I recently completed 20 years at the gym. This has done me plenty of good. Physically certainly. Perhaps mentally as well, but I leave it for others to judge. Yet, if you ask me, I can’t say I have ever liked it. I find the whole gym act awkward and a rather pitiful way to get to the end goals.
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| Two Million Stones, Two Tons Each, 481 Feet |
But don’t take it from me on that harsh assessment. Listen to Montuhotep, a pyramid workman who served under two Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Sneferu, and his son Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza. I caught up with Montuhotep recently and after some chitchat, we compared notes on how things looked circa 2,600 BC and the present.
To put it mildly, Montu isn’t impressed. And his exhibit A for that conclusion was what he saw through an “invisible fence.”
“I could see into a hall full of workmen but could not enter, I kept bumping up against some invisible fence,” was how he put it. I surmised he was looking through a glass window but I did not interrupt him.
What Montu saw had left him thoroughly mystified. But as he spoke his emotions turned to one of deep pity. I came to see his point.
Montu said he saw a great many men, and women, laboring intensely inside the hall, each doing their own task. They shared an expression of great, even painful, effort. “But,” Montu exclaimed throwing up his hands, “nothing was getting done!”
“I saw men strenuously handling heavy objects. Some lifted weights attached to a bar above their head. Others lay on a bench and thrust bricks into the air. A third group lay upside down and pushed a metal plate with their legs. They repeated this activity a dozen times, stopped, added more weight, and continued their pretend work under great strain. Yet, for all their effort, no wall, pillar, or any other structure was being built!”
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| Getting Ready for Pretend Work |
I stood agape as I began to understand what he was getting at. I had my doubts about the gym routine but never in such stark terms.
“In one corner, I saw men and women walking in a hurry, some running. But, even after half an hour, they hadn’t moved one cubit! Why would anyone walk or run without getting anywhere?” Montu asked.
“Unless they are being chased,” I replied trying to inject some humor into the situation.
“Right,” Montu nodded with an ever so slight smile.
“Astonishingly,” Montu continued, shaking his head in disbelief, “I watched an array of people seated astride, rowing fast and furious. They did not have oars and appeared to be pulling ropes but it was clear from their motion they were rowing.”
“What did you find strange about that? I asked, curious to hear Montu’s view.
“Are you joking,” he looked at me with raised eyebrows. “There wasn’t a drop of water anywhere, let alone a river or a canal. And like the runners to their side, these rowers too weren’t moving a finger’s width forward.”
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| Is there a Better Way? |
“I saw other strange sights. Some people were on the floor engaging in various movements with a large sphere; they weren’t playing like children because unlike children these grownups seemed to derive no joy from this activity. Yet others were pretending to draw water from a well by pulling a rope. No trough of water came up though. Instead, a large stack of metal bricks lifted off the floor, which they dropped with an enormous thud.”
“It does appear strange when you put it like that,” I said trying to place myself in Montuhotep’s ancient shoes.
“How else to put this pointless work?” Montu asked, seemingly offended by having to state the obvious. “I saw a man and woman sweating profusely from an attempt to climb stairs. In spite of taking one step up after another, they remained in place!”
“In an adjacent hall, a mixed batch of men and women were frenetically jumping about, showing various gesticulations, prodded on by a screaming squadron leader. Suddenly, they stopped, got down on all fours, and crawled like monkeys. In the end, they appeared to play dead, lying motionless on mats, eyes closed. I don’t blame them, for I too would be ashamed from having little to show for after that amount of frenzied activity.”
“And the dress they wore,” Montu continued, motioning with hands. I immediately saw the danger of where he was headed. As much as I agreed with the rest of what Montu said, I didn’t want any part of this.
“Montu, Montu, pardon me, but we don’t comment on other people’s dress these days,” I pleaded and cupped my ears. I didn’t hear the rest of what he said.
When I looked up, Montuhotep was lost in thought, fingers on the chin. Eventually, he turned to me. “What’s the point of all this?” he asked, looking resigned.
Even though I was a gym goer, I shared Montuhotep’s skepticism and didn’t want to be a gym spokesperson. But I couldn’t ignore his question either. “They are working their muscles, trying to stay fit, not get corpulent,” I said in a half-hearted defense of the gym proceedings.
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| Get Down to Real Work |
That didn’t help because Montu looked more stumped than before. “Don’t these people work? On the farm, in the quarries and mines, in workshops, in construction? That should make anyone stay fit. You could hunt, row a boat, chop wood, or walk to see your relatives in the next village. You could even hike up the mountain to see the sunrise or sunset!”
Having grown up walking two miles to reach the school, I could hardly dispute that. “You’re speaking my mind,” I said nodding. “But you see Montu these days few people work like that. Most sit at their desks from morning till evening. Others who do have to move are not happy about it.”
Montu listened, his face straining to grasp what I was saying. “And to atone for that they get into these halls and pretend to work?” Montu asked showing genuine shock. “That’s primitive,” Montu concluded, shaking his head.
But then Montu’s face broke into a bright smile. “I did see something that gives me hope though,” he said as I looked at him eagerly for the good news. “Many of the pretend workers I observed through the invisible fence appear to be scribes. This is an improvement. In our days, scribes never did any physical labor—pretend or otherwise,” Montu recalled. “They just wrote.”
“What makes you think they are scribes?” I asked.
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| Script Revival |
“Oh, I saw them stopping work frequently, taking out palm-sized tablets and scribing with their fingertips. They displayed many emotions while doing so, some laughing, others showing a foul mood. The happy ones wrote 😆😍💃🎉🙏👍, those angry 🤬😫👹☠️🖕👎.
“It’s good to see you have kept our pictorial script,” Montuhotep said as he walked away flashing a thumbs-up sign and a wink. “That gives me hope!”
