Social Structures During The New Kingdom Of Ancient Egypt

These two ancient civilizations shared similar social structures as both divided their citizens into different classes. During the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt, people were divided into seven different levels. At the top was the Pharaoh with the government officials, nobles and priests below him/her. The fourth level consisted of the scribes and soldiers with the craftsmen and merchants making up the middle class in the fifth level. Farmers and unskilled individuals were in the sixth level with the slaves making up the lowest level. As would be expected, each level of the social chain came with specific duties. The top of the social chain was called the Pharaoh, which was the political and social leader of Egypt. The Pharaoh’s duty was

The Greek social structure was condensed into four different social levels; Athens, Metics, Freedmen and Slaves. The Athens, also known as the upper class, was the top of the social structures in ancient Greece. The people in this class controlled all the government work, literature departments, the army and ruled the slaves. These people had to be born in Athens as the rights of this class could only be inherited. Following the Athens came the Metics, which was considered the middle class of Greece. These people were not native of Athens but were free men with less rights than the upper class. They mainly held trading and manufacturing jobs. Freedmen were next on the social hierarchy list and they were considered the lower class of Greece. These people were once slaves but were freed by their owners, they could never become citizens and were given only a few rights and privileges. As expected, the last class in the Greek hierarchy was the slaves. The people in this class were either prisoners of war or criminals. They were mainly non-Greeks and possessed no rights, not even of the right of their own lives. The slaves did all the dirty work in the city-state as they would build the structures and buildings that the upper class ordered. The only way they could escape being a slave was to pay a ransom amount of money, which was nearly impossible due to the little money they earned. Although the social structures of these two civilizations were named differently and condensed, the overall concept of the hierarchies were as similar as they could get without fully taking each other’s social