Akilah Beasley
CENG 105WS.01
October 29, 2009

Misfortune in the Egyptian Empire

I, Queen Hatshepsut am the most prosperous, efficient, glorious Pharaoh to ever rule over the Egyptian Empire. Many citizens loved me, for I made them exceedingly happy. My over all approval rate was that of seventy-one percent making my empire the one with the highest amount of satisfied residents. My people were also fortunate to have a life expectancy of sixty-one whereas our rival’s average life expectancy was a mere fifty-seven; my empire was the healthiest and strongest of them all. With this being said you would imagine that my empire was the greatest empire- they were privileged enough to have yours truly as their leader- but my empire’s flawlessness was not compatible with my own. The people of my empire adored me for my great leadership skills; they depended on me so much that they were unable to think for themselves. When it came down to making vital decisions like how to produce more food, manufacture more goods, and build a strong military, everyone looked for me to supervise the entire ordeal like it was my responsibility or something! My people were not advocates of personal responsibility; they thought that because I was the ruler I had to make all the decisions, their irresponsibility was the factor that caused my empire to collapse.
Reasonable citizens would have tried to produce more food when they noticed that our food supply was low. My empire only had twenty-two million bushels of food, while our rivals had three hundred thirty-seven million bushels of food. If I were a citizen in my empire I would have done something to recover from this terrible flaw. I would have resorted to cannibalism if I had to; this would have increased the food supply in the empire and decrease the overcrowded population, killing two birds with one stone. It is unfortunate that my people weren’t intelligent enough to even contemplate this idea- maybe I nurtured them too much.
My empire did not have many manufactured goods; we had twenty-nine goods while our counterparts had four hundred seventy-eight goods. My citizens depended on me for petty things like food, with knowing this I shouldn’t have expected them to build factories and collect resources so that the empire could produce manufactured goods. I take the blame for thinking that my citizens clever but I still hold them responsible for the lack of effort they put into manufacturing goods. Because my people failed to manufacture goods, their wealth suffered and they weren’t able to trade with the other empires. It is none of my concern that my citizens weren’t as wealthy as citizens in other empires; I was wealthy, and that was all that mattered to me. If my citizens wanted to be wealthy, they would have done the work so that they could generate wealth.
The military in my empire was puny; there were not many soldiers. My empire’s military consisted of one hundred twenty-eight thousand soldiers whereas our rivals had two hundred seventy-two thousand soldiers. The military unit was so small because my male citizens didn’t volunteer to be soldiers. My citizens wanted to be protected but they didn’t have the courage to contribute their services to the military. They expected me to appoint warriors and to research things that would be beneficial to the military such as iron working, and metal casting. Once again, I thought that they would research these attributes being as though they were the ones who needed protection- but no, they didn’t even lift a finger. As a result to their own sluggishness, they were not protected and they were often attacked by barbarians.
It is unfortunate that my citizens were so dense, they really didn’t have to do much to support themselves. I made them happy and healthy; I would think that they would appreciate me for that and try to pick up some of my slack, but they were just too dependent on me. It obviously wasn’t my fault that my empire collapsed; I was able to rule and keep my citizens happy from 4000BC to 1992. My citizens were to blame for my empire’s downfall; they were irresponsible and needy.

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