This message was from the next episode board--

>By Rene on Tuesday, March 12, 2002 - 03:37 pm:

I have a nit for "A Pharoah To Remember"...

At the end of the episode, Leela, Fry and Bender run to their ship and escape.

Their ship...which seems to be right next to the locations with the slaves. So...why couldn't they make it to the ship alot earlier in the episode? >

I don't know if the creators were using the image of poor driven slaves deliberately or out of poor research, but what I've heard about is that most scientists about old egypt see the pyramids as work insurance during flood times, when the pharaoh made a contract with the homeless, jobless, workless farmers to build the pyramids, getting housing, food and money in return, and when after 4 months the flood fell, the farmers returned to come back next year. Also building one building gave a common goal to the different parts of egypt, uniting the country.

But where's the humor in that?

(Actually, I suppose it WOULD be kind of funny to see all the toilers just up and leave when their time was up, but it wouldn't really last for the whole episode)

I attribute the idea of slaves being used more to the cliched popular image of how the Pyramids were built than to a lack of research. A funnier image might have been having a bunch of flying saucers levitating the stones into place, in reference to one of the dafter theories of how the Pyramids were built.

Am I the only one who thinks this episode was just screaming for a few Stargate references?

Well, it wasn't Ancient Egypt, just very much like it.