The British Museum displays a 3,250-year-old Egyptian tablet. The limestone slab, inscribed in black and red ink, is a work supervisor’s attendance sheet: who clocked in, who was absent, and what excuses they gave.

MPs and ministers’ special friends, eyeing future consultancy jobs, could learn a thing or two. So might the rest of us, puzzled by the mysterious distinctions that Robert Abela draws between the cases of Justyne Caruana and Clayton Bartolo, or those of Amanda Muscat and Rosianne Cutajar.

Ancient civilisations were sticklers for workers showing up. Among the Aztecs, if you didn’t show up for work on the Tenochtitlan aqueduct, things quickly got serious. Your boss meant it literally when he yelled: “Next time, I’ll make sure the high priests on the Public Standards Committee dig your living heart out with a spoon!”

Despite the bad publicity that Pharaonic Egypt gets in the Bible, working conditions in the land of the Great Pyramids seem to have been more lenient. The first recorded strike was held by workers in the Valley of the Kings, who protested at not being paid their rations.

The British Museum’s attendance sheet shows some understanding for absences. One worker said his mother was ill, another that Mummy was being mummified.

Someone else said he was stung in the eye by a scorpion. Even in our day, that’s a good reason to sit still and not go to work.

Other reasons for no-shows need historical context. “I was making beer” would be audacious, even coming from Rosianne.

But in ancient Egypt, making beer was related to health and safety. Alcohol killed the bacteria in water. Beer was a fortified drink. It was associated with the goddess Hathor, to whom one prayed for bounty in personal life.

Making beer was a way of making sure you continued turning up for work in the long run, healthy and strong, and with a good work-life balance.

The ancient Egyptians wouldn’t have understood why no attendance sheet was kept for Amanda. Or why she couldn’t just say she was helping the minister make frothy beer.

But they’d understand why we make little fuss about workers dying on building sites. They weren’t too exercised, either.

Their approach to labour relations made use of astrology and auspicious times. They’d quickly understand what Abela means when he says that “specifics” explain why ministers have been treated differently.

Obviously, no one case is alike. There are always particular details that are different. It explains nothing to say that, in the case of Caruana, who had to resign as education minister (she gave a consultancy job to a special friend), the specifics are different from the case of Bartolo, who merely needed to offer a non-apology. What particulars matter?

Like the Aztecs and the Babylonians, the Egyptians would catch on quickly. They were attuned to the importance of the timing of the stars.

Who gets fired, and what gets paid back, is calculated on what would be an adequate sacrifice- Ranier Fsadni

They would notice that Caruana’s case came to a head in December 2021, when a general election was round the corner.

Rosianne’s reintegration into Labour’s parliamentary group came in August this year. That was on the heels of the bad result in the European elections. The sun was in Leo, and the party base was roaring for concessions from Abela.

What happens to you depends on which side of the election date you’re on, and the election’s specific result.

Amanda’s case came in between elections. Hence the middle-of-the-road result: nothing too lenient, nothing too harsh. Alas, the second scandal showed something was really wrong in the stars.

Everything in our politics clears up once you get the right handle. Our government is civilised but in an old-fashioned way. Critics, stop invoking new-tangled democratic principles. Stop pointing to the public service code of ethics, which prohibits profiteering for friends and family.

You’re missing the point. The firings and non-firings lie in our prime minister’s reading of the stars. Want to know why Rosianne doesn’t pay back the money she earned back on her phantom job, but Amanda does? Ask a high priest, not a standards commissioner.

The actual standard is propitiation of the mysterious gods. Who gets fired, and what gets paid back, is calculated on what would be an adequate sacrifice.

How did we get here? Our politicians make the gods in their own image. They are themselves arbitrary and mercenary, centralising power and erasing real rules. It’s a recipe for unstable, short-term politics but the result is attributed to capricious gods who can be wheedled.

If you say this is regress from the rational, democratic politics we hoped for, it’s understandable. But think of it in a different way.

Suppose we settled for being governed according to the norms of an ancient civilisation, say, Babylon. Frankly, we’re not too far off. Ancient Middle East battles were planned by diplomats; there was a set day, winner takes all. We have those same battles, except we call them elections.

If we settled for less, we might get more. We could demand what Babylon took for granted. Under Hammurabi’s Code, when the rich injured the poor, they had to pay up handsomely. When buildings collapsed and killed people, the architects were held responsible.

We could demand a minimum of civilisation. But I suspect we’d be told that the times are not auspicious, because the specifics are different.