Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Ancient Egypt – 3 Surprising Cases of ANCIENT BIOLOGICAL WARFARE




1. The Macedonian author of Stratagems of War, tells us that Persian King Cambyses learnt of the Egyptians’ deep reverence for cats, symbol of their goddess Bastet, and of their unwillingness to harm them. To kill a sacred cat brought the punishment of death. So the Persian ruler dreamed up a novel stratagem. He ordered his front line troops to hold up cats in order to protect his army from Egyptian arrows. His sacrilegious act against the cats of Egypt paralyzed the Egyptian archers and Cambyses was able to win the battle with ease.



2. The King of Mitanni used biological warfare against Thutmosis. He released mares in heat into the path of pharaoh’s chariots, causing hormonal chaos among his horses and surprised the Egyptians before an attack.



3. The Egyptians did not play fair either.


Another story of biological warfare has the desperate Egyptians turning to the use of rats in warfare. Greatly outnumbered by the enemy, Ptah saved the city of Pelusium from the Assyrians by sending out a horde of rats to gnaw through the attackers’ bowstrings and their leather shield handles, turning attack into defeat.  

And of course the Egyptians reached for an even bigger stick.
They employed potent execration texts and rituals against enemies, believed to weaken and flatten them... 'esoteric weapons of mass destruction'... (Could they still be deadly today? See "'The Smiting Texts', the archaeological mystery thriller.)


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Monday, June 22, 2020

Truthfully, what do you, and all Egyptologists, ACTUALLY LOVE ABOUT ancient Egypt?




Few Egyptologists can express in any satisfactory manner why they are smitten by ancient Egypt, yet almost all felt Egypt’s ‘Intimations of Immortality’ dawn on them while young.

What is it about Egypt above all other civilizations?



A noted British Egyptologist and writer, Dr Barbara Watterson, once confessed her puzzlement to me while on a River Nile cruise in Egypt: “I don’t know why I love this place. I have never cried over it, the way I did when I first set eyes on the Parthenon in Greece.”

I had just confessed to her that in spite of all my books “I’ve sometimes experienced a more powerful sense of ancient Egypt as a shaft of sunlight fell through a window onto the floor at home, than I’ve felt inside a temple in Egypt.

Explain that.

I love ancient Egypt’s temples...

Is it because ancient Egypt is also a ‘concept’ that so satisfies us - endlessly?

And yet...

The civilization of ancient Egypt gets deep hooks into people’s imaginations.

Young people’s, in particular.

They ‘get’ ancient Egypt.

But what is it they get?

After a talk I gave to schoolchildren about Egypt, one boy told me afterwards, with a beam on his face: “I was so HAPPY while you were talking about Egypt and mummies!”

Mummies?

Happy?

I’ve written scores of novels over the years, trying to put a lens to that ‘something’ about the ancient Egypt I love.

I hope a few make you happy.

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