Posted on 07/14/2009 7:00:27 PM PDT by decimon
Egyptian archaeologists digging near the Suez Canal have discovered the remains of what is believed to be the largest fortress in the eastern Delta, Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni announced.
Located at the site of Tell Dafna, between El-Manzala Lake and the Suez Canal, the remains reveal the foundation of a military town about 9 miles (15 kilometers) northeast of the city of western Qantara.
"The fortress covers an area of about 380 by 625 meters (1,247 by 2,051 feet), while the enclosure wall is about 13 meters (43 feet) in width," Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, head of the Central Department of Lower Egyptian Antiquities and the director of the mission, said in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
ping
Tell Dafna of the Ways of Horus ping.
Why in heaven would you need a 43-foot-thick curtain wall, before the invention of cannons?
Catapults might have existed - I dunno. But, that brings up another question - was the area yet forrested?
SC, Blam?
That's a long way to throw a spear? The wall are of mud brick so maybe the thickness was needed to keep them from digging through. As you've guessed, I don't know.
Insurance?
As in, LLoyds of london said, “No policy for you, unless your walls are at least 42’ thick!”
Could be, I dunno.
There’s a Stargate in there, I just know it!
That's my guess too. Anyone digging could be dealt with before they could dig through.
LOL, yeah - by maggots. Wow, that is overkill.
I was guessing that there was an undead mummy, Book of the Dead and a ghost Egyptian army. I’m covering all my bets.
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Okay, somehow I managed to miss this topic and ping (luckily I did a search before I posted it). Thanks decimon! |
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Pelusium/Sin alert!
The Delta was and is forested, just not oaks, maples, and the like :’). The Egyptians built very large structures of mud brick (as someone pointed out) but for defense relied on fending off attacks with sheer numbers. The other big defensive array was the Sinai. Crossing that was done all the time, by merchants, shepherds, the Children of Israel, and whatnot, but it was non-trivial to march an army across it. Nevertheless, Egypt has spent quite a bit of its history (despite what Hawass et al claim) occupied by foreign powers (possibly the Akkadians, the Hyksos, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Macedonians and Greeks, the Romans, various foreign Moslem caliphs and sultans and whatnot, a couple of different European powers).
Like a lot of insular powers throughout history, Egypt’s worst enemy may have been the internal power struggle.
Egyptian soldiers used shields occasionally, but mostly relied on bow and arrow, spears, and small specialty units used slingstones. Use of artillery (that is, catapaults and related doodads) may not have entered Egypt until Alexander the Great, or perhaps the Persians before him. Phillip (A’s dad) used “belly shooters” which were powerful crossbows which IMHO fall into that category. The Romans used artillery for siegecraft in a lot of campaigns of conquest (Vespasian was particularly skilled in its use, and reduced dozens of hilltop forts in Britain), but the Roman conquest of Egypt was a pretty quiet affair.
By the peak of the New Kingdom Egyptian higher-ups relied on chariots, and as in most ancient users of war chariots, these were mobile artillery platforms, allowing the attackers to zoom up, shoot off a (largely randomly targeted) volley until the “ammo” was used up, then turn back toward Egyptian lines.
Anyway, the use of wood in Egypt was in construction (various ways), furniture, boats, and the arrows, bows, and spears mentioned. I don’t think they relied as much on dung for fuel as the Mesopotamians did.
But... ok
swamp maples require HUNDREDS of gallons of fresh water a day, per tree.
Mud brick implies a wet climate.
Were the 43’ walls for flood control?
There’s no date proposed in the article. Long-range catapults were in use from the Macedonian conquest period.
Maybe the walls were a public-works program: “shovel-ready stimulus” jobs, as it were. “Who cares if it does any good? Just keep building!”
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