4 ms·

It would be interesting to know who and when exactly created this temple, if it's really a Zeus temple. Were that expat / refugees from Greece? Greek wife of s

It would be interesting to know who and when exactly created this temple, if it's really a Zeus temple. Were that expat / refugees from Greece? Greek wife of some Pharaoh? Greek soldiers of Roman legion? Or Phoenicians deciding to troll future archaeologists?

ginko 4y ago
Greeks ruled Egypt for several hundred years after it was conquered by Alexander the Great. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_Kingdom
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  Heck, Alexandria was in Egypt. You can't get more Hellenic than that.
dghf 4y ago
Egypt was Hellenised after its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. The article suggests the temple was renovated in the reign of Hadrian, in the first half of the first century AD.
cavDXF 4y ago
This is not aimed at the commenter, but rather a generalized statement: yntries like this make me love and at the same time hate HN. Great articles with mostly uninformed comments, whereas the two or three guys with knowledge on the topic are buried deep underneath. Egypt was ptolemaic, thus hellenised. Cleopatra is famously Greek, not Egyptian.
- darkerside 4y ago
  Bring uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated, not condescended. It's an attitude that I see too much of in our society but hope to see less of here on HN. This is a topic I'm also ignorant of, and I'm glad to see a discussion spark up.
  - carapace 4y ago
    > Bring uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated I disagree. There's too much noise already. This isn't StackOverflow. Wikipedia exists. People should take a moment to read up on whatever subject before they ask questions rather than wasting other people's time coming up to speed on fundamental knowledge. (It's not like ancient Egyptians and Greeks are particularly obscure, eh?) We can have much deeper discussions if people ask informed questions.
    - darkerside 4y ago
      Sometimes the experts have a really deep discussion, and that's cool. Sometimes people just want to spitball because a post sparked their imagination. The great thing is, we can do both. If you don't like the question that was asked, find another or ask one yourself. I fundamentally disagree with feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions. How much research should be necessary? How much baseline knowledge is "enough" to participate? Who gets to draw that line? Thank Zeus it's not you, and instead people get to draw their own lines by engaging, or not, with other commenters on this social network.
      - carapace 4y ago
        > Who gets to draw that line? Thank Zeus it's not you... I'm not the Spanish Inquisition. The worst I can do is downvote stupid or ignorant questions that could be easily answered by a web search and ten minutes of reading. > I fundamentally disagree with feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions. That's not how I feel. In fact, I would say that "feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions" is a symptom of mental or emotional illness. What I feel is that it's disrespectful at best to lean on other people for basic knowledge rather than doing one's own homework. Even if you don't agree that "lazyweb" is disrespectful, I would still argue that it wastes a lot of time and energy. If someone asks a question that could be answered by ten minutes of googling, they are just using the forum as a interface to google, eh? There are plenty of other places on the Internet where people can go to get basic information, Wikipedia, Stackoverflow, Google, etc... Places where it's perfectly appropriate to be one of the "lucky 10,000" ( https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ ). I don't think being "uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated" here. FWIW I do think it should be tolerated, because A) that's how some people learn (however disrespectfully and lazily) and B) occasionally ignorant questions lead to very interesting and informative discussions (which is the whole point of HN as far as I'm concerned) and we cannot reliably predict which ignorant questions will lead to such discussions.
- throw0101a 4y ago
  Sometimes it's easier to use a shortcut: > Cunningham is credited with the idea: "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."[15] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Law
cguess 4y ago
Just to add what others are saying. Phoenicians (and anyone else in antiquity) would never have "trolled" archaeologists, because the concept of archaeology, or preserving the long-forgotten past, was simply not a concept until relatively recently (like, the late 1700's and even then, not picking up steam for a couple of decades).
- kasey_junk 4y ago
  While the current techniques of archaeology may have started in the 1700s the concept of excavating and preserving ancient sites is much much older. The Babylonians were extremely active in that practice and Nabonidus was famous for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabonidus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabonidus
  - graderjs 4y ago
    Imagine if we could travel back in time and show those Babylonians an iPad. They'd think it was magic. It's incredible to think how far we've come technologically but how similar we are mentally emotionally psychologically spiritually.
    - cguess 4y ago
      Someone 100 years ago would think it's borderline magic, 200 years ago they would have absolutely considered it magic (electricity wouldn't come into its own for 70 more years). 3000 years ago a pocket knife would have been unbelievable.
      - kasey_junk 4y ago
        We have historical evidence of pocket knives that are about 3000 years old: https://coolmaterial.com/roundup/the-history-of-the-pocket-knife/ https://coolmaterial.com/roundup/the-history-of-the-pocket-k...
Mikeb85 4y ago
It's from the Roman Era. From the conquest of Alexander onwards, Egypt was hellenized so calling the temple 'ancient' in the context of Egypt is misleading.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tut-urut-utut 4y ago
Separate comment since I can't edit anymore. Yes, Egypt was a Hellenic / Greek colony for a while, but seeing “ancient” I was under the impression it was much older. Hellenic / Greek period is something I associate with “antic” and not “ancient”.

ginko 4y ago

Greeks ruled Egypt for several hundred years after it was conquered by Alexander the Great. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_Kingdom

formerkrogemp 4y ago
Heck, Alexandria was in Egypt. You can't get more Hellenic than that.

dghf 4y ago

Egypt was Hellenised after its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. The article suggests the temple was renovated in the reign of Hadrian, in the first half of the first century AD.

cavDXF 4y ago

This is not aimed at the commenter, but rather a generalized statement: yntries like this make me love and at the same time hate HN. Great articles with mostly uninformed comments, whereas the two or three guys with knowledge on the topic are buried deep underneath. Egypt was ptolemaic, thus hellenised. Cleopatra is famously Greek, not Egyptian.

darkerside 4y ago
Bring uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated, not condescended. It's an attitude that I see too much of in our society but hope to see less of here on HN. This is a topic I'm also ignorant of, and I'm glad to see a discussion spark up.
- carapace 4y ago
  > Bring uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated I disagree. There's too much noise already. This isn't StackOverflow. Wikipedia exists. People should take a moment to read up on whatever subject before they ask questions rather than wasting other people's time coming up to speed on fundamental knowledge. (It's not like ancient Egyptians and Greeks are particularly obscure, eh?) We can have much deeper discussions if people ask informed questions.
  - darkerside 4y ago
    Sometimes the experts have a really deep discussion, and that's cool. Sometimes people just want to spitball because a post sparked their imagination. The great thing is, we can do both. If you don't like the question that was asked, find another or ask one yourself. I fundamentally disagree with feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions. How much research should be necessary? How much baseline knowledge is "enough" to participate? Who gets to draw that line? Thank Zeus it's not you, and instead people get to draw their own lines by engaging, or not, with other commenters on this social network.
    - carapace 4y ago
      > Who gets to draw that line? Thank Zeus it's not you... I'm not the Spanish Inquisition. The worst I can do is downvote stupid or ignorant questions that could be easily answered by a web search and ten minutes of reading. > I fundamentally disagree with feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions. That's not how I feel. In fact, I would say that "feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions" is a symptom of mental or emotional illness. What I feel is that it's disrespectful at best to lean on other people for basic knowledge rather than doing one's own homework. Even if you don't agree that "lazyweb" is disrespectful, I would still argue that it wastes a lot of time and energy. If someone asks a question that could be answered by ten minutes of googling, they are just using the forum as a interface to google, eh? There are plenty of other places on the Internet where people can go to get basic information, Wikipedia, Stackoverflow, Google, etc... Places where it's perfectly appropriate to be one of the "lucky 10,000" ( https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ ). I don't think being "uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated" here. FWIW I do think it should be tolerated, because A) that's how some people learn (however disrespectfully and lazily) and B) occasionally ignorant questions lead to very interesting and informative discussions (which is the whole point of HN as far as I'm concerned) and we cannot reliably predict which ignorant questions will lead to such discussions.
throw0101a 4y ago
Sometimes it's easier to use a shortcut: > Cunningham is credited with the idea: "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."[15] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Law

cguess 4y ago

Just to add what others are saying. Phoenicians (and anyone else in antiquity) would never have "trolled" archaeologists, because the concept of archaeology, or preserving the long-forgotten past, was simply not a concept until relatively recently (like, the late 1700's and even then, not picking up steam for a couple of decades).

kasey_junk 4y ago
While the current techniques of archaeology may have started in the 1700s the concept of excavating and preserving ancient sites is much much older. The Babylonians were extremely active in that practice and Nabonidus was famous for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabonidus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabonidus
- graderjs 4y ago
  Imagine if we could travel back in time and show those Babylonians an iPad. They'd think it was magic. It's incredible to think how far we've come technologically but how similar we are mentally emotionally psychologically spiritually.
  - cguess 4y ago
    Someone 100 years ago would think it's borderline magic, 200 years ago they would have absolutely considered it magic (electricity wouldn't come into its own for 70 more years). 3000 years ago a pocket knife would have been unbelievable.
    - kasey_junk 4y ago
      We have historical evidence of pocket knives that are about 3000 years old: https://coolmaterial.com/roundup/the-history-of-the-pocket-knife/ https://coolmaterial.com/roundup/the-history-of-the-pocket-k...

Mikeb85 4y ago

It's from the Roman Era. From the conquest of Alexander onwards, Egypt was hellenized so calling the temple 'ancient' in the context of Egypt is misleading.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tut-urut-utut 4y ago

Separate comment since I can't edit anymore. Yes, Egypt was a Hellenic / Greek colony for a while, but seeing “ancient” I was under the impression it was much older. Hellenic / Greek period is something I associate with “antic” and not “ancient”.