15 ms·
Roman Egypt was a strange province
- patientplatypus 4y ago
- mrwnmonm 4y agoEvery time someone obtains power, the first thing they think of is "let's conquer Egypt" It is surprising that the US didn't do that. But hey, they have a smarter plan.
- to1y 4y agoAncient/modern Egypt are completely different nations/people.
- mrwnmonm 4y agoWhat does this add to what I said?
- kwere 4y agothe wealth of egypt, its fertile floodplains dwarfs in comparison to mississipi river basin and Rio della Plata basin agriculture wealth and lower population to deal with.
- Koshkin 4y ago> most of the country is desert Well, in the manner of speaking only. Back in the day, the "country" was where people had settlements, and that was the delta and the banks of the Nile...
- somat 4y agoyes, however, having a river does not make the area something other than a desert.
- agumonkey 4y agoThere's a video about Florida in the early days of USA and it was mostly a swamp. The last century made it into a state per se but it's really recent.
- justinator 4y agoDeswampifying Florida is one of the greatest environmental tragedies ever committed. Up there with the building of the Glen Canyon and Hoover Dam. Shortly below is attempting to control the Mississippi River Delta.
- debacle 4y agoThe problem is the land owners who didn't see it as a tragedy are still the ones pulling the strings. Florida is on borrowed time.
- justinator 4y agoYou're right, but it's a losing battle.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoAll the hundreds of dams out west built to irrigate high and cold interior deserts really. Each individually unjustifiable environmental destruction, all together a catastrophe. They'll outlast everything else we build and probably even the memory of the name of this country itself.
- justinator 4y agoI have to agree with your sentiment.
- paganel 4y agoThe Soviets thinking about reversing the flow direction of some big Siberian rivers (from South to North into North to South) might have topped them all, if the project had actually been executed. [1] Of course, the same Soviets copied the American capitalists's hydro policy, starting with Stalin and continuing with Khrushchev, with the same negative environmental effects. The Volga Hydroelectric Station project [2] was used as an accusation against Khrushchev by some and said accusation was used for its dismissal, supposedly for the project's negative effects, mainly the huge swathes of very productive agricultural lands which got submerged. Modern-day Egypt has done the same thing with the Aswan Dam. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Hydroelectric_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Hydroelectric_Station
- hammock 4y agoThanks for this necessary context. Roman Egypt did not share the same borders of what we think of as modern Egypt as today. AD 125: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Roman_Empire_-_Aegyptus_%28125_AD%29.svg/440px-Roman_Empire_-_Aegyptus_%28125_AD%29.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Ro...
- mkehrt 4y agoIf you read the rest of the paragraph, you'll see that he's talking about aridness being important for preserving papyri.
- imbnwa 4y agoPeople really underestimate what it takes to preserve writing
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> Well, in the manner of speaking only. Back in the day, the "country" was where people had settlements, and that was the delta and the banks of the Nile... Absolutely untrue. The country was the territory held by the king. Most of the people were in the agricultural area, yes, but the Egyptian king also operated a lot of mines and quarries. Those were in the desert.
- prox 4y agoI think you are right. They also had various outposts, and in various timeframes they were a local superpower. In terms of what Egyptians themselves thought was Egypt, that might be clued in by the name! The name was “Kemet” , aka “Black land” , referring to the embankment of black fertile land.
- selimthegrim 4y agoI seem to hear conflicting reports on whether invest in Greek Egypt (up to Cleopatra) was practiced mainly by the Greeks or by the Egyptians to thumb their nose at the Greeks.
- ggm 4y agoI wonder if the existence of a stable overclass of alexandrines distinct from the native population pre-prepared Egypt to be a Roman vassal state: it was already functioning as an analogous model, they just replaced the top set, but kept the governance model as-is. Egypt was a breadbasket for Rome long before it was incorporated as were Tunisia and Sicily. I suspect "do not break the supply chain" was huge in not altering the governance
- ProjectArcturis 4y agoI think Egypt had been controlled by a foreign overclass since at least the Sea Peoples. Perhaps longer. The Nile is incredibly valuable but also very difficult to defend from invasion.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> I wonder if the existence of a stable overclass of alexandrines distinct from the native population pre-prepared Egypt to be a Roman vassal state: it was already functioning as an analogous model, they just replaced the top set, but kept the governance model as-is. No, those are two different phenomena. The piece notes that once the Romans took over the Greek elites immediately fused with the native elites. Any time anywhere with a functioning administration is conquered, the local administration is mostly left alone. The existing administration is already doing the job you want it to do; why would you change it? But it's not relevant (to this question) that the top level of the Ptolemaic administration was ethnically distinct.
- DoughnutHole 4y ago> Any time anywhere with a functioning administration is conquered, the local administration is mostly left alone. Not universally true - this presupposes that maximum economic output is the only goal of a conquering power. Conquering rulers are not always rational, or they may have other rational goals. The Mongols maintained the existing administrations wherever they submitted to them, but wherever they faced stiff resistance they wiped out the old power structures (and much of the population at large). In mesopotamia they even destroyed ancient, essential irrigation systems to an extent that the the region's productivity didn't recover for centuries. Even the Romans weren't always so conciliatory and rational - in conquering Carthage they sold the entire surviving population into slavery and destroyed the original city entirely. It wasn't exactly rare for them to choose to be brutal to make a point.