Hi Ray, Let me extract one paragraph from your latest message:
(REH) >>>> I've been watching another possibility in the "Life of the Pharaohs" series on public television. Egypt had an incredible run for a civilization with a high degree of stability and affluence even amongst the commoners. The life of the Kingdom was longer than all of the various little Nation States put together, that Keith, Harry and others like to rail against. 3,500 years. Longer than Rome all the way to the present. Now that is a serious society. Of course, they didn't have "Freedumb." Next to Egypt, Greece and Rome were amateurs and the current crop doesn't even qualify as in the running. Not even England. >>>> I don't know what history books the researchers of the "Life of the Pharaohs" have been reading, but they're certainly not the same as those on my shelves. Nor does the irenic picture of the Pharaohs correspond with my inferences when visiting Egypt two years ago where I saw acres of hieroglyphs showing Paraohs hanging up their enemies like washing on a clothes-line, queues of kneeling prisoners awaiting beheading, multitudes of battle chariots trampling down the proletariat and once-beautiful renderings and statues of Pharaohs having been obliterated by their immediate successors. Here's the historical low-down in brief: 4,000-3,200BC -- 800 years of warfare between the Upper and Lower Egypt 3,200-2665BC -- Protodynastic. A largely peaceful period when Egpyt was not so much an Empire but a region in which trading could now take place safely along a much extended, peaceful Nile, now able to connect a thriving Mediterranean economy* and the resources of inner Africa. 2665-1075BC -- Five distinct "Kingdoms" each resulting from social breakdowns, coups d'etats, palace revolutions, harem conspiracies, religious revolutions, and so on. *This economy being serviced by Phoenician traders with cities, islands and provinces over all the seaboard of the Mediterranean. The Phoenician culture lasted for 2,000 years and -- good gracious! -- with not a soldier among them. (At least, not a single archeological relic or wall-painting depicting soldiers has yet been discovered.) As for dig about England, well, we're a nation of mongrel barbarians really -- though I must add that we were building great stone monuments a thousand years before the Egyptian pyramids. And, in our accidental way, we have produced a few all-time geniuses such as King Alfred, the Venerable Bede, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Darwin and, of course, in my own modest way, Yours truly, Keith __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
