Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 933 Communication

"Your questions are very good, Professor Guy." After the person who stood up sat down, Liang En remembered that this person should be a well-known professor in the Department of Humanities and Sciences of University of Paris I, so explained.

"Regarding the content of the trade route, in fact, the archaeological field has been able to explain some things, and there are actually more evidences, but we need to jump out of this scientific expedition itself and adopt more information."

For Liang En, the preparation in advance is still very valuable. For example, this time I read more materials because of the preparation in advance, and there happened to be relevant things in the materials.

This is actually not unexpected, after all trade with the south was very valuable to ancient Egypt, so there will be some content related to the southern trade route everywhere.

"We can take a look at this stone tablet." Liang En, who had been prepared for a long time, quickly projected another stone tablet on the screen, and then explained it based on the records on the royal inscription in the Middle Kingdom period.

"The text on this stele means to prevent any blacks from passing by water, land or boat, except for trade or missions to the Yiken area."

"This shows the importance of the southern fortress in terms of trade and transportation from the side, because we can see from the stele that the importance of trade communication is high enough to allow blacks to enter Egypt through the fortress."

"In addition, we can also get the news from this inscription that Ikon must be a major trade center shared by Egypt and Nubia. That's why it needs to be specifically mentioned in the stele."

"So in the end, it can be concluded that the trade in the south was very important in both the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom, and they were all in such important fortress areas."

"It is even bolder to guess that in addition to the basic role of defense, the establishment of Fortress should have played a protective role in trade communication, and even existed to ensure trade communication and cultural integration between the two countries."

It is actually a very normal thing to build a border trade center into a military fortress. After all, unlike now, the borders of the two countries in ancient times were often relatively desolate places.

Therefore, both dangerous wild animals and wandering thieves may pose a serious threat to this wealth and material distribution center, especially the latter.

At least for the vast majority of thieves gangs, this kind of trade center only needs to be robbed once to ensure that the rest of their lives will have no worries about food and clothing, so they are easy to be targeted for robbery.

Therefore, in many countries in ancient times, such transnational trade centers were often built as military fortresses and stationed there, so as to avoid the above-mentioned bad things from happening as much as possible.

For example, China, which is also an ancient civilization, is like this. The border trade center called Quchang in the Song Dynasty was actually a military fortress, which could be used to resist those dangerous attacks.

Moreover, there is another important reason for the construction of fortresses in ancient Egypt, that is, they and Nubia are the most important civilizations on the ancient African continent, and the exchanges between the two places have begun since prehistoric times.

At the same time, Nubia has always been the most important opponent of ancient Egypt in the Nile Valley.Two kingdoms with similar levels of development, similar histories, and being so close to each other are bound to have constant friction.

After Egypt entered the era of civilization, Nubia's civilization gradually declined, and its development was far inferior to that of Egypt; at the same time, the ancient Egyptian civilization developed rapidly during this period, and its national strength increased rapidly.

Portraits of Egyptian pharaohs and Nubian captives can be seen on later discovered stone inscriptions.A large amount of archaeological unearthed evidence also shows that military conquests have already occurred during the First Dynasty of ancient Egypt.

Subsequently, ancient Egypt blew the clarion call to conquer Nubia.In the thousands of years of entanglement between the two countries, the Nubians often appeared as losers and rebels.

It's just that the Nubians didn't always pull their hips like this. They also successfully took advantage of the chaos in ancient Egypt to completely seize Egypt and established the famous 25th black dynasty in ancient Egypt.

However, after failing in the traditional conquest of West Asia due to backward military equipment and insufficient numbers, the dynasty quickly fell apart.

It is precisely because these people are Nubians who were originally regarded as backward slaves by the ancient Egyptians. Their traces were completely wiped out by the pharaohs of the 26th dynasty, and they have not been rediscovered until today.

Considering the love-hate relationship between these two civilizations, it makes perfect sense to have such a series of defensive structures on the border between the two sides.

After Liang En finished speaking, he looked at Professor Guy, and found that the other party nodded in satisfaction, so he paused for a few seconds and then began to answer the next question.

"As for why the materials we have found now show that there are many conflicts in this place, the reason is also very simple, because for those foreign pharaohs, launching a war is something we must do."

"Different from the current world that pursues peace as a whole, people in the era when the pharaohs of ancient Egypt lived were more inclined to choose a king who was more capable of fighting as their leader."

"After all, the world thousands of years ago was a very dangerous world. Under such circumstances, whether a war can be won or not depends on the survival of a country, or even a nation."

"For example, the reason why the 25th dynasty of ancient Egypt did not last long was because the first foreign war lost too badly. Therefore, after only maintaining the rule for 40 years, the three pharaohs completely collapsed."

"It is precisely because of this tradition that the ancient Egyptian pharaohs had to show their strength on the battlefield. For example, Ramses II, who drew a draw in the Battle of Kadesh, has been publicizing that he has won a huge victory. .”

"I think it was the same with the previous pharaoh, who was unable to expand in his era, so he could only highlight the small-scale conflicts that broke out in the fortress groups in southern Egypt, and then used hyperbole to boast that he had won."

"Your analysis is very reasonable, and it can correspond to all the current archaeological data." After Liang En finished speaking, Professor Guy stood up and said seriously.

"So we can be sure of this. That is, the real value of the fortresses in southern Egypt is not just military defense buildings, but also the core of trade."

"Yes, so it is not easy for us to restore a historical event or the historical truth. We need to combine a series of clues such as field archaeology and historical records before we can draw a conclusion that is as close to the truth as possible."

Liang En is quite satisfied with the restoration of history this time. After all, they found sufficient evidence this time to prove the beginning and end of the whole thing, but in fact most of the cases are not so perfect.

To give a simple example, if you go to a museum, you will find that sometimes the names of certain cultural relics will change.Because there are many things in it that are used by everyone to guess.No one knows exactly what happened.

So as time goes by and people make new discoveries, those introductions will naturally be updated accordingly, and under normal circumstances this kind of revision is likely to happen many times.

(End of this chapter)