A Complete History of the World Part 5: Ancient Greece 1100 BC TROJAN WAR

So when we last left off we we're watching the world of the Greeks spiral into chaos as a war with Troy loomed and poor Odysseus is dragged off to fight. So lets get this post movin' and get the Delorean revved up.


At the gathering of the Generals at Aulis a sacrifice was made to Athena. When the blood was done running a snake slithered out from the temple, climbed a tree and ate a sparrow and it's nine babies, then abruptly turned to stone. Instead of taking this as a sign that everything was fucked up beyond all recognition they decided it meant that Troy would fall in ten years.

Now this mighty host was ready to beat much ass, except for the part where they had no idea where Troy was or how to get there. That's right, they had no clue where their enemy was.


So the fleet sets sail and arrives at the Kingdom of Mysia, ruled by King Telephus of the Arcadians, son of Hercules. Guess what, rather than ask for directions Achilles stone stabs the dude and leaves with the fleet, getting crazy lost and eventually ending up back at Aulis.


Sadly for Telephus his wound refuses to heal, and after asking the Oracle what he can do about this it is explained that he can only be healed by the one that wounded him. Telephus goes all the way to Aulis and asks Achilles to tend to his wound. Achilles natural response is to say "Dude I'm 15 I have no clue what medicine is, my major is stabbing things, not unstabbing them." So Telephus takes Achilles spear and scrapes some pieces of metal off it and stuffs his wound with them, and magically it heals. Telephus then gives the Greek army directions to Troy, because he's not a sore loser.

So now that the army is reorganized...EIGHT YEARS LATER! A thousand ships set out for Troy. Upon their arrival fighting began in earnest, that is after a dire warning was given that the first person off the boats would be the first to die in the war. Achilles decided he'd wait and let Protesilaus go first, which got him summarily killed. What a big man you are Achilles. With a few guys dead all around the Trojans retreated into their city and closed the door. This went on for NINE MORE YEARS! That's right, they just kind of milled around hoping the war would end, without actually besieging the city either, just sitting out in front of it. Achilles kept busy though, going crazy all over the Aegean, conquering towns left and right for no good God damned reason.

With the war dragging on and everyone getting crazy fucking sick of it we finally see the army mutiny and demand an end to hostilities. Sadly Achilles manages to persuade the army to hang out and not leave, because he isn't done rampaging all over the damned place. Agamemnon kidnaps the daughter of a Trojan who then prays to Apollo for help, causing the allied invaders to be struck with plague. Agamemnon turns around and asks Achilles to hand over his own woman since he was forced to return the kidnapped daughter. Achilles naturally feels insulted by this and refuses to fight, a huge boon for the Trojans because Achilles kill ratio to anyone else in the invading armies was like 12,000 to 1. The man was a meat grinder, a spinning murder top. Eventually the two armies actually decide to have a real fight, which ends with Menelaus challenging Paris to a dual, wherein he beats Paris' ass. Paris is saved at the last minute by Aphrodite, who was still grateful for the Golden Apple she won because of him.



So Achilles, still refusing to fight minces around the Aegean whilst the Gods roll 20 sided dice to determine whose loyalties will lay where. So Zeus tells the Trojans that he'll supply them a great warrior, Thetis, since Achilles is gone. I guess this would be like renting a car, but only under the promise that the roads wont be populated by only drunk drivers, putting a hero onto a field of battle with Achilles is a death sentence and apparently Zeus didn't feel like losing another good fighter. Anyway the Trojans beat the Allies asses all the way to their ships before Patroclus, who happens to be Achilles BFF, dons the wayward douche bags armor and sends them screaming back to Troy. Sadly Apollo shows up and stops Patroclus, just in time for the Trojan's greatest hero Hector to run him through...like crazy!

So guess what! Achilles is now extremely pissed off that his best buddy is dead!



He comes back, gets his girl back from Agamemnon, gets armor specially made by Hephaestus (God of Forging Stuff) and goes on a murder rampage, killing every fool he sees, forcing the Trojans into their city, save Hector who gets tricked by Athena into staying outside. What happens next? Well lets see...Achilles is a juiced up psychopath and Hector is...his name is Hector, he sounds like a Greek version of Garfield.



Achilles kills Hector and drags his corpse behind a chariot for a while before headin' back to camp. It takes intervention by the Gods to get him to hand over the body for a proper burial. Abruptly another Trojan ally arrives! THE AMAZONS!


No, I'm sorry, I can't take these Amazon's seriously, we're going to need new Amazons...


So the Amazons arrive under the leadership of Penthesilia, who goes on her own killing spree, until Achilles gets to her. Achilles stone kills the leader of the Amazons, then finds out that she's beautiful and wishes he hadn't done it. Amusingly enough the ugliest soldier in the whole army walks by and makes fun of Achilles for having a soft spot for the girl he just killed, then gouges out her eyes.



I bet he even said "ain't so pretty no more," afterward too.

So Achilles feels guilty and goes to the island of Lesbos to ask for forgiveness. While away the great king Memnon comes from the East conquering everything in his path, intent on saving Troy. He battles the newly forgiven Achilles, who stone kills him. Why the fuck even try? Why? You try to stomp Achilles yard and he will go crazy on you. Funny thing though, Zeus and the Gods weigh the fight, between Achilles and Memnon, and find that poor Memnon's 'Win Weight' was sinking, so they let Achilles annihilate him. Now Zeus becomes upset that Achilles has simply killed too many sons of the Gods, too...damned...many, and has Paris fire a poison arrow at him, guided by Apollo. The arrow hits the mark and Achilles is killed, though all the variations of this make sure to point out that he was totally awesome, and that the killer sucked...balls.



So with Achilles dead Ajax and our nutty friend Odysseus grabbed the body and fought their way back to the Allies lines. Agamemnon then decided to give away Achilles armor to the smartest of his warriors, except that Odysseus and Ajax both stepped forward requesting the title. Agamemnon, worried over pissing off Ajax, decided to let the Trojan prisoners decide, by asking who had done them more harm. It was decided that Odysseus would get the armor and Ajax went into a blind rage. Athena quickly cast a spell on him, causing him to mistake a group of cattle for the Allied armies. Ajax hacked and slashed his way through this false army until he came to his senses and killed himself for being so stupid.

After this episode a series of prophecies, each dumber than the last, had to be fulfilled to win the war for the Allies. Odysseus (eager to get home) went about completing one task after another, until finally after a series of adventures that saw quite a bit of vandalism, plus the death of Paris, he came up with his best plan to stop this madness.



Yes, the Trojan war was completely insane. Odysseus came up with the brilliant ruse of crafting and enormous wooden horse(sacred to the Trojans), hiding inside of it, then letting the rest of the army leave so the Trojans would come out and take the horse back in the city. With the plan in action Odysseus and a number of soldiers awaited their fate in the wooden horse, now within the city of Troy. The Trojans quarreled over whether they should offer the horse up to Athena, burn it for fun, or throw it off a cliff...also for fun. At the same time a Trojan women Cassandra, who had been given the power of prophecy, but also the curse of never being believed warned against keeping the horse. Also, as if there weren't enough dire portents a giant serpent rose from the sea and ate two important Trojans. After much thought they decided to hold onto the horse and get super drunk.

Naturally the soldiers came out of their horse, signaled the waiting Allied fleet and Troy was sacked...sacked, burned, obliterated, the women raped in the streets then thrown from walls. All the potential rulers of Troy were killed, and Cassandra was raped in a temple of Athena by Ajax the Lesser, who was spared by Athena after much whimpering. So the Gods were furious, since besides the city, all their temples were destroyed as well...or if not destroyed were witness to all manner of sacrilege. As result it was decided that a majority of the Allies should die on their way home, or if not die, then become horribly lost, except a general named Nestor who decided not to loot and burn Troy, he was rewarded with an uneventful trip home. Odysseus, clever fellow that he was suffered all manner of troubles at the hands of the Gods because of his involvement with the destruction of Troy. Naturally his story comprises the Odyssey, wherein he spends another decade trying to get home whilst assholes try to sleep with his wife.

So with that we bring the "history" of the Trojan War to a conclusion, join us again later for the next chapter in the development of mankind in THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE WORLD!

A Complete History of the World 4: Ancient Greece 2800 BC-1100 BC

So, rather than go to the rest of the planet right this moment I have decided that perhaps we should stop by and see what the people of Ancient Greece have been up to, you know shoot the shit with all those wild and crazy Aegeans!


Now the early period of what would be considered Greek history starts around 2800 BC and is split into three different cultures in what is the modern Aegean Peninsula (Greece Dawg!)


I will be referring to this, there will be a test dammit! DAMMIT!

Anyway, lets start with the mainland, what is also archeologically called the Helledic period from 2800 BC- 1060 BC. Little is really known about this period actually, the region was extremely hilly, with little space for standard crops and most of the things that are important to sprouting civilizations noticeably lacking. However we still find the beginnings of all the great city states that would dominate Greek history in like another few hundred years. Athens, Corinth, Sparta, were all founded, however called by different names.


Alright, now that we've established that people were living on the mainland of Greece we can move on to one of the bazillion islands that are off the coast where people lived too. One of the more important islands was Crete, where the Minoan civilization saw its birth and eventual collapse in between the years 3650-1150 BC. The Minoans were named such by a 20th century historian who equated King Minos (of Labyrinth fame)


No. Not you, King Minos...this guy, the one who appears in Dante's Inferno.



You know what, whatever. Jareth, you will now be playing King Minos.


Anyway, the Minoans were traders who traveled all across the ancient Mediterranean, boring people with their unremarkable history and their lovely pottery. The Minoans appeared to be repeatedly attacked or annihilated either by earthquake or outside forces invading them. In later Greek popular legend Knossos (major city on Crete during the Minoan era) was home to the fabled Labyrinth, where King Minos' wife banged bulls and made minotaurs.


No, well I don't...I know a few people who would, but that's irrelevant to our journey. Onward to Cyclades! They lived on an island...around 3000 BC to 2000 BC. They carved large round statues of women out of marble. They are more boring than our first post. Man the Cycladic culture was dull. If only there was some way to make this better...

Dammit Jareth! not now!

Lets get away from truly ancient Greece and move to what is called the 'Greek Dark Ages', a time also referred to as the Dorian Invasion. The Greeks explained that the descendants of the banished Hercules returned to the Peloponnesian islands and changed up the language and reorganized everything. there is really no historical evidence to support this, save that Greek culture all of a sudden changed like crazy with no definitive reason why. Although some people also suggest that the change and desertion of many towns in this period was due to the Sea People. Sea People appear repeatedly in ancient texts, all over the Mediterranean. The story remains the same however, a group of guys no one knows, who don't speak the lingo show up and complete obliterate everything they find leaving nothing behind. Fun times in the past.

Now then, this brings us to around 1100 BC, which is roughly the time when there is a possibility the Trojan War happened. See, since the whole thing occurred in a culture that had largely spoken word poems as their method of recording events it's difficult to nail down what actually happened, and because I am more interested in humor and adventure I'll toss around the story of the more than likely made up history of the Trojan War.

It all begins after Zeus, having risen to the position of ruler of the Gods, decides that there are A) Too many damned people in the world and B) A lot of them are half human and half God. Funny thing about that though, because Zeus was father to a lot of those as well, because he could not stop having sex with human women. Plus the lengths he would go to! Turning into animals and all sorts of crap. Zeus had a hard on for mortals, and because he was trying to overcome addiction he was going to kill everything he could bang. It's like a junkie becoming President then proactively hunting down and obliterating anyplace that has poppies in it.

So Zeus heard from Prometheus (recently saved by Hercules) that one of his sons would be his downfall, or at the very least eclipse him. As such Zeus passed off one of his recent conquests Thetis (a woman, not a city) to Peleus a King of the Aegina. At the party all the Gods showed up, except Discord, who was barred from the event (can't imagine why). Well she got seriously pissed and threw her gift into the reception hall. The gift was a golden apple which was inscribed with 'to the fairest.' So Hera, Athena and Aphrodite got into a cat fight over who would get this kick ass paper weight.

Since no headway was being made on the issue it was decided that the three of them would appear...nude...before Paris the hair to the throne of Troy (who was living as a shepherd because he was foretold to bring about the fall of Troy) who would decide. Incidentally the Gods didn't answer because they were acutely aware that if they answered at all the odds of them having extramarital affairs with one or more of these Goddesses would go down the tubes. So Athena, Hera and Aphrodite appeared before Paris offering him treats!

That's right, of the above options Paris picks the 'Most Beautiful Woman in the World' Helen of Sparta. So Aphrodite wins the apple, yay. Paris goes on an adventure or two, then heads on back to Troy where he is recognized as a long lost heir and reinstated...because Trojans are dumb as hell. Now rather amusingly that wedding that we saw earlier, between Thetis and Peleus, guess who the son of the union is...none other than Achilles. Achilles at birth was destined to have one of two possible lives, either he would lead an ordinary and uneventful life, dying of old age, or he would die young and be remembered forever. I think you can guess which one he ended up with...you know, because a guy of mostly Scottish/French descent living on the West coast of a country where the dominant language is not Greek knows his name.

So to make their son immortal, so as to prevent the more tragic 'young death' they either dip the baby Achilles in the River Styx or they hold him over a fire until his mortal-ness burns away. Incidentally we should try this out more often...holding babies over fires and seeing if they become immortal.

Anyway, back to Helen...who incidentally was the love child of Zeus and a mortal women Leda (Zeus was a swan...who raped a woman...rapist swan) which means that almost everyone in this story has had sex with Zeus at one point or another, dudes lucky he didn't get syphilis.

So Helen's fake dad, the King of Sparta finds himself in a difficult spot, everyone wants to marry the hell outta Helen, except that if any one of them does Sparta and the dude whose married her will find themselves immediately under attack by every other suitor. God dammit Helen, get ugly would you? Eventually though the King of Sparta got the suitors to agree to defend the eventual husband no matter who he was. Meanwhile King Menalaus, a rich douche, has a chat with Aphrodite, to whom he promises the sacrifice of 100 oxen if he gets Helen. As a side note the brilliant idea of making the various kings agree to defend the marriage was Odysseus', so he could get help with his marriage to Penelope. Menalaus sends his brother Agamemnon to ask for Helen's hand, and the King of Sparta agrees. Menalaus promptly forgets to give the promised sacrifice...because you know it's Aphrodite he's dealing with, a goddess, what could she possibly do to fuck this up for him?


So Paris arrives in Sparta to collect on his new bride, whilst Menalaus is away burying his dad. Aphrodite sends Cupid along too, with the goal of shooting Helen with a love arrow when she glimpses Paris sneaking into her room...to kidnap her. Well Hera was still pissed off about the whole 'he didn't say I was the prettiest' thing and sent a storm to blow them off course. Which really only hampered them a little, they make it back to Troy and promptly the whole Aegean goes fucking insane!

Menalaus and Odysseus (the worlds craftiest man at the time) head for Troy and ask that Paris stop being a complete asshole and return Helen. Paris refuses and the two return home to Sparta where Menalaus asks Agamemnon to go around Greece asking the various kings to hold up their previous promise to defend the marriage (smooth move Odysseus). Odysseus at the time had just married Penelope and had a son named Telemachus, so the idea of going to war was not terribly appealing to him so when the emissaries arrived with the demand he join up he decided to act like he had gone insane to avoid being conscripted. His fool proof plan was to gibber like a loon while plowing his fields naked, where one of the emissaries placed his infant son. Odysseus' fool proof plan backfired when he stopped plowing so he wouldn't kill his son and he was promptly dragged off to war.

Meanwhile Achilles, at the time 15 years old, was summoned to fight because at the time he was widely considered one of the greatest warriors of the day...at 15. Well his mom disagreed with this plan and disguised him as a girl, which would have worked if the emissaries sent to retrieve him hadn't blown a horn that was used to warn of attack causing the disguised Achilles to leap into action, ripping off his disguise and grabbing a spear.

In no time at all the various Kings, generals and princes of the Greek world met at Aulis and got down to brass tacks about exploding the shit out of Troy.

We'll leave the story there, to be continued next time on Complete History of the World!

A Complete History of the World Part 3: Mesopotamia 3,000 BC-600 BC, Egypt 1500 BC-700 BC

I think we should let Egypt be alone for a little while as their next phase in history will be during the Iron age and we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. So therefore I have requested that the Doc take us to Ancient Sumer, where we may learn about the Mesopotamian's.



So way back in the 4th millennium we find that all those scattered cities in modern Iraq have developed into very complex cities, with social hierarchies, walls, irrigation and a common language, the language is Sumer, and thus we call these people the Sumerians (who reside in Mesopotamia, which at the time was more a region than a nation). During this time life was hard, for anybody who wasn't in the upper parts of society, and the early religions of the time described death as a mind crushing nightmare, where you ate dirt for all eternity and knew no warmth or comfort. Now you may wonder why they would have such an unpleasant after life set up for themselves? Well it's because life was so completely awful, waking every morning so you could toil in the fields, on the walls, or pretty much any place the local king told you he needed toiling, that suicide seemed like a great way out. That's right, life sucked so bad that people had to be made to fear death so they wouldn't take the easy way out. Remember it's the ancient Sumerians who worshiped Gozer the Gozarian and Zuul.


Anyway, this period has proven difficult for historians to keep track of because of the multitude of city states, each with its own history and that this is when writing was first developed in the region, meaning no one was capable of writing gripping historical epics yet. However we can discuss the greatest Sumerian of the age, Gilgamesh!



NO GOD DAMMIT! GILGAMESH! THIS GUY!



Gilgamesh was a King of Uruk, a city of ancient Sumeria/Mesopotamia sometime around 2700 BC. He was described in his semi-biographical piece 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' as being two parts God, one part man. He was like some kind of shitty cake, because what kind of two part God would hang around in Mesopotamia? The Gilgamesh kind! Anyway, here's the story of Gilgamesh as told via the amusing Epic of Gilgamesh. Our hero is born and grows to manhood, where he builds a mighty wall for the city of Uruk, so no one can get in. In spite of this generous service the people complain to Gilgamesh that he sucks and that he has a nasty tendency to sleep with everyones wives...usually before the marriage ceremony is complete. This kind of cheeses off the Goddess of creation who creates a wild man named Enkidu to run amok and wreck up Uruk...because that will totally irk Gilgamesh?

Anyway, Gilgamesh sends Enkidu a hooker...



Who proceeds to spend a week with Enkidu, banging him into submission. Enkidu becomes civilized and no one learns a lesson about anything...especially Gilgamesh, who starts having strange dreams where he is told he'll be making an awesome friend soon.

After this we see Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel all over creation, killing things, weeping, offering horrible monsters their loved ones. In the end Gilgamesh suffers a bout of depression until he sees the outstanding wall he built at which time he air guitars his way back into Uruk and lives probably happily ever after...until he dies and goes to a realm of darkness where he eats dirt forever.




Then there was the Elam, the peoples who dwelt in the city of Susa(in modern Iran). They are terribly boring and suffered mightily later on under the hands of Ashurbanipal and later the Persians.

Of some more importance however was the kingdom of Akkadia, which was ruled over most importantly by King Sargon. Akkadia conquered Uruk and pretty every other bit of land in Iraq and it was during this time that Sargon (at that time the Royal Gardener) looked over his group of well trained and hard working gardener friends and decided to overthrow the king. So before you write off your local Hispanic landscapers as being not worthy of praise remember that there was a time when they could rise up and completely overthrow the government and found one of the great empires of antiquity.




Sargon ruled for 56 years, which is pretty damned impressive when your life expectancy is probably like a biscuit longer than a dogs. He conquered pretty much the whole of the Middle East and at the end of his long reign managed to defeat a massive insurrection that besieged his capital city of Akkad. However the Akkadian hegemony was short lived, within 100 years the empire collapsed and became the Neo-Summerians. This was short lived as soon the Amorites took over, amorites being basically a ethnic group who moved en masse all over the failing Kingdoms of Ur and eventually ended up just taking over. They effectively ended the long held tradition of city states (your kingdom ends at the city walls) in favor of regular old kingdoms (my kingdom stretches from this pile of dirt over to that cow skeleton). Amorites also appear in the bible, for those of you who care, in which they are used interchangeably with the term Canaanites. They were said to be descended from giants, however it is unlikely that these Amorites are the same group as the historical Amorites...amiright?

After the fall of the Amorites in the 17th century BC we see Hammurabi of the Babylonians gain a position of leadership over the central kingdoms of the old empires (primarily every city in between the Tigris and Euphrates). Hammurabi was a fairly nondescript ruler, who is more known for his strict code of laws, one of the first written sets in recorded history. The punishment for crimes was usually death or disfigurement. Steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family? Lose your hands and feet. I am sorry to say however that when Rastafarian's refer to the world at large as being Babylon they are using some kind of super hyperbole.

After a short stint as lords and masters of the 'cradle of civilization' the Babylonians fell to the Kassites. The Kassites were a third rate power from the Zagros Mountains in Iran. They arrived on the scene and once in power they realized that the Babylonian culture was vastly superior to theirs so they became super conservative and dedicated to Babylonian customs and traditions. They ruled for around 500 years, which is really impressive when we see other more popular kingdoms ruling for only a few generations. Part of the reason why the Kassites were able to maintain power for so long was the success Hammurabi and others had at making regional kingdoms instead of independant city governments.

During this whole period we also see the rise and fall of many Assyrian dynasties. They were largely left alone by the other powers that came and went, probably because their name sounds incredibly dangerous. However by 911 BC(NEVER FORGET!)


The Assyrians, or rather the Neo-Assyrians would dominate the whole of the Middle East. Great plagues and droughts struck all across the old empires of this period allowing the Assyrian Kings to steam roll right over everyone and anyone in their way including the Kingdom of Israel. Poor Kingdom of Israel, they popped up around 1030 BC and were conquered in short order by 931, at which time 27,000 odd people were displaced. Assyria also managed to conquer Egypt in around 600 BC.

Assyria would see unprecedented growth in culture and art under King Ashurbanipal, but sadly this period was short lived as almost immediately after his death the whole of the the Middle East erupted into civil war. We see the Neo Assyrians swept away and the speakers of the Akkadian language (used by the leadership of the Assyrians) wiped out by 605 BC.

Lets leap back over to our old friend Egypt, who we left back in 1500 BC or so. during this whole period Egypt primarily did what it did best, invade its neighbors, allow its priests to get too much power and fall into complete disarray. One such period is when the Pharaoh Akhenaten takes the reigns of leadership, his exciting plan being to completely throw out the old religion and found a new one. He saw a growing threat from the Priests of Thebes, who were effectively directing public opinion at this point, so he declared that there was only one God, Aten, who ruled over all and that he was Atens messanger on Earth. This is one of the first monotheistic religions in history, but it only lasted for the duration of Akhenatens rule, after his death his wife Nefertiti tried to keep up the old ways but was not so successful as did Akhenatens son Tutenkhaman, who under pressure from the priests recounted and reinstated the old religion. After King Tut we see Ramses II eventually arise. Ramses the Grea,t as he is known, builds more temples, statues and great works than any other pharaoh. He also sires a metric shit ton of children and battles the feared Hittites (we'll get to them) into a peace treaty (the first in history). Ramses II is probably one of the most well known Egyptian pharaohs, for his great civic works, his constant canoodling with women and that he is often equated with the pharaoh under whom the 'exodus' takes place. Whether this is in fact under his reign is debatable as there is little evidence to support it especially since it will be still another three hundred odd years before the Kingdom of Israel is founded. you may also know Ramses from Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" in which a tablet is inscribed with the phrase,

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

You probably know Ozymandias as the alter ego of boy loving, purple clad, Studio 54 frequenting multi billionaire playboy Adrian Veidt from Watchmen.

Now then, that should about wrap it up with Mesopotamia, Egypt and pretty much every place in the cradle of civilization. Up next we'll visit Ancient Asia, South America and all those other rubbish places no one talks about. after that we'll hit up Super Ancient Greece, where we will learn all about the Trojan War.

A Complete History of the World Part 2: Bronze Age Egypt 3100BC-1500BC

So, lets keep the ball rolling, and let me introduce you to the next phase in our history tour. I've chosen to do this by arrangement of periods, you see the prehistoric neolithic period, although long, was incredibly dull. Also since there were few written records and such it makes it difficult to keep everything in order. So since we've moved up to the Bronze Age we have a more clearly delineated historical time line, as such what I will do is move forward by epochs making a post about each culture (sometimes merging two or three smaller cultures into one post) then once we get to a period of actually recorded history we'll move forward by hundred year increments, following every civilization we can during a hundred year cycle, this means we should be done sometime around when you children's children die.

So Doc, what's on the menu today?



Alright, in about 3100 BC we see Egypt start to get its shit together, the Upper Nile looks at itself and says "Upper Nile River Valley, we can do better." so it promptly swallows itself in conflict and intermarriage until it is one unified group of cities, then turns its sights on the Southern Nile Valley. At this time Egypt was creating their early hieroglyphs, making the recording of history easier, and their art cooler. They also began settling colonies in lower Israel, arguably making them the first Imperialists.



So, who unified Egypt and created the first Dynastic period. well Technically speaking there is the possibility that a long lost King of Upper Egypt (you can identify them by their funny looking hats), the Scorpion King, began a conquest of Lower Egypt which was completed after he died.


By none other than the Pharaoh Narmer...who is a guy who they didn't make a movie about. Sorry Narmer. Narmer conquered the Southern Nile River Valley, or perhaps he didn't, maybe another Pharaoh named Menes did it and he was the immediate succesor, or heck, maybe the Scorpion King conquered Egypt and handed it off to Narmer...or maybe they are all the same god damned person! this is what happens when you don't have a well developed system of writing and enough stone tablets surviving posterity to go around. Also Egypt, stop naming your Kings four or five different things depending on where he happens to be standing at a given moment.


the one thing we can say is that he was buried at Abydos...Narmer that is...who may have been Menes...who also could have been the Scorpion King. Whatever.

Anyway, from here we have a few dynasties that see the development of Egyptian Civilzation coalescing into something worth looking at. That culminates in the first big period in Egyptian civilization the Old Kingdom, roughly 2686-2134 BC, here we have however a lineage of Pharaohs who were related to their forebears in the Early Dynastic period and also were in the same capital, Memphis...Tennessee. Sorry, that's a lie, it's just regular old Egyptian Memphis, which at the time was called Ineb Hedg, but that's a stupid name and Memphis makes me think of Powerslave, a video game from the mid nineties.


It was during this time that we see the Pharaoh Djoser (2630–2611 BC) of the third dynasty order a pyramid to be built in Saqqara in the necropolis of Memphis. This is the step pyramid you see on occasion, which looks a lot more like a mesoamerican pyramid, but hey, Egypt couldn't help it if ancient astronauts helped them out by using old plans. Now during the reign of Djoser we see Egypt launch a military campaign against the peoples of the Sinai peninsula in the East, subjugating them and then mining the area for tourqouise. In Egyptian mythology Ra the Sun God's son Horus usually represents the people of Egypt, and Seth an evil black God represents those peoples to the East of the Egyptian Empire. so many stories about Horus defeating Seth are actually analogies for the Egyptians beating on the people to the immediate East. Incidentally it was also Djosers Vizier, or Royal Advisor/Doctor/ Architect/ Scientist who would be responsible for the construction of the Step Pyramid, a Mr. Imhotep.


Imhotep was regarded as the worlds first recorded Engineer, Architect, and Physician...and the go to guy for evil mummies. Besides being a great architect responsible for Djosers pyramid, he also wrote one of the first medical books, which used reason over magical thought for cures. After his death a cult was formed around him and within 2,000 years he was deified outright. Even during the later Ptolemaic period his temples were still places of learning for budding doctors. In later centuries we all know however that he came back from the dead and harassed Rachel Weisz.



Now at the same time as all of that the Egyptians began their reverence of the Pharaoh as a living God who ensured the regular flooding of the Nile and also made sure the cyclical nature of time maintained its balance. Also during this period the Pharaoh began a practice of describing the Egyptian populace as the chosen people, selected as the only true humans on Earth, you know since everyone else worshiped Seth and was evil.

After Djoser and the Third dynasty passes we move to the Fourth Dynasty, the Golden age of Egyptian everything. When you think ancient Egypt, you are thinking of the Fourth Dynasty. This period lasted from the year 2575 to 2467 BC and saw some truly amazing work by the peoples of Egypt. This dynasty was founded by Sneferu, who reigned for 24 years. Sneferu was considered a beneficent ruler, partially because his name can mean 'To make things beautiful', and it was during his reign that the Egyptians started to really hit the nail on the head when it came to good pyramid construction. the guy was Pyramid and civic development crazy! this guy wasn't building any stepped pyramids either, he was making serious smooth sided pyramids, you know, the ones we allcare about. During this time Sneferu also invaded Nubia and Libya where he conquered the indigenous cultures there, and integrated them into the pre existing Egytpian work force.

Now we get to the big guy, the one we see all the time, Khufu, known in Greek as Cheops, as well as his son Djedefra then Khafra and his son Menkaura. These rulers built the Great Pyramids of Giza, lasting symbols of the power and might of the flowering Egyptian civilization. In later years it was widely believed that slave labor had produced these works (as credited in Exodus) however archeological evidence suggests that the work force was drawn from all across the Egyptian kingdoms and work was only done during the off season when regular agriculture wasn't manageable. evidence has shown that each Egyptian household was responsible for at least one laborer for the civic projects ordered at the time, though the wealthy could hire laborers to do the work for them.



After the grand Fourth dynasty we see the fifth and sixth dynasties declining towards the collapse of this early era. Dynasties came and went and the faith in the old Pharaohs was rocked when a terrible famine came and droughts blighted the Nile river. We enter the Intermediate Period a century of decline and war in the Egyptian Empire, from 2181 to 2055 BC. The Egyptian Empire splits between Herecleopolis in the South and Thebes in the North. Besides the famines and such, one of the problems that arose was that regions of Egypt were controlled by regional monarchs (called nomarchs), who handed down their titles in a standard hereditary model. these monarchs accumulated power, built monuments and raised armies in their name, eventually challenging the Pharaoh's authority.

In the South Libyan invaders rose to prominance, gaining a seat of power for over 500 years, defeating the Memphite rulers of Egypt and installing the 9th Dynasty. Meanwhile other invaders conquer Thebes and set up the 11th and 12th Dynasties, or at the very least make good their place for the future.

After the conflicts ended in these two different power centers we enter the Middle Kingdom, wherein the 11th Dynasty, the Thebens conquer the Herecleoptian cities and reunite Egypt. Mentuhotep II ruler of the eleventh dynasty invaded Palestine and Nubia during this period, after conquering the Southern Kings. He also gave control of civil matters over to a Vizier instead of handling them himself.



At the end of the 11th dynasty we see a smooth transition to the 12th, because it is widely believed that when Mentuhotep IV passed away and the reigns of power went to the already qualified and well positioned Vizier Amenemhat.



The new Pharaoh curtailed the monarchs, put down rebellion and kept the reigns of power by offering a second in line position to a trusted adviser. He was then promptly killed by one of his bodyguards.


Sensuret I takes over, hands off leadership to Sensuret II, who uses diplomacy to form trade agreements with Nubia and Palestine. Sensuret III however looks at his dads works and says "Fuck that shit!" and invades Nubia, leading the army personally. He builds forts along the Egyptian borders and generally makes a nuisance of himself. when he dies his son Amenemhat III steps in and does such a solid job of leading the Egyptians that he is deified in later years. You know you're doing alright when you become a God for your efforts. He also allowed Asiatic peoples to live in Egypt under the promise that they would help him build shit.

Then comes the 13th and 14th dynasties, which sucked and caused the second intermediate period. You remember that period, that shitty time where the country split in two? Well it happens again. At this time a group called the Hyksos invade Egypt and formally conquer it, which runs from the 15th to 18th dynasties, ending sometime around 1570 BC. the Hyksos were a group of Asiatic peoples from East of the Nile delta, who arrived in the region with many important technological advances, the composite bow (sturdy and accurate) and the horse drawn chariot.



I think we'll take a break there, before we reach the New Kingdom, where more crazy hieroglyphic shit happens. so tune in later for more...of this...you know, everything that ever happened anywhere.

A Complete History of the World Part 1: 10,000BC-4,000BC

That's correct, at this very juncture I have decided that it is in my and everyone's best interest to start writing a complete history of the world, from the dawning of civilization to the present day. I have no doubt that it will come to naught, but hey, who the hell cares anyway, I have a user base of near zero, if there was a bright center of the blogosphere this would be the page that it's farthest from. So lets set the wayback machine to the distant past and start the inexorable march forward, God help us.




That's right we're going back to just shortly after the last ice age, when mankind, having struggled our way across the globe via land bridges settled in our respective regions and started ruining things for everyone. Our first important civilized skill to be learned was the domestication of plants, and further the desire to remain in a single place. You see before 10,000 years ago humanity spent most of its time wandering around, hunting and gathering, diets consisting of berries, large land animals and ground up shit they found laying around. You see what happened to us was that we started building dwellings and stopped migrating, once we discovered that we could selectively grow different types of plants, and further make those plants do things we wanted, like make bigger seeds or shed their seeds earlier in the year. This lead to the creation of granaries where our forebears would pile all of this grain. this was not just happening in what is called the fertile crescent, the cradle of civilization (modern Middle East) Oh no! This is going on everywhere else, the spontaneous discovery of agriculture (albeit maybe a thousand years later in Asias case and a few thousand years more in South America as well) anyway, each of these other regions cultivated their own unique crops, like potatoes in South America and coffee in Ethiopia.

Anyway, this was all called the Neolithic revolution, our first steps towards motor cars and the internet. the next big endeavor in the revolution was the domestication of animals like goats and pigs, as well as the camel. all of this was focused in and around the fertile crescent again. Largely these changes were caused by an increase in population, putting stress on the early groupings of humans, which is surprising when your life expectancy at the time was probably like 12.



So we collected together and formed little bands of people, building granaries, making animals have sex at our discretion, making plants have their own plant version of sex at our discretion. Bending the world to our will.

these first discoveries prompted us to find out other cool things! Like that if we dried out the skins of our various dead animals we could make shelters and fashionable straps for our collective crotches. We could take the hair from animals like sheep and alpacas and turn it into wool, so we could be itchy from things besides lice and other small parasitic insects. Milk, there's a winner! But best of all we realized that if you took a bunch of goats, tied them together and then tied yourself to it, they would drag you places, at speeds of up to five miles and hour...HOLY SHIT!

From here we also developed our various exciting diseases. Because we lived in shit, with animals, we created all manner of exciting crossbred illnesses like measles and smallpox, not to mention cholera and the like. You see in the Eurasia we loved domesticating animals and drinking their fluids, but in the Americas and the Pacific islands you find people who rarely domesticated large animals and when they did they didn't drink it's various juices. This is an important fact that will crop up in a few thousand years.

So in no time at all, like maybe 5,000 years we see cities cropping up with thousands of inhabitants, toiling away on useless crap, like writing and art. Early Chinese were some of the first peoples to make a semi written language. Regardless of this it's hard to pin down the exact things that make a civilization, for example the Inca had grandiose buildings but no written language until 200BC, the Chinese had a proto language but no great works aside from that. You see where I'm coming from? Now then, with all these densely packed cities cropping up we have the first 'Civilization' appear, the Mesopotamians.


That's right, that very informative video will provide you with valuable imagery to work off of. In reality Mesopotamia wasn't really quite like we were today, you know, organized under a single government, sharing a common language and all that. No, the Mesopotamians were a collection of like minded peoples who knew pretty much the same thing and lived in large cities, the most important of which are Ninevah, Uruk, Nippur and Babylon. Mesopotamia, as with most things during the neolithic revolution, was located in the Tigris and Euphrates river regions of modern Iraq. Besides the Mesopotamians there also arose a group called the Sumerians, who were from the city of Eridu, which would later become the city of Uruk. Now the Sumerians are regarded largely as Mesopotmian, however they spoke their own independent language, and were also the first peoples to do the whole 'agriculture' thing year round.

South of these groups was of course the future 'Big Boys' of the region, the Egyptians, a bunch of kooks all living in the Nile river valley, whose favorite pastimes were inventing forms of writing and getting eaten by crocodiles. The early predynastic Egyptians, known as the Faiyum A culture, created woven baskets, undoubtedly sold in the worlds first Pier 1 Imports.




Then comes the Merimde culture of Egypt, then the El Omari and the Maadi, who like burying their dead in graveyards. After this the list of minor cultures growing then disappearing on the Nile goes on and on, however it was during this time (6,000 BC) or so that the Egyptians developed simple boats, some with sails, to traverse the Nile...and be eaten by crocodiles in new and interesting ways.


However all good things must come to an end, or rather all periods of discovery wherein stone tools are used must come to an end. So from the Neolithic Revolution we move into the Bronze Age, beginning around 4-3,000 BC. Incidentally this is where things begin to get complicated and interesting.