Ancient Egypt had a lot of dynasties. About thirty, give or take. And unlike dynasties in other countries, we don't even call them by unique names. We just say "First Dynasty, Second Dynasty," etc.
Some of these dynasties are super important. Some are unimportant, but contained important rulers or coincided with important events. Others are not important in any way.
In this post, I'll highlight the three that I think are important to come up, by themselves, as answers.
(1) The Third Dynasty
This is the first dynasty of the "Old Kingdom", the classic Egyptian civilization. It was also the dynasty under which pyramid building began. Its most notable ruler was Djoser, the first king to build a step pyramid. Another notable figure was Imhotep, the chancellor who designed the pyramid. Imhotep was also an early pioneer in medicine. He later became a god in the Egyptian religion.
(2) The Fourth Dynasty
This is the dynasty under which the Great Pyramids at Giza were built. Its rulers, therefore, include the three kings who built the three pyramids: Kufu, Khafra, and Menkaure.
But there are other notable Fourth Dynasty figures!
Sneferu: the father of Kufu and founder of the fourth dynasty. He built three pyramids, including the famous "bent" pyramid. He was the first king to build a non-stepped pyramid.
Hetepheres: a common female name during this dynasty. If you hear a question about a pharaoh having a daughter or wife named Hetepheres, you can be sure that you are in the fourth dynasty.
Djedefre: OK, putting this guy here is kind of a stretch. But he was the older son of Kufu who was pharaoh before Khafra. He built a big pyramid on a hill near Giza, but very little of it survives, due to it being plundered for stone during the Roman and Arab periods.
(3) The Eighteenth Dynasty
Probably the most famous Egyptian dynasty, and the only one I would consider writing an ACF Fall tossup about. This is the dynasty that began the Egyptian New Kingdom by expelling the Hyksos (a good Hyksos clue: they allegedly banned hippopotamus hunting, one of many evil and oppressive acts that later historians would accuse them of).
Tons of famous pharaohs here, including:
Hatsepshup: the most famous female pharaoh
Thutmosis III: Hatsepshut's son, who greatly expanded Egyptian military power
Amenhotep III: Considered the peak of Egyptian power, influence, and diplomacy
Ahkenaten: Religious reformer who attempted to institute monotheism; was married to Nefertiti; did all sorts of crazy things and may have had all sorts of physiological disorders
Tutankhamen: restored the old Egyptian religion, only intact royal tomb to be discovered
An important set of documents from the 18th Dynasty are the Amarna Letters. These are named for the new (and later abandoned) capital that Akhenaten established. They are a record of Egyptian diplomacy with the Levant during the reigns of Amenhotep III and Ahkenaten. Not only are these important to Egyptologists, they are also important to people who study the Mitani and other Ancient Near Eastern polities. Also, they are written in Akkadian, not Egyptian (Akkadian was a lingua franca of the ancient world). This is important because vowels are written down in Akkadian, but not in Egyptian. Thus, the Amarna letters give us our best glimpse of what vowels were like in Ancient Egyptian.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Mutually Assured Destruction: Why the Cold War Got Gentler after 1963(ish)
In the 1950's, you had two delivery mechanisms for nuclear warheads: strategic bombers and liquid fueled rockets.
Strategic bombers were planes that dropped bombs; this was the delivery mechanism used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each superpower had thousands of bombers. In a nuclear war, they would be sent to fly over the other superpower and drop bombs. Anyone who has been on an international flight - even a supersonic one - could tell you that this would take a while.
Liquid-fuel rockets were early ICBMs. Their fuel was corrosive, which meant you couldn't store fuel in them. You had to actually fill the rockets up with fuel before you launched them. This meant that you couldn't really launch a surprise attack: you'd have to spend about a day fueling all of your rockets and THEN launch them. So if the other side saw you filling your rockets with fuel (say, from a spy plane or satellite), then they'd probably guess you were getting ready to nuke them. Why else would you be pumping a multi-million dollar asset full of corrosive liquid?
So a nuclear war in the 1950's would have looked a bit like this: the aggressor would start fueling their rockets and launch their airplanes. Hours before the first mushroom cloud, the other side would catch wind of this and launch their own planes and start fueling their own rockets (except that since the other side's rockets were probably aimed at your rockets, you'd be kind of screwed if you didn't catch them fueling in time). Each side would attempt to shoot down the bombers of the other side using fighter jets or missiles.
The important thing to take home about this is that in the 1950's, you could still realistically dream of WINNING a nuclear war. If you launched your rockets early enough to destroy the other guy's rockets before they could be fueled, AND if you managed to get your bombers not shot down while shooting down most of his bombers, you could reduce the other superpower to a smoldering ruin while only losing a few of your own major cities.
With each side able to be optimistic about their chances, they were free to escalate tensions.
But by the late 1960's, things had changed. There were two big innovations: the solid-fuel rocket and the ballistic missile submarine.
Missiles now had solid, non-corrosive fuel that could be stored inside the missile with no ill effects. So now, instead of spending hours filling your missiles in fuel, you could just press a button and send them on their merry way to Moscow or New York (it would take about 30-40 minutes for them to get there). And you now had submarines filled with nuclear missiles: submarines that could hide anywhere in the ocean. And you still had bombers.
This combination of bombers, missiles, and submarines is called the Nuclear Triad. With its advent, your chances of realistically winning a nuclear war dropped dramatically.
No longer could you hope to wipe out the other guy's missiles before they could launch. Even if they only detected your incoming missiles 5 minutes before impact, they still had time to press that button. The process could even be automated: a computer could be hooked up to seismic equipment and programmed to press the button for you if it detected seismic activity consistent with a nuclear holocaust of your cities.
Even if you DID destroy the other guy's missiles, you still had to shoot down his bombers AND sink all of his submarines. Basically, you would have to launch three separate attacks on the other superpower, each involving different strategies, equipment, and branches of your armed services, and win ALL of them. Failing to destroy even just one leg of the nuclear triad meant the destruction of your homeland.
With each side no longer having hope of winning a nuclear war, tensions relaxed. Beginning in the late 60's, you saw a series of arms control agreements in which both superpowers agreed to cut their arsenal or ban certain kinds of weapons. These treaties included the Nuclear Test Ban, SALT I, the ABM Treaty, and the INF Treaty from my last post.
Strategic bombers were planes that dropped bombs; this was the delivery mechanism used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each superpower had thousands of bombers. In a nuclear war, they would be sent to fly over the other superpower and drop bombs. Anyone who has been on an international flight - even a supersonic one - could tell you that this would take a while.
Liquid-fuel rockets were early ICBMs. Their fuel was corrosive, which meant you couldn't store fuel in them. You had to actually fill the rockets up with fuel before you launched them. This meant that you couldn't really launch a surprise attack: you'd have to spend about a day fueling all of your rockets and THEN launch them. So if the other side saw you filling your rockets with fuel (say, from a spy plane or satellite), then they'd probably guess you were getting ready to nuke them. Why else would you be pumping a multi-million dollar asset full of corrosive liquid?
So a nuclear war in the 1950's would have looked a bit like this: the aggressor would start fueling their rockets and launch their airplanes. Hours before the first mushroom cloud, the other side would catch wind of this and launch their own planes and start fueling their own rockets (except that since the other side's rockets were probably aimed at your rockets, you'd be kind of screwed if you didn't catch them fueling in time). Each side would attempt to shoot down the bombers of the other side using fighter jets or missiles.
The important thing to take home about this is that in the 1950's, you could still realistically dream of WINNING a nuclear war. If you launched your rockets early enough to destroy the other guy's rockets before they could be fueled, AND if you managed to get your bombers not shot down while shooting down most of his bombers, you could reduce the other superpower to a smoldering ruin while only losing a few of your own major cities.
With each side able to be optimistic about their chances, they were free to escalate tensions.
But by the late 1960's, things had changed. There were two big innovations: the solid-fuel rocket and the ballistic missile submarine.
Missiles now had solid, non-corrosive fuel that could be stored inside the missile with no ill effects. So now, instead of spending hours filling your missiles in fuel, you could just press a button and send them on their merry way to Moscow or New York (it would take about 30-40 minutes for them to get there). And you now had submarines filled with nuclear missiles: submarines that could hide anywhere in the ocean. And you still had bombers.
This combination of bombers, missiles, and submarines is called the Nuclear Triad. With its advent, your chances of realistically winning a nuclear war dropped dramatically.
No longer could you hope to wipe out the other guy's missiles before they could launch. Even if they only detected your incoming missiles 5 minutes before impact, they still had time to press that button. The process could even be automated: a computer could be hooked up to seismic equipment and programmed to press the button for you if it detected seismic activity consistent with a nuclear holocaust of your cities.
Even if you DID destroy the other guy's missiles, you still had to shoot down his bombers AND sink all of his submarines. Basically, you would have to launch three separate attacks on the other superpower, each involving different strategies, equipment, and branches of your armed services, and win ALL of them. Failing to destroy even just one leg of the nuclear triad meant the destruction of your homeland.
With each side no longer having hope of winning a nuclear war, tensions relaxed. Beginning in the late 60's, you saw a series of arms control agreements in which both superpowers agreed to cut their arsenal or ban certain kinds of weapons. These treaties included the Nuclear Test Ban, SALT I, the ABM Treaty, and the INF Treaty from my last post.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
The Intermediate Range Nuclear Missile Crisis
Tanks: I has it.
Leonid Brezhnev could have said this with a smile. For most of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies had far more tanks in Europe -- and far more artillery, infantry, and conventional forces of any kind -- than NATO did.
NATO accepted this. Instead of trying to beat the Soviet Union by matching the size of its conventional forces, NATO invested in small, precise nuclear weapons. These could be used like artillery, launched against opposing armies during a battle. In the event of a US-USSR war, the Soviet Union's massive tank columns would simply be nuked instead of engaged in tank-to-tank combat. This strategy took advantage of NATO's better technology; the Soviets could not build such precise nuclear weapons.
The result was deterrence: the Soviet Union could not hope to conquer Western Europe, and so the Red Army simply sat.
But in the late 70's, things began to change. The Soviets introduced a new missile: the SS-20. This was a relatively small, accurate missile, with a nuclear warhead big enough to wipe out a military base. They took about 8 minutes to travel from the USSR to West Germany. In theory, they could be used to launch a sneak attack that would destroy NATO's bases in Western Europe (and thus destroy NATO's small nuclear weapons) and allow the Red Army to march to the Atlantic unopposed.
NATO responded by deploying a new nuclear missile in Western Europe: the Pershing II. This was a modified version of the older Pershing missile, which was already deployed, but it had a longer range and - importantly - was more accurate. Similarly, it could get from West Germany to the Soviet fatherland in under ten minutes.
The Pershing II spooked the Soviet Union: its accuracy meant that NATO could reliably nuke targets inside the USSR in a short amount of time (for comparison, an American ICBM would take about 30 minutes to get to Russia). This might allow NATO to destroy Soviet bases or even to launch a decapitation strike against the Kremlin.
All of these small, accurate missiles in Europe threatened to disrupt the relative peace of the Cold War. If both sides now believed they had a shot at pre-emptively neutralizing the other side's conventional forces, both sides might be tempted to start a European war.
Both sides realized this, and in 1987 Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, abbreviated the INF Treaty. This treaty banned intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe. As a result, the SS-20 and Pershing II missiles were removed and disassembled.
With this, the status quo ante returned. The USSR was safe from conventional attack by NATO because of its much larger army. NATO was safe from conventional attack by the USSR because it still retained its smaller tactical nuclear weapons.
As a side note: one of the consequences of the intermediate range nuclear missile crisis was me. My father, a defector from Communist Poland, was living in Germany in the 1980's. He was happy there and planned to stay. Then, one day, he saw a large protest against the Pershing II missile. One of the protesters was carrying a sign that said "Better Red than Dead". My father couldn't disagree more with this sign; it disgusted him so much that he moved to the United States, where he met my mother.
Leonid Brezhnev could have said this with a smile. For most of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies had far more tanks in Europe -- and far more artillery, infantry, and conventional forces of any kind -- than NATO did.
NATO accepted this. Instead of trying to beat the Soviet Union by matching the size of its conventional forces, NATO invested in small, precise nuclear weapons. These could be used like artillery, launched against opposing armies during a battle. In the event of a US-USSR war, the Soviet Union's massive tank columns would simply be nuked instead of engaged in tank-to-tank combat. This strategy took advantage of NATO's better technology; the Soviets could not build such precise nuclear weapons.
The result was deterrence: the Soviet Union could not hope to conquer Western Europe, and so the Red Army simply sat.
But in the late 70's, things began to change. The Soviets introduced a new missile: the SS-20. This was a relatively small, accurate missile, with a nuclear warhead big enough to wipe out a military base. They took about 8 minutes to travel from the USSR to West Germany. In theory, they could be used to launch a sneak attack that would destroy NATO's bases in Western Europe (and thus destroy NATO's small nuclear weapons) and allow the Red Army to march to the Atlantic unopposed.
NATO responded by deploying a new nuclear missile in Western Europe: the Pershing II. This was a modified version of the older Pershing missile, which was already deployed, but it had a longer range and - importantly - was more accurate. Similarly, it could get from West Germany to the Soviet fatherland in under ten minutes.
The Pershing II spooked the Soviet Union: its accuracy meant that NATO could reliably nuke targets inside the USSR in a short amount of time (for comparison, an American ICBM would take about 30 minutes to get to Russia). This might allow NATO to destroy Soviet bases or even to launch a decapitation strike against the Kremlin.
All of these small, accurate missiles in Europe threatened to disrupt the relative peace of the Cold War. If both sides now believed they had a shot at pre-emptively neutralizing the other side's conventional forces, both sides might be tempted to start a European war.
Both sides realized this, and in 1987 Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, abbreviated the INF Treaty. This treaty banned intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe. As a result, the SS-20 and Pershing II missiles were removed and disassembled.
With this, the status quo ante returned. The USSR was safe from conventional attack by NATO because of its much larger army. NATO was safe from conventional attack by the USSR because it still retained its smaller tactical nuclear weapons.
As a side note: one of the consequences of the intermediate range nuclear missile crisis was me. My father, a defector from Communist Poland, was living in Germany in the 1980's. He was happy there and planned to stay. Then, one day, he saw a large protest against the Pershing II missile. One of the protesters was carrying a sign that said "Better Red than Dead". My father couldn't disagree more with this sign; it disgusted him so much that he moved to the United States, where he met my mother.
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