"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches"-Ben Franklin

[Zoigal]

Since i live on the coast, i definitely agree with Ben. z:hippie:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

1. If you ask me, that sentence is true even in Nebraska. -nt

[Zoigal]

5. Yep, Commie Pinko

Know what you mean. Lived twenty two years in Missouri. z

[onager]

2. Thanks, from the home of the world's first lighthouse!

Oh boy! Another excuse for me to post a lot of boring and irrelevant pedantic trivia!

I'm in Alexandria, Egypt, home of the world's very first lighthouse--the Pharos. In no particular order of boredom or irrelevancy...

--The Alexandria Lighthouse was so famous that "Pharos" became the word for lighthouse in several Western languages.

--The Pharos was one of the Seven Wonders Of The Ancient World. But some experts say that list was rigged. It was allegedly put together by scholars at the ancient Alexandria Library, working for the faux-Egyptian Pharoahs of the day--the Macedonian Ptolemy dynasty. And that may (or not) explain 2 of the 7 wonders were in Egypt. (The other one being the Great Pyramid of Giza, but it's hard to see how that one could NOT make the cut. Until the Eiffel Tower, it was the tallest structure in the world.)

--Despite the fame...and the fact that it stood for over 1,000 years...no blueprints or technical information has survived about how the lighthouse worked. This is very annoying. What did it use for fuel? According to witnesses, the Pharos burned both night and day. It couldn't have used wood, since Egypt at the time had to import timber from Lebannon to build its navy. Some experts guess it burned dried reeds from Lake Mareotis behind Alexandria. But that's a heckuva lotta reeds.

--The Lighthouse took its name from the place on which it was built, Pharos Island. The island is mentioned by Homer in the Odyssey, but he was either using Bible Geography or the Greeks had the slowest ships in the world. Homer puts Pharos at "a day's sail from Egypt." It is a half-mile from Egypt.

And also no longer an island. The Ptolemies built a causeway to the island, with drawbridges at either end so ships could pass from the Western Harbor to the Eastern. The causeway silted up centuries ago and formed a "land bridge." By the time Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, Alexandria had been so depopulated that almost the whole population lived on that causeway. Because Turkish immigrants originally settled the area, it was (and is) known as "Turkish Town."

--Interesting note on how Eevul Sekular Engineering can influence the religious. The Pharos lighthouse was square on the bottom, octagonal in the middle and round on top. That's exactly the pattern of most minarets on the mosques in Egypt.

--You can still see a few pieces of the Pharos if you visit Alexandria. Parts of it were recycled in Fort Quitbay, built in 1472. Other parts are constantly being dredged up from the Mediterranean.

[Kolesar]

3. 20th century pop history

Is is true that Egypt's population doubled after the Aswan Dam was built, enabling vastly more irrigation for crops? That's a story I vaguely recall from world history or from a brother with a lot of half-knowledge.

[onager]

6. Arable land doubled

At least in the short term. But I don't know if population doubled. I've read that population increased after the dam was operating.

All in all, that dam has probably been more of a liability than an asset. Building it drove thousands of Nubians off tribal lands where they had lived for 5,000 years, and destroyed untold numbers of undiscovered archological treasures. (You probably remember that Abu Simbel, the temple at Philae and some other historical sites had to be physically moved to higher ground.)

It is causing rapid salinization of farmlands around the Nile, because the natural cycle of flooding was interrupted, and is raising the water table in the Nile Delta. If that dam ever breaks, most of Egypt will probably be washed into the Mediterranean.

You could say that the Dam got thousands of Egyptians killed before it was even built. A political squabble over funding the Aswan Dam led to the idiotic 1956 Suez Crisis. Well, that and the stupidity/pig-headedness of British Prime Minister Anthony Eden. (That Crisis is interesting to study, since it bears an eerie resemblance to the Iraq invasion--right down to a wish for "regime change" and cooked intelligence from the British Services.)

I don't really know that much about the Dam, but as usual I'm happy to rant about it anyway.

[Kolesar]

11. Look at those bloody Egyptians, filling up the bloody world, with people they cannot afford to feed

Egyptian relations were so framed in the context of "anybody who is with the Soviets is our enemy" when I was in school. In further reading, I came to the conclusion that Nasser was a pretty clever guy. Well, let's say there was more to him than being a Soviet puppet.

Salinization of crop lands happened in the various growing regions of the Colorado River. There is a high evaporation rate. Overwatering caused the salts in the huge watershed to stay in the soil. Farmers responded by pouring even more water onto the cropland to wash out the salt. They put in perforated drains to pull the salty water out of the soil. The lower Colorado is so salty that the US had to build a desalinization plant for that small portion of the Colorado River (~10%) that flows into Mexico.

There is a Monty Python reference in this post.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

7. Dude. Write a book. I'm serious.

You are the History Channel of DU.

Hell, if I do an advanced search for (onager AND Egypt) I'll probably HAVE a book.

[onager]

8. But I just steal everything from other people's books!

Thanks for the compliments, though!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

9. It's all in the way you say it, and what you choose to put in.

Hell, how many nonfiction books out there AREN'T "stealing from other people's books?"

[TZ]

10. You are better than the Histroy Channel!!

You don't do "History of the Bible" "Ghost Hunters" and UFO related based woo!!
The job for you would be to be in charge of programming there because that Channel is becomming woo central....:)

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. Re: half mile from Egypt

wouldn't it be that in Homer's time, where the norm was the Greek city-state, that "Egypt" would be equivalent to Cairo & Giza, a day's sail upriver from the mouth of Nile? Alexandria was still hundreds of years in the future, as was the lighthouse, so Pharos Island could be, to his POV, a day's sail from Egypt.

[onager]

13. Are you trying to out-pedant me?

:rofl:

Just kidding. To answer your question: well, I don't know.

I know that Greek traders probably had settlements in Egypt during Homer's time. They seem to have originally settled near the coast, as is typical, then moved up the Nile establishing trading posts.

Here in Alexandria there are some ruins of docks and wharves so ancient, not even the experts seem to agree on where they came from. (Only the woos know for sure: Atlantis!) Some of these are on the western end of the city, near Ras el-Tin, and others in the east at Montazah. (A spot so gorgeous that both King Farouk and Cleopatra built homes on it.) Some of the experts say these ruins may date from those ancient Greek traders.

You're right, "Alexandria" was hundreds of years in the future. But patriotic Egyptians like to point out that a perfectly good Egyptian town named Rhakotis was sitting on the same property for hundreds of years before Alexander The Colonialist Oppressor arrived.

These same grumpy people also note that while Greek architects planned Alexandria, the city was actually built by Egyptian forced labor.

According to one local legend, the Egyptian laborers refused to even say the name "Alexandria" and just called the place "the building site." The Egyptians seem to have viewed Alexander's henchmen as simply the latest in a long line of unwanted foreign invaders. Though apparently they were somewhat grateful that the Macedonians kicked out the Persians, who they REALLY hated.

Legend also says Egypt had two visits from Helen Of Sparta...er, Troy. The stopover at Pharos Island was on the return trip, when Menelaus brought her there. According to Herodotus, on their way to Troy, Helen and Paris stopped off in Egypt. Egyptian Immigration officials confiscated all of Paris' stolen loot--including Helen--and immediately deported Paris as an illegal alien. Probably a smart move, considering how the whole thing turned out.

[Zoigal]

4. From California with a stopover in Nebraska to Egypt

Thanks for the interesting comments and history lesson. z

[ozone_man]

14. A compass is more helpful than a lighthouse.

:D

If only we has a compass last Sunday on top of the mountain.