Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 197 Please, You Are So Song~~
Guo Kang wasn't too surprised by Cao Xun's question.

For the people of the Purple Horde, there are probably two most obvious features of Egypt.

First, of course, is wealth.

The Nile is a very special river that floods at a fixed time every year.The time when the river floods coincides with the cycle of crop growth.

After harvesting, the river floods the surrounding farmland, then recedes at fixed times, leaving behind a layer of fertile silt on the farmland.In the following time, the river will be very stable, and people can return to the fields for the next round of farming.

Due to this unique condition, the Egyptians entered the agricultural society early.The banks of the Nile River have thus become the most affluent areas in the world.

——This "prosperity" is not the result of the "comparison" between various civilizations and agriculture in the Mediterranean world in the late Middle Ages today, but a real compliment.

In fact, until the 21st century when Guo Kang’s previous life lived, the place with the highest grain yield per unit area on the earth was neither in a large country in the Western Hemisphere with advanced agricultural technology and fertile land, nor in the Eastern Hemisphere where the land has been planted for thousands of years and intensive farming has produced flowers. A certain big country, but still in the Nile River Basin where technology and industry are very backward.

This is the achievement when the Nile River no longer floods regularly after the construction of the Aswan Dam.

The Nile River is like a diligent mother who personally delivers fertilizer once a year, spreads it in the fields, drowns the weeds, washes away the salinity, and maintains the land for thousands of years.

The periodic flooding gave the Egyptians a corresponding religion, which worshiped the new life after death.They also developed astronomy, which was used to determine the calendar and determine the time of the flooding of the Nile.

And what these religions fear, the "disaster" brought by the river, may not be worth mentioning to everyone in Zizhang, because basically the flooding is not very punctual, or the silt brought is not so much.

Although it will cause some troubles, it is too gentle compared to some violent rivers that are also called "mothers" for some reason.

The second point is that the combat effectiveness is worrying.

Generally speaking, some famous civilizations have their own glory days.During this period, not only civilization is developed, but also force is often strong.

For example, Persia, which is often disliked by everyone, has actually been stronger more than once.Before the Sassanid Persian Dynasty disintegrated, it was also a big country that destroyed Guishuang to the east and wanted to annex Rome to the west.It's just that they don't know why, they always lose the chain at the critical moment, which gives the impression that the soldiers are weak and invincible.

The problem for the Egyptians is that in the Middle Ages, according to everyone's perception, they cannot find such "highlight moments".

Guo Kang himself knew that Egypt was indeed strong and prosperous a long time ago.The problem is, compared with the beginning of time commonly used in European folktales, this "long, long time" is too far away.

The Egyptians at this moment can only judge that there is an ancient civilization here based on the remains of the pyramids.As for the ins and outs of it, and what it has to do with people today, everyone has no idea at all.

Unbeknownst to these Egyptians, Thutmose and Ramses once lived here.It was not until the development of modern archaeology that these things became known to everyone.Guo Kang is not a professional archaeologist, and he cannot excavate and identify those important inscriptions by himself.Relying on his strength, it is obviously impossible to change this.

And this kind of thing, if you think about it carefully, you can't even blame the Egyptians.

He has been under the influence of Seris culture for too long, and he has become accustomed to many rare things.But when you get in touch with other civilizations, you will find that a lot of "common sense" is anti-common sense.

In fact, forgetting the past history is the most common phenomenon.If anyone has not forgotten, it is a unique case.

The Persians next to him also couldn't figure out the history before Alexander, but just fabricated the legendary Bishidadi dynasty and Kaiyan dynasty to fill in the vacancy before the Sasanian dynasty.And they already belong to the category of "can still make up myths and epics", and most other civilizations can't even make up stories like this.

In this world, with a slightly more orderly history, only Seris and Greece remain.

Although people often laugh at the Greeks for scribbling stories, and wonder why others take it seriously, but as the saying goes, "People are more angry than others."If compared horizontally with other civilizations, the stories of Homer and others are relatively reliable.

The Greeks at least knew that there was a Dorian invasion before classical times.They remember that the invasion destroyed most of the city-states, including Mycenae, with only a few places like Athens surviving.Facing the Spartans who are no longer the "Sparta" in Homer's epic, the Athenians have always been proud of it.

Although this memory may not be accurate, but in the time period of 1000 BC, it is already a very remarkable achievement to have a general impression of history.In the whole world, I am afraid that there will be no third one.

This is also why there will be a situation in later generations that "words must be called Greece"-this is also impossible, because apart from Greece, there is really nothing to talk about...

The situation of the Egyptians is even worse than others.

They even have confusion about who they are.

Most Egyptians consider themselves Arabs and that they are descendants of Arab immigrants after the Great Conquest era.And those who identify as indigenous people are mostly Copts who still believe in the early Christian church.The beliefs between the two are different, and there has always been a gap.

But in Guo Kang's era, people discovered through modern technology research that the Egyptians who followed were indeed descendants of the ancient Egyptians.

In most civilized parts of the world, the native blood is very difficult to change.The foreign conquerors were too few in number to have had a noticeable impact.Therefore, the Turks of the later generations are still the ancient Asian Minors, not the Turks; the Egyptians of the later generations are still the ancient Egyptians, not the Arabs.

Of course, the attitudes of the two sides are very different.The Turks obviously don't want to admit this result, but many Egyptians have been shaken.

The reason is not difficult to understand: the Turks do not want to change their identity; but the Egyptians always feel that the church members will entrap them, and they have a lot of resistance to the identity of the "Arab nation". gladly accepted.

Although they all claim to be ethnic groups based on blood, this identification is obviously not always based on blood.In other words, everyone just flexibly uses blood relationship as evidence.Once you recognize this, you can understand the Egyptians' thinking.

And in this era before molecular biology, how can ordinary Egyptians identify their own blood?In fact, it is also very simple, because there is no need at all.

The upper-class Arabs collectively refer to all those engaged in farming here as "Fira".

The distinction between lineage and culture is far less important than what later generations think, and may even be meaningless.

The water of the Nile has flowed for thousands of years, and the people here have cultivated it for thousands of years.In the long history, some people were Persianized and produced the "Neruz Festival"; some people were Hellenized and entered Alexandria; some people were Romanized and made Anubi wearing legionary armor Statues of Sri Lanka; others became Arabized and began to speak the language of the Arabs.

But the rulers who come and go here probably don't care much about these "trifles".Because no matter what culture you use, Fira is still Fira, and basically will not be allowed to join the army, let alone enter the high-level.

They only need to bear taxes and labor, like the reeds on the reed field by the Nile River, those reeds that wither and flourish every year.No matter how much dies, it will grow back.

To put it bluntly, who cares about Reed’s bloodline, culture and self-awareness?
Therefore, it seems understandable for the Egyptians back then to be indifferent and numb to regime change and religious replacement.

What's even more tragic is that the fighting power of the Egyptians is indeed as bad as other people's stereotypes of them.

Farmers in the Han Dynasty also laughed at themselves with "leek" and "chicken".But anyone who knows history knows that these people really have enough mobility, neither "leek" nor "chicken", but if they are not careful, they will give meat eaters a big "surprise".And throughout the history of Egypt, these Egyptians really never did it.

Other things are easy to say, if you can't beat others, then there is really nothing you can do.

In the end, European scholars even put forward a set of theories, arguing that the situation in Egypt was the end of the development of civilization.All civilizations will go from a period of vitality to prosperity, and then lose vitality, to decline and mediocrity.This stagnant state of silence is typical of the Egyptians.

This theory itself is not of much value, because it is also a typical product of "summer insects can't speak ice".Researchers may not have seen the phenomenon of alternating decline and prosperity cycles, so they take this "one-off" civilization as the norm for granted.

But having said that, although the Serese themselves have always regarded the "periodic law" as a curse-like rule, and always want to jump out of it, but for most civilizations, this thing should be called a blessing.

—— Few civilizations are so lucky that there are still multiple cycles.Even if it is relatively strong, it often just supports the convergence of the two and goes to destruction.And the vast majority, even the "prosperous period" did not exist, and disappeared in the long river of history.From their point of view, the people of Seris complain and worry about the periodic law, which belongs to the behavior of standing and talking without back pain...

As for the Egyptians, they have been so miserable that they have changed from nouns to adjectives.

In Serris, this kind of situation is really rare. Guo Kang thought for a long time, and felt that Da Song might only have this potential.When they describe countries like Greece and Andalusia, they will euphemistically say that the other party is "like the Song Dynasty".Perhaps, "very Song" will also become an adjective in the future...

(End of this chapter)