Helo

Due to the fact that we have no concrete dates and the chronology of many events in Egyptain history isnt exact (And in this case being off by a hundred or so years is important) the debate about the dates needs to wait untill we can firmly establish dates of events.

Chariots were also used to chase down retreating infantry and as shock troops to smash into enemy formations and hopefully cause a panic. Most often chariots had two archers on the back but that does not mean they never had contact with infantry at close range. There were small pieces of metal attached to the axels that protruded two to three inches (Usually slightly curved) that served to make the chariot that much more deadly when it passed through a group of enemy infantry.

Chariots were divided up into squadrons of 25, we dont exactly know how many squadrons were assigned to which division, company, or platoon.

The battle of Kadesh had roughly 2000 chariots on the Egyptian side and was supposed to have been the largest chariot battle of the ancient world. So assuming that 2000 was close to the max as far as chariots went in Egypt, 600 or less is not an un-reasonable number. Especially considering they would have left from the capitol of the time period which would have a large garrison of troops.

Considering Pharoah himself lead the attack, its possible that a the couple hundred chariots that made up his personal guard linked up with chariot squadrons already in the city to go after the Hebrews.

In ideal circumstances, yes they would have won. But if the chariots were somehow taken out of the equation (Say by the mud of a marsh in the Sea of Reeds) you would very quickly have a loosing battle on your hands even against slaves armed with rudementary weapons.

Gawen

Not as far as the Egyptians used them.



The Pharoah would have to have been a complete fool. I somehow don't see this as likely.

Helo

Thats like using a tank as a scouting vehicle. Besides, how can you determine that the Egyptians never used thier chariots as shock troops. Logically that would be one of the best uses for them. Yes they make great archer platforms, but even if you've got 60 chariots, thats still only about 120 archers. Thats not that many, not enough to REALLY be effective.

The most effective use for a chariot is to charge straight at enemy infantry and smash through them. Make them panic and run and then use the archers on the chariot to shoot down fleeing enemy troops while the chariot itself runs them down.

The Persians took this to the extreme with a scythed chariot. Metal blades were attached to the axels that could be as long as a foot and a half. The Romans also sometimes used chariots with metal spikes on the axels in the Hippodrome to make chariot races more interesting

And, if as you say, chariots were not used in that capacity, then please explain why Alexander the Great developed a tactic to counter a chariot charge. The first lines would step aside, opening a gap. The horse would refuse to run into the lances of the front ranks, and enter the "mouse trap", only to be stopped by the lances of the rear ranks.

Napoleon invaded Russia, was he a fool? Even great leaders make mistakes. Pharoah simply could have been caught with his pants down or got careless. He was chasing slaves, he probably thought he'd just run them down and be home in time for dinner.

Gullwind

Of course we have to ask the question, what was pulling the chariots?

Exodus 9 starts off with the plague that killed off all Egyptian livestock, including horses. While I haven't studied ancient warfare all that much, I do know that a horse has to be trained fairly intensively to pull a chariot and respond properly in battle. Where did the Egyptians get the horses to pull their chariots if they had all been killed by the plague?

This also raises another question about evidence. The death of all livestock would have a tremendous effect on the economy of Egypt. We're not just talking about food supply, but transportation infrastructure. Poof, gone, just like that, and somehow no one ever mentioned it?

FatherMithras

Different cultures he fought.

Napoleon lost due to the weather conditions among other things.

Iasion

Greetings all,

Here is an essay by the well-known Barbara Walker that I thought might be appreciated (this small article is a tiny fragment of a well-known encyclopedia, I quote it here in full, and cite the source I lifted it from) -

Barbara Walker: Vagina dentata
(from The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets)
http://www.antropologiacritica.net/a...agina_dent.htm


"Toothed vagina," the classic symbol of men's fear of sex, expressing the unconscious belief that a woman may eat or castrate her partner during intercourse. Freud said, "Probably no male human being is spared the terrifying shock of threatened castration at the sight of female genitals." But he had the reason wrong. The real reason for this "terrifying shock" is a mouth-symbolism, now recognized universally in myth and fantasy: "It is well-known in psychiatry that both males and females fantasize as a mouth the female's entranceway to the vagina."

The more patriarchal the society, the more fear seems to be aroused by the fantasy. Men of Malekula, having overthrown their matriarchate, were haunted by a yonic spirit called "that which draws us to It so that It may devour us." The Yanomamo said one of the first beings on earth was a woman whose vagina became a toothed mouth and bit off her consort's penis. Chinese patriarchs said women's genitals were not only gateways to immortality but also "executioners of men." Moslem aphorisms said: "Three things are insatiable: the desert, the grave, and a woman's vulva." Polynesians said the savior-god Maui tried to find eternal life by crawling into the mouth (or vagina) of his mother Hina, in effect trying to return to the womb of the Creatress; but she bit him in two and killed him.

Stories of the devouring Mother are ubiquitous in myths, representing the death-fear which the male psyche often transformed into a sex-fear. Ancient writings describe the male sexual function not as "taking" or "posessing" the female, but rather "being taken" or "putting forth." Ejaculation was viewed as a loss of a man's vital force, which was "eaten" by a woman. The Greek sema ir "semen: meant both "seed" and "food." Sexual "consummation" was the same as "consuming" (the male). Many savages still have the same imagery. The Yanomamo word for pregnant also means satiated or full-fed; and "to eat" is the same as "to copulate."

Distinction between mouths and female genitals was blurred by the Greek idea of the laminae -- lustful she-demons, born of the Libyan snake-goddess Lamia. Their name meant either "lecherous vaginas" or "gluttonous gullets." Lamia was a Greek name for the divine female serpent called Kundalini in India, Uraeus or Per-Uatchet in Egypt, and Lamashtu in Babylon. Her Babylonian consort was Pazuzu, he of the serpent penis. Lamia's legend, with its notion that males are born to be eaten, led to Pliny's report on the sexual lives of snakes which was widely believed throughout Europe even up to the 20th century: a male snake fertilizes the female snake by putting his head into her mouth and allowing himself to be eaten.

Sioux Indians told a tale similar to that of the Lamia. A beautiful seductive woman accepted the love of a young warrior and united with him inside a cloud. When the cloud lifted, the woman stood alone. The man was a heap of bones being gnawed by snakes at her feet.

Mouth and vulva were equated in many Egyptian myths. Ma-Nu, the western gate whereby the sun god daily re-entered his Mother, was sometimes a "cleft" (yoni) and sometimes a "mouth." Priestesses of Bast, representing the Goddess, drew up their skirts to display their genitals during religious processions. To the Greeks, such a display was frightening. Bellerophon fled in terror from Lycian women advancing on him with genitals exposed, and even the sea god Poseidon retreated, for fear they might swallow him.

According to Philostratus, magical women "by arousing sexual desire seek to devour whom they wish." To the patriarchal Persians and Moslems this seemed a distinct possibility. Viewing women's mouths as either obscene, dangerous, or overly seductive, they insisted on veiling them. Yet men's mouths, which look no different, were not viewed as threatening.

"Mouth" comes from the same root as "mother" -- Anglo-Saxon muth, also related to the Egyptian Goddess Mut. Vulvas have labiae, "lips," and many men have believed that behind the lips lie teeth. Christian authorities of the Middle Ages taught that certain witches, with the help of the moon and magic spells, could grow fangs in their vaginas. They likened women's genitals to the "yawning" mouth of hell, though this was hardly original; the underworld gate had always been the yoni of Mother Hel. It has always "yawned" -- from Middle English yonen, another derivatave of "yoni." A German vulgarity meaning "cunt," Fotze in parts of Bavaria meant simply "mouth."

To Christian ascetics, Hell-mouth and the vagina drew upon the same ancient symbolism. Both were equated with the womb-symbol of the whale that swallowed Jonah; according to this "prophecy" the Hell-mouth swallowed Christ (as Hina swallowed her son Maui) and kept him for three days. Visionary trips to hell often read like "a description of the experience of being born, but in reverse, as if the child was being drawn into the womb and destroyed there, instead of being formed and given life." St. Teresa of Avila said her vision of a visit to hell was "an oppression, a suffocation, and an affliction so agonizing, and accompanied by such a hopeless and distressing misery that no words I could find would adequately describe it. To say that it was as if my soul were being continuously torn fro my body is as nothing."

The archetypal image of "devouring" female genitals seems undeniably alive even in the modern world. "Males in our culture are so afraid of direct contact with female genitalia, and are even afraid of referring to these genitalia themselves; they largely displace their feelings to the accessory sex organs -- the hips, legs, breasts, buttocks, etc. -- and they give these accessory sex organs an exaggerated interest and desirability." Even here, the male scholar inexplicably "displaces" the words sex organ onto structures that have nothing to do with sexual functioning.

Looking into, touching, entering the female orifice seems fraught with hidden fears, signified by the confusion of sex with death in overwhelming numbers of male minds and myths. Psychiatrists says sex is perceived by the male unconscious as dying: "Every orgasm is a little death: the death of the 'little man,' the penis." Here indeed is the root of ascetic religions that equated the denial of death with the denial of sex.

Moslems attributed all kinds of dread powers to a vulva. It could "bite off" a man's eye-beam, resulting in blindness for any man who looked into its cavity. A sultan of Damascus was said to have lost his sight in this manner. Christian legend claimed he went to Sardinia to be cured of his blindness by a miraculous idol of the Virgin Mary -- who, being eternally virgin, had her door-mouth permanently closed by a veil-hymen.

Apparently Freud was wrong in assuming that men's fear of female genitals was based on the idea that the female had been castrated. The fear was much less empathetic, and more personal: a fear of being devoured, of experiencing the birth trauma in reverse. A Catholic scholar's curious description of the Hell-mouh as a womb inadvertently reveals this idea: "When we think of man entering hell we think of him as establishing contact with the most intrinsic, unified, ultimate and deepest level of the reality of the world."

Helo

Chariot horses were no doubt incredibly valuble. As such they probably would have been kept separate from the majority of other animals. This lessens the opportunity they would have had to come into contact with an already infected animal.

That it does, however you have to consider that many records from the ancient world do not survive to this day. The Royal Library of Alexandria was destroyed multiple times (by fire, flood, and human agency) and as many records concerning Egypt were contained within the library, its probably that records containing plauge-like events were destroyed as well.
Im assuming your stating that he never fought against the Egyptians. In that case I would say it is YOU who needs to do the reading. Alexander did indeed conquer Egypt in 322 BC, well after the development of chariots. He founded Alexandria, which would later become the capitol under the Ptolemaic dynasty.

Napoleon didnt do his homework in Russia OR Spain, he blundered and paid the price.

FatherMithras

I know this already. But examine the amount of fighting he did in Egypt and it will show how little it was. He was a liberator from the Persian empire. I was referring to his tactics in Persia.

Had it not been the worst winter almost ever, and had the Russians not broken the typical rules of engagement, he would have won. His blunder wasn't miscalculation, it was TERRIBLE luck and a clever enemy.

FatherMithras

All this aside, there still is zero evidence of the 10 plagues, Jews in Egypt, or an exodus. There's still evidence against it being possible.

Helo

And again, there are perfectly valid explanations for why there is no known evidence currently and enough information to not totally write the story of the plauges and the exodus off.

And what evidence would you want for the plauges? There wouldnt be much physical evidence left except for records. And considering that many Egyptian records have been destroyed or lost, its very likely that the record of the plague events was burned or is burried in the desert sands right now