WI no pyramids

Straha

Banned
What if, instead of the pyramids, the ancient Egyptians had constructed a 500 foot high phallus (being penis worshippers). Would we have it as symbol on the dollar? Would puritanism have not arisen? Would Napolean's soldiers have shot it with a cannonball?
 
This is all your idea of a sick joke, isn't it, Straha ? (lol) I mean, there never actually existed any prospect that the Egyptians or any other ancient civ would've constructed such a weird thing, right ?
 
Straha said:
What if, instead of the pyramids, the ancient Egyptians had constructed a 500 foot high phallus (being penis worshippers). Would we have it as symbol on the dollar? Would puritanism have not arisen? Would Napolean's soldiers have shot it with a cannonball?

Given availabnle technology, they very likely couldn't have. Tower construction is statically speaking quite difficult. Pyramids, while labour-intensive, are easy. That's also the likeliest solution for the 'Atlantis enigma' why so many early civilisations throughout the world chose to build pyramids - because they could. If you want to get up high, you need a broad base.
 
Melvin Loh said:
This is all your idea of a sick joke, isn't it, Straha ? (lol) I mean, there never actually existed any prospect that the Egyptians or any other ancient civ would've constructed such a weird thing, right ?

Given the ancient Egyptians considered it perfectly acceptable to celebrate a high holiday by parading a ten-foot wood phallus through the streets, they very well might have. Most ancient civilisations were a great deal more interested in sex than our schoolbooks would admit and a great deal less inhibited about showing it. A 250-foot phallus might just be too much of a technological challenge, but absent the centuries of wanton destruction by the various exponents of 'good taste', 'pure morals' and 'true religion', even more of these things would survive than already do. After all, sexual abstinence as an ideal and the banishment of the sexual from polite society is a Hellenistic development, and was hardly universally accepted before the Mosaic religions carried the day in the West.

Check out Catherine Johns: Sex or Symbol; Erotic Images in Greece and Rome, British Museum Publications 1982 (I think there's a non-illustrated edition out ;) )
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
I believed they called such things ben-ben stones. They were rather stylized, but you could tell what they represented.

Min, everyone's favorite ithyphallic eidolon, is somehow connected with these ben-ben stones. Both are attested in predynastic times in the delta, and he was certainly well-enough endowed himself. [Caption: Is that a scepter in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?].
 
I've always wondered about those Egyptian obelisks myself. They were impressive enough for later civilizations to transport them long distances to set up in cities that didn't exist in the days of ancient Egypt. In the US there are a few large obelisks built as monuments, with the Washington monument probably being the best-known. I doubt that most 19th or 20th century westerners consciously thought of them as stylized phallic symbols, but what about the people who made the first obelisks?
 
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