Ancient Egypt Gunpowder
- Thread starter mojojojo
- Start date
Keenir
Banned
which "height"? the Old Kingdom's height? the Middle Kingdom's height? the New Kingdom's height? the height of the Ptolomies?
They're not going to be making it in any large quantities. Very limited supply of saltpetre (no stall-fed cattle), difficult access to sulphur, and better things to do with limited wood suppliews than turning it into charcoal to blow up. So it'll stay a novelty for quite some time.
I don't think cannon will be in the picture for quite some time. Start out with spectacular pyrotechnics and use thosae for signalling and display purposes. New Kingdom armies (and presumably earlier ones, though we don't know that much) placed great value on their ability to overawe enemies. Can you imagine a chariot squadron fanning out to attack trailing Roman candles and surrounded by blinding flashes and billowing powdersmoke while flaming arrows arc overhead??
The potential as an incendiary is also likely to be discovered early, though this is an era before extensive siegeworks or catapults. These applications may come in time.
Experimentation could well quickly yield an understanding of the explosive principle. Firecrackers made or rolled papyrus and pottery containers will be effective terror weapons, and pottery bombs could even become sling projectiles or primitive hand grenades. Can you imagine the carnage a small hard-burned fayence vase filled with a 200g powder charge and wrapped about with papyrus reed and flint shards could cause in an infantry formation? Beyond that I don't think there will be any development for quite some time. We don't have the metallurgy for guns, mortars, bombs, shells or canister. I mean, in the Old Kingdom we don't have the metallurgy period.
Rockets would be interesting, but they're iffy.
What would happen? The Egyptians would have another level of military edge and they'd win a battle or three more. Some changes to warfare ocur. Then the manufatcuring process gets out (it will, it always does) and the Syrian and Anatolian civilisations get a leg up due to better access to metals and wood for charcoal.
I don't think cannon will be in the picture for quite some time. Start out with spectacular pyrotechnics and use thosae for signalling and display purposes. New Kingdom armies (and presumably earlier ones, though we don't know that much) placed great value on their ability to overawe enemies. Can you imagine a chariot squadron fanning out to attack trailing Roman candles and surrounded by blinding flashes and billowing powdersmoke while flaming arrows arc overhead??
The potential as an incendiary is also likely to be discovered early, though this is an era before extensive siegeworks or catapults. These applications may come in time.
Experimentation could well quickly yield an understanding of the explosive principle. Firecrackers made or rolled papyrus and pottery containers will be effective terror weapons, and pottery bombs could even become sling projectiles or primitive hand grenades. Can you imagine the carnage a small hard-burned fayence vase filled with a 200g powder charge and wrapped about with papyrus reed and flint shards could cause in an infantry formation? Beyond that I don't think there will be any development for quite some time. We don't have the metallurgy for guns, mortars, bombs, shells or canister. I mean, in the Old Kingdom we don't have the metallurgy period.
Rockets would be interesting, but they're iffy.
What would happen? The Egyptians would have another level of military edge and they'd win a battle or three more. Some changes to warfare ocur. Then the manufatcuring process gets out (it will, it always does) and the Syrian and Anatolian civilisations get a leg up due to better access to metals and wood for charcoal.
Definitely not in the Old Kingdom. They were still in the Copper Age. Could happen in the Middle Kingdom...they had bronze by then.
Rockets would be a natural outgrowth of the pyrotechnics (Roman candles) that you speak of. All it takes is the right kind of accident to give somebody the idea...
You could have massed formations of slingers hurling these. Could be quite devastating!
By the Middle Kingdom, you have bronze. That is all you need for the cannon(heck, even as late as the mid-19th century, the best guns were still made of bronze). Solid round shot and cannister projectiles can be fashioned of stone. The Egyptians had lots of that.
I think the secret might be kept a good deal longer than you are thinking. If the Egyptians consider it important enough, they could put enough safeguards around it that nobody outside Egypt would be able to find it out for a long, long time. The easiest way would be to entrust the manufacture of gunpowder to the temple priests. Gunpowder is made only in secret within closely guarded temple complexes. The priests who live in the complexes never come out, and no non-Egyptians ever go in. Of course, this in itself would have big consequences...in OTL, the Temple Priests came to be a serious rival to the Pharaoh for power in Egypt by the time of the New Kingdom. In this scenario, their power is magnified even more.
most likelly it would be used in a way simillar to chinese gunpowder, first as fun fireworks, or in acient Egipt with a more misticall religious twist to it, it could become part of some ritual or something, then once people figure out it can cause bodily harm it becomes part of hand granades and katapult launched bombshels
it could at first greatly increase Egiptian military power, especially regarding sieges both in attak and defence, and naval battles
sooner or later it gets picked up by greeks and fenicians and other cultures and spread to most of the mediteran/midle east area
thta basically butterfflies avay most OTL history
as for saltpeter, egiptians had a large and complex economic sistem, theyd figure out a way, or there would be more trade in saltpeter
it could at first greatly increase Egiptian military power, especially regarding sieges both in attak and defence, and naval battles
sooner or later it gets picked up by greeks and fenicians and other cultures and spread to most of the mediteran/midle east area
thta basically butterfflies avay most OTL history
as for saltpeter, egiptians had a large and complex economic sistem, theyd figure out a way, or there would be more trade in saltpeter
If Egyptians have gunpowder, which leads to cannons, does that mean that the requisite metallurgical and soforth techniques will exist allowing for ancient Greek steam engine analogues to actual be useful and practical? While Hero, and Alexandria, would be butterflied away another similar individual in similar circumstances might arise.
Does gunpowder discovered at a much earlier date mean that the rise of firearms curtails the dominance of horse nomads in Eurasia?
Does gunpowder discovered at a much earlier date mean that the rise of firearms curtails the dominance of horse nomads in Eurasia?
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
Very interesting question, I guess this thread wasn't such a dodo bird after all
Valdemar II
Banned
I think the gunpowder need to spread to anatolian, where it could help evolve the more advanced metallurgy there, the result could be the middleeast dominated by a Hittit or Frygian empire, the better metallurgy could result in steam engines, which make sense in mediterranean. So the result could be a Greek or a Phoenican empire (or both) around the mediterranean using steam galleys and cannons BC. But I doubt we will see a industrial revolution before AD
Quite likely.
acient egiptian logic would probably work thowards developing a number of cheap but efficient instruments, made from readily available materials such as palm wood, cloth or papirus and ceramics
ceramic granades of warious sizes to be katapulted from large machines or chuked by specialised infantry, slingers most probbably
or disposable firearms made of wood or similar material, that fire buckshot,
these or similar would probbably develop into rockets eventually
since most acient armies were composed mainly of light infantry, untill this changed there would be no need for large amounts of firepower
most effort would go into developing explosive devices that can remove citty gates, or be thrown ower walls to burn the citty from the inside out, also to be used in defence of fortifications, as fragmentation granades thrown on attackers in formation or siege machines
there would most likely be no cannons, not for a long long time, some cultures could develop small arms, but it would take a long time for someone in the acient world to build a cannon, not becouse they wouldnt know how, or even that they wouldnt have the tehnology, it would simply be seen as wastefull owerkill, even in roman times
ceramic granades of warious sizes to be katapulted from large machines or chuked by specialised infantry, slingers most probbably
or disposable firearms made of wood or similar material, that fire buckshot,
these or similar would probbably develop into rockets eventually
since most acient armies were composed mainly of light infantry, untill this changed there would be no need for large amounts of firepower
most effort would go into developing explosive devices that can remove citty gates, or be thrown ower walls to burn the citty from the inside out, also to be used in defence of fortifications, as fragmentation granades thrown on attackers in formation or siege machines
there would most likely be no cannons, not for a long long time, some cultures could develop small arms, but it would take a long time for someone in the acient world to build a cannon, not becouse they wouldnt know how, or even that they wouldnt have the tehnology, it would simply be seen as wastefull owerkill, even in roman times
bard32
Banned
You need three things necessary for gunpowder: Saltpeter, sulfur, and some form of acid. Plus, you need the know-how. Unless the Ancient Egyptians were
in contact with the Ancient Chinese, then there's no way for them to obtain
the recipe for gunpowder.
Leo Caesius
Banned
Egyptian History, Old Kingdom to 26th Dynasty: ca. 3150 BCE to 525 BCE
Chinese discovery of gunpowder: ca. 9th c. CE
While we're drawing up a wish list, the Egyptians will be needing a time machine as well. Unless of course the Chinese invent one first.
bard32
Banned
Very true. The Chinese were fairly isolated, (by their own design,) for most of
their history.
Methinks you missed Leo's point. For the Ancient Egyptians to learn gunpowder from the Chinese, they need to travel in time because the Chinese invented gunpowder much later.