Great Wall of Ancient Egypt

Say the 25th or 26th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt wary of the threat coming from the east (Neo-assyrian & , neo-babylonian respectively) decide they'll build a great wall (a la the Great wall of China) from the Atlantic to the Arabian sea w/ a series of fortifications ahead of them in the Sinai peninsula.

How do they fair against the Persian Empire w/ these defences in place?

(I recognise they'll be issues, the terrain appears to be rather flat, but humour me)

Edit: Red not Arabian sea. Mediterranean not Atlantic
 
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I could understand a wall from the Med to the Red Sea but across Arabia? Why? In this era there's almost nothing of strategic importance in Arabia and it's barely passable/habitable. Plus, investing in a Red Sea navy would be a much more cost effective solution to protecting Egypt from invasion from Arabia since its a built-in moat.

Egypt is significantly poorer for having spent so much treasure building a wall across an area nobody cared about or wanted to go to. Persia breaks through the fortifications and wall in the Sinai and carries on.

Fortifying the Sinai exclusively and focusing on a navy would be a much better option.
 
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I could understand a wall from the Med to the Red Sea but across Arabia? Why? In this era there's almost nothing of strategic importance in Arabia and it's barely passable/habitable. Plus, investing in a Red Sea navy would be a much more cost effective solution to protecting Egypt from invasion from Arabia since its a built-in moat.

Egypt is significantly poorer for having spent so much treasure building a wall across an area nobody cared about or wanted to go to. Persia breaks through the fortifications and wall in the Sinai and carries on.

Fortifying the Sinai exclusively and focusing on a navy would be a much better option.

I meant the red sea.
 
I feel like there's a Jewish joke in there somewhere...but it's gonna have to be h-yooooo-ge! :)

And make the Israelites pay for it?

Please let's not do this. I had a feeling this would happen. Purposefully put context w/ the neobabylonians and neoassyrians (serves a analogues to the steppe nomads) + the great wall of China which was specifically built to counter invasions from the steppe, in order to avoid this.
 
I would be more inclined to see them build it to their south, but great idea nonetheless. If the Egyptians could build the pyramids, they could build a wall as well.
 
Please let's not do this. I had a feeling this would happen. Purposefully put context w/ the neobabylonians and neoassyrians (serves a analogues to the steppe nomads) + the great wall of China which was specifically built to counter invasions from the steppe, in order to avoid this.

Sorry. I just couldn't resist.

Now that that's over, where would they get materials? Sure, you could probably do the whole clay bricks and stuff, but is that going to really be that effective? Where would the nearest stone be quarried - I think I read somewhere that stone used to be ferried down the Nile/Red Sea in flat-bottomed barges, so for the pieces close to a navigable water source, perhaps that could be used. Although I'm not sure what you would use inland though.
 
I could understand a wall from the Med to the Red Sea but across Arabia? Why? In this era there's almost nothing of strategic importance in Arabia and it's barely passable/habitable. Plus, investing in a Red Sea navy would be a much more cost effective solution to protecting Egypt from invasion from Arabia since its a built-in moat.

Egypt is significantly poorer for having spent so much treasure building a wall across an area nobody cared about or wanted to go to. Persia breaks through the fortifications and wall in the Sinai and carries on.

Fortifying the Sinai exclusively and focusing on a navy would be a much better option.

The 26th dynasty for example is thought to have had a navy under Necho II in both the Mediterranean and Red sea. It's just to build further on those defences (although it doesn't appear that this navy was maintained after his passing) I thought a series of forts in the Sinai would be helpful and then have said wall be kind of the last resort, something to fall back to (to be honest I was thinking of casters keep and hardhome as defensive structures before the wall in GoT when I thought of this)

As to cost, it's thought Egypt was going through a boon of sorts under Amasis II, some of funds directed at temple construction could go towards defensive fortifications.
 
Sorry. I just couldn't resist.

Now that that's over, where would they get materials? Sure, you could probably do the whole clay bricks and stuff, but is that going to really be that effective? Where would the nearest stone be quarried - I think I read somewhere that stone used to be ferried down the Nile/Red Sea in flat-bottomed barges, so for the pieces close to a navigable water source, perhaps that could be used. Although I'm not sure what you would use inland though.

Necho II is one of the Pharaohs who tried to construct a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, one of the purported routes was from the Nile to the Great bitter lake which is on the course of the Suez Canal. Most of the stone quarries from ancient Egypt were on the course of the Nile. Presuming completion of said canal that should assist in the transport of materials.

Alternatively we could have the canal completed and a wall/series of forts covering the overland region not covered by the canal. Navy on the canal, forts on land. Thoughts?
 
Now that that's over, where would they get materials? Sure, you could probably do the whole clay bricks and stuff, but is that going to really be that effective? Where would the nearest stone be quarried - I think I read somewhere that stone used to be ferried down the Nile/Red Sea in flat-bottomed barges, so for the pieces close to a navigable water source, perhaps that could be used. Although I'm not sure what you would use inland though.

Bricks were used for most Middle Eastern fortifications of the period, IIRC, so they seem to have been effective enough.

The 26th dynasty for example is thought to have had a navy under Necho II in both the Mediterranean and Red sea. It's just to build further on those defences (although it doesn't appear that this navy was maintained after his passing) I thought a series of forts in the Sinai would be helpful and then have said wall be kind of the last resort, something to fall back to (to be honest I was thinking of casters keep and hardhome as defensive structures before the wall in GoT when I thought of this)

TBH I think wall would be overkill: basically the only way for an army to invade Egypt from the east was along the coast road from Gaza, so there would be no need to defend the inland desert regions where nobody would come along anyway. It would be better to focus resources on fortifying existing Delta cities, especially Pelusium on the Egyptian end of the coast road.
 
Say the 25th or 26th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt wary of the threat coming from the east (Neo-assyrian & , neo-babylonian respectively) decide they'll build a great wall (a la the Great wall of China) from the Atlantic to the Arabian sea w/ a series of fortifications ahead of them in the Sinai peninsula.

Just out of a pure curiosity, what Atlantic Ocean has to do with Egypt? x'D

How do they fair against the Persian Empire w/ these defences in place?

The defenses are meaningful only if you have enough troops to man them. The Great Wall of China, the Roman fortified lines, or on a much lesser scale, Perekop produce an encouraging answer to the question what happens when you don't.
 
Just out of a pure curiosity, what Atlantic Ocean has to do with Egypt? x'D



The defenses are meaningful only if you have enough troops to man them. The Great Wall of China, the Roman fortified lines, or on a much lesser scale, Perekop produce an encouraging answer to the question what happens when you don't.

Lesson learned today, don't post stuff half asleep while binging GoT. As to the comment on population, that I can't say as to what the population was. Do you have sources on estimates around that time? Per wiki, during the boom under Amasis II some of their cities had populations of 20,000. Now not all are going to be in the military but that's a population to draw upon. Likewise, Pharaohs of the time were still encouraging Greek traders and settlers to come to Egypt.
 
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Lesson learned today, don't post stuff half asleep while binging GoT. As to the comment on population, that I can't say as to what the population was. Do you have sources on estimates around that time? Per wiki, during the boom under Amasis II some of their cities had populations of 20,000. Now not all are going to be in the military but that's a population to draw upon. Likewise, Pharaohs of the time were still encouraging Greek traders and settlers to come to Egypt.

Being half asleep is not too bad (I'm half asleep most of the time courtesy of my dog) but GoT definitely can be quite destructive to person's mind (the book was driving me nuts because I was simply incapable to memorize all personages and their relations). :teary:


"Population" at that time was not necessarily directly mapping into the army size and quality and AFAIK Egypt extensively used the foreign mercenaries, probably because they were more warlike than the Egyptian peasants (similarly, why would the Late Roman Empire with its huge population hiring relatively small bands of the Germans and whoever else?). I'm not sure how the "native" army of Egypt was formed but I doubt that they had an universal conscription or even recruiting based upon a certain percentage of population. Then, of course, goes a pure logistics: you need to maintain a permanent garrison of the wall and to keep some strategic reserve reasonably close.

BTW, building the wall against danger from the East is fine but how about the resources needed to defend the Western and Southern borders?

However, the whole idea is quite interesting because an idea of building a fortified line along the border or to defend some communications existed for a very long period of time and had been implemented in the various times and places (including those mentioned in GoT) with a rather questionable record in the terms of success. But in the region you are talking about the idea was seemingly "not there" and the question is why.
 
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A wall along what is now the Suez Canal would be plausible.

It would be close enough to population centers of Egypt that it could be monumental and impressive show of the Pharaoh's power, even if it's not that militarily useful.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Say the 25th or 26th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt wary of the threat coming from the east (Neo-assyrian & , neo-babylonian respectively) decide they'll build a great wall (a la the Great wall of China) from the Atlantic to the Arabian sea w/ a series of fortifications ahead of them in the Sinai peninsula.

How do they fair against the Persian Empire w/ these defences in place?

(I recognise they'll be issues, the terrain appears to be rather flat, but humour me)

Edit: Red not Arabian sea. Mediterranean not Atlantic
do you mean the Mediterranean to red sea?

going from the atlantic (morocco) to the red sea is probably outside the capacity of ancient egypt, and large chunks of it isn't really defending anything
 
the major problem is not actually the building of the wall, but the manning of it. times when they could afford to man the wall they probably wouldn't need it, but when Egypt was facing internal conflict they probably couldn't afford to man it and it would become useless. along come the Assyrians or the Persians and they would just do a deal with a commander of a fort along the wall and bingo.
 
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