Ancient Mod for 0 AD

[Aldandil]

Huh, my archaeology textbook book doesn't agree, it refers to people in the Levant before 1000 B.C. as Canaanites. Some of them must be ancestors of the Phoenicians, though, so it may just be a matter of different sources using the term "Phoenicians" differently. In any case, somebody from there should be their ancestors, and therefore potentially useable even before 1000 B.C. And you're right that without mercenaries and elephants, the gameplay will be different. The question is whether they had a significant navy.

I agree with making the Mesopotamians a single civ with sub-factions.

Edited September 27, 2010 by Aldandil

[SMST]

Your textbook may be right. Nontheless, a naval tradition seems to have existed in the Levante before, regardless if the people are called Phoenicians or Canaanites. (though I would call the in-game faction Phoenicians, I think we can stretch so far?) Remember that New Kingdom Egypt employed Levantinian mercenaries to build and crew their galleys. I would certainly reduce naval combat in the mod compared to 0 A.D., but would the Phoenicians have the strongest navy. (followed by the Mycaeneans. Hittites may be worst at navy of all.)

[Aldandil]

I think your source is just using the Greek term Phoenician for the later Phoenicians' ancestors in the bronze age: the people of Ugarit and so on, who seem to me to be linguistically, culturally, and religiously related or ancestral to the later "Phoenicians."

They had writing before the Greeks did. Maybe somewhere it is recorded what they called themselves, at least during the Iron Age? Though I suppose they may have had only names for "person of XYZ city" instead of a pan-ethnos name.

But that brings up the question what the factions should be called. The well-known names (Egyptians, Hittites, Phoenicians) are often different from what they called themselves. Hellenes isn't such an obscure faction name, but would an introductory paragraph that clearly identifies who they are be enough to explain factions with names like Tawy, Mitanni, and Nasili?

The Hittites hired or levied Ugaritic ships, maybe for their army, but I didn't know the Egyptians hired Phoenician ships. This book has very little military information. Canaanites/Phoenicians/Ugarites seem to have been the naval civilization of the time, even if they weren't as big a powerhouse until later.

I wish I knew more about this stuff. Hopefully I'll continue to learn on these forums!

Edited September 27, 2010 by Aldandil

[Cassador_Chris]

The Egyptians were known to have a powerful navy. Or, at least they trashed the Sea Peoples (refugees of Mycenae civilization?) in a sea battle off the coast of Egypt. Mind, the Egyptians kind of cheated; they caught the Sea Peoples snoozing in their boats and managed to use their fleet to trap the Sea Peoples against the shoreline so that the Egyptian firepower would be augmented by archers on the beach.

Furthermore, it has been suggested that this tribe of Sea Peoples (the Peleset), devastated by their defeat, settled down nearby and became the people known as the Philistines to Hebrew writers.

Also relevant to this discussion, I suppose, is that archaeological evidence strongly points to the Hebrews as being descendant of the Canaanites (along with the Phoenicians?).

As far as Phoenicians go, do we have anything about their navy? What did their ships look like? I think this discussion will ultimately come down to which civilizations we know the most about. If we don't have enough on the Phoenicians, we had best start looking elsewhere.

Hint: Somebody better start posting artist renderings of Phoenician buildings, ships, and soldiers if this civ is gonna have a chance.

[Aldandil]

I can imagine both Myenaeans and Egyptians having decent navies. And the early Philistines had Aegean cultural affinities and manufactured Mycenaean pottery, so they could have been Greeks, or included some Greeks.

Edited September 28, 2010 by Aldandil

[SMST]

Egyptian powerful navy = Phoenician mercenaries, as I posted before.

I have a depiction of a Phoenician galley in my atlas, unfortuanetly, I have no scanner. If we can find Egyptian ships that are not made of straw, it is a safe bet though, that they are Phoenician, at least in origin and sinliar in design.

[Aldandil]

Egyptian powerful navy = Phoenician mercenaries, as I posted before.

Oh duh, you just said that.

Egyptian texts do discuss ships with cabins, decks, and masts, which strongly implies wooden ships instead of reed boats, and they had several words for different types of ship. But whether they were of Phoenician or Egyptian make I don't know.

At the very least, reed boats of any size could not have transported huge stone blocks and obelisks down the river, and 14 actual wooden ships up to 75 feet long were also buried in 1st Dynasty Abydos. During the 1st Dynasty, the Levantine coast had a settlement of some kind (Megiddo), and the city of Ebla was near the later site of Ugarit but further inland, maybe 150 km from the coast (the map I'm looking at is small). I'm sure Asians and Egyptians were trading back then. But it's also possible the boats were a native development.

Edited October 7, 2010 by Aldandil

[Cassador_Chris]

Egyptian texts do discuss ships with cabins, decks, and masts, which strongly implies wooden ships instead of reed boats, and they had several words for different types of ship. But whether they were of Phoenician or Egyptian make I don't know.

No need to go to Egyptian texts. Archaeologists quite a while ago unearthed an actual ship. This is from the old kingdom, though.

http://www.kingtutshop.com/free-pictures/egypti10.jpg

Anyway, Egyptian ships!

http://www.modelshipmaster.com/products/an...20merchantS.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_yL1gRCqUvQI/SSL0...cient+Egypt.JPG

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yL1gRCqUvQI/SSLs...litary+ship.JPG

http://www.arabian-archaeology.com/images/es-077.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_yL1gRCqUvQI/SSLv...cient+Egypt.JPG

http://www.artsales.com/ARTistory/Ancient_...n_galleons.html

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timeli...oingvessels.htm

Phoenician Ships!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2723/402524...7fa29ed6c_z.jpg

http://www.ahrtp.com/EarlyShipsOnLine/page...tamianShip1.htm

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:Z-f63Rn...an-ship.jpg&t=1

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g316/pat...enicianShip.jpg

http://smontagu.org/images/asterix-2a.png

EDIT:

OH! And this amazing resource for Mycenaen ships.

http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/ships.htm

Edited September 29, 2010 by Cassador_Chris

[Aldandil]

Wonderful sources!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yL1gRCqUvQI/SSLs...litary+ship.JPG

This is certainly a warship. Some of those Egyptian ships are very similar to the Phoenician designs, but some are rather different IMHO. According to one of your links, Pharaoh Sahure commissioned Phoenician/Canaanite shipbuilders to build his navy.

That boat excavated from the Old Kingdom was 142 feet (43.3 meters) according to this textbook.

Phoenician Ships!

http://image51.webshots.com/151/3/23/31/43...31uSnOtZ_ph.jpg

http://image54.webshots.com/154/3/41/4/434...04cpaIcP_ph.jpg

These two only bring up 403 Forbidden errors for me.

OH! And this amazing resource for Mycenaen ships.

http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/ships.htm

It looks like it covers the whole Aegean Bronze Age.

Thanks for posting these!

(*1) Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, and Crete all illustrate their ships in this period. Even if the sword-blade inlaid with ship from the mysterious Dorak Treasure contemporary with Troy II should prove genuine, the ship do not look quite Cycladic (Illustrated London News 28 November 1959, 754)

I'm not sure but this appears to refer to Middle Helladic depictions. In any case, contemporary Levantine and Anatolian designs evidently exist and it should be possible to track them down as well. Edited September 29, 2010 by Aldandil

[Cassador_Chris]

In any case, contemporary Levantine and Anatolian designs evidently exist and it should be possible to track them down as well.

Yeah, heh, but as great as the internet is, we may not be able to find them online. We might need to email an expert or contact a few museums to get a picture or description of what such ships would look like.

So are we Phoenicians Go? I've been looking over things and I'd say there is enough information out there to build a playable civilization out of them. Only kink is in the time frame. Phoenicians would only work for the very late bronze-early iron age. Anything before that and they are probably best described as Canaanites.

[Aldandil]

I would call them Canaanites and depicted in late Bronze Age designs, but I've been convinced that they should be in.

And Chris, if you are planning on researching the Nubians you might as well see if there is enough information to make a Bronze Age civ for them. I kind of doubt there's much about Kerma, but you never know.

[SMST]

It seems we have overlooked one important major people: the "Sea People" (of whom a part settled and formed the Philistines)

I think of them because I came across great art for them:

http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/john...cture17891.aspx

http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/john...ture307295.aspx

For those who don't know, these guys of unknown origin entered the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 B.C., leading to the downfall of the Hittite empire and also giving the Egyptians a hard time beating them off.

I don't know much about them yet, but if we want to include them, I can do some research, plus research for the Hittite faction. (which I need anyway)

[Aldandil]

According to this

http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/sea.htm

there were several different Sea Peoples, of whom the Peleset (possibly Mycenaeans who became the Philistines) were only one.

Of course there were many "Celtic" peoples, and many Iberian peoples. If research can make a good case for grouping these guys together on cultural or historical grounds (other than that they all went about raiding during the same centuries) then they could hang together as one "civilization."

Conversely, if the current consensus among archaeologists and historians turns out to be that the majority of Sea Peoples belonged to the Mycenaean material culture, then it may turn out to be infeasible to make them more than a Mycenaean sub-faction.

It's also possible that some Sea Peoples were affiliated culturally or historically with each other an/or the Mycenaeans, and others weren't, so that any potential use of them might have to leave some out.

There also may be the possibility that some of the Sea Peoples could be used as mercenaries by other civs. Apparently Ramesses II employed some Shardana, for instance.

All in all, good suggestion. If these guys were so significant historically, ignoring them entirely wouldn't seem right.

Edited October 7, 2010 by Aldandil

[Mythos_Ruler]

My personal pet theory was that the sea peoples were Mycenaeans pushed out of Greece by repeated Dorian invasions. I am not sure if this aligns correctly historically.

[Cassador_Chris]

^ I think the Dorian invasion theory has been, or is in the process of being, discredited by modern archaeologists. Though I'm not entirely sure about this.

They might be leaning towards a "Dorian" migration, or towards that Mycenean society collapsed because of famine and natural disasters. Anyway, I'd have to spend time looking stuff up, but I'm going to bed right now.

Anyway, its a moot point, I think. I tend to agree with Mythos here, though I'd like to add the Estruscans (it is suspected they had connections to Anatolia) to the list of people whom I suspect fled from the Aegean during this period of turmoil.

[Aldandil]

I've also read that the Dorian invasion isn't considered a certain thing anymore. But it's not my area of expertise.

I found a website with some info about the Egyptian military:

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timeli...ndex.html#state

and about ships (scroll down a bit):

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timeli...ex.html#economy

Like the Age of Bronze site for Aegean archaeology, this isn't by a scholar but hopefully a person who is using scholarly sources (I haven't taken the time to see what they cite).

EDIT/Update: Reshafim's sources are all over the place. Some pages have a scholarly-looking bibliography, some pages cite no sources at all. The timeline page is to be avoided.

Edited October 6, 2011 by Aldandil

[Cassador_Chris]

Tour Egypt also has a wonderful cache of articles about Egypt. I have been especially enlightened by the ones dealing with the Egyptian military.

Here is an article on the distinct Egyptian war chariot:

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/chariots.htm

Here is the 1st part of a article on the Evolution of Warfare in Egyptian history:

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/war.htm

And here is an article dealing with Egyptian weapons.

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/weapons.htm

There are also many, many other related articles that you can usually find links to at the bottom of the page. Topics include Enemies of Egypt, Egyptian military architecture, close combat edged weapons of the Egyptians, Egyptian ranged weapons... the list goes on and on.

Have fun!