On the Golden Age of Inventions

Report by the engineer Zephon Botrys

It is true that the inhabitants of these lands, stretching from Kemet to Mesopotamia, have always been industrious, and have been creating all kinds of inventions for at least three millennia by now. The wheel, various writing scripts, bronze tools and weapons, irrigation and sewage systems, improved building techniques, chariots, bigger and faster ships, and much more. But one would also have to be blind to not have noticed the increase in the rate of such inventions in the last few decades. These days, it seems as if a new major invention is created every year, not to mention all the unsuccessful ones which spawn seemingly every day now. This would have been rather unimaginable in the age of Ramesses II, I would say, as in previous centuries such advancements took much longer to be achieved. Something changed in the universe, and because of that we are now advancing at a seemingly unstoppable pace.

Different groups have different explanations for this phenomenon. The priests say that the gods blessed us by giving us more intelligence so we could advance faster, generals claim that it was due to increase in warfare between major powers and the need to create new weapons to compete with them, while others say that it was pure luck and nothing more. Yet none of these explanations seem very logical to me, and I believe there must have been something more. And I have my own theory, in fact. I believe that this golden age of inventions, which we are living in right now, began about eighty years ago, during the first years of the rule of Ramesses III. As you may now, that time period was highly precarious, not only for Egypt, but for the existence of civilization itself. We had a series of unprecedented natural disasters – such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions – as well as an exceptionally hot period which brought severe droughts. Ones which could very well have resulted in extreme famines. The people were getting restless as well, and many speculated that Egypt, Hatti, Mycenae, or Karduniash might have a revolution any moment. Not to mention the mysterious barbarians from the north, who seemingly came from Europe after a series of famines hit the continent, and attacked us and the Mycenaeans. Peoples such as the Sherden, a group now almost completely integrated into our society and forgotten, but at that point they were as threatening as the Hittites.

No one probably knew it at the time, but those years, the first decade of Ramesses III’s rule, seem to have been a turning point for all our civilizations here. We could have perished and the tri-continental region could have been set back by many millennia. The consequences could indeed have been dire, and they are still the speculation of many scholars and fiction authors alike. Yet we managed to avert disaster, and seemingly came out much better for it, though it did take some time. Ramesses III did indeed decide to help the Mycenaean and the Hittites in their time of need, even if the latter contribution only resulted in a stab in the back for us at the time. Even still, helping the Hittites might have been necessary – with the world having been so connected, a single piece falling could have brought down many other civilizations, and leaving Hatti to die might have resulted in destruction of Egypt as well. A controversial view, for sure, but one that is being adapted more and more often these days, especially now that the Hittites are seen as allies and not some barbarians.

But what does this have to do with inventions and technological advancements? Well, I believe that the civilizations came so close to destruction, that the leaders and the people were shocked enough already by the experience, and decided to act swiftly by making new inventions to avert any possible future disasters. The gods probably didn’t make us more intelligent, our brain capacity has always been the same, but they may have given us a serious warning. If that was the case, we definitely understood it and acted accordingly. Because the next time, it may not be a warning. The next time, we may not have so much luck. The next time, we may face even more serious problems, and so we have to prepare for them. And these preparations came in a variety of ways. Higher focus on international cooperation to prevent any civilization falling and so causing harm to everyone else. Discreet increases in the budget allocated to research and development. Further professionalization of armies, so that farmer conscripts wouldn’t need to be relied upon in times of crisis. Creation of various scientific and engineer divisions. Promotion of private entrepreneurship, which could help the state as well. Higher investment in medicine, so that plagues wouldn’t devastate the populations as much anymore. Finding better agricultural methods, so that famines wouldn’t be as devastating. Diversification of economies, so that the treasury wouldn’t be empty when the funds from it are most needed. All of this, I believe, was started eighty years ago, possibly by Ramesses III himself, after he completed the expedition to the Mycenaean Confederation. And, with the kingdoms being so interconnected, it quickly spread to our neighbors and then their neighbors.

Of course, the wars of the period might also have contributed, firstly to military inventions, but those soon had civilian applications as well. The anti-barbarian campaigns, the two decade long Second Hittite-Egyptian War, the Assyrian-Kassite War, requiring international intervention, the Great Powers’ War, and, finally, the OFK-EC War, and the ongoing cold war between our factions. Warfare is changing, it is no longer about seasonal campaigns involving a few thousands peasants raiding a village, it is now about armies of hundreds of thousands of professional warriors fighting for the control of almost every corner of the civilized world simultaneously. The increase in the invention rate had already started, but these massive wars gave it even more momentum, as everyone now needed bigger and better weapons to fight their similarly sized foes. For example, the Second Hittite-Egyptian War prompted us to massively increase our navy and start building bigger, four and five and even six-banked, ships in order to link up with the Mycenaeans and try to liberate Alashiya from Hatti. The Assyrian-Kassite War had the Assyrians create various new siege engines, such as the siege towers and catapults, to have an easier time taking the highly defended Kassite cities in Babylonia. The Great Powers’ War gave us explosives, so we could destroy each other’s armies and fortifications quicker, and the OFK-EC War, of course, resulted in guns, even if, in a functional form, they did come a couple years too late. That is also not mentioning all the improvements in soldier training, in medicine, fortifications, and societal developments, such as the inclusion of women in the army, also a result of the OFK-EC War and the depletion of army aged males from the preceding Great Powers’ War.

All this was done not for some wish of great societal development, only for the sake of survival, same as decades before during the crises in the first years of Ramesses III. But it worked, and we not only survived, but also set the foundations for many new developments for centuries to come. Our standards of living increased, and so did populations, increasing by the millions in many of the major states. With that, the economies grew and further propelled new developments, with the income from taxes, at least here, being much larger than ever before, even with the decrease in tax rates. And so, we continue pushing forwards, pleasing the gods greatly, if I do say so myself. We already advanced more in this century than we did in the previous millennia, and our progress is not stopping anytime soon, it seems. Military, agriculture, transportation, medicine, communication, construction, and many other developments have been made, and many more are being experimented with right as we speak. Having explained how this new golden age of innovations has come to be, and given the general overview of the situation and of the trajectory on which we and our allies and opponents are on, I would like to now move on to more specific fields, with their actual new technologies and other innovations, discussing them all in more detail.

Agriculture

Agriculture has been slowly but steadily improving for many millennia by now, but, seeing how devastating droughts and subsequent famines can be, it was nonetheless among the first few spheres to be focused on and targeted for further development by the governments of Ramesses III’s time. One of the first such changes was the switch to the three-field system from the two-field system, which had been in use for many millennia by that point. The two-field system, first developed in Mesopotamia, involved planting crops in one half of the field, and leaving another one without sowing anything, so that it could recover. The next year, these fields would be switched, so that the one which recovered would be sown while the one which was used for growing crops would be left without sowing. A simple enough system, but the problem with it was that it left 50% of the farmlands as unproductive at any point in time. Naturally, since the soils here along the Nile and in Mesopotamia are so fertile, using even half of their capacity was good enough most of the times, but famines were still possible. And the near famine of eighty years prior demonstrated the faults of such a long-used system. So the switch was made to the three-field system – a field would be divided into three parts, rather than two, and each part would have a cycle of growing one crop (cereal, mostly wheat), then another (legumes, such as lentils, as they were discovered to fertilize the soil), and finally would be left without any sowing, being used for animal grazing. Thus, by diversifying the crops and increasing the number of fields, the farmlands became more productive, as now, instead of being efficiently used only 50% of the time, they could be used 67% of the time. There may certainly still be room for improvement, and some are even theorizing and experimenting with a four-field system, but the three-field system was still certainly a massive improvement over the previous method, and allowed us to feed many more people than before, which is what I believe contributed highly to our immense population growth. Seeing such results, other countries followed shortly, with Mesopotamia making the switch only a couple decades later, and by now almost every civilization uses the three-field system, with its first mention being right here in Kemet, seventy-eight years ago, from what records I could find.

Efficiency was also improved by moving away from subsistence farming to massive conglomerate plantations. Such attempts can be traced back to the rule of the Third Dynasty of Ur in Mesopotamia, almost a millennia ago, but, as we all know, that ended in failure once the empire collapsed. Still, the idea persisted and reemerged about four centuries ago, both in Assyria and here in Egypt. And in both cases, it was due to slavery. The Assyrians conquered everything around them and so gained hundreds of thousands of slaves, which were sent to work in plantations, held by Assyrian nobles, while we conquered Kush and had a similar system there. In general though, as nobles became more and more wealthy and powerful everywhere, they started buying up farms and building large estates, containing farmlands as far as the eye could see, with thousands of peasants working them. There was also, of course, the increase in the lands held by the priests and the governments. More recently, lands have begun to be bought up by self-made Phoenicianists and the companies they hold. That is not to say that subsistence farms don’t exist anymore, they certainly do, but these days one would be more likely to find a peasant working for a noble, priest, company, or the government, than himself. The crisis of eighty years ago, of course, also had an effect on this, as many people were driven to destitution, while the more powerful players had more leftover funds to sustain themselves, and later, once the crisis ended, buy up the farms of some desperate peasants. This also depends on the country, as here in the Commonwealth we have many subsistence farms still, especially now that we have abolished slavery, but Assyria has most of the farmlands under government control, while in Babylonia they are almost entirely divided between the major megacoporations. Yet the trend is similar everywhere.

And while some may decry this as some terrible thing, it is far from it. The early subsistence farms were horribly inefficient, with every farmer having to be not only a worker, but also an expert on farming techniques, a merchant (to sell the crops), and more to manage his farm. Now, with these acquisitions and mergers of the farms, everything can be done more efficiently. The farmers only have to worry about doing the actual work of farming, while what crops have to be planted and how and where they should be sold is decided by the owner, or some assistant of theirs, so the process is streamlined. This means that more crops are grown, they are traded more efficiently, and so everyone has more food and more wealth, as the situation comes closer to the equilibrium. The landowners profit greatly, of course, but so do the tenant farmers, as they farm more efficiently and so are left with more produce than they would be left with if they farmed independently, even factoring in the rent they have to pay to their landlords. The only way this would result in a worse outcome for the farmer would be if the farmer was very intelligent and could figure everything out himself, but in that case, he wouldn’t be a peasant then, would he? He would be a manager of some company, a scribe, or even the landlord himself.

I must also mention the emergence of scholars and scholarly works discussing agriculture. For a long time, this field was seen as a self-explanatory matter, and few tried researching it more. However, the near collapse made the scholars reconsider this and dedicate resources to studying agriculture as well. Over the previous few decades many respected scholars have written significant works on agriculture which helped societies improve their methods and achieve better yields and efficiency. These include Egyptians Petubast of Het-Nesut and Sneferka of Iunu, the Babylonian Zababa-Il of Kish, the Elamite Hishur of Susa, and the Mycenaean Andokides of Pylos. The Mycenaeans in particular started researching this field extensively, as for them it really was a matter of survival. They have always relied on imports from us for sustenance, and so developing methods to increase their own meagre agricultural yields was, and still is, seen as a priority. The Hittites also seem to be thinking the same thing, and starting their own initiatives to promote agricultural studying to improve their own farmlands. While a century ago, agriculture was a niche and almost non-existent topic in scholarly circles, now it is a highly respected field, prevalent in almost every country with a capacity to have any serious scientists.

This rise in scientific agriculturalism did result in many benefits, one of them potentially being the aforementioned adoption of the three-field system. Other discoveries include concepts such as selective breeding of plants and animals, so that only ones with desirable characteristics would remain and continue producing and multiplying. We have been engaging in this for millennia, knowingly or unknowingly, but now this is being researched even further, so that weak animals and inadequate plants would be phased out, while better ones would remain and produce even better breeds, which would, of course, help in raising efficiency. Naturally, it can take a long time to see results from such a method, but it is always worth investing in the future, and already we are seeing some, if relatively small, gains because of this practice.

So in this way we got better animals and plants, but what about better soil? Well, the agricultural scientists thought about that as well, and they have indeed discovered ways to also increase the efficiency of the soil itself. Granted, the soil here in Kemet and Kush around the Nile, and that in Assyria and Babylonia is already great and unrivalled in the known world, with the possible exception of the Indus river, but there is always room for improvement. For centuries we have already been using fertilizers such as manure, fish, wood ash, and various minerals, with decent results. Most of these discoveries relating to fertilizers had been made in Babylonia, and spread around from there. And now, the newest major discovery was also made in Babylonia, about forty years ago. That was still during the era of the Kingdom of Karduniash, specifically during and after their war with Assyria, which nearly resulted in complete destruction of Karduniash. Due to this, the Kassite elites hired many local Babylonian scientists to figure out how to improve the soil, so that the country would have more resources and be able to support a larger population, and in turn a larger army to resist the Assyrians in the future. And these scientists did indeed make a new discovery, this being the usage of gypsum on the soil. Gypsum is a sulfate mineral which has been found to be a great fertilizer and, luckily for the Kassites, there was plenty of it around them, both in the then unclaimed Zagros Mountains and in Anatolia, held by Hatti, which was an ally of Karduniash. Of course, Karduniash still fell, for a variety of reasons, but soil was certainly not one of them. And now, because of them, we have knowledge of this fertilizer and are using it quite extensively, with the OFK getting most of it from Hatti, while the EC gets it from Elam and Lullubum.

Of course, all this that I mentioned are only discoveries of things and laws of nature that already exist, and I did not even mention any actual technological inventions. And technologies have been very important in this regard as well. Firstly, we have improvements in irrigation, which have been taking place for millennia already here and in Mesopotamia, but have intensified even more in the last sixty years or so. Irrigation has been used extensively to make agriculture viable in areas where normally few crops or nothing at all could previously grow, and in this sphere both we and the easterners have always been improving. The Mesopotamians invented the modern aqueducts – ground based or elevated watercourses made to carry water from the source to their destination – a few decades ago, though the earlier iterations had been created by the Indus Valley and the Minoan civilizations more than a millennium ago. The Elamites, meanwhile, adopted the usage of such aqueducts while also introducing underground ones to transport water to harder to reach areas, since it was easier to make the water flow from the underground rather than trying to make it bypass large mountains. We ourselves have also made some developments in irrigation, such as the enlargement of Lake Moeris under the pharaoh Amenemhat III about seven centuries ago, so that the lake could store surplus of water from the Nile during its floods, and then use this surplus to help irrigate the farmlands during dry seasons. Further improvements have been made over time, and now we barely need to worry about lack of water here. Still, we have even more plans for similar designs, such as bringing in the further oases into the irrigation network as well and using them for similar purposes, which would also help connect the country better.

Another advancement concerns the tools used for agriculture, specifically the plough. We already had good ploughs for a long while and didn’t feel the need for creating a new version, but the Hittites did, since their soil is not nearly as fertile and needs more power to bring nutrients to the surface. Thus, the Hittites experimented with new ploughs and created a greatly improved version about fifty-five years ago. This one is larger, sturdier, made of iron, which is abundant in Hatti, has a larger front plate to overturn more soil, and has wheels, thus acting something like a chariot, except for farming rather than for warfare. We knew little of such an invention for a long time, as we were enemies with Hatti, but now that we are together with them in the OFK, they shared the designs, which were adopted in Mycenae and are spreading to other places as well.

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There is also of course the matter of buildings which help conduct agriculture. One such building is the windmill, which is a structure which converts the power of wind into energy, by capturing the wind with sails or large blades. This energy forces the wheel on the outside of the mill to spin, which in turn makes the inside mechanism start working. And this inside mechanism can be used for a variety of purposes, but mostly windmills are now used either to pump water or grind grain, thus saving farmers many hours and giving them more necessary resources. Windmills are first reported to have been built under Hammurabi, the king of Babylonia about seven centuries ago. Over the centuries, the Babylonians improved on the design and built more windmills, though the reign of Nebuchadnezzar seems to have had the biggest expansion of the number of windmills, built both by the government and the megacorporations of the EC. However, windmills obviously require winds, and strong ones at that. And strong winds mostly occur near seas and especially oceans, so Babylonia, being a land-based kingdom with a tiny coastline, doesn’t benefit that much from these windmills in relative terms. Yet there are countries which could certainly use windmills efficiently, and they seem to be doing just that. The Mycenaean Confederation, being mostly composed of islands and coastal cities, is perfectly suited to capture wind power, and it began constructing windmills about thirty years ago. Hatti also started building some windmills, mostly after the war a few years back, on its northern coastline with the Euxine Sea and also some on the southern coastline with the Mediterranean Sea. Alashiya, Dilmun, and Magan, being almost or totally surrounded by water and in turn fast winds, built many windmills in the last few years as well and are rapidly expanding this sector.

Just like one can capture energy from the winds, so can energy be captured from the flow of water. Thus we have watermills, which work similarly in concept to how windmills work. These watermills have a large wheel, placed on a river or some other body of water, and the movement of water forces this wheel to move. The wheel, in turn, forces the mechanism inside the mill to move, and this can be used for similar purposes as the windmill. That includes the grinding of grain, cutting and grinding of wood, and, most notably, powering the cotton processing machines in cotton mills. The watermills are used for textile production even more than they are used for agriculture, and so I will return to them in another section, but their agricultural uses are still not to be disregarded, as, just like windmills, they can save many hours and process resources much more efficiently than a human could by hand. Watermills were experimented with for centuries, but the first working models were introduced in Assyria a few years ago, specifically as these cotton mills, necessary for the new Assyrian textile factories. By now, watermills are integral to the economy of Assyria and have also spread to Babylonia, where more are being built every day. Watermills work the best with large rivers and so it’s natural that the Mesopotamians were the first to adopt them, though we are not too far behind them and have some of our own watermills on the Nile, both in Kemet and in Kush.

Finally, there is one last matter in regards to advancements in agriculture which is very new and quite unexpected. This is called the Khonsmian exchange, and it involves us trading with the newly discovered continents of Khonsmia. It turned out that the people there are growing many completely different plants than what we are growing here in the tri-continental area. Naturally, we started trading with the Khonsmians, buying their produce and paying in ours most of the times. We gave them samples of wheat, onions, apples, and coffee, while in exchange we received corn, chili peppers, cacao, and tobacco from them, mostly by trading with the Olmecs. Of course, the effects of this exchange in the long term are only being theorized now, as we are only now trying to grow these plants here in our countries, but some believe that this could help greatly in many regards. Scholars are studying the implications of these new plants on the soil and thinking of how they could be introduced so as to increase the number of fields, and so increase the efficiency of farmlands, medics are saying that these new products could help diversify the diet and so give people more necessary nutrients, thus potentially strengthening us and making us healthier, while the chefs are thinking of dozens of new recipes which combine our local ingredients and those of the new world, though I imagine that such dishes could only be afforded by the wealthy elites for a long time, as trade quantities are relatively miniscule right now. Still, this development seems to have greatly and unexpectedly helped us and might make our populations increase even faster than before, and the same should be the case on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Medicine

While famines can indeed be highly devastating, plagues are just as destructive to a civilization, if not more. After all, a famine can be solved by importing more food, even if that drains the treasury, while containing and neutralizing a plague is much more difficult and for most of history has been basically impossible. We had quite a serious plague here a couple centuries ago, during the reign of the pharaoh Amenhotep III. It ravaged most of the Levant, from Ugarit to Ashkelon, as well as Hatti and the Mycenaean Confederation. We Egyptians didn’t get the worst of it, but the effect was still felt. The reports are quite conflicting, but it seems that the plague took hundreds of thousands of lives, if not millions. The Mycenaeans seem to have been the most affected, and it took them many decades to truly recover. Suddenly losing a significant portion of your population for no apparent reason is never a good deal and so we have always been thinking on how such disasters could be averted. Of course, here in Egypt we always did have a strong medical tradition, with research papyri containing significant medical discoveries having been written continuously over the previous millennia, so we were ahead of the rest of the world from the very start – our intricate mummification and burial processes would certainly have given us an advantage in better understanding how the body works. Still, we needed to do better if we wanted to avert disaster, because the next time the plague might hit us even harder than it did the Levant or Mycenae.

The crisis of Ramesses III’s time incentivized this even further – even though there was no plague at the time, it seemed like the end times were indeed coming and so that a plague was not too far behind either, which prompted alchemists and other scientists to try to think of a solution. One discovery which was made rather soon was on how these plagues spread in the first place. For a long time, it was thought that plagues and all other illnesses just materialized out of nowhere, or were sent down by the gods, and so there was no pattern or reason to them. Yet the alchemists of eighty years ago discovered that this was not the case. The Enskerka Papyrus proposed a new theory – since the first major plagues of such a scale occurred only once the world, or at least this region of eastern Mediterranean, was quite well interconnected, with people interacting relatively often with their counterparts in other countries, couldn’t it be that the humans themselves were spreading diseases to one another? After all, all the previous plagues seem to have been contained within a single city or a single country at most. If the plagues are random then global plagues should have been often encountered in the past as well, but we know of none such plagues from the records. Thus Enskerka theorized that most mass diseases would begin by a person (or an animal) getting in contact with some tiny particle containing the disease, and then would, unwittingly, spread it to others by touching them or even standing too close to them so that the particle could get to other hosts as well. The disease could then spread exponentially, first to the first host’s family, then to the people their family interacted with, and so on, until the whole city is infected, and other cities would become affected by merchants coming to them, also unknowingly carrying the disease from the originally infected city, if it had not been sealed off before too late.

This was a controversial theory indeed, and was opposed by many priests and even fellow alchemists and doctors, as they could not accept that such terrible things could be the consequences of humans and other beings simply interacting with each other. Yet, as time went on, the theory became more and more accepted, especially after our investigation in Assyria thirty-six years ago. A minor disease was highly prevalent among the Assyrian soldiers, the same one which had sprung up in Karduniash a few years prior. The Assyrian soldiers were, of course, returning from the same Karduniash after the Assyrian-Kassite War, and before long much of Assyria seemed to be infected as well. Thus proponents of Enskerka’s theory now had some real data to back up their claims, and the theory became the accepted one about three decades ago. Even the priests seemed to not challenge it anymore, as the idea that we are responsible for creating such problems was a better alternative than claiming that the gods want to destroy their own creations for no apparent reason, as the latter would only undermine the priests and their authority.

We learned how diseases spread, and so now we can better prevent that. Just like we have emergency plans for unexpected invasions or natural disasters, so now we have ones for containing diseases. This involves sealing off affected cities, restricting land and naval travel for persons whose health is not verified, setting up testing points where medics can see and register who is infected, isolating infected people from the others, distributing supplies to affected regions so that people wouldn’t need to unnecessarily leave their homes and risk infecting others, washing hands and entire bodies more often and more thoroughly so that these disease particles would hopefully be washed off, and putting on outfits which would cover the entire body – including gloves, glasses, and masks – so that it would be more difficult to penetrate for the disease. How well would all of this work is still a question, as we haven’t had a large-scale disease here yet, but it is a start, and the medics are working on these issues as hard as ever, from what I have heard in my Thotherite circles.

Speaking of preventing diseases from spreading – a related discovery which was made a couple decades ago was that some diseases are spread through sexual contact. This was observed when during one week a whole cast of men went to a doctor’s office for the same problems, and it was discovered that the only common variable between them was that they all had went to see and have intercourse with a popular courtesan who had come to the local brothel from Phoenicia for a short while. This was, of course, completely in line with the thesis of Enskerka Papyrus, and only further validated it, but now there arose a need to prevent sexual diseases, as the solution of simply separating the people and trying to control who has intercourse with who was deemed impossible, so the medics wanted to create some protection so that the people could be safer while engaging in the same activities. Other than the promotion of the usage of some substances discovered centuries earlier and written about in earlier papyri, new ones were experimented with and given to some brothels, which sometimes became important sites of observations. The visiting scientists weren’t very welcome most of the times, but that would change once the owners and workers of the establishment were compensated for participating in these trials, while more customers would flock to these locations, since the perceived risk of disease was lower there.

However, there was some private development in this sphere as well, since this is a very lucrative market, after all, and it came in the form of the company Tyrian Textiles creating thin phallic sheaths, which would prevent direct contact between sexual organs and so prevent the spread of sexual diseases, while still not taking away any of the pleasure. They are made from silk and, for cheaper options, cotton. Another advantage of this product is that it also prevents pregnancies, and so it quickly became very popular everywhere from Kemet to Elam, as the potentially mild loss of pleasure was seen worth it to not have to deal with diseases and unwanted children. Or so I’ve heard. There is also another contraceptive, derived from the plant known as silphium – of which we are now the only producers ever since we conquered Tjehenu, the eastern Libyan lands – which became prominent about a decade ago, though the scientists are still debating its effectiveness. Still, a lot of progress was made in this sphere in the last few decades and the people are now safer for it.

In general though, just like with the agricultural sector, the medical field expanded quite a bit in these last few decades from the reign of Ramesses III. Like I said, it was always very important here in Egypt, but it became even more crucial recently, and now new medical schools are appearing everywhere, to prepare a new generation of combat and civilian medics who would know the newest and most effective techniques to treat their patients. Previously, this was much more of a theoretical field and the practitioners of it just appeared through trial and error, which is what was changed, as now medics are trained in official institutions, gain official certifications – of a similar type as ones gained by people who finish scribe schools – and can work in an official capacity, which both helps us gain many more doctors to fulfill the demand, and also makes sure that the patients receive the best possible treatments. Of course, they are not always saved, there are still many issues and diseases that even the most skilled doctors cannot cure, but at least we don’t have to lose citizens to trivial injuries and illnesses anymore. Other countries have also adopted such models, to a lesser or higher degree, with the most medically advanced countries behind us being Assyria, Elam, and Mycenae.

The emergence of easily accessible medical services is also a development not to be understated. Previously, if a person had an injury or an illness, they would have to seek out a local alchemist or medic who could hopefully help them, but there would be no guarantee that the situation would be improved or even that it wouldn’t be worsened. Healthcare was highly unreliable, and only the wealthiest could afford to hire personal doctors to look after them. However, now with the emergence of a prominent middle class here in the Commonwealth and in other countries, demand emerged for something between a shady neighborhood alchemist and the exorbitantly expensive private physician. Luckily, there was supply now as well, owing to all the graduates of these medical schools, as there are only so many noble estates to work in, so most of these new medics had to look for work from less affluent customers. Thus, about twenty years ago, private clinics began popping up all around the country, serving everyone from a local peasant to a travelling merchant, as long as they can pay. These clinics can range from simple ones set up inside a small apartment, to massive hospitals which are larger than most apartment complexes. They can also contain personnel ranging from just one doctor, to a team of dozens of doctors, alchemists, nurses, administrators, cooks, and security guards. The largest one is right here in Men-nefer, with a capacity for about 500 patients and 200 workers, and it is still rapidly expanding. These institutions have the required certifications and look more professional and so people are more likely to trust them and visit them, which brings many patients to these hospitals, and many shematys which keep them running. Such hospitals are private and are most prevalent here in Kemet, in Retjenu, and in Babylonia, where they are often built by the megacorporations who use them as incentives for recruitment. In some places, however, the government sometimes compensates a portion or even the full cost of the medical procedures, such as the case in Assyria, where the government pays the cost for the lower income patients who could not afford the procedures on their own. Here we also have some similar policies, such as compensating the cost of any treatment for any current and former members of the military.

Now, we have all these institutions, the hospitals to house patients, and educated professional to take care of the, and that’s good. But the problem is that medical procedures are often rather painful, and so many people choose not to go anyways, because the operation may be more painful than just suffering through the symptoms. This is an issue, and the alchemists have been experimenting for decades to find a substance which could help with this, by removing or at least lessening the pain, so that the procedures would not be as dreadful and would give the patients a better experience. They turned first to drugs, specifically opium, which we grow in abundance here in Kemet and Kush. Opium makes one rather sleepy and less aware of the surroundings, which is exactly what the doctors needed, as a barely conscious patient is better than one constantly fidgeting and possibly screaming. The pleasure which is given by opium also helps negate the effects of pain from the procedure. Thus opium began to be used extensively in medical facilities a few decades ago, and even the military makes sure to always have a consistent supply of opium for injured soldiers, but a few years ago, a new substance was invented. During the OFK-EC War, as the front saw dozens of thousands of injured soldiers who needed urgent treatment, a need arose for a more efficient painkiller, and one was created by a Iseret, a female field medic. She managed to extract a certain substance out of raw opium, and the final product was about six times stronger than opium, which helped in treating soldiers immensely. This substance was named Serketine, after our goddess Serket, who, among her other functions, heals venomous stings and bites, and other such attacks, and so it was an appropriate name for a war time drug used in medical operations. It quickly spread to the civilian sector too, and is now popular all across the OFK and the EC. Some even say that Serketine may be a combat multiplier just as important as guns before long.

There is another major development in the medical sphere, and it relates again to the plagues and other diseases, but it is very recent and not highly tested, so I left it last. It is about the recently released Behdeti Papyrus, published just a couple years ago. Many dismiss it because of the lack of testes cases, but I still think it is a very interesting idea and one which may become very important. It deals with how diseases could be prevented, however, instead of focusing on conventional methods like isolating patients or wearing masks and gloves and what not, it approaches the problem from a completely different angle. That is, the author – the prominent Egyptian-Canaanite alchemist Behdeti Nezemab – discovered two versions of a certain disease while travelling deeper into Afrika, and while one of these versions was lethal, another one resulted in far fewer complications. The theory was then that if a person was infected by the less lethal disease, he wouldn’t be infected by the more lethal one, and while it may be uncomfortable for a while, it would obviously be preferable to debilitating illness or death. So Behdeti experimented and tested out his theory. He took a piece of skin from a native infected with the less severe version of the disease, ground it into powder, and injected into a still healthy native. That second native, naturally, became infected with the disease. So then, after a few days, Behdeti did the same, except injecting the same test subject with the more severe version of the disease. And surprisingly, the native test subject did not experience the more severe symptoms, which means that the theory was correct. There have been more tests with similar outcomes afterwards, though the Behdeti Papyrus is still under heavy scrutiny, and many do not fully trust the results. Still, I believe this could be a massive discovery, and if it holds up, we may have much more protection from any plague or other disease than previously imaginable, and this could save millions of lives in the long run.