Transportation

With our world being so interconnected, transportation is now more important than it has ever been and so technology has advanced in this sphere as well, naturally. First, there is the matter of land travel. While most civilizations were founded around major rivers, and so most transportation was done using those rivers, some states don’t have such an extensive network of waterways and so have to rely on travelling by land. This includes Hatti, Retjenu, Amurru, and Elam, but land transportation can have uses in river-centered countries or regions too, since those same rivers or seas may not be always reliable and sometimes a land route may be needed to accomplish the task. Thus, most countries by now have invested in some sort of land travel. The most popular option is, of course, horse drawn carriages. They came in use a few centuries ago, but became much more prominent about fifty years ago. This development started in Hatti, where larger and faster carriages were first introduced to transport officials around the large tracts of land, but civilians soon started using such carriages as well. They then trickled down to the Levant, and in turn to us here in Men-nefer, and to the eastern civilizations. Carriages are now the primary way of getting to different cities if there is no river-based or sea-based connection and there are options ranging from luxurious carriages, transporting a single person or a single family, to large commercial carriages which can transport up to twenty people at a time. And, as I mentioned, such carriages are now used not only for travel between cities, but for travel within cities, mostly in the large urban areas in Babylonia and here in Kemet, though they are being introduced in more and more locations every year. As cities expand and walking everywhere becomes more and more unfeasible, carriages may become essential for most people.

The problem with carriages is that they are still relatively small, and the largest carriage can only carry barely a tenth of what an average ship could carry, which makes water transportation still much more preferable. However, the Elamites have been working on improving the efficiency of carriages. They do have some rivers and a long coastline, but some of their cities are located deep inland, and, more importantly, all their resource rich areas are in the mountains far from the coast and from most rivers, which makes land transportation crucial for them. So what did the Elamites do to solve this issue? Well, they started laying wooden tracks, known as wagonways, on their most important routes. This helps in several ways – first, the carriage is locked onto that track and so is less likely to go off course, and second, the carriage can be pulled much more easily along the way, due to less resistance from the ground, which means that horses can draw bigger carriages. That, of course, means that more copper, tin, lead, or any other resource can be transported with a single trip. To be exact, it appears that these wagonways allow horses to transport four times as much material in a single trip, meaning that efficiency is quadrupled. This is quite a significant development, which was first started about two decades ago under Shilhak-Inshushinak, but has been improved since. The Hittites may be building their own wagonways in the near future as well, considering they have similar geographical issues that Elam has. I would say that even we should look into this, since we also have some places which are not that well connected to the Nile or the Mediterranean Sea, such as the gold mines of Kush. Using wagonways in such places may really help us.

Another rather recent development in the area of land travel is the extensive usage of supply stations. These are small stations scattered throughout most of the civilized world by now, and they are there to help maximize the potential of carriages. For a fee, a traveler can have their horse changed for a less exhausted one, get the carriage repaired, the wheels fixed or changed, and get some more water and food supplies for the road ahead. Such stations exist in cities, small towns, villages, and even in the middle of nowhere. In fact, those in the middle of nowhere are often the most profitable, since they have no competition and if anyone travels along that road and needs supplies or maintenance for their carriage, they have no other option than to turn to that single station, which then can raise prices way above the market rate. Of course, there is also the caveat that such stations can be attacked by local thugs or even foreign barbarians, and there would be nowhere near enough time to get the law enforcement involved, so this comes with risks too. Still, supply stations are often crucial for long distance travel and they help to shorten the total travel time due to all the benefits they provide.

Let’s now move on to water-based travel, since, despite all the inventions simplifying and speeding up land travel, it is still by far the most popular and most efficient method of transporting goods and people. And water travel is doing just as well as land travel in terms of new inventions, so it doesn’t seem like it will be giving way anytime soon. One notable advancement is the digging of canals, which help connect different bodies of water. By now there are plenty of canals all around the tri-continental area, but the most important ones must be the Euphrates-Tigris Canal and the Pharaonic Canal. The former, as one would expect, connects the Mesopotamian rivers of Euphrates and Tigris at the point where they are nearest to each other (right next to the border between Assyria and Babylonia), and this helps both Assyria and Babylonia greatly, as trade can now be efficiently done not only on the north to south axis, but also on the west to east one. This one was planned for a long time already, but was only finished about a decade ago, when both countries were unified by Shilhak’s conquests. The latter canal, meanwhile, connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. More exactly, it connects the easternmost distributary of the Nile to the Red Sea, which means that all the ships travelling between these seas must still pass our territory in Kemet and pay our tolls (if it was located more to the east, that income would go to the region of Retjenu, and while we would still gain some income from the canal, it would be not nearly as much). There is also the famous canal between the Nile and Lake Moeris, built centuries ago. Other than these, there are plenty of minor canals, mostly in Mesopotamia, but also some in Elam and even the Mycenaean Confederation. Apparently the Mycenaeans are digging the Corinthian Canal right now, which would allow ships to bypass the Peloponnese peninsula (would make for a quick sea route between Delphi and Athens, for example), and this could be a great boon to the Mycenaean economy.

The ships themselves received some improvements too. They are now bigger, faster, able to carry many more passengers and cargo, and in general more formidable than ever before. In this sphere it has been mostly us in the Commonwealth (Egyptians and Phoenicians specifically) who spearheaded the advancements, with the other civilizations just adapting our inventions. The Mycenaeans have been doing pretty well in this sphere as well though, since they are also very much a sea-based civilization and so they naturally need the best ships available. One advancement which is often overlooked, but one which was extremely important, is the usage of new and improved sails and more of them in total. Previously, ships would have only one sail, but in the last few decades we have been experimenting with outfitting ships with two, three, four, and more sails, ones of more unconventional design as well. This allows the ships to capture more wind and so get more power, which makes them much faster than the old models. Some say that this development was crucial for discovering the Khonsmias, as otherwise the ships would not have been able to reach these western continents. Currently, our best ships can travel at about 1.24 leagues an hour, or almost 30 leagues a day (about the naval distance between Men-nefer and Ashkelon), so sea travel takes much less time than previously and makes trade and other international dealings much easier.

Yet there are also other important developments which allowed us to reach such distant lands as Khonsmia. These were mostly inventions made by the Phoenicians, who have been exploring the planet for more than a millennium, and so they know a thing or two about such matters. First, there is the magnetic compass, invented about seventy years ago. It’s a device which shows the directions of the world and it has an arrow-like needle which always points north. Why? We are not sure yet, but the Phoenicians have discovered that some metals can become magnetized, meaning that they will pull other metals or get pulled by them themselves. And so they created such needles which would be pulled to and point to the north, as apparently the north heavily attracts such metals. Again, we do not know how this works exactly, and we would need to send an expedition to discover what truly is there in the far north and why it affects these metals in such a way, but for now, we are just happy to have discovered such a useful tool. The compass shows the north, and from that other directions can be inferred and so the course of the ship determined, which makes it easier to correct it and set the ship on the right path. Another Phoenician invention is the astrolabe, which works as a sort of miniature model for the universe. It was first created about sixty years ago and improved over time, with the current version said to be quite accurate. It is a metal disc with some cutouts, and this allows a navigator to somewhat reliably calculate astronomical positions. Knowing the positions of various stars can definitely help in navigating the vast oceans, as there are no landmarks in the water to rely on, so the sailors must turn to the skies. Lastly, there is the sextant, another Phoenician invention, created about fifteen years ago. Phoenicians are the primary glass makers in the world, and so they know how to work with this material well, which led to the creation of this invention. The sextant is an item which utilizes a few small glass panels, which reflect the light from an astronomical object and allow to measure the angle between that object and the horizon. In essence, the sextant allows one to measure the distance between two objects, which, again, helps greatly in naval navigation, where otherwise it can be very difficult to estimate how far away something is.

All these Phoenician inventions, combined with our improved ships, allowed the Commonwealth to explore much of the world, which was previously unknown to the civilizations in the tri-continental area. We sailed around most of Europe, around the entirety of Afrika, reached China, and, of course, reached the Khonsmias, all in the last seventy years or so. We are exploring new islands and new coasts almost every year now, and our world maps are becoming larger and larger. The gods surely must be pleased that we are finally discovering what they left for us here. We are advancing at an unprecedented pace in this field, and before long, possibly in less than a century, we may explore the entirety of this planet.

Military

Last, but definitely not least, is the military sphere, where many significant inventions and advancements have been made over the last century. However, the foundations for this have been set much earlier, centuries ago. And they were set right here in Kemet. As you know, when the Hyksos were defeated and Egypt reunited about four and a half centuries ago, we switched from having a conscript army to maintaining a fully professional standing army. We needed to have such a reliable force which would be on full alert at all times, so that such calamities as the Hyksos invasion would never repeat again. It was an expensive development for sure, but it worked, as we had the largest population and the most wealth of any country, and so could afford to continuously pay our soldiers, rather than just raising peasant conscripts in times of need. This, of course, resulted in our armed forces becoming by far the most equipped, trained, and experienced ones in the known world, assuring our supremacy over Afrika and the Levant. By now some other countries have also adopted such a model, including Alashiya, Assyria, Dilmun, and Magan, and to some extent Babylonia and Elam (the last two get enough volunteers to not need to resort to press-ganging, but conscription is still officially in force there). The more conservative societies – Hatti, the Mycenaean Confederation, Punt, and Lullubum – still mostly rely on conscription, though even they are starting to employ some full-time soldiers to be always at least somewhat prepared.

But why is this development important? Well, I will leave the moral considerations about the rights of a citizen to the philosophers, but I am more interested in how this affected the development of military technologies. And I would say that the transition to professional standing armies greatly accelerated military developments, since now a soldier is being equipped not only for a single season’s campaign, but possibly for many years. The soldiers are more trusted, they are not as likely to desert, they are also more experienced and know how to handle weapons, which means that there is less risk and more utility in giving them better armaments. That means that there is more value in developing new and better weapons rather than only using old ones, since one now knows that those new inventions will not be wasted on untrained peasants. Of course, some military advancements have been made by countries only relying on conscripts as well, but overall, it seems that states which have professional armies tend to innovate more, as they are interested in making every soldier as powerful and deadly as possible, whereas conscript armies rely more on mass human wave tactics, since they have a large pool of potential soldiers and every one of them is easily replaceable. That is to say, professional armies focus on quality, and in turn make inventions, while conscript armies focus on quantity, and either don’t care about or can’t afford to use inventions on such a scale.

Before I move on to the exact inventions, I would like to comment on another change in army compositions in recent years. In previous centuries, all soldiers were men, and usually ones belonging to the dominant ethnic group of the respective country. However, the recent OFK-EC War challenged such notions and showed us that the gods of war don’t care about any gender or ethnic notions. Shilhak-Inshushinak employed all sorts of soldiers, including women from Assyria and Elam, and minorities such as Hurrians, Lullubi, Levantines, and even Indians. Basically, anyone who wanted to join his forces was more than welcome to do so. And that had terrifying consequences for us, as he established the largest empire ever seen in just a couple years. So we had to adapt to match him. The Commonwealth armed forces now have women, Kushites, Canaanites, and Phoenicians in them, as well as some Libyans, Edomites, Moabites, Arameans, Amorites, Arabs, Nilotes, and Horus knows who else. Our allies in the OFK haven’t been so quick to catch on to such developments, but even they are moving in the right direction – the Mycenaeans are already employing some Thracians and Illyrians to help maintain their colonies, while the Hittites are finally accepting Luwians and Palaics in their ranks. This is only natural, since once conscription is removed, the army has to fully rely on volunteers, and then it makes sense to allow anyone who wants to enlist (as long as they are physically and mentally able) to fill in the gaps. The armies are thus allowed to grow quicker, and they are now at an all time high in terms of personnel, despite conscription being at an all time low. The result is that both the armed forces and the civilian sectors are much more efficient, since, for example, a strong Kushite who wants to join the army can do just that, allowing a less enthusiastic Egyptian, who would have been in his place, to continue farming and so providing necessary resources for the state. The approval of the government is also increased, since people who want to join the army can do that, while those who don’t can be of use to the state in many other ways, which is always good.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Let’s now move on to actual new inventions. A notable one is the use of explosives. This began eleven years ago, at the start of the Great Powers’ War, as we were thinking about ways to whittle down the Hittite army. Before long, Egyptian and Phoenician scientists and alchemists discovered ways to create such reactions which would result in explosions, and the advancing army led by Muwatalli proved to be a great test subject. The early explosives were not very powerful and could not do too much damage to armies or cities, but everyone saw the potential of such a technology, and everyone started working on their own version. By the end of the OFK-EC War, almost every country had some sort of explosives, and even specialized grenadier units, which were lobbing bombs at the opposite side, with varying levels of success. The damage was still felt though, so much so that we needed to include the terms of the use of explosives in the updated version of the Knossos Conventions during the Damascus Peace Conference. But explosives by themselves were, for the most part, only a means to an end to what is quickly becoming a much more significant technology.

I am talking, of course, about the guns. These deadly, concealable, miniature bows which shoot out small explosions with relative precision. We have been working on such designs from the start of the OFK-EC War, hoping to make a weapon which would counter the Elamites and render their numerical advantage void, but the war ended before the invention was finalized. Still, the EC remained and so with another potential war on the horizon, the scientists and engineers continued working on the design of the new weapon. And so four years ago, we made our first guns. Tirynthius’ campaign against the Thracians was a great testing ground and allowed us to notice the flaws and improve the guns, making them more reliable, stable, and accurate. A more recent mass scale field test was Muwatalli’s campaign in Cimmeria, and we took some lessons from there as well. It is no secret that the EC has guns now as well, as word spread fast these days, and so they must have tested their own designs as well, in Lullubum or some similar place. For now though, guns are still only used by specialized agencies, such as the Kemet Intelligence Agency and the Eastern Coalition Secret Service, by some law enforcement units, high ranking officials in the armed forces, and wealthy civilian citizens. But, as I mentioned, we already have large gun factories, and the production of guns is increasing exponentially, which means that use will follow accordingly. I will leave the specifics of mass gun adoption to the generals and admirals, but I am confident in assuming that the next war between the OFK and the EC, even if it took place within this decade, would be fought primarily with guns, and not with swords.

Guns only solve a part of the equation, however. Field battles are crucial, but so is siege warfare. The simple invention of city walls many millennia ago caused serious headaches for many aspiring conquerors, who were stopped by a necessary siege for months or even years, due to the lack of abilities to overcome those walls. So, as one would expect, siege weapons began to be developed. First came the wheeled siege ladders, which were invented here in Egypt, possibly more than a millennium ago. Our cities are well defended, and so we needed such inventions to reunify the country during the intermediate periods, as well as to take down Canaanite rebel strongholds. Another one of our inventions was the battering ram, also first used nearly a millennium ago. This one focuses breaking down the gates and is often used at the same time as the ladders to split the attention of the defender. However, the Assyrians have improved the battering ram over the centuries, adding a whole structure on top of it, including more wheels, walls, and a roof (to protect from enemy arrows and other projectiles), while the ram itself is outfitted with a metal head, often resembling some fierce animal. The Mycenaeans created some siege inventions as well, such as the siege hooks, which are hooks used to pull down portions of the walls and so make bypassing them easier.

However, the biggest development in siege warfare came during the Assyrian-Kassite War about three decades ago, as the Assyrians were invading Karduniash, yet were faced with many well-fortified cities. The Assyrians wanted quick results and so started working on better siege equipment, which yielded great results for them. First, they created siege towers, which are large towers with wheels, with a few dozen men inside. Basically, they function as siege ladders, except they are protected from all sides and can offload many times more soldiers at the same time. This made scaling the walls much easier, and the Kassite defenders were often found unprepared for such assaults. Yet sometimes even scaling the walls doesn’t help, if there are enough defenders on the other side. So what did the Assyrians do? Well, they invented the catapults, which are devices able to launch massive projectiles, such as large rocks, pieces of a collapsed wall, or, more recently, cluster bombs, at the target, usually a less reinforced portion of the wall. That particular portion of the wall is then destroyed and makes for an opening for soldiers to enter the city. Assyrians guarded their technologies for a while, but they still managed to spread outside eventually, and catapults and siege towers are now used by many kingdoms. And while these are currently the best weapons against walled cities, that may not remain so for long. The invention of guns gave our scientists and military leaders a new idea – what if we made our guns massive and able to breach such walls? This essentially would make for a much more powerful catapult and is what we are working on with our OFK partners. These guns – these cannons – would be larger than humans, and would have to be drawn on wheels by horses, but they could potentially launch massive projectiles with extreme force and render most defenses useless. If this development comes true, walls may not remain necessary anymore, simply because, even if they were made of the finest and sturdiest bricks, they would be no better than ones made of papyrus.

While not as impressive and fancy as guns and potential cannons, there are some equally crucial developments used behind the fighting lines as well. There are the medical field camps, for one, which help reduce casualties by patching up wounded soldiers and either sending them to the reserve or back to civilian life, but in any case, the outcome is better than having a dead citizen. As I mentioned in a previous section, the invention of the opium-based painkiller Serketine also helps greatly in operations, as the wounded are more sedated and so it is easier to treat them. Over the last few decades we have also advanced in matters regarding logistics, as soldiers are now much better supplied by weapons, food, and everything else that is necessary. More supply routes are active at any one time and they are served by the aforementioned carriages and supply ships, which make sure the soldiers are never lacking the required resources for fighting. New technologies in transportation reduce travel times, and so armies can be supplied quicker. The result is that we can now wage campaigns further away, as well as ones which last longer. The Mycenaeans are campaigning deep in Illyria and Italy, the Hittites are fighting in the far north of Cimmeria, the Elamites and Lullubi are venturing far into Iranian lands, while we can easily reach the Libyan lands in the west and the Nilote lands in the south – all of this was hardly conceivable even a century ago. Of course, we are still far from being able to support a campaign in, say, China or Khonsmia, but we will get there in time, I am sure of it.

So far I have been mostly talking about land warfare, but naval warfare has seen its fair share of inventions as well. Ships have been slowly upgraded over the last few millennia, but we received the largest impetus to improve our navy during the Second Hittite-Egyptian War, starting over sixty years ago. Its initial purpose was to liberate Alashiya and kick the Hittites out of the island, and for this task we naturally needed ships. Before that, the best we had were small three-banked ships, with three rows of oars on each side. During the war, however, we (with Phoenician help, naturally) designed and built some fours (four-banked ships) and even fives near the end. We still didn’t get Alashiya in that war, but it prepared us better for the Great Powers’ War, where we did finally manage to liberate the island, owing to our new ships.

By the start of the war, we had not only hundreds of fours and fives, but also some sixes, and so the Hittite navy was no match for our fleets. During the Great Powers’ War and the OFK-EC War, some sevens saw service, though they weren’t very popular, and the ships only continued increasing in size. Grand admiral Khaemtir’s flagship, the RKS Sobekhotep, was finished during the war, and this eight-banked beast headed the mission to transport Muwatalli and his Hittite exiles back to Hatti. Development continued after the war, and the Elamites constructed their own flagship, which apparently is ten-banked, and there is possibly even a twelve-banked one in construction as well. There is probably a limit on how big these ships can get, but developments can be done inside as well. Just like the soldiers, the sailors and the marines may also receive guns before long, which would make them much more effective combatants. The use of fire in naval warfare is also an important development, which began a few decades ago, and it involves marines shooting fire arrows at enemy ships and even setting whole ships on fire to then send them to the enemy and so break their formation. Fire can destroy ships much quicker than anything else, and so fleets now number in the hundreds of ships, sometimes even thousands, as a navy always needs to be prepared to lose dozens of ships or more even in simple engagements. And this trend will only continue, especially once we finalize the designs of cannons, as they could easily be mounted on warships, making them more destructive and naval battles much deadlier.

Lastly, there is another, less well known and more esoteric, field of warfare. That is chemical and biological warfare. Some ignore these fields, stating that such warfare is prohibited by the Knossos Conventions and so has no bearing on reality. And while it is true that such methods are prohibited by international law, the question is whether the opponents will always adhere to such laws? Tiglath-Pileser certainly didn’t, Muwatalli didn’t (at least at the start of his reign), and Hakkarpili treated it more like a checklist of what to do. One can never truly be certain of what the enemy will use, and so most states, secretly, of course, work on developing some of their own biological and chemical weapons, so that they could be deployed to even the odds if the enemy resorts to using them.

As one would expect, the Hittites and Assyrians of recent ages are spearheading such developments, or at least had been before the war. The Hittites are known to have used diseased people as weapons, sending them to enemy territories in large numbers so that a plague would spread there. Assyrians, meanwhile, have used a parasitic fungus to poison enemy wells and so cause much of the population of the attacked city to fall ill or die. Both countries have also used poisoned weapons to make them more lethal, including spears, swords, and arrows, all tipped with strong poison. There is also the matter of animals, which are used in a variety of ways. For example, the Hittites and Mycenaeans are known to have been flinging venomous snakes and scorpions at each other’s positions during direct and proxy wars, while the Assyrians made additional use of their catapults by launching dead or diseased animals over the walls to the besieged Kassite cities. And one must also not forget sulfur, which is a mineral being mined for little else other than being able to burn it and so release toxic gases. The Assyrians are said to have used it during the Assyrian-Kassite War, which resulted in thousands of additional deaths (mostly civilian ones), and possibly even during the Great Powers’ War in a limited capacity. Hakkarpili was also discovered to have had a stockpile of sulfur, to be used as a last resort to retain his power, but he was never able to execute this plan, since even his loyalists probably realized the insanity of trying to spread poisonous gases in their own cities and lands and what the long-term consequences of this could be. Elam is also reportedly building up such a stockpile, and while the Elamites are not likely to resort to such methods, it is still not impossible that they would bring out such weapons, especially if they were on the losing side.

Warfare is changing, and it barely resembles warfare of a century ago in any area. It is advancing at an unprecedented pace, and I don’t know if that’s for the better. I am all for inventions and advancements in most fields, but I don’t know if this is the field where innovation should be cheered on so much. Of course, we have no choice but to advance in order to match our enemies, we must participate in this arms race to maintain our supremacy and even existence, but it may have consequences. Already, the armies are much larger than ever before, and so are the casualties. The Great Powers’ War and the OFK-EC War resulted, combining all countries, in more than half a million casualties in total. And with inventions such as explosives, guns, cannons, more potent poisons, and toxic gases, future wars may have even higher casualty numbers. This is not even accounting for the creation of something even more horrifying, something which, say, could level entire cities in a moment. We don’t have such weapons yet, but who knows if this will always remain the case. I just hope that by avoiding all those calamities nearly a century ago and setting ourselves on the path to accelerated advancement, we will not create something which would be even more destructive than any natural disaster. Because if that happens, well, Horus help us all, for no one else will be able to.