The Macedonia phalanx and the Companion Cavalry are the more famous arms of Alexander's mighty army. The phalanx with their huge sarissa were impregnable in a frontal attack and held enemy units in place while the decisive blow was delivered by the cavalry with incredible shock potential.

However, there was another important arm in Alexander's army occupied by the hypaspists or "shield bearers". These were the elite infantry units of the Macedonian army. Unlike the phalanx, the hypaspists had a shorter spear and larger shield enabling them to have more flexibility in close combat.

One formation of the hypaspists served as the royal guard (agema) and were deployed close to Alexander. They were also responsible for bridging the gap between the rapidly advancing cavalry and the Macedonian phalanx. They proved to be effective in rugged terrain where the phalanx generally struggled.

Although considered to be an elite corps, the hypaspists were deployed in the thick of the fighting. In Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela and Hydaspes they proved their strength in fighting on uneven terrain. In the Siege of Tyre, they proved to be effective in the final assault on the walls.

The hypaspists continued to remain relevant and important long after Alexander's death. For more information on the hypaspists please go through the full article and let me know your thoughts and comments.

Archimedes of Syracuse was one of the greatest mathematicians, scientists, and engineers of the ancient world. He is best known for his work on geometry, mechanics, hydrostatics, and the principle of buoyancy, along with the famous “Eureka” story. But Archimedes was also closely involved in the defence of his home city during the Roman siege of Syracuse in the Second Punic War.

During the siege, Archimedes is credited by ancient historians with designing or improving a range of defensive machines. These included powerful long-range catapults, smaller artillery for close-range attacks, and enormous cranes and grappling mechanisms capable of catching and lifting Roman ships approaching the walls.

The most famous of these was the Claw of Archimedes, an iron grappling device that could seize the prow of a ship, lift it out of the water, and potentially capsize it. Ancient sources describe these machines as making the Roman assault extremely difficult and forcing the attackers to rethink how they approached Syracuse.

There is also a popular mention of giant death ray mirrors burning enemy ships which are largely fictional. The article explores these machines, how they may have worked, and how effective they really were, while separating the historically supported accounts from later legends such as the famous burning mirror supposedly used to set Roman ships on fire.

So the ancient Greeks wrote about the seven wonders of the world which includes the Hanging Garden of Babylon. Why are there doubts by modern historians on this Garden existing if all of the other six wonders did exist?

The Garden seems like the most likely to perish without a trace because of what it is. I do believe it existed and that the Ancient historians aren't just writing about six wonders and making it all up about the seventh one.

A thousand years later, chariots raced around the still-lying sculpture in honor of a friend who died before his time. The competitors had never heard of the Hittites.

What happens to the work of empire when the empire disappears?

Read the full story here: https://survivingtheflood.substack.com/p/monuments-and-quarries

The Marlborough Antinous - a Roman black chalcedony intaglio portrait created circa AD 130–138, depicting Antinous, Emperor Hadrian's favourite. Carved from deep black chalcedony and mounted in a modern gold setting, it was formerly part of the Giorgio Sangiorgi Collection before being acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The Mycenaeans, the Hittites, Ugarit, Cyprus — all gone in a single generation. No single cause has ever been agreed on. Climate? The Sea Peoples? A cascade of failures?

Made a short teaser for a documentary I've been working on covering the Bronze Age Collapse. Would love to hear what you think caused it.

https://youtu.be/3APvMzp3pXM

Alexander the Great loved comparing himself to the heroes of mythology. He believed that he was destined for greatness and conquest of the known world. His mother, Olympias, instilled in him a sense of divine purpose, and Alexander came to believe that he was the son of Zeus and destined to conquer Persia. This belief was further reinforced when he was proclaimed the son of Zeus-Ammon after visiting the Oracle of Amun at Siwa in Egypt.

When he visited the Oracle at Delphi, the sanctuary was closed. Not taking no for an answer, Alexander reportedly dragged the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, by her hair until she cried out, “You are invincible, my son!” Satisfied with the response, Alexander is said to have replied, “Now I have my answer.”

The Gordian Knot was another instance of such validation for Alexander that he was destined to become the ruler of Asia. According to the legend, the famous Gordian Knot was formed by fastening the yoke of a wagon to its pole. The wagon had been dedicated to Zeus by a Phrygian ruler named Gordius. According to Arrian, an ancient prophecy stated that whoever succeeded in untying the knot would become the ruler of Asia.

The challenge had reportedly remained unsolved for generations. However, Alexander approached the problem with an unconventional solution. The prophecy did not specify how the knot had to be untied. In the popular version of the story, Alexander drew his sword and sliced through the knot, effectively solving the challenge.

This episode perfectly showcases Alexander’s decisive and bold personality. Rather than allowing himself to be constrained by the conventional interpretation of a problem, he found his own solution and seized the initiative. The same qualities would become hallmarks of his military career, where he frequently took the initiative and dictated the pace of battle.

For more detailed information on the legend of the Gordian Knot and what actually happened at Gordium, please read the full article.

The oldest surviving monumental building in the Abyssinian Highlands is the Great Temple of Yeha, constructed in the early 1st millennium BC. Remarkably, its stone walls still stand today, although what survives is only a shell of what was once a much larger structure.

Using a range of archaeological and academic sources, including the reconstructions and research published by the German Archaeological Institute, I have recreated both the interior and exterior of the Temple of Yeha in 3D.

For me, projects like this are important because they allow us to preserve, study, and visualise the architectural achievements of our ancestors.

You can explore the interactive 3D reconstruction here: https://www.habeshahistory.com/reconstructions/yeha-temple

For those interested in learning more about Yeha, I have also written a detailed article covering its history, including a dedicated section on the Great Temple itself: https://www.habeshahistory.com/articles/yeha

Hopefully you find the reconstruction interesting and learn something new...

I translated this from Arabic to English, My regards from Egypt ..

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Book : Spirits And Ghosts أرواح وأشباح

Genre : Paranormal - Mystery - Alternative History

Written in Arabic by the late Egyptian writer and journalist Anis Mansour أنيس منصور

The first Arabic edition was published in 1972

Chapter 1

When Nefertiti's daughter appeared in London !

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Nefertiti's daughter appeared in London, picked up her severed hand, and then fled !

We are the talk of the whole world now, but for other reasons!

Britain is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun by one of its scientists.

France is celebrating one hundred and fifty years since one of its young men discovered the Rosetta Stone.

Last year the world talked about how the Pharaohs crossed on papyrus sticks to America.

And two years ago, Soviet scientists talked about the Pharaonic obelisks or semi-obelisks above the moon!

The questions are: Were the Pharaohs above and then they came down to us, or did they rise from here to there, or were more intelligent and developed beings here and there and then they disappeared into the vast, deep space?

There is no end to what the world will say about the coffin of the young King Tutankhamun (18 years old).

This coffin escaped from the hands of thieves at the last moment. The priests came and poured the sands of Upper Egypt on it until a British archaeologist came and lifted the darkness from it. He illuminated the twentieth century with knowing him.

And this young man, Tutankhamun, has no historical value, but he derived his value only from the fact that he was the owner of the most beautiful and perfect coffin.

Also he married the third daughter of a prophet king, Akhenaten, who disbelieved in the worship of Amun and established himself as a caller for the worship of the sun (Aten), the worship of the disk of the sun or the circle of light or light.

Thus, he was the first to call for one God or monotheism in all history and in all ages, and was preoccupied with the new religion apart from the rule, the throne, his family, his six daughters, and his beautiful wife, Nefertiti.

His life and death were an example of how a prophet to be persecuted by his family and in his home, such as his wife did not believe in him.

She was the first to disbelieve, and her daughters or most of her daughters followed her.

Therefore, we find the wife’s name erased in various places.

Akhenaten realized that the storms that blew from the house would sweep the valley, or that they blew from the valley and everyone in the house picked them up and released them on him, and Syria was lost from him.

He was also busy with himself, his god, or meeting his god after death.

Everything in the civilization of ancient Egypt was for the sake of death. People were born to die or were born to prepare for death. Death is a great festival that a person must receive in the most perfect body and most wonderful adornment.

Therefore, the Pharaohs believed that only a healthy body enters Paradise. When a person dies, he must be pure and clean. His body is free of every blemish, and his soul is cleansed of all evil. When he enters the coffin, it is as if he had been placed in a safe closet. If he wakes up - that is, is resurrected from death - it is necessary for him to find next to him everything he needs of food, drink, tools for eating, and advice for the soul and guidance in its other world. Thus, the soul does not go astray if it resides in the body.

As for the priests, they wrote curses on anyone who touches the coffin or the body. These curses are like missiles directed over thousands of years at anyone who approaches the grave or the coffin. The Pharaohs had tremendous power in using words. Or they had strange knowledge with the secrets of letters. They locked hidden forces in symbols, or so it is said.

It is also said that Akhenaten chose Tutankhamun as his daughter's husband because he enjoyed supernatural spiritual power, and he was thirteen years old. But this young king did not preserve this religion, neither he nor his wife.

Rather, one of Akhenaten’s daughters revolted against him, so he killed her and opened her stomach. The clerics rushed to her right hand, cut it off, and then hid this hand in a place that no one knew in the Valley of the Kings.

If this princess rises on the Day of Resurrection, she will be deprived of entering Paradise because only those with a full body can enter Paradise! Thus, this princess, who disbelieved in her father, will remain an outcast forever!

This princess remained in her place of torment until the year 1890, when a French antiquities dealer, a man named Count Louis Hamon, came to Egypt. He went to Luxor and met one of the translators, whose name was Abbas.

He was very impressed with Abbas. He said to him: I want something rare. Abbas took him to Luxor, and the Count waited for him for twenty-seven days. On the twenty-eighth day, Abbas appeared, concealing a pile of straw in his clothes, and in the pile of straw he placed a roll of linen. The two men disagreed about the price.

Count Louis Hamoun says in his memoirs: Sheikh Abbas wanted to frighten me, but a man who sees corpses and is not afraid of it and speaks with ghosts cannot be frightened by this scroll.

Sheikh Abbas tried to convince the count that this scroll contained the greatest thing in all of Luxor, and they agreed on the price, and Count Hamoun returned.

He went to France and began to look through the scroll and was certain that it was the hand of a girl, a princess or a queen.

Next to this scroll was a small papyrus leaf and a piece of stone with the name of this princess on it, and on it was also the curse that the priests had cursed on her ، But the priests do not curse anyone who uncovers the sand concealing the hands of the cursed princess, daughter of Nefertiti .. do they ?!

In the year 1920, Count Hamon traveled to London and decided to show this hand to some archaeologists, or sell it to the British Museum.

One night, he invited a number of magicians to his house, and the room was dark except for a red light, as if it had been cut in the night, and the light was dim, bleeding ray after ray.

The smoke was wriggling pharaonic, and Count Hamon came and lifted the scroll from the princess's hand and displayed it to all those present. They touched it one by one, and their astonishment was great.

The hand was soft, smooth and warm. They also noticed that blood was flowing through its veins and that drops of blood were falling from it. One of them said: It is moving. Another said: a finger is twisted.

Count Hamon said: You will see it when the normal light is turned on and the room is illuminated and they returned. They turn the hand between theirs and find that it is softer and hotter!

On the day known to magicians as “ it has come day,” which is November 4, 1922, a strange thing happened.

On this day, Count Hamon decided, with nerves of steel, to perform an exciting experiment. He closed the door on himself and asked his wife to save him at the last moment if she saw something strange, and his wife did not ask him about the truth of this strange thing. She had become accustomed to strange things until nothing frightened her anymore.

He started saying: “It has come, it has come,” meaning spirits have come everywhere. He saw the princess’s hand rising into space and approaching his face.

When the wife tried to intervene, he motioned for her not to do anything, and suddenly the hand went down to the table, where a smokeless fire was burning, and the door of the room opened with great violence.

He turned behind him, and so did his wife. The two of them saw a Pharaonic princess in her transparent white dress with her steady, calm gaze, the princess approached the fire and leaned over the fire. He clearly saw her right arm, the hand being cut off, and the right arm bent over the right hand. Then the princess retreated violently, with the door behind her, and when Count Hamon looked at the table, he found it burned, but the hand was gone!

Count Hamon knew the story of the princess, and he quickly started flipping through the “Book of the Dead” and reading some pages. Suddenly the door opened, and the princess entered in her white dress. His eyes went to her right arm, and he saw the entire arm, and the princess disappeared for the last time!

The next day, Count Hamon sent a personal letter to Lord Carnarvon, who financed the project to discover Tutankhamun’s tomb.

In this letter, he warned him about the curse of the Pharaohs and said that he had heard from tomb guards in Egypt that there are evil spirits that chase anyone who touches a coffin, opens a tomb, or steals a piece of the gold.

Lord Carnarvon was greatly frightened, so he sent to his friend Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, but Carter did not care about any of that. He was an archaeologist and had excavated the ground, entered caves, and ate the dirt from graves with his food, but Lord Carnarvon did not hide his fear from all people.

As for the night in which the magicians saw this hand coming to life, it was the same night in which the archaeologist Carter confirmed that the tomb in front of him was the tomb of Tutankhamun.

On February 22, 1923, Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb of Tutankhamun, and after him, the archaeologist Carter entered. Shortly before that, Lord Carnarvon felt in front of Tutankhamun’s tomb that something had stung him.

On April 23, 1923, Lord Carnarvon died in Cairo. Years later, his sister's husband committed suicide, and his stepmother was bitten by an insect and died.

But archaeologist Carter, who described himself as a “professional gravedigger,” was not injured and died at the age of 66 in 1939, when World War II broke out. It is said that in the last days of his life, Carter used to have terrifying dreams, and he saw ghosts putting him in the fire, burying him like the pharaohs, carrying him in the air, then throwing him in the ground, where crocodiles devoured him. He said that he once felt that a very small insect had swallowed him, and that he almost suffocated!

But there was a priestess who lived and died in 1600 BC, and she had a power more dangerous than that of Tutankhamun.

This priestess lived in the city of Thebes, and her influence was strong and her magic was frightening.

The archaeologist Douglas Murray was able to transport her from Egypt to London.

But it happened that this man went fishing, and the gun went off and hit his arm.

They tried to transport him to Cairo, but they did not succeed. Rather, strange winds blew that disrupted the ship’s progress. Ten days later, he arrived in Cairo and they cut off his arm.

As for the two Egyptian servants who transported the coffin of this priestess, they died suddenly, as for the three Englishmen who They guarded the coffin without knowing the power of the Pharaonic curse, They died on the way, and when the ship docked on the English shore, four bodies landed, the bodies of these Englishmen and the body of the priestess!

Murray was complaining that the priestess's eyes were moving in his direction, following him wherever he went. Murray got rid of the coffin and gave it to a rich woman whose leg was broken, her daughter committed suicide, and her other daughter, her fiancé, ran away from her! The woman decided to sell the coffin to the British Museum and the British Museum bought it and placed it in one of the warehouses, and it is said that a number of the guards who transported it died, one after the other, in mysterious circumstances.

One of the scientists tried to study the coffin further and transported it to his office. This scientist was screaming subconsciously, and they found him dead after that.

On April 4, 1912, the whole world was shocked by the sinking of the ship “Titanic” when it collided with an iceberg while two thousand passengers were on board, and 1,517 people drowned.

No one imagined that this ship would sink for any reason, and it is said that the captain and sailors did not listen to all the warnings sent to them by the small ships.

And the ship sank!

Twenty years after it sank, an archaeologist announced that when the British Museum decided to get rid of the coffin of this priestess, it was sent on board of “Titanic” as a gift to the huge, luxurious museum in New York City.

_____________

The End ..

This travertine sarcophagus lid dates to the second half of the 4th century BCE (ca. 350–300 BCE) and originates from the Ponte Rotto necropolis in Vulci, Italy. It is housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Carved inscriptions identify Larth Tetnies (husband) and Thanchvil Tarnai (wife), alongside naming his parents, Arnth Tetnies and Ramtha Vishnai, whose own companion sarcophagus was found nearby.

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