Andrew Schulz
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
There's still a lot of stuff going on down in the south.
Ptolemies are still building temples down there, but mainly the heart of
egypt is that alexandria and alexandria is really really advantageous place because when alexander took over so much of of this world he can a lot of those ports became connected to alexandria and alexandria became the center of trading across the mediterranean and out into the indian ocean so they're filthy filthy rich so essentially
The Ptolemies take all this money and they start these two primary projects.
One, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, if you guys are familiar with this.
The second one, the Library of Alexandria.
It's going to be the center of knowledge of all of the ancient world.
And there were other projects that they started, but those are the two primary ones.
I feel like there's one right now that I'm just blanking out on.
Now, what's really interesting here is Ptolemy...
gathers his architects, probably native Egyptian architects, and we have a lot of evidence that scholars in the library of Alexandria were going and studying the pyramids and studying the obelisks.
They were studying ancient Egypt during ancient Egypt, right?
And so the Greek Alexandrian scholars are very fascinated by these marvels that are just...
sitting quietly out in the deserts for thousands of years, right?
Like they want to go study the geometry and how they were created and things like that.
You know, the idea that the Earth is a sphere was discovered in Alexandria by Eratosthenes, I believe.
And so what's really interesting is for the first time, perhaps since the pyramids were built,
I can't think of other examples.
For the first time since the pyramids were built, megalithic architecture using red Aswan granite, down from Aswan, same granite that's used in the valley temple next to the Sphinx, the same granite that's used in the king's chamber, is employed again in architecture on the same scale.
So the ancient sources tell us...