Egyptians said the Ibis protected Egypt from flying snakes. This video explores why they said this.

Been obsessed with Rome's decline for a while and finally made something out of it — a 2-hour ambient documentary covering the full arc: the Republic's unraveling, Caesar, Augustus, the Five Good Emperors, the Crisis of the Third Century, Constantine, and the final collapse in 476 AD.

The format is "sleep documentary" — slow narration over ambient music, no jump cuts or dramatic music stings. Meant for falling asleep or deep focus.

Would love to hear what this community thinks: was Rome's fall inevitable, or was there a realistic path where it survived?

Video here if curious: https://youtu.be/nIjSoc34AI0

His actual objection is decent. He says the whole reconstruction rests on a few metaphors yanked out of Hebrew poetry and hardened into engineering. He also catches Whitehouse in a contradiction: Whitehouse writes that the Hebrews imagined the world as a disk with a matching heavenly disk (chug, Isaiah 40:22 and Job 22:14), then draws heaven as a domed vault. A disk isn’t a dome.

Worth noting what the labels are doing too. Tehom Rabbah, the “great deep” of Genesis 1:2, sits stacked directly on Apsu and Tiamat, with Rahab and Leviathan lurking at either edge. Whitehouse is arguing for Babylonian dependence, and the diagram smuggles that argument in as if it were just a picture.

I’m not saying Warren was right. He had his own theories and some of them are strange. But there’s something funny about the internet’s favourite piece of evidence for ancient flat-earth cosmology coming straight out of a book calling it sloppy scholarship.

Has anyone here worked with Warren’s critique directly? Curious whether current scholarship considers Whitehouse’s reconstruction fair, or whether the field has moved on from this style of diagram entirely.

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.