Can one argue that Ancient Egypt was more advanced than Ancient Rome

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hobbysyoyo said:
I take your point but isn't cost and manufacture-ability a pretty good indicator of superiority?
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It's only one potential indicator. Obviously there are value-judgments inherent in any judgment of superiority or its opposite, and these values aren't necessarily given.

For example, I could say these 'advantages' to iron are actually disadvantages because they turn war into a dirty commoners' game instead of a noble (and I mean that literally) pursuit.
 
hobbsyoyo said:
Re Ancient Science -
I am not really comfortable calling much of what any ancient civilization developed a contribution to science as the scientific method didn't exist in ancient times. Sure, there were great observations and empirical datasets developed but there was also a ton of garbage and guesswork involved with ancient 'scientific' discoveries. Science is, after all, a rather modern concept and while there were certainly good contributions to what would become the scientific method before it itself existed, you can't really call them science in and of themselves.
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One thing I came across recently was that urine could be sold (and taxed) as a commodity in the Roman world: it was reasonably well known, for example, that stale urine (which decomposes to ammonia) is sterile, and so can be used as a kind of disinfectant. One writer apparently recommended administering this to a sheep with a lung infection, via the nose - however, he said that it had to be the left nostril, or it wouldn't work. In other words, he clearly had no idea what was going on, and had not actually applied the scientific method to it: he was just blindly passing on what seemed to work.
 
Flying Pig said:
One thing I came across recently was that urine could be sold (and taxed) as a commodity in the Roman world: it was reasonably well known, for example, that stale urine (which decomposes to ammonia) is sterile, and so can be used as a kind of disinfectant. One writer apparently recommended administering this to a sheep with a lung infection, via the nose - however, he said that it had to be the left nostril, or it wouldn't work. In other words, he clearly had no idea what was going on, and had not actually applied the scientific method to it: he was just blindly passing on what seemed to work.
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I've heard it was used as a bleach. So it was a tax on dyers.
 
There were quite a lot of uses for it - it was used in the manufacture of leather, for example, as it acts as a solvent to get the fats and dirt out of the skins. The upshot of this was that it was reasonably valuable for quite a lot of people. The tax on it was implemented under Vespasian, who got some abuse from various people (including his son), to which he responded that the money it brought in had no smell at all.
 
Flying Pig said:
One thing I came across recently was that urine could be sold (and taxed) as a commodity in the Roman world: it was reasonably well known, for example, that stale urine (which decomposes to ammonia) is sterile, and so can be used as a kind of disinfectant. One writer apparently recommended administering this to a sheep with a lung infection, via the nose - however, he said that it had to be the left nostril, or it wouldn't work. In other words, he clearly had no idea what was going on, and had not actually applied the scientific method to it: he was just blindly passing on what seemed to work.
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Nice illustration of my point, but hey, what do I know? After all:
Re your view of 'ancient science' (wot) though, it is plainly wrong, and wouldn't be this if you bothered to at least read some of the texts discussed here as well.
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Oddly enough, I thought my point on the scientific method was beyond dispute and noncontroversial . Though I guess telling me I'm 'plainly wrong - read a damn book' doesn't count for much of a refutation.
 
Owen Glyndwr said:
I've heard it was used as a bleach. So it was a tax on dyers.
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was used in industrial quantities to lighten cloth.
 
I think urine is actually a mordant, or at least the raw material for some mordants. More importantly, it's absolutely correct that ancient thinkers didn't really have what we would recognise as a scientific method. Some were certainly good at empirical observation - above all Aristotle, despite his caricaturing in modern scientific literature as unwilling even to count teeth - but they didn't proceed by forming hypotheses and conducting experiments to test those hypotheses, and they didn't understand the importance of measurement either.
 
I should hope that the consensus is that talking about being 'more advanced' first requires you to ask what 'advanced' means, and that most people who answer that question come out with 'similar to how we do things today', and that there might be a problem with that.
 
Egypt was obviously more advanced. It achieved sizable results in shorter amount of time. If we are measuring peak power then both of them are completely outclassed by any current-day White or Asian country so i don't think it's a valid way of measuring performance, which is commonly defined as power/time (that's the reason exams are timed too. :D )
 
Title thread's true, just open up Hatshepsut's chamber in the Pyramid and you'll see.
And if not, finally uncover the one Great Wonder still hidden underneath the sands of Egypt! If they ever do and present their findings to the general public, the effects will blow us all away!
(talking about the Hawara Labyrinth of course-the great wonder they try to hide from us all)
 
Ancient Egyptians had knew ELECTRICITY, something Romans could never even imagine.

On Civilized level Egyptians were ahead (on some aspects)
On Militaristic level Romans had them beat (totally)
 
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