History questions not worth their own thread III

Is it true that the Ptolemies of Egypt were mostly culturally Greek and if that's the case then why did they adopt the strange custom of marrying their siblings?

NovaKart said:

Is it true that the Ptolemies of Egypt were mostly culturally Greek and if that's the case then why did they adopt the strange custom of marrying their siblings?

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They were descended from Macedonian generals, so yes, culturally they were largely Greek. But they adopted many Egyptian customs, such as referring to themselves as Pharoahs, adopting Egyptian religion and continuing the practice of sibling marriage. Some of these practices were adopted to curry favour with their subjects - the illusion of continuity - while others were doubtless simply assimilated due to being surrounded by Egyptians.

There might also have been the same pragmatic reason the Pharaohs had it - it reduces Dynastic strife. While sibling marriage would probably not be ideal in a Greek culture that didn't tolerate it, Egypt encouraged it and it would help maintain stability.

The Ptolemies weren't exactly strangers to sibling marriages. Arsinoe II was married to a half-brother and the Queen of Macedon before realizing it probably wasn't safe to stay married to the dude that killed your kids. So she ran to Egypt where her (full)brother was currently Pharaoh and someone mentioned the crazy idea.

Lord Baal said:

Some of these practices were adopted to curry favour with their subjects - the illusion of continuity - while others were doubtless simply assimilated due to being surrounded by Egyptians.

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Oh, there was no illusion about the continuity.

But as has been previously mentioned, incestuous marriages weren't just a Ptolemaic thing in the long and sordid history of Hellenistic states.

The Akkadian people and language are so-called after the city of Agade or Akkad, supposedly founded by Sargon the Great. However, they were around for a long time before then. So what did the Akkadians call themselves and their language? And what did other people at the time call them?

Was the language written down that early? If not, it strikes me as difficult to establish. My guess is there was no uniform identity of language and each city had its own dialect they associated with their city. Akkad became the dominant dialect, so everyone referred to it as Akkadian (well, probably not literally with the -ian suffix, but you get the point).

I'm just speculating, though. Hopefully someone has more concrete info here.

Akkadian was written down after Sargon conquered the Sumerians, installed an Akkadian civil service throughout Sumeria, and they decided to use cuneiform to write their own language (rather like Japanese being written using Chinese symbols). Throughout this whole period, both before and after the conquest, Akkadian and Sumerian both appear to have been widely spoken, with a lot of people being bilingual in both and a lot of borrowing between the two languages (even through they were apparently unrelated - again rather like Chinese and Japanese).

Now it seems to me that in that situation there should be some mention in some texts, whether in Sumerian or Akkadian, of the Akkadian language or people. There certainly are of the Sumerian language and people. We know that the Sumerians called themselves Ung Sang Giga, meaning "the black-headed people", their country Ki Eng Gur (meaning "civilised land"), and their language Eme Ngur or Eme Sal depending on which dialect you're talking about. So I'm wondering, if we know these things about the Sumerians, what are the equivalents for the Akkadians?

Why did the Irish independence movement go from Home Rule to independence between 1914 and 1919? From what I've read, the high-points of their ambition pre-1914 was Griffith's proposal for a "Dual Monarchy" on Austro-Hungarian lines, so for them to end up in an independence war by 1919 seems quite a leap. Was this due to a radicalisation of the whole movement, or just a change in leadership? Or some combination of the two?

Mainly it was due to the British screwing everything up. There was an increasing widescale perception that Home Rule would not be implemented when the war was over, but things weren't really bad until 1916.
The British completely overreacted to the Easter Rising, which, as I've said before, sets the bar for incompetent revolutionaries.
First they overreacted in a military sense, but even then the rebels were viewed in Ireland primarily as sauerkraut-sucking agents of the Kaiser, which they practically admitted to as much in their manifesto.
However, the British completely ignored how unpopular the Rising was in Ireland, and decided some good harsh political repression was neccesary. They rounded up almost every major nationalist in Ireland, regardless if they were republicans or monarchists and put them in concentration camps in Wales.
This had two effects: First it immediately pissed off anyone seen to actually represent Irish interests. If they were monarchists before they went to Wales, they were almost certainly republicans afterwards.
And second, anyone who wasn't sent to a prison camp (Redmond) was immediately delegitimized, because he couldn't be much of an Irish Nationalist if the British Army didn't think so.
Worst of all, this didn't actually do much to hurt the IRB itself. They were a secret society that adopted a policy of infiltration a while ago and so their members were by definition, not prominent. The removal of major nationalists probably helped with IRB efforts to subvert the GAA and so forth (I think this is probably the largest effect control of a sports club has had on history).
Violence picked up again as the nationalists started leaving the camps and the IRB got a new breath of life. This of course brought the Black and Tans in. This not only completely alienated the population, it also removed the greatest threat ever held over Irish independence: that without British Rule, there would be a civil war between Catholic and Protestant.
But by the 1920s it certainly looked like a sectarian war was already happening, and independence was the only way out.

So to summarize, the change in leadership happened as a result of radicalization. But, I wouldn't say there was all that much radicalization. The issue was that Home Rule had been shown to be disastrous and by that point it was clear that such proposals were essentially non-starters. Independence offered the only real solution.

Was there any standardization of units of measurement in Europe in the late middle ages or Renaissance era?

Cutlass said:

Was there any standardization of units of measurement in Europe in the late middle ages or Renaissance era?

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The units of length were in England in the fourteenth century (although the popular story of how the yard originated is a myth).

Cutlass said:

Was there any standardization of units of measurement in Europe in the late middle ages or Renaissance era?

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There was a standard unit of measurement in Italy during the Middle Ages. It even survived Saracen control in Sicily and Naples, which is somewhat surprising considering the Arabs had their own standard units. I don't know about elsewhere.

So was the metric system in the 18th century the first common system of measurement?

Cutlass said:

So was the metric system in the 18th century the first common system of measurement?

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As in international? No, I'm sure there had been others before for some things, but they simply tended to be neither systematic nor very long-lasting.

There were exception, long-lasting "international" standards imposed through use - the most obvious ones were currency weights: for example, in the Mediterranean Athens exported its drachma weight standard for centuries, continuing through the hellenistic era.

To what degree did the USSR support Israel during its first few years of existence? I remember reading that the USSR was important in breaking the Anglo-American bloc that was trying to prevent the statehood, and in '49 the USSR wasn't as tied to the Arab states.

Ajidica said:

To what degree did the USSR support Israel during its first few years of existence? I remember reading that the USSR was important in breaking the Anglo-American bloc that was trying to prevent the statehood, and in '49 the USSR wasn't as tied to the Arab states.

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They were quite supportive at first, because they hoped that the then-dominant Labour Zionist current would lead it into the Soviet sphere of influence, and form the basis of a Soviet-lead challenge to British influence in the region. (They were actually the first country to formally recognise the State of Israel.) It was only when the Arab-Israeli conflict shifted to becoming a de facto theatre of the broader anti-colonial conflict in the region that they found themselves obliged to side against Israel, and even then they attempted to play peace-maker until the Suez Crisis.

It was only when the Arab-Israeli conflict shifted to becoming a de facto theatre of the broader anti-colonial conflict in the region that they found themselves obliged to side against Israel, and even then they attempted to play peace-maker until the Suez Crisis.

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Can you explain, or at least direct me to good articles, on how that shift occured? I would have thought the Soviets, despite any problems with Imperialism, would have loved the idea of the Kibbutz going into the unknown, living communism, and making the land better more than Arab Nationalism.

Basically, Israel doesn't like Arabs, and the British and the French still wanted to control the Arabs, so they were pretty much inevitable allies. Once it became clear that backing Israel would also mean backing the British and French, the Soviets backed out.

What's the literature like in Non-European+Anglosphere Countries on the origins of the cold war? Does that term even really come up outside of those countries?
Looking at Masada in particular for help on this one.