Eygptians were renowned as brillaint builders/enginerers....

The use of the term pioneering implies that the techniques which the ancient Egyptians used were unknown elsewhere, until the Egyptians came up with them. This is not the case. Monumental architecture was used in many places in the middle east at the same time, and it appears in places in the world which make it obvious that monumental building was derived independently in those places, such as the Mexican plateau/Mayan Highlands, and the coastal regions of South America in what is now Ecuador and Peru. You might find this article from Standford University interesting, it tells of the monumental architecture of the Mycenaeans, which is known as Cyclopean architecture.

In ancient Egypt, you had a command economy directed by aristocrats and monarchs. It was not always successfully managed, but when they were in funds, the nobility and the Kings could command huge resources. Modern archaeological evidence suggests that the builders were a special class of people, often itinerant as were the stone masons of Europe in the middle ages, and that they were provided with food and housing for themselves and their families. (The hoary old tales of slave gangs building the pyramids has never been confirmed by archaeological findings.) If you are in a position to command tens of thousands of workers, and the resources to feed, clothe and house them while they work, you can get things like this done. But these people didn't understand basic economic equations, and often, even usually, bankrupted the kingdom with their building projects. Then it would be a long time before anything similar was again built. Eventually, the Egyptians gave up monumental building altogether.

Egypt today is a nation of more than 80,000,000 people--it's the largest nation in the "Arab" world. Just feeding such a population is the major economic activity of the nation. What makes you think they have any reason to build monumental structures such as were built thousands of years ago? What would they build? New pyramids, so Hosne Mubarak can have a cool place to be buried? Should a Muslim nation build tempes? If they did, to whom or what would the temples be dedicated?

Although it may not have occurred to you when you asked it, your question makes little sense.

Thanks for the detailed reply- i can see your point in the Kings having control of such projects and the labour that comes with it.
My question - having reanalyzing it, makes perfect sense(i can't see the purpose of cheap sniping) - in fact i consider it a great "why didn't someone ask that before" question.
You are saying they still have great building/engineering skills - but maintaining the population takes priority - but why arn't they overseeing huge building projects in other countries?
If Modern Eygptians were great builders/engineers/architects -everyone would give only one reason alone - because their forefathers were.

I couldn't agree less, and my reply did not constitute "cheap sniping," i suggest that you are being thin-skinned. I invite you to consider just how much of a non sequitur it is to compare the priorities of absolute monarchs in a relatively sparsely-populated land thousands of years ago with the priorities of the rulers of the most heavily populated Arabic-speaking nation in the world.



I said nothing of the kind.



Being able to feed the population is a major concern of any of the "third world countries." Hosne Mubarak's predecessor and erstwhile companion in arms, Anwar El Sadat, became a hero to the Egyptian people for crossing the Egyptian army over the Suez canal in the teeth of heavy Israeli resistance, and then maintaining that salient despite repeated, heavy attacks by the Israelis. He became known as "the Hero of the Crossing." Within a year, run-away inflation and the consequent spiralling price rises had people in the street chanting: "Hero of the Crossing, where is our bread?"

Thousands of years ago, as i already noted, the rulers of Egypt would bankrupt their treasuries with their monumental building projects. But if anybody missed a meal as a result, you can bet it wasn't the army. Any peasant uprising would have brutally suppressed, with no lack of bloodshed. There was no international opinion to restrain them, no United Nations to intervene, no Feed the Children or other NGOs to bring in food supplies to distribute to the starving. But that equation works in the world today. In the Sudan, we are "suddenly" aware of a war and atrocities in Darfur. But there has been civil war in the Sudan for fifty years or more, and it has largely been between the Muslim north and the Christian and Animist south. The government of the Sudan is a failed state, they cannot effectively govern the nation. But they make sure the army and the police get fed, and get as many luxuries as they can provide, and they do their damnedest to see that Muslims get fed. The rest of the population can rot, as far as they are concerned.

In the wake of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the price of petroleum rose dramatically. Whenever this happens, it means thousands, or tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people (chiefly women and children) are going to starve. In Somalia, Mohammed Siad Barre was faced with the question of whom he could feed. One of his chief lieutenants in past years had been Mohammed Farrah Aidid, but he suspected him of planning a coup d'état, so he had him imprisoned. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Somalia is divided not into tribes, but into clans. With Farrah Aidid in prison, his clan, the Habr Gidr clan, was now on the outside looking in, and whatever resources Barre's government commanded were going to Barre's cronies and the clans who supported him. This lead to a successful uprising by Aidid's Habr Gidr clan, and the other clans who had been pushed to the margins of Somali society. I could go on for pages listing the number of times in history that a state has failed because it failed to feed its people. The failure of the harvest in France in 1788 lead directly to the events in 1789 which culminated in the French Revolution. "Maintaining the population" is a hell of a lot more important than anything else which government does.



Very likely, they are. If you were an intelligent young man in Egypt in this age, and you were fortunate enough to get a good education, and engineering were your area of interest, you'd be looking for work elsewhere. You'd probably hope to get a good job in England, or the United States, or somewhere in Europe. A dream job would be in Dubai, which is building like crazy these days, and rich as Billy-be-damned. I suspect that talented young Egyptian engineers hope to work in Dubai these days.



In the first place, your attitude ignores what i have already pointed out in some detail--the Egyptians were not unique in building monumental structures. Certainly they were talented and innovative engineers thousands of years ago. But this is the contemporary world, not thousands of years ago, so engineering talent is only going to prosper if one can get a good education, meaning the proper credentials to get a good job, and actually get that good job. It's not as though the ancient Egyptians were great builders because of a genetic superiority. So claiming that the only reason a contemporary Egyptian, if he or she were a "great builder/engineer/architect" can only be because his or her forefathers were is nonsensical--so your question doesn't make much sense.