Commonalities Between Ancient and Modern Communications

¶ … Ancient & Modern Communications in Intelligence

Ancient and Modern Communication

COMMONALITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ANCIENT AND MODERN COMMUNICATION IN INTELLIGENCE

AUTHOR'S NOTES

The paper highlights the major commonalities and major differences in the way intellectual abilities and, intelligence, by name was utilized for Communication purposes in Ancient times compared to the Modern times. Although at the times of Pharaohs and before industrial revolution, technology did not set its path in this field, yet the communication methods adopted by these civilizations had astonishingly intellectual and effective use, helping these civilizations grow and thus helping the mankind to develop overtime. We also focus upon the effectiveness of the intelligence used for the purpose of communication.

Introduction

Egypt and Hittites-Babylonia and Assyria-Persian Intelligence and Royal Post service-Greeks, Hellenistic State, Ptolomaic Egypt are a few instances of the civilizations making immense use of intelligence for communication by developing proper communication systems and thus conducting the operations of their state. Although some might state that intelligence is the product of modern times considering the technological and scientific developments, but it is not so. Intelligence could be traced far back in time when the states began to form and civilizations developed through various intellectual moves. One of these moves was the concept of universal empire, which was brought in by the Egyptians who with this concept formed a hereditary monarchy and introduced the principle of divine royalty, which prevailed thereafter.

Political expansion was another initiation brought in by the rulers and conquerors of the valleys of Nile, the Euphrates and the Tigris. With the advent of political expansion, the need for information was identified pertaining to the situation prevailing among neighbors, reactions of subject nations and the sentiments of the citizens of original states, who were often overstrained by taxes and beleaguered by wars. This led to the formation of intelligence services. The introduction of the governor system, to manage and look into the states matters and kept the Kings informed. Also, at that time, the commanders of the Egyptian garrison were situated at the nearest conquered cities and natives gaining a living from the Egyptians served as informers bringing in information for the governors as they possessed various ways of securing reliable information. Nobles called "King's messengers" also served as another source of information, who were sent to subjected countries to collect tributes.

Another source of intelligence for these empires was the merchants travelling from Babylonia to Syria, Palestine and Egypt and the Phoenician mariners. Pharaohs had open access to the Nile delta, a service which they availed in a certain limit. The commercial colonies established in the Mediterranean and thus made the area with the Palestinian border the hub of intelligence. Pharaohs obtained information by sending special messengers passing through these places to provide updates to the pharaohs.

Egyptians, being extremely innovative, made use of intelligence to gather information and communication to the fullest. A written letter from a frontier official was required, who was the main personnel approving and observing everyone passing through their territory's boundaries. The pharaohs developed an efficient and well organized communication system and intelligence gathering systems considering the fact that Egypt is geographically spread over a large area. In ancient times, to communicate through long distances from the south and Nubia to capital and from the capital to Asia, in case of external communication, developing an effective communication system was an achievement.

Major Commonalities

Although the world today, is a completely new world with extreme changes and developments, particularly in technology, there are still certain common characteristics which remain in our society as they had been brought forward by the civilizations that existed before us. As mankind developed over the years, it went through numerous changes, yet leaving behind certain traditional routes to be followed. In context of communication in intelligence, there are numerous characteristics or methods for extracting intelligence through communication that remain similar when comparing the Ancient regimes with the modern world today.

One major common method used in the ancient times and is still used now is the use of governors to run and manage the states. The Egyptian states, although under the rule of Pharaohs, were administered by the governors. The roles that the governors played in ancient regimes and how they act now in the modern world may differ, but still the concept of assigning governors to each state was introduced in the ancient regimes and is still being followed by the entire world.

The ancient Egypt developed a police administration system for the protection of the Pharaoh, which involved the court having a high official responsible for conducting confidential enquiries. This is a major commonality that exists between the ancient Egypt and the modern world of today. Every state in this world these days has an established law and order, a court and a police administration system with separate intelligence organizations working on the communication of intelligence, specifically military intelligence which was the major area intelligence was made use of in the ancient times as well.

Lastly, just like today's modern era, the ancient times had a complete and proper administration system which consisted of the governors assigned for every state, special agent who could be called spies in the modern world today for communicating intelligence, mayors, local authorities which mainly included the Prime Ministers or vizirs as was called in the ancient times.

Major Differences

Although the Ancient administrations and modern governments were similar in many ways, there existed massive differences in the administrations during the two time periods. The major reason that supports the occurrence of these differences is the fact that as civilizations moved on; they developed and brought inventions along with time. The world is a dynamic place and thus still continues to change as the time passes by.

The same goes when we compare the Ancient Egypt and related ancient regimes with the modern civilization that exists today.

As the technology had no existence in the ancient times, the pharaohs gained information related to enemies or other territories that they want to acquire/capture through their secret messengers, who were civilians of the state or the commanders of the Egyptian garrison, passing by the states and observing their activities. Letters were used at the time to communicate with the governors, which are still used today, but in contrast to these, the use of emails and internet for communication has infiltrated the communication network in Intelligence.

During the regime of the pharaoh Amenophis III, the intelligence service in Nubia enhanced even further into discovering the rebel's plots before they would actually execute them. This was made possible by the intelligence services provided by the Egyptian secret agents who were mostly the civilians/natives of the state who showed immense loyalty to the pharaohs. The agents stayed in constant communication with the commanders of the garrison who further relayed the intelligence to the governors of the states, who finally conveyed the information to the Pharaohs. In today's world, on the contrary, the intelligence has an entire computerized system. The intelligence agencies make use of specialized equipments to identify the plots of the enemies and thus communicate the findings is done through electronic means, since has been made quicker due to technology.