Thoth

During the reign of Pepi I of Egypt on this world, someone, likely a priest trying to improve the preservation of the dead, mixed dung crystals, brimstone, and charcoal in precisely the right proportions, and was rewarded for his trouble by losing a few fingers, along with his hearing and the sight in one eye. Nonetheless, he was able to guide others to reproduce his work (slightly more cautiously) and within a few years, reasonably stable black powder was being manufactured and put to use, initially for simple clay grenades. It was obvious this powder had other uses, but needed stronger substances to contain and direct its force. The push to find new metals and techniques led to further discoveries in metallurgy, and the iron age (along with the gunpowder age) began several millennia early. Now, a century later, Egypt has reached the stage where great chariots haul powerful, if somewhat unreliably, bombards into battle. Mathematics has advanced, driven (as it was on Baseline) by the need to calculate firing arcs and ranges. Other sciences have continued apace; libraries are growing as fast at the borders of the Empire. It is very likely that the area which would, on Baseline, hold Greece and Rome will be within the boundaries of Egypt in under a century.

Naturally, Baseline Egyptologists are desperate to get in there and study everything. The factors holding them back are:

There are not a lot of trained Egyptologists who are also capable of using 2022 Breach Stabilizers. (For more on this, see the 1000 or so words I wrote on Breach Stabilizers and Attuners which were lost due to poor design on this site and which I have not yet re-written. Not that I'm bitter or anything.)

There is a lot of pressure on BREACH to have any research or extended exploration led by, y'know, actual Egyptians. As BREACH is a NATO organization, that opens many possible security issues. It is quite certain that if "official" action is not taken, Egypt will be constructing their own stabilizers, and PAIN, CERN, and BREACH (and other groups yet to be revealed) can bite them.

It is likely this is already being done clandestinely. A common part of the nascent interdimensional cold war is national partisans finding worlds where their history was, or could be, more favorable, and trying to keep it, or make it, so. And where there is clandestine activity, there is crime. Underground antiquities markets are sometimes rumored to be selling "new" tablets and scrolls depicting cannon-equipped Egyptian soldiers.

World Type

Alternate Historical

Divergence

~2400 BC

Current Year

~2200 BC