Would You Like Some Cyanide with that?

So I know that Professor Burton wants us to start to transition our posts into our new unit on printing, but I had another idea I really wanted to post about. In class on Tuesday we brushed on the topic of how the development of writing systems granted access to the languages of other cultures by means of translation and an easier structure for teaching that language, which led to a larger dissemination of these languages. This greater understanding of other languages led to a very significant tactical change - the beginning of intelligence gathering and espionage between civilizations. This idea particularly piqued my interest because as a Middle Eastern Studies/Arabic major this is one of the career fields I'm interested in going into, (and I think it would be kinda cool to talk about ancient spies).

So, keeping in line with my assigned civilization, I decided I would try to find out if Ancient Egypt had spies or not and what they did. Well it's pretty apparent that spies (or at least largely fictional stories of them) were not a major part of Egyptian pop culture like they are in our society. I could only find somewhat vague references to accounts of Egyptian spies on ancient papyri, without finding these accounts themselves. I did gather however that Egyptians were early pioneers in the craft of espionage. Pharaohs would employ spies within their own lands to find those who opposed his rule and to gather information on nearby lands they could conquer. As time progressed, the power of the Greek and Roman Empires each grew in turn, and subsequently the role of spies changed to a more foreign counter intelligence. This brings up the importance of the expansion of literacy between cultures. Egyptian spies had to be capable of working both orally and in written form with the languages of the Greeks and then the Romans in order to effectively gather intelligence. Another development that came about after intel began to take written form was secret codes. These were a necessary adaptation to control who had access to particular knowledge, which in effect tried to reassert the limitations that once existed from the primary language barrier. Secret codes have been one ancient aspect of knowledge control that still thrives in our world today.

Two Hittite spies that were found out by Egyptian troops

Written literacy totally changed the game of espionage. This gave a whole new dimension to intelligence gathering by opening up far more possibilities than prior spying which relied almost solely on visual confirmation of information. Agents were able to intercept battle plans, tactical reports, messages between divisions, correspondence of enemy leaders, and many other things. Two things that especially came to mind were maps with specific plans for a battle or campaign on them, and new weapon designs. These are both things that would not have been possible to physically acquire (or at least incredibly difficult) until they were verbalized in writing. One practice that Egyptian spies in particular thrived on was poisoning. It's believed that they were some of the first to utilize this tactic for espionage purposes, and that they developed a form of what we now call cyanide.

The Trojan Horse, one of the most well known examples of ancient espionage

As far as accounts of specific actions taken by and other practices Egyptian spies, those were difficult to find  (I guess this means that they were good at their job). There was; however, a lot more resources, here, about the development of intelligence gatherings in other civilizations like the ancient Chinese, Semitic people, the American Indians, and here focusing specifically on Ancient Greece. Even though we might think of it as a more modern practice, the ancient beginnings of intelligence gathering and espionage due to the spread of writings systems is something that totally changed the way governments interact with each other and the conduct of wars, and as a result the course of history. This is a world that is directly linked with advances in knowledge medium, and it is rapidly changing in our day. With the advent of technology like predator drones and high powered satellite imagery, do you think intelligence gathering will begin to revert back to its origins as "visually" based? Or do you think writing systems (even digitally) will remain the primary source of this information?

CIA headquarters at Langley, VA