User blog:DancePowderer/Erased by Whom?

Just a quick musing on the Void Century from your resident archaeologist here. One thing that's been swirling around in my head when I think about erased history is the pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known as Akhenaten. He had a relatively short reign for a pharaoh, only about eight years. More importantly, he is arguably the most hated of the pharaohs in the whole of the ancient Egyptian dynasty. He tried to do the unthinkable, he tried to make the Egyptian religious structure monotheistic, where people would only worship the sun god, Ra. Trying to take polytheism out of Egypt is like trying to take the water out of a cup of tea. Since he was the pharoah, no one wanted to go against him, even if they disagreed with him. You just didn't do that. So, at their earliest opportunity, they booted him and dismantled his work like rolling back an edit. By that I mean, they not only tried to cover up his attempt at modifying their religious structure, they tried to erase his entire existence from the public record. They did a pretty good job of it too. It's just a good thing they weren't as thorough as they thought.

That got me thinking, what if the Void Century was an inside job? The Ancient Kingdom could have been doing just fine, until one guy came along and tried to change things too much. The only difference between the Void Century and Akhenaten would be the percentage of people on board the idea. With Akhenaten, the only people who didn't want him ousted were the ones he was paying, and even they were only kissing his butt for their paycheck. But, what if, in the Void Century, it was evenly sided? Half the people liked a certain decision, the other half didn't. Clover and Robin kept going on about how the country was wiped out by outside forces, the 20 kingdoms. But what if the original leaders of those 20 kingdoms all came from the same motherland? Twenty people led the rebel side and ultimately won. It was multiple splinter cells gone rogue.

They then deemed the civilization too big for its own good, and broke it up into 20 smaller nations, and then agreed to ally together, essentially becoming twenty separate pieces to the same puzzle. Then, to cover their tracks, they decided to erase any and all evidence of what went on in that kingdom. Ok, they destroyed the records, now all they have to do is split up the non-liquid assets. Easy, right? Wrong. You can't divide 20 by 3 evenly. So what to do with their three trump cards? Ok, no one should have them, so we'll hide them and leave ourselves a hint as to where we left them in case we have to find them in the future. Too bad they didn't project the future to be 800 years down the road. The Ancient Kingdom was never destroyed, it was only broken up. Not unlike one theory about the fate of the famed Library at Alexandria. Think about it. Where did we first learn about this whole Void Century thing? Alabasta, which is based off of Egypt. I wouldn't be surprised if Oda came across this bit of history when doing research for Alabasta. Also, the civilization seemed to be an empire of sorts, so who's to say it was only one country? The Roman Empire considered all countries under its control to be part of one overarching political entity. Ryugu, Alabasta, and Jaya, all part of the same empire. What I'm trying to get at is the poneglyphs. The poneglyphs themselves weren't scattered, they're too friggin' heavy. The information on them was. And, in order to understand the events of the past, they all must be brought together into one motherstone. Hmm, why does that sound familiar? Oh well, food for thought.