The Greeks themselves, and us in the modern age, really have not given Egypt credit enough for it being the fount from where Greece drew to formulate much of its technology.
There is very little direct textual attestation of course, and I'm not advocating for some Black Athena type of research, but in this context of robotics, simply take note of these two artefacts:
Someone well informed on the literature might say, "Homer was dreaming of robots already in the 8th century BC with Hephaestus' workshop", and that might indeed seem like the earliest possible imagination of robotic creation. But note the sheer antiquity of the artefacts above, and if you apply a layer of very reasonable heuristics, it will become apparent that the Greeks were uniquely brilliant innovators, but they did so by brilliantly synthesizing and building on top of various neighboring civilizations and of course their own IE heritage.
The Greeks themselves, and us in the modern age, really have not given Egypt credit enough for it being the fount from where Greece drew to formulate much of its technology.
There is very little direct textual attestation of course, and I'm not advocating for some Black Athena type of research, but in this context of robotics, simply take note of these two artefacts:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/566713 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/544519
Someone well informed on the literature might say, "Homer was dreaming of robots already in the 8th century BC with Hephaestus' workshop", and that might indeed seem like the earliest possible imagination of robotic creation. But note the sheer antiquity of the artefacts above, and if you apply a layer of very reasonable heuristics, it will become apparent that the Greeks were uniquely brilliant innovators, but they did so by brilliantly synthesizing and building on top of various neighboring civilizations and of course their own IE heritage.