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0:22
Around the year 1200 AD, the
0:25
medieval Arab traveler and scholar,
0:28
Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, departed
0:31
from his hometown of Baghdad and
0:33
set out on a journey of
0:35
exploration. As
0:38
a young man, al-Baghdadi had
0:40
studied law, medicine, and philosophy,
0:43
and was inspired by the
0:45
works of classical philosophers, in
0:47
particular Aristotle. At
0:50
the turn of the 13th century, al-Baghdadi
0:53
embarked on a series of journeys that
0:55
would take him to many of the
0:57
great cities in the region. He
1:00
traveled to Mosul, to
1:02
Jerusalem, Damascus, and Aleppo, and
1:05
eventually around the year 1204, his
1:08
journey took him across the Sinai desert
1:10
to the banks of the Nile. On
1:14
his travels, al-Baghdadi wrote a
1:17
book that was part travel
1:19
account and part philosophy, entitled
1:21
The Book of Edification and
1:23
Admonition. In it,
1:25
he recalls the remarkable impression that
1:28
Egypt made on him. Egypt
1:39
is a land of wondrous monuments
1:41
and strange stories. It
1:44
consists of a valley enclosed by two
1:46
ranges of hills, one to
1:48
the east and one to the west.
1:50
The Nile runs between them until it
1:52
reaches lower Egypt, where it divides into
1:54
branches, all of which flow out
1:56
into the sea. The Nile is
1:59
unusual for its land. We
2:01
know of no other river in the inhabited
2:03
world that covers a greater distance. As
2:16
al-Baghdadi travelled around Egypt, he
2:18
was struck by the incredible
2:20
variety of ancient remains he
2:22
saw, great temples
2:24
of stone and tomb complexes
2:27
crumbling beside the waters of the
2:29
Nile. But none of
2:31
these compared to the most fabled
2:33
of all Egypt's monuments, which
2:36
rose over the horizon, not far
2:38
from the city of Memphis, at
2:41
a place called Giza. The
2:45
ancient monuments
2:47
in Egypt are such as I have never seen nor heard tell of
2:49
in other lands. Verse among them are the pyramids. They are very numerous.
2:54
All are situated on the Giza side of
2:56
the Nile and extend in the direction of
2:58
Memphis, spread out along a distance of about
3:00
two days' journey. Some
3:03
are big, others are small, and they are very small. Some
3:08
are of clay and mud brick, but most are of stone. Some
3:12
are stepped, but most of them taper smoothly.
3:17
And of all these pyramids, three
3:19
stood out for their seemingly impossible
3:21
immensity. Turning
3:31
to the pyramids that everyone talks about, pointed and captured,
3:34
in terms of their sheer size, there are three, laid
3:36
out in a straight line at Giza. Two
3:40
of them are particularly enormous, and it is
3:42
with these two that the poets have been
3:44
infatuated. The spectacle is
3:46
so awe-inspiring that your sight will falter as you try to take
3:48
it all in. Al-Baghdadi
4:02
wrote accounts of the local people
4:04
who lived close to these vast
4:07
remains. He described some
4:09
who climbed to the tops of these
4:11
structures, and others who quarried
4:13
them for their fine-cut stone. Others
4:17
still became obsessed with exploring
4:19
the hidden tunnels and chambers
4:22
that branched out beneath the pyramids.
4:27
In one of the great pyramids, there is an
4:29
opening that allows people to gain entry. It
4:32
leads them into narrow corridors, labyrinthine
4:34
passageways, well-shafts, pitfalls, and other
4:37
such features as appear in
4:39
the accounts of those who
4:41
venture inside and explore the
4:43
innermost paths. Many
4:45
people, obsessed by the pyramid and
4:47
filled with fanciful ideas about it,
4:50
are inspired to penetrate its depths.
4:53
But they always end up at some place beyond
4:55
which they cannot go. They
4:57
spoke of how the pyramid was full of bats,
5:00
and how these bats grow to the size of pigeons.
5:03
There are inscriptions on the stones,
5:05
written in the ancient characters that
5:07
no one understands. In
5:10
the entire land of Egypt, I
5:12
have never found a single person who so
5:14
much as claimed to have heard of anyone
5:16
who knew how to read them. He
5:22
even seems to have visited the Sphinx
5:24
nearby, which was then buried up to
5:27
its neck in the sands. Also
5:33
by the three pyramids, and a distance
5:35
from them of rather more than a
5:37
bowshot, the likeness of a most enormous
5:40
head and neck protrudes from the ground.
5:43
The people call it old father
5:45
dread, and assert that its body
5:47
is buried in the ground. The
5:49
face is handsomely, indeed admirably betrayed,
5:52
with a touch of elegance and
5:54
beauty about the features, as
5:56
if a smile were playing across them. Above
6:02
all, Al-Baghdadi was impressed by
6:04
the mastery of engineering. It
6:06
must have required to build
6:08
such constructions, and to
6:10
have them survive for such a stretch
6:12
of time. The
6:20
construction of the pyramids was carried
6:22
out according to a methodology remarkable
6:24
in respect both to design and
6:26
to precision of execution. This
6:29
is what has enabled the pyramids to
6:31
endure time's passing eras, or
6:34
rather, it has meant that time
6:36
itself has had to endure the
6:38
era of the pyramids. Noble
6:41
intellects gave the pyramids their all. Pure
6:45
minds exhausted their every effort for their
6:47
sake. Enlightened souls
6:49
out poured their loftiest capabilities on
6:52
their design, to stand
6:54
as exemplars that are the pinnacle
6:56
of the possible. Because
6:58
of this, they all but speak aloud
7:01
of their builders, telling us
7:03
what sort of folk they were, giving
7:05
voice to their intellects, relating
7:08
the stories of their lives and
7:10
times. When
7:17
Al-Baghdadi visited Giza around the
7:19
year 1200, the great
7:22
pyramid was the tallest man-made structure
7:24
in the world, and had been
7:26
for more than 3,700 years. All
7:31
that time, it had testified to the
7:33
greatness of the civilization that had grown
7:35
up on the banks of the Nile,
7:37
a civilization that
7:39
had passed through countless periods
7:41
of flourishing and decay, and
7:44
then finally disappeared beneath the
7:46
sands of the desert. My
8:23
name's Paul Cooper, and you're
8:25
listening to the Fall of Civilizations
8:27
podcast. Each episode, I
8:29
look at a civilization of the past
8:32
that rose to glory, and then collapsed
8:34
into the ashes of history. I
8:36
want to ask, what did they have in common? What
8:39
led to their fall? And what
8:41
did it feel like to be a person alive at
8:43
the time, who witnessed the end
8:45
of their world? In
8:47
this episode, I want to tell the
8:50
story of one of the most iconic
8:52
cultures ever produced by humankind, the
8:55
civilizations of Egypt's Nile Valley.
8:58
I want to show how this series
9:00
of related societies grew up in the
9:02
floodplains of their Great River, and
9:05
built some of the most enduring
9:07
and recognizable structures in the world.
9:10
I want to tell the story of how
9:12
they rose, how they endured, and
9:14
how they finally faded from
9:16
history altogether. The
9:27
story of Egypt is one of
9:29
the greatest and longest epics in
9:31
all of history. Many
9:33
empires would consider themselves lucky to last
9:36
through the reigns of 31 kings, but
9:40
ancient Egypt would see the reign
9:42
of 31 dynasties of kings, lasting
9:45
for more than 3,000 years. In
9:50
the time since, historians have long
9:52
struggled with this panoply of
9:54
rulers and eras, and
9:57
have tried to wrestle the history of Egypt
9:59
into neat categories. They
10:02
typically split its history into the
10:07
Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and
10:09
the New Kingdom. Between
10:12
these are a number of
10:14
intermediate periods, when the central
10:16
power of its kings failed and the
10:19
land divided. Throughout
10:21
this history, Egypt's empire would ebb
10:23
and flow, just like the great
10:26
river that gave it life. That
10:29
river was the greatest watercourse of
10:32
the entire Afro-Eurasian landmass,
10:35
the river Nile. The
10:40
Nile finds its source in Lake
10:42
Victoria, the largest lake
10:45
in Africa. It's a body
10:47
of water about the size
10:49
of Georgia, or nearly
10:51
the size of Ireland. The
10:54
gigantic Lake Victoria drains into the
10:56
river known as the White Nile,
10:59
which is joined by the
11:01
so-called Blue Nile, further downstream
11:03
at Khartoum, the capital of
11:06
Sudan. From there,
11:08
it flows for a further 2,000 kilometers
11:10
across the Nubian and Egyptian
11:13
deserts to Cairo, where
11:15
it branches out into a wide delta
11:18
and empties into the Mediterranean
11:20
Sea. Next
11:24
to the Amazon River, the Nile
11:26
is either the longest or second
11:28
longest river on earth. It
11:31
runs for 6,800 kilometers,
11:34
or around a sixth of the way around the
11:37
earth, and its drainage basin covers
11:39
a tenth of the entire landmass
11:42
of Africa. Egypt
11:44
itself has an extremely arid
11:47
climate, and its inland territories
11:49
experience virtually no rainfall. If
11:53
geography had been only a little different,
11:56
and Lake Victoria had not begun to
11:58
drain westwards, we can only imagine
12:00
how differently history might The
12:29
northern presence in Egypt is among the
12:31
oldest in the world. After
12:34
evolving in the region of East
12:36
Africa, modern humans migrated primarily along
12:38
this corridor and from there spread
12:41
to the rest of the world.
12:45
The Nile is in a sense the
12:47
highway down which all of humanity has
12:49
once passed. As
12:52
one of our first stops along our
12:55
great journey, Egypt is
12:57
home to human remains of
12:59
astonishing antiquity. Stone
13:02
tools worked by archaic humans
13:04
have been discovered in Nile
13:06
deposits dating to as early
13:09
as 600,000 years ago, and
13:12
modern Homo sapiens followed in the last 100,000
13:14
years or so. These
13:18
migrations likely happened during one of
13:20
the many African humid periods that
13:23
have occurred over the last millions
13:25
of years. These
13:28
are times when shifts in the planet's
13:30
climate caused rains to fall on the
13:32
Sahara Desert. During
13:35
these periods, the desert bloomed
13:37
into a verdant grassland, home
13:40
to animals and people. And
13:43
when the period ended, the grasses would
13:45
die, the animals would leave, and the
13:47
sands would return. It's
13:50
thought that this cycle has occurred more than
13:52
200 times since
13:55
the desert first formed 8 million
13:57
years ago. The
14:04
earliest peoples in this region behind
14:09
stone tools and a multitude of
14:15
18,000 BC, in one of the Sahara's
14:18
driest periods
14:22
in history, the Cebilian culture began
14:25
gathering wild wheat and barley, and from
14:29
there developed their own domesticated
14:31
strains. From 9,000 BC, people began
14:34
to weave thread from wool, and another
14:38
humid period began. One enigmatic Nabta
14:42
Playa dates to around 7,500 BC, when
14:47
the Sahara was a range of
14:49
rolling grasslands once more. This
14:52
stone monument may have been used to
14:54
mark the movements of stars at different
14:56
times of the year, so
14:58
that people could keep track of cycles
15:01
like the harvest and the migration of
15:03
animals for hunting. Nabta
15:06
Playa has been called Egypt's
15:08
stonehenge, but this doesn't quite
15:10
do it justice, since it
15:12
was built at least 5,000
15:15
years before the first stones of
15:17
Stonehenge were ever laid. When
15:20
the last ice age ended and the
15:23
Sahara once more dried up, any
15:25
peoples who had been living and herding
15:27
in its grasslands would have been driven
15:30
out of their ancestral home. They
15:33
would have wandered across the newly formed
15:35
desert until they reached the only stretch
15:37
of green in the midst of all
15:39
that sand. That was
15:41
the banks of the Nile, and
15:44
here they would make their home. These
15:48
peoples would build a collection
15:50
of scattered settlements, reaching up
15:52
and down the river. But
15:54
slowly, as more and more
15:56
people were driven to the riverbank to survive,
15:59
these began to coalesce into
16:01
larger towns, cities,
16:04
and referring
16:25
to the long Nile Valley in the
16:30
north, close to the sea. These
16:34
were the hills.
17:00
They were always facing upstream, waiting
17:06
for the annual floods to arrive. If you
17:08
find this confusing as we continue, just remember
17:10
that southern upper Egypt is the region upstream
17:13
and northern lower Egypt
17:15
is downstream. For
17:18
many people at this time, the lands
17:20
along the river bank
17:22
would have constituted their entire world. The
17:25
Egyptians referred to the river's
17:28
floodplain as Kemet, or
17:30
the black land, due to
17:32
the rich dark soil left behind
17:34
by its life-giving floods. This
17:37
land was the realm of the noble
17:39
god Horus, who had the head of
17:41
a falcon, the god
17:44
of life, protection, and healing. If
17:47
you walked just an hour in
17:49
either direction, you would soon reach what
17:51
they called Deshret, or the
17:54
red land. This
17:56
was the inhospitable desert stretching
17:58
out on all sides. roasting
18:01
hot, largely devoid of water
18:06
life. These
18:09
deserts were presided over by
18:14
the god Set, the
18:16
god of chaos and violence.
18:19
The Nile itself, they knew
18:21
simply by
18:23
the name Iteru, or the river. Since in their
18:28
world, there was no other. The
18:34
Egyptian world began in Upper
18:36
Egypt, far
18:40
up the reaches of the Nile, at a place
18:46
now known as Aswan. Here, a belt of hard granite
18:52
crosses the landscape and forces the
18:55
river waters into shallow whitewater rapids,
18:58
running over boulders and through rushing
19:01
down. Today,
19:04
the waters of these cataracts have
19:06
been tamed by the construction of
19:08
the Aswan Dam, but in
19:11
ancient times, they could be a
19:13
rushing torrent. Each year,
19:15
when the floodwaters passed through this
19:17
rocky stretch of the river, they
19:20
made such a thundering sound that
19:22
the earth itself could shake. This
19:24
led the ancient Egyptians to believe
19:27
that the waters were coming up from beneath the
19:29
earth, bursting out of
19:31
vast subterranean seas. At
19:35
Aswan, they built a temple on
19:38
an island in the middle of
19:40
those rushing waters and here, worshiped
19:42
that primeval force. The
19:46
fast flowing waters at Aswan made
19:48
it a natural barrier to ships
19:51
and prevented any further
19:53
exploration upriver. For
19:55
this reason, for much of its
19:57
early history, this was where ancient
19:59
Egyptians... influence ended, the
20:01
final extent of their power
20:04
and border of their empire. Beyond
20:08
Aswan was the southern lands
20:10
of Nubia, and
20:12
for this reason Egyptians would also
20:14
refer to it as the narrow
20:16
gateway to the south. The
20:20
temple island in the Aswan cataracts
20:23
was known to the Egyptians as
20:25
Abu, the Egyptian word for elephant,
20:28
since it was a hub for the ivory
20:30
trade with these southern lands. The
20:33
Greeks would follow this example and
20:35
named the place Elephantine. From
20:38
here, trade caravans would pass over
20:41
land south to the Darfur region
20:43
of Sudan, bringing gold,
20:45
ivory, and other goods. But
20:48
north of Aswan, everything was
20:51
considered to be Egypt as
20:53
Herodotus records. All
20:57
the land watered by the Nile
20:59
in its course was Egypt, and
21:01
all who lived lower down than the
21:03
city Elephantine and drank the
21:06
river's water were Egyptians. Such
21:08
was the oracle given to them. Luckily
21:13
for the Egyptians, the Nile flows from
21:15
the south to the north, while
21:18
the prevailing winds blow in the other
21:20
direction, meaning that you could
21:22
use the winds to sail against the current
21:24
as far as Aswan without too much effort.
21:27
But the return journey would be even
21:29
easier, allowing the river waters
21:32
to simply carry you along. A ship
21:35
heading downstream to the north from
21:38
Aswan would see for some time
21:40
only rocky desert, and
21:42
the river bordered by cliffs of
21:44
hard Nubian sandstone. This
21:47
is not a land well suited
21:49
to agriculture, but in ancient times
21:51
these valleys were sources of natural
21:53
resources, like gemstones, copper,
21:55
and gold. Further
21:58
north, the red cliffs fall away
22:00
and the floodplain around the river of
22:06
blushed green, and a larger
22:08
population region
22:11
that the desert city of thieves called
22:16
Waset. This
22:18
would one day become the
22:23
capital of the desert regions. The
22:54
region would have been full of wildlife
23:00
and vegetation. Some way to the west of
23:02
the river, the waters divert and fill a
23:04
large oasis known as Fayum, which sprouts like
23:06
a broad leaf from the stem of the
23:09
Nile. In
23:11
ancient times, this lake was
23:13
home to large populations of Nile
23:16
crocodile, so that the settlement
23:18
on the shore would be known by the Greeks as
23:20
crocodilophilus or
23:22
crocodile city. Here
23:26
Egyptians apparently even tamed crocodiles
23:28
in their temples as
23:31
Herodotus recounts. Now
23:34
for some of the Egyptians the
23:36
crocodiles are sacred animals. Those
23:38
who dwelt about thieves and about
23:40
the lake of Moiris hold
23:43
them to be most sacred, and
23:45
each of these two peoples keep
23:47
one crocodile selected which has
23:50
been trained to tameness, and
23:52
they put hanging ornaments of stone
23:54
and of gold into the ears
23:56
of these and anklets round the
23:59
front feet. they give
24:01
them food appointed and victims of
24:03
sacrifices and treat them as well
24:06
as possible. In
24:09
other places crocodiles were
24:11
hunted for food using
24:13
ingenious but risky methods.
24:18
A man puts the back of a
24:20
pig upon a hook as bait and
24:23
lets it go into the middle of the river
24:26
while he himself upon the bank of
24:28
the river has a young live pig
24:31
which he beats and the
24:33
crocodile hearing its cries makes for the
24:35
direction of the sound and
24:37
when he is drawn out to land first
24:40
of all the hunter plasters up his
24:42
eyes with mud and having
24:44
done so he very easily gets
24:47
the mastery of him but
24:49
if he does not do so he
24:51
has much trouble. Also
25:00
living in the river with the animals
25:02
that the Greeks would call river horses
25:05
or hippopotamus our
25:08
hippopotamus. The
25:11
river horse is sacred in districts of
25:13
our premise but for the
25:15
other Egyptians it is not sacred and
25:18
this is the appearance which he presents.
25:21
He is four-footed, cloven hoofed
25:23
like an ox, flat-nosed
25:26
with a mane like a horse
25:28
and showing teeth like tusks with
25:30
a tail and voice like a
25:33
horse and in size as large
25:35
as the largest ox and
25:37
his hide is so exceedingly
25:39
thick that when it
25:42
has been dried, sharves of javelins
25:44
are made of it. The
25:47
most strategically important location
25:50
was what the Egyptians called the
25:52
balance of the two lands. This
25:55
was the place where the river split
25:57
into its delta. the
26:00
crossroads between Upper and Lower Africa.
26:05
Each year, the monsoon rains falling
26:07
in the highlands of Ethiopia and
26:09
Central Africa would
26:29
swell the river and the annual
26:31
flood would arrive. This
26:34
happened with such regularity around the
26:36
middle of August that the Egyptians
26:39
timed it using the rising of
26:41
the star Sirius. In
26:45
the 5th century BC, Herodotus
26:47
wrote the following description of
26:49
these floods. When
26:53
the Nile is in flood, it
26:55
overflows in places as far as
26:57
two days' journey from either bank.
27:00
The Nile comes with a rising flood
27:03
for a hundred days from the summer
27:05
solstice, and when this tale
27:07
of days is complete, it
27:09
sinks again with a diminishing stream,
27:12
so that the river is low for the
27:14
whole winter till the summer
27:17
solstice again. The
27:20
Egyptian year was divided into three
27:23
seasons, the flood season of
27:25
Achat, the growing season of
27:27
Perret, and the harvest season
27:29
of Shemu. Once
27:32
the floodwaters receded in early
27:34
autumn, the land was refreshed
27:36
and fertilized with rich Nile
27:38
mud and new crops could
27:40
be grown. In
27:42
this black mud, farmers grew
27:44
emmer wheat, barley, beans, and
27:47
lentils throughout the cooler winter
27:49
season, and when summer
27:51
came again, the grain was ready to
27:53
be harvested. And
27:56
life was held in this delicate balance.
28:00
Each year, if the river flooded too
28:02
little or too much, the
28:04
results could be devastating. As
28:07
one, ancient Egyptian hymn to the
28:09
Nile makes clear. If he
28:12
is greedy, the whole land suffers.
28:15
Great and small fall moaning. People
28:18
are changed and
28:30
his coming. When
28:33
he rises, then the
28:35
land is in joy. Then every
28:37
belly is glad. Every jaw
28:40
has held laughter. Since their
28:42
lives depended so greatly on
28:45
these floods, the Egyptians
28:57
developed ingenious systems for measuring
28:59
them. At
29:01
the cataracts of Aswan, they
29:04
built a series of devices
29:06
known as nylometers. These
29:08
often take the form of towers
29:11
with deep wells inside that allow
29:13
the river to flow in, with
29:15
measurements inscribed on their walls in
29:18
Egyptian cubits. Each
29:20
year, ancient people would
29:22
anxiously check these nylometers to
29:24
see how high the water
29:26
was rising that year, and
29:29
whether it would be a time of famine, plenty,
29:32
or a time when they would
29:34
need to hastily build some flood
29:36
defenses. During
29:41
the period known as the pre-Dynastic
29:43
era, the two halves of Egypt
29:45
were divided, and this
29:47
division was cultural as well as
29:50
political. The desert people
29:52
of southern upper Egypt worshipped their
29:54
own god, Nechbet, who was commonly
29:57
depicted as a griffin vulture, a
29:59
powerful and majestic bird.
30:02
These people were cultural
30:07
and linguistic connection with Saharan
30:11
Africa. Their rulers
30:13
sometimes southern
30:16
kingdoms. Meanwhile, the
30:19
people to
30:23
the god Wajet, usually shown
30:25
as an Egyptian
30:30
cobra, they had more genetic influence
30:33
from North Africa and the Mediterranean and
30:35
may have been somewhat
30:37
lighter-skinned. The kings of southern upper
30:41
Egypt ruled while wearing a white bulbous
30:44
crown, while the kings of the north wore a red
30:46
crown with a spiraling representation
30:48
of a cobra emanating from the
30:51
north. The kingdoms that ruled over these
30:53
regions were always fluid, but the
30:55
geographical distinction between upper and lower
30:57
Egypt always held sway. But
31:00
around the year 3000 BC, or more than 5000
31:05
years ago, all that began to
31:07
change. That
31:09
was because of a king of
31:11
a kingdom called Finis. His
31:14
name was Namir. The
31:26
figure of Namir is wreathed
31:28
in mystery and what little we
31:31
know about him has been pieced together from
31:33
fragments of inscriptions and
31:36
a few significant artifacts. Namir
31:39
was born under the personal
31:41
name Menes, but chose Namir
31:44
as his Horus name or king name when
31:46
he came to the
31:48
throne of Finis. This name perhaps
31:51
gives us some sense of his
31:53
personality. That's because Namir
31:55
means something like fighting
31:57
catfish. The
32:00
Nile catfish that the king
32:02
clearly admired is a remarkable
32:04
species. It's a
32:06
predatory fish, a nocturnal hunter
32:08
that can grow up to 1.2 meters
32:11
long or about the size of a
32:13
dolphin, and uses a
32:15
form of naturally generated electricity as
32:17
a weapon. Using
32:20
a unique organ in its body, it can
32:22
generate an electric shock of up to 350
32:24
volts that stuns its prey. In
32:29
the largest catfish, this shock can be
32:31
enough to stun an adult human, and
32:33
the Egyptians were fascinated by this
32:36
unique property. They
32:38
depicted these shock and awe predators
32:40
on painted wall murals, and
32:42
even experimented with using the weak
32:45
electric charges of young specimens as
32:47
a treatment for arthritis. We
32:50
might imagine that this king, Namer,
32:52
wanted to emulate some of the
32:55
characteristics of these surprise hunters. But
32:57
whether it was their patience lying in
33:00
wait for their enemies, the tenacity of
33:02
their surprise attacks, or the shock and
33:04
awe with which they stunned their prey,
33:07
we may never know. Virtually
33:09
the only source we have for
33:11
this period is a carving known
33:13
as the Namer Pallet, which contains
33:15
only a handful of cryptic clues.
33:20
One side of this carved artifact
33:23
shows King Namer standing over a
33:25
defeated enemy, gripping him by the
33:27
hair in one hand, and raising
33:29
a mace in the other. It's
33:32
a clear sign of domination. Here,
33:35
Namer is shown wearing the white
33:37
bulbous crown of his native Upper
33:40
Egypt, suggesting that he bludgeoned
33:42
his rivals there into submission. On
33:46
the other side, the carving shows the
33:48
king leading an army, while ranks of
33:50
his defeated enemies lie before him. Below
33:54
this, an image of a bull is
33:56
shown tearing down the walls of a
33:58
fortress with its horns. On
34:00
this side of the carving, Narmad is
34:03
wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt.
34:06
From this, we might assume that he set
34:08
out on a campaign of conquest and
34:10
successfully brought the two lands of
34:13
Egypt together. Two
34:15
mythical animals carved on one side
34:17
of the Narmad palette stand with
34:20
their long necks intertwined, perhaps
34:22
representing the coming together of the
34:24
two sides of Egypt, their
34:27
lives and their fates now
34:29
inextricably bound. This
34:44
was a union that would see
34:46
the newly united Egypt grow to
34:48
become one of the most influential
34:50
societies in early human history. At
34:54
first, Egyptian culture was heavily
34:56
influenced by the slightly older
34:59
civilizations of Mesopotamia, like the
35:01
Sumerians. Egyptian
35:03
palaces were often built to a
35:06
Sumerian design, and they used
35:08
Sumerian motifs in their art too. But
35:11
by at least the year 3000 BC,
35:13
Egypt had matured its own
35:16
indigenous artistic culture and its
35:18
own system of writing. The
35:22
Greeks would later refer to these
35:24
by a word which means sacred
35:26
carving or hieroglyph.
35:34
The Egyptian hieroglyphs are a
35:36
mixed writing system that uses
35:38
a variety of phonetic symbols,
35:40
as well as a collection
35:42
of symbols that represent whole
35:44
words. For example, an
35:46
image of a man holding up his
35:48
hand to his mouth could be used
35:50
to represent the common word eat, but
35:53
other symbols that represented groups of
35:55
consonants could be used to spell
35:57
out other less common words. names
36:00
or places. A
36:04
little after the invention of cuneiform
36:07
in Mesopotamia, and it's possible
36:09
they were inspired by this older writing
36:11
system. In Mesopotamia,
36:14
we can see the gradual
36:16
evolution of the cuneiform writing
36:18
system from its earliest symbolic
36:20
roots. But in Egypt,
36:22
the earliest discovered example of hieroglyphs
36:25
show the symbols springing into existence
36:27
already fully formed in a complex
36:29
system. This suggests
36:31
that they may have been developed all
36:34
at once as a conscious effort, and
36:36
were perhaps even devised by a
36:39
single person. The
36:41
Egyptian hieroglyph for ruler was the shepherd's
36:43
crook, since the king was considered to
36:46
be a kind of shepherd for his
36:48
people. Egyptian kings
36:50
would even symbolize their royalty
36:52
by holding a gilded curved
36:55
crook modelled after those used
36:57
by shepherds, and these
36:59
kings have come to be known
37:01
as pharaohs. The
37:06
word pharaoh derives from the
37:08
Egyptian word per'a'a, meaning
37:11
great house, and it
37:13
has stuck in the popular imagination as
37:15
the name used for any Egyptian ruler,
37:17
partly due to its use in the
37:19
Bible. There is
37:21
actually no evidence that it was used to
37:23
refer to Egypt's rulers until nearly
37:27
2,000 years after Naamir's lifetime.
37:30
Up until that time, throughout the first 18
37:33
dynasties of Egypt's history, its rulers
37:36
were simply referred to as kings
37:38
or nethwet, and by
37:41
epithets such as His Majesty. Still,
37:44
the term pharaoh has gained such
37:46
currency and popular usage that it's
37:48
still used to refer to all
37:50
the rulers of Egypt across the
37:52
ages. The
37:54
pharaoh in ancient Egypt was considered
37:57
the living embodiment of the falcon
37:59
god Horel. and the
38:01
son of the Sun God Ra. One
38:09
Pharaoh is the Lord of Wisdom whose
38:15
mother knows not his name. Pharaoh's glory is in the sky, his
38:17
might is in the horizon. Pharaoh
38:19
is the bull of the sky who
38:21
shatters all at will, who
38:23
lives on the being of every
38:25
god. Perhaps
38:28
most famously of all, the Egyptians
38:30
were compelled by their religious beliefs
38:32
to embalm the bodies of the
38:34
dead, ritually cleansing them
38:36
in preparation for the afterlife.
38:40
The Greek Herodotus, who traveled
38:42
widely in Egypt, wrote
38:44
about the specialist embalmers who would
38:46
prepare bodies in this way in
38:49
exchange for a fee. They,
38:53
whenever a corpse is conveyed to
38:55
them, show to those who brought
38:57
it wooden models of corpses made
39:00
like reality by painting and demonstrate
39:02
on these the best of the
39:04
ways of embalming. The
39:07
second which they show is less
39:09
good and also less expensive, and
39:11
the third is the least expensive
39:13
of all. Having told
39:16
them about this, they inquire in which
39:18
way they desire the corpse of their
39:20
friend to be prepared. With
39:24
the price negotiated, the embalmer could
39:26
begin their work, the
39:28
grisly process of which
39:30
Herodotus also describes. First,
39:34
with the crooked iron tool,
39:36
they draw out the brain
39:38
through the nostrils, extracting
39:41
it from the thus and partly
39:43
by pouring in drugs, and
39:46
after this with a sharp stone of
39:48
Ethiopia, they make a cut
39:50
along the side and take out the
39:52
whole contents of the belly, and
39:55
when they have cleared out the cavity
39:57
and cleansed it with palm wine. line,
40:00
they cleanse it again with spices
40:02
pounded up. Then they
40:04
fill the belly with pure myrrh
40:07
and with cassia and other spices,
40:10
and sew it together again. Having
40:13
done so, they keep covered up
40:15
in Natron for seventy days. And
40:18
then they wash the corpse and
40:20
roll its whole body up in
40:22
fine linen cut into bands, smearing
40:25
those beneath with gum, which
40:27
the Egyptians used generically instead
40:30
of glue. Mummification
40:34
was expensive, and
40:36
only those with wealth could afford it.
40:39
Rich merchants, royal officials,
40:42
and of course, the pharaoh
40:44
himself. One
40:48
inscription on the walls of a tomb
40:50
for the pharaoh Unus gives
40:52
a sense of the kinds of prayers
40:55
and blessings that might have been spoken
40:57
while these rituals took place. This
41:00
one to the sun god Amun-Ra
41:03
and the moon god Thoth. Son
41:07
and Thoth, take
41:09
Unus with you, that he may eat of
41:12
what you eat of, that he may drink
41:23
of what you drink of, that
41:26
he may sit where you sit, that
41:29
he may sail in what you sail in.
41:32
The booth of Unus is platted
41:34
of reeds. The
41:36
flood of Unus is in
41:38
the marsh of offerings. His
41:41
feast is among you gods. The
41:43
water of Unus is wine like
41:46
the sun. Unus will
41:48
circumnavigate the sky like the sun.
41:51
Unus shall course the sky.
42:08
Upon coming to the throne of the newly united
42:12
Egypt, King Namer built a new capital, perfectly placed
42:14
at the balance of the two lands,
42:17
where the river met the delta. This
42:20
city would become known as Inebu-Hedge,
42:23
or the city of white walls, but
42:26
today we know it as Memphis. The
42:30
kings who followed Namer would rule from
42:33
this new capital, but
42:35
they spent much of their time travelling
42:37
between palaces, and when they
42:39
died, their bodies were still taken back
42:41
to Namer's home region of Thinnis in
42:43
Upper Egypt, to be
42:45
mummified and buried in the
42:47
city's ancestral burial ground at
42:49
Abhidos. That
42:52
was until the reign of a
42:54
king named Hotep-Sakhemui. He
42:57
ruled from about 2900 BC,
43:00
and started what has been called the
43:03
Second Dynasty of Egypt, and
43:05
he took the decision to start a
43:07
new burial ground near Memphis, so
43:10
that Egypt's pharaohs could be buried close
43:12
to their new capital. For
43:15
the sight of this new burial ground, he
43:17
chose a place on the western bank of the
43:19
river, the side where the sun
43:22
sets, at a vast
43:24
open place called Sakada. Sakada
43:35
is situated on a raised plateau
43:37
that the floodwaters of the Nile
43:39
do not reach. Visually,
43:42
it would have been striking to ancient
43:44
people, as the place where the green
43:47
riverlands end, and the dead
43:49
sand of the desert abruptly begins. For
43:52
this reason, it may have been
43:54
considered a crossing place between death
43:56
and life, the perfect
43:58
place for a necropolis. or
44:00
a city of the dead. For
44:03
kings who At
44:26
first, these tombs were built in a large
44:31
rectangular constructions built of
44:36
mud brick and promising their inhabitants a
44:38
rebirth into the next life. These
44:42
could be very large, but they were still relatively unassuming. But
44:44
soon, Egyptian pharaohs would
44:47
get even more ambitious with their
44:49
burial arrangements. This
44:51
ambition truly began with the rule
44:53
of a pharaoh named
44:56
Netjediket Joseph. The
45:04
reign of Joseph begins the period known
45:06
as the Old Kingdom, which would last
45:08
for the next 500 years.
45:12
Joseph was the son of
45:14
a king named Khar-Sakhemui, who
45:16
had reunited Egypt after a
45:18
period of turmoil during which
45:20
the northern delta rose in
45:22
rebellion. With
45:24
order now restored, Joseph clearly
45:26
wanted to keep it that
45:28
way. Rather than
45:30
continuing to travel around the country as
45:32
pharaohs before him had done, he
45:35
moved to a permanent capital at
45:37
Memphis, where he could keep
45:39
a better eye on the rest of
45:41
northern riverlands. Over
45:43
his nearly three decades of rule,
45:46
he set about an ambitious program
45:48
of construction, rebuilding temples
45:50
and throwing up fortresses all along
45:52
the river. But it was in
45:54
the manner of his burial that he would
45:56
truly leave his mark. When
45:59
Joseph had been the construction of his
46:01
final resting starboard
46:04
tombs of the kings that had come
46:06
before. But his royal architect
46:09
soon began dreaming of a more
46:11
ambitious structure. He
46:13
was a visionary chancellor and engineer
46:16
who held numerous official titles in
46:18
the kingdom, including head
46:21
of the royal shipyard,
46:23
royal seal-bearer, and overseer
46:25
of all stone works.
46:28
His name was Imhotep. Imhotep's
46:37
name means the one who comes
46:39
in peace, and he was born
46:41
in the 27th century BC.
46:44
But beyond that, much of what we
46:47
know about him has been distorted by
46:49
myth and legend. He
46:51
was something of a polymath,
46:53
a priest, a statesman, a
46:55
scribe, physician, and architect, and
46:58
even gained fame as a magician. He
47:01
also has the distinction of being
47:03
perhaps the first non-royal person to
47:06
be recorded in any detail by
47:08
history. As
47:10
the king's most trusted architect, Imhotep
47:12
was put in charge of the
47:15
construction of Joseph's tomb, but
47:17
it would not be a regular
47:20
mudbrick mastaba like his predecessors. In
47:23
fact, Imhotep was determined to build
47:25
this tomb out of stone. This
47:28
stone would need to be quarried from
47:30
the bedrock nearby, roughly cut
47:33
into blocks. But
47:35
as this stone mastaba rose out
47:37
of the desert, Imhotep seems to
47:39
have had an idea. With
47:43
this stronger building material, the structure
47:45
could support more weight, and
47:48
so there was no real reason
47:50
to stop building. Once
47:53
the first mastaba was built, he
47:55
experimented with placing another smaller one
47:57
on top of it, and
47:59
then another on top of that, creating
48:02
a world's
48:23
first large-scale construction made from
48:25
cut stone, and rising to
48:27
a height of 62 meters,
48:29
it was likely also the
48:31
tallest building on earth. Finally,
48:35
the stepped pyramid of Joseph
48:37
was complete, and
48:39
when the king died, he was laid
48:41
to rest in a granite chamber beneath
48:44
the great edifice, surrounded by
48:46
a maze of tunnels. Joseph's
48:49
pyramid was a revolutionary
48:51
step in Egyptian architecture,
48:54
and it would stand as a challenge to all
48:56
the kings who would follow him, a
48:59
challenge that they would find
49:01
irresistible. The
49:10
difficulties that engineers like Imhotep
49:12
faced in building these pyramids
49:15
were enormous, but
49:17
their achievement becomes even more impressive
49:19
when you consider that these monuments also
49:22
had to be built fast. Today,
49:25
Egypt is littered with the
49:27
remains of half-built pyramids. These
49:31
were abandoned halfway through their
49:33
construction, usually because the pharaoh
49:35
who commissioned them had died early.
49:39
Once a pharaoh was dead, it seems
49:41
no one saw any point in continuing
49:43
to build his tomb. After
49:45
all, there was a new pharaoh now, and
49:48
construction on his pyramid would have to
49:50
begin right away. For
49:53
this reason, pyramids usually had to be
49:55
completed, at the very least, within 30
49:57
years. Only
50:00
the kings with the longest and
50:02
most stable reigns would ever live
50:04
to see the final capstone placed.
50:10
The next pharaoh after Josur was
50:12
a man named Sekamket, who
50:14
may have been Josur's brother, and
50:16
he would join the ranks of the unfinished.
50:20
As soon as he came to
50:22
the throne, he began the construction
50:24
of another stepped pyramid of immense
50:26
ambition, sure to dwarf his
50:28
brother's achievement. But
50:30
only the first layer of the
50:33
pyramid was built when Sekamket died,
50:35
just six or seven years into his
50:37
reign, and the pyramid was
50:40
abandoned. Another
50:42
king, Khabar, also died after
50:44
six years before his stepped
50:46
pyramid could be completed. To
50:49
build each pyramid, the Egyptians would
50:52
require enormous amounts of laborers, as
50:54
many as 100,000 per pyramid, with about 10,000 laboring at any one time.
51:01
There's a widespread misconception that these
51:03
monuments were built by armies of
51:06
slaves, but most historians
51:08
now believe this not to be true. Slavery
51:11
was an aspect of Egyptian society, as
51:13
it was across the ancient world, and
51:16
slaves were mostly taken from prisoners of
51:18
war, and also from those
51:20
who fell into debt or committed serious
51:22
crimes. Slaves
51:25
were mostly used as domestic servants, or
51:28
if they were unlucky, toiled
51:30
in extraction industries like mining
51:32
and quarrying. These
51:34
were considered an underclass and would
51:36
not have been trusted with the
51:38
construction of such important and sacred
51:40
buildings. In fact,
51:43
evidence shows that the pyramid builders
51:45
were a mixture of professional artisans
51:48
and laboring peasants who worked
51:50
seasonally in exchange for rations.
51:54
The life of an Egyptian farmer was dictated
51:56
by the coming and going of the annual
51:58
floods, and there were only a few times
52:00
of year when they could be meaningfully employed
52:03
in the fields. For
52:05
the rest of the time, they would
52:07
have leased out their services to construction
52:09
projects, the digging of canals and other
52:11
public works, and the construction
52:14
of pyramids. While
52:21
they labored for the king, these workers drank
52:23
beer three times a day and ate meat
52:26
regularly. They toiled
52:28
in three-month shifts and were divided
52:30
into teams of twenty men. The
52:34
discovery of their graffiti, hidden on
52:36
the inward-facing sides of sunstone blocks
52:38
in the pyramids, shows
52:40
that they gave themselves playful and
52:43
boisterous team names, some
52:45
of which have been recorded. The
52:49
friends of Khufu, the
52:51
vigorous Geng, the followers
52:54
of the powerful white crown of Khufu,
52:57
those who know the pharaoh, the
52:59
drunkards of men quarry. It
53:03
seems their supervisors fostered a sense
53:06
of team pride and healthy competition,
53:08
perhaps giving honours and extra beer
53:10
rations for those who shifted the
53:13
most blocks. Doubtless,
53:15
the work was back-breaking, but
53:17
over the following millennium, millions
53:19
of Egyptians would take this deal.
53:24
Perhaps they also felt a sense of pride
53:26
at the great constructions they were taking part
53:28
in, which if all went
53:30
well, they would live to see completed.
53:34
These labourers were sufficiently respected that
53:36
any who died during the construction
53:38
were buried in tombs within the
53:41
royal complex, their bodies
53:43
forever a part of the monolith they
53:45
had given their lives to build, an
53:48
honour that would never have been given to
53:50
a slave. The
53:55
vast administrative effort of building these
53:57
tombs over the next centuries required
54:00
a fundamental restructuring of the
54:06
high positions of state had been separated
54:25
out, and these roles were
54:35
summarizing the transformation in the
54:43
following terms. As Egypt embarked on
54:49
Pyramid Building, the pyramids were building
54:54
Egypt. This new cast of civil servants
54:58
took pride in their work. One Egyptian
55:01
text of the Fifth Dynasty administrator.
55:31
Still, the failures of the kings that
55:33
followed Joseph must have left a mark
55:37
in Israel. Their crumbling,
55:39
half-finished pyramids
55:42
stood in the desert as an image of
55:45
kingship that could also be fragile and
55:48
fleeting. With his stepped pyramid, Joseph
55:52
had laid down a provocation that would
55:55
have to be answered. But it wasn't until
55:58
the reign of a king named would
56:00
rise to the challenge. Sneferu's
56:15
full name was Hauneb
56:18
Ma'at Sneferuwaj.
56:20
Horus Lord of Ma'at has Ma'at
56:24
in Egyptian religious belief was
56:27
the embodiment of justice and
56:29
truth, sometimes portrayed
56:31
as a goddess wearing an
56:33
ostrich feather on her head,
56:35
who kept the stars and the
56:37
seasons in their regular patterns and
56:40
maintained peace. Opposed
56:43
to her in their theology was
56:46
the concept of Isfet, chaos,
56:49
darkness, and disorder.
56:52
This was sometimes depicted as
56:54
a great coiling serpent. For
56:58
the most part, Sneferu's name seems
57:00
to have been appropriate. Under
57:03
the protection of Ma'at, he reigned for as
57:05
long as 48 years, a
57:08
time of prosperity and stability.
57:11
His accession to the throne is
57:13
remembered in the later Egyptian source,
57:16
the Prisuppa Piras. The
57:19
majesty of the king of upper
57:21
and lower Egypt, Huni, came
57:24
to the landing place of death, and
57:26
the majesty of the king of
57:29
upper and lower Egypt, Sneferu, was
57:31
raised up as a beneficent king
57:33
in this entire land. During
57:37
his half-century on the throne,
57:40
Sneferu would secure his place
57:42
as Egypt's most ardent and
57:44
determined pyramid builder. With
57:46
the failure of the last kings
57:48
to build a stepped pyramid to
57:51
match Joseph's, Sneferu began
57:53
to wonder if he could build something
57:55
even better, a pyramid
57:57
that conformed to a perfect geometrical
58:00
shape. He had a
58:02
vision of a pyramid with the
58:06
world had seen before. His
58:09
first pyramid
58:12
of Medun. There
58:24
is some debate about whether the stands
58:35
as one of the most impressive period
58:43
was built in several stages.
58:46
First, it was a stepped pyramid of
58:48
similar design to Joseph's, and
58:50
then this interior structure was encased
58:53
in a steep shell of white
58:55
limestone, creating a high and
58:57
narrow point. The
58:59
effect would have been beautiful, that
59:02
is, until one day, as the
59:04
pyramid neared completion, when
59:06
the entire weight of the stone
59:08
facing began to collapse in all
59:11
directions. We
59:13
can only imagine the noise and calamity that must
59:15
have accompanied this. The workers
59:18
leaping clear of the wreckage, the
59:20
overseers watching Agass, as
59:22
an avalanche of painstakingly cut stone
59:24
poured off the side of the
59:26
pyramid. The moment this happened,
59:29
Sneferu ordered the construction to be
59:31
halted. Workmen inside
59:34
the interior chambers simply
59:36
put down their tools and left. Today,
59:40
the burial chamber inside the
59:42
pyramid is still unfinished, with
59:44
raw, uncarved walls and wooden
59:47
supports still in place, which
59:50
were usually removed after construction.
59:54
Sneferu must have been devastated,
59:56
but he wasn't discouraged. Soon,
59:59
he he tried again, with
1:00:01
a pyramid at the site of
1:00:03
Darshur, just to the
1:00:06
south of the royal necropolis of Saqqara.
1:00:13
This pyramid was intended to be tall,
1:00:16
and its sides were even steeper than the first.
1:00:19
His workmen began to construct it
1:00:21
with a sharp 53-degree slope to
1:00:24
its sides, and this
1:00:26
time Sneferu must have hoped that he would
1:00:28
get the pyramid he dreamed of. But
1:00:31
this would not turn out to be the case. This
1:00:34
second pyramid was built on ground
1:00:36
that was only soft sand and
1:00:38
shale. As the
1:00:41
pyramid took shape and its weight climbed
1:00:43
into the millions of tons, they
1:00:45
found that the stone was sinking into the
1:00:47
earth and causing cracks to
1:00:49
appear in the structure. We
1:00:52
can only imagine how it felt to be
1:00:54
the architect who had to bring this bad
1:00:56
news to the king, the son
1:00:59
of Ra, the living embodiment of the
1:01:01
god Horus. The
1:01:04
workmen tried everything they could, from
1:01:07
adding new supporting blocks to the
1:01:09
base, to propping up subsiding sections
1:01:11
with huge beams of cedar wood.
1:01:15
But it was hopeless. It
1:01:17
became clear that if they continued the
1:01:19
pyramid as planned, it would likely collapse,
1:01:22
just as the first one had. The
1:01:26
Pharaoh Sneferu seems to have listened
1:01:28
to reason. He consented
1:01:30
to allow his workmen to hurriedly
1:01:32
finish the pyramid with a reduced
1:01:34
angle of only 43 degrees
1:01:37
and a final height reduced by 25 meters.
1:01:42
This means that today the pyramid
1:01:44
has a peculiar, snub-nosed appearance that
1:01:46
has given it the name the
1:01:48
Bent Pyramid. It's
1:01:51
clear that Sneferu still wasn't
1:01:53
satisfied. He
1:01:56
now ordered the construction of a final
1:01:58
pyramid, one kilometer long. to the
1:02:00
north, combining everything his craftsmen had learned
1:02:03
from the first two. This
1:02:05
one was now built with a 43-degree
1:02:08
incline from the beginning, more
1:02:10
evenly distributing the weight on the earth.
1:02:13
And finally, Sneferu got the
1:02:15
pyramid he desired. This
1:02:19
was the first structure that truly
1:02:21
took the iconic shape of an
1:02:23
Egyptian pyramid, and would be
1:02:25
used as a model for those that would
1:02:27
be built in years to come. It
1:02:30
was 105 meters high,
1:02:33
nearly twice the height of Joseph's
1:02:35
pyramid and the world's
1:02:37
new tallest building. And
1:02:40
its geometrical perfection was
1:02:43
undeniable. When
1:02:46
Sneferu died, he was buried in
1:02:48
this pyramid according to his wishes,
1:02:51
and his son took the throne. He
1:02:54
would be the greatest pyramid builder of
1:02:56
all. His name was
1:02:59
Khufu. As
1:03:10
a boy, Khufu must have seen
1:03:12
his father Sneferu obsessed with the
1:03:14
construction of his three pyramids. We
1:03:17
can imagine the young prince listening in
1:03:20
on his father's conversations with his architects,
1:03:23
the tension and anger as the
1:03:25
first two pyramids failed, and then
1:03:27
the final triumph of the Red
1:03:29
Pyramid. And perhaps as
1:03:31
a boy, he dreamed of one day
1:03:34
building such a monument for himself. We
1:03:44
know very little about Khufu, or
1:03:46
what his reign was like, but
1:03:49
it's clear that he was inspired by
1:03:51
one thing, size, And
1:03:54
above all, the desire to build the
1:03:57
largest pyramid that would ever stand.
1:04:00
Learning from his father's mistakes
1:04:02
on the bench pyramid and
1:04:05
likely inheriting some of his
1:04:07
architects, Khufu elected to build
1:04:09
his tomb some fifteen kilometers
1:04:11
to the northwest of Sakara,
1:04:13
on a shelf of strong
1:04:16
limestone just outside of. At
1:04:19
a place called Giza.
1:04:24
When construction began on the Great
1:04:26
Pyramid, there must have been some
1:04:29
uncertainty about whether he would even
1:04:31
be possible. It was
1:04:33
built using an estimated two point
1:04:35
three million large stone blocks, weighing
1:04:38
a total of six million tons.
1:04:40
And when it's first layer was
1:04:42
completed, it was the size of
1:04:44
more than ten football pitches. It's
1:04:48
builders used for dominantly local
1:04:50
limestone quarry it from nearby
1:04:52
on the Giza plateau to
1:04:54
build the pyramids interior structure
1:04:56
and these were bound together
1:04:59
with lie motor packed with
1:05:01
straw and charcoal. Luckily,
1:05:03
these organic remains in the
1:05:05
pyramid motor can be carbon
1:05:08
dated, allowing archaeologists to date
1:05:10
the pyramids with scientific certainty
1:05:12
to this period. But
1:05:15
while rough stone would do for the
1:05:17
main body, the King's burial chamber at
1:05:19
it's heart was made of flux of
1:05:22
hard granite brought from a swan since
1:05:24
it needed to resist the crushing weight
1:05:26
of millions of tons of stone above
1:05:29
it. The fine limestone
1:05:31
blocks of it's outer shell were
1:05:33
quarried at a place called Tourer.
1:05:36
On the other side of the river. The.
1:05:38
Stone from these quarries was
1:05:41
of exceptional quality. A
1:05:43
pale white in color, almost like
1:05:45
marble. For. This
1:05:47
reason it was highly prized for use
1:05:49
on the interiors of tombs. And
1:05:52
the perfect casing for a
1:05:54
pyramid. this
1:05:57
limestone was cut out of
1:05:59
underground tunnels in these quarries
1:06:02
and dragged loaded
1:06:06
onto barges to be carried downstream.
1:06:11
In order to ease the transportation
1:06:13
of these stones, the Egyptians dug a
1:06:15
series of canals and artificial harbors that
1:06:17
came right up to the base of
1:06:19
the pyramids, one of which was known
1:06:22
as Sheikufu, or the Pool
1:06:24
of Kufu. One
1:06:27
papyrus has been uncovered, the
1:06:29
oldest ever found, that is the work journal
1:06:32
of an overseer named Marreir.
1:06:35
In it, he records the
1:06:37
process of this perhaps less
1:06:40
than exhilarating task. Day
1:06:44
25. Inspector Marreir spends
1:06:46
the day hauling stones in Tura
1:06:49
south, spends the night
1:06:51
at Tura. Day 26.
1:06:53
Inspector Marreir
1:06:55
casts off from Tura loaded with
1:06:57
stones, day
1:07:02
27. Set sail loaded with
1:07:04
stone, spends the night at the pyramid.
1:07:06
Day 28. Castes
1:07:10
off from the pyramid in the morning, sails
1:07:13
upriver to Tura south. Day
1:07:17
29. Inspector Marreir
1:07:19
spends the day hauling stones in
1:07:21
Tura south, spends the night at
1:07:24
Tura. Day 30. Inspector
1:07:27
Marreir spends the day
1:07:29
hauling stones in Tura south, spends
1:07:31
the night at Tura. Remarkably,
1:07:38
the pyramid was oriented
1:07:40
perfectly to true north,
1:07:42
with one of its faces at each point
1:07:44
of the compass, suggesting that
1:07:47
the Egyptians must have used measurements
1:07:49
of the stars in order to
1:07:51
align it, the only method
1:07:53
by which they could have achieved such
1:07:55
accuracy. And with
1:07:57
the kingdom's now exceptional organization.
1:08:00
It's been estimated that it took
1:08:03
only about 23 years to build,
1:08:06
with the final stones being placed around
1:08:08
2560 BC. Upon
1:08:13
its completion, the Great Pyramid of Giza
1:08:15
would stand 147 meters high, or nearly 40
1:08:21
stories. It
1:08:23
was the tallest man-made structure in the
1:08:25
world and would remain so for nearly
1:08:27
4000 years. The
1:08:31
building that eventually surpassed it, the
1:08:33
wooden spire of Lincoln Cathedral in
1:08:35
England, completed in 1311,
1:08:38
would stand for little more
1:08:40
than two centuries before
1:08:42
it collapsed in a storm. Today
1:08:46
Khufu has cemented his name into
1:08:48
history with the construction of these
1:08:51
monuments. But other
1:08:53
than his ambitious pyramid, little else
1:08:55
is known about him. The
1:08:58
only representation of him ever found is
1:09:01
a single statuette carved from
1:09:03
ivory. And ironically
1:09:05
for a man so obsessed
1:09:07
with grand scale, this statue
1:09:09
is only 7 centimeters, or
1:09:12
less than 3 inches tall. When
1:09:18
Khufu died around 2525 BC,
1:09:22
his son Jeddefre would take the
1:09:24
throne. But his reign was short,
1:09:27
and when he died another of Khufu's
1:09:29
sons became Pharaoh. His name
1:09:31
was Kaffre. The
1:09:35
Pharaoh Kaffre would follow in
1:09:37
his father's and grandfather's footsteps,
1:09:39
and build a grand pyramid of his own.
1:09:43
He would place it right beside his
1:09:45
father's, but for some reason he declined
1:09:47
to build it any higher. It
1:09:50
could be that his builders, perhaps
1:09:52
tiring of this mania for ever
1:09:54
bigger and better pyramids, simply
1:09:57
told him that it wouldn't be possible to
1:09:59
build any bigger. bigger. It
1:10:01
may be that Caffre worried meaning
1:10:24
that from many angles it appears
1:10:30
deeper angled sides. This meant
1:10:32
Caffre pyramid
1:10:35
with perhaps 350,000 fewer stone blocks, a saving
1:10:37
that his teams of laborers
1:10:42
and stonemasons no
1:10:45
doubt appreciated. Today,
1:10:48
the pyramid of Caffre is the
1:10:50
only pyramid at Giza to retain
1:10:52
any of its original casing stones
1:10:54
of smooth white Torah limestone which
1:10:57
still cling to the top third of the
1:10:59
structure, perhaps since its
1:11:01
steeper sides made it more difficult
1:11:03
for stone thieves to extract the
1:11:06
very top of its masonry. This
1:11:10
allows us to picture how these monuments
1:11:12
would have looked in their golden age,
1:11:15
the smooth white sides that must
1:11:17
have gleamed blindingly in the desert
1:11:19
sun, and at night shone
1:11:21
in the light of the moon. These
1:11:26
pyramids were also likely capped
1:11:28
with a stone known as
1:11:30
a pyramidian, usually carved
1:11:33
of diorite or granite and
1:11:35
carved with hieroglyphs. Some
1:11:38
examples of these pyramidians have
1:11:41
been found with distinctive grooves
1:11:43
that suggest that they were
1:11:45
encased in a decorative metal,
1:11:48
either copper or shining electrum,
1:11:50
an alloy of gold and silver.
1:11:54
Since The pyramidians for the Giza
1:11:56
pyramids have never been found, It's
1:11:58
unknown whether their tops. There are
1:12:00
encased in metal but if they
1:12:02
were it would have made them.
1:12:04
And even more impressive sight a
1:12:07
gleaming cynical reaching up to the
1:12:09
heavens. Within
1:12:12
only one hundred years or
1:12:14
so of the construction of
1:12:16
Josias first stepped pyramids, all
1:12:18
of Egypt's largest pyramids had
1:12:20
already been built. All my
1:12:22
only three generations of the
1:12:24
same family. Was.
1:12:26
Almost from the moment the
1:12:28
final capstone was placed on
1:12:30
cafes massive monument, enthusiasm for
1:12:32
enormous pyramids began to wane.
1:12:39
The pharaoh Men Coday, the
1:12:41
son of Cafe and grandson
1:12:43
of Khufu, also built his
1:12:45
pyramid of Giza around twenty
1:12:47
five ten B C, but
1:12:49
his would be significantly smaller.
1:12:52
It's not even a tenth the size
1:12:54
of the Great Pyramid, and early two
1:12:56
thirds the size of even Josias stepped
1:12:59
pyramid. One
1:13:01
explanation for this was that men
1:13:03
count. I didn't expect to live
1:13:05
long enough to build such a
1:13:07
grand construction as his predecessors. Paralysis
1:13:10
records one piece of tradition about
1:13:12
the Pharaoh mentality which recounts how
1:13:14
and oracle told him that his
1:13:17
reign would be short. As a
1:13:19
result, he determined to make the
1:13:21
best of the time he had
1:13:23
and perhaps this left him little
1:13:26
time for pyramid building. Just
1:13:33
and sent back to the. Oracle a
1:13:35
message of French blaming the god.
1:13:38
Why must he die so soon? Whereas.
1:13:41
His father and his uncle had lived law.
1:13:44
He caused many lamps to be
1:13:46
made and would like to these
1:13:48
at nightfall and drink and make
1:13:50
merry. By. Day or night,
1:13:53
he never ceased from reveling roaming
1:13:55
to the marsh country and the
1:13:57
groups, and whenever he heard of.
1:14:00
The likeliest places of pleasure.
1:14:06
Whether there's any truth to this or
1:14:08
not, it's clear him and Count had
1:14:10
different priorities to cuckoo and Caffrey. And.
1:14:13
His more modest pyramid seems to
1:14:15
have broken the spell of his
1:14:17
family's one upmanship. For
1:14:20
the next thousand years, Pharaohs would
1:14:22
continue to build pyramid tombs, but
1:14:25
they would be mostly at a
1:14:27
much reduced scale and they would
1:14:29
cut bigger and bigger corners in
1:14:31
that construction. Instead
1:14:34
of a solid limestone structure, these
1:14:36
later monuments would often be a
1:14:38
simple limestone shell casing, a core
1:14:41
of mud brick. Or
1:14:43
simply earth and sand. For
1:14:45
this reason, little remains of
1:14:47
these later pyramids other than
1:14:50
melancholy heaps alone in the
1:14:52
desert. Slowly.
1:14:55
The practice would begin to die
1:14:57
out all together. The
1:15:00
reason or Jepsen stopped building pyramids
1:15:02
was partly due to changes in
1:15:05
religious attitudes towards burial, but it
1:15:07
also seems to have stemmed from
1:15:09
concern over two brothers. After
1:15:12
all, a pyramid was essentially an
1:15:14
enormous sign announcing to the world
1:15:16
that the richest man in Egypt
1:15:18
was buried them. From.
1:15:21
The earliest days, people were drawn
1:15:23
to the tombs of long dead
1:15:25
kings to attempt to steal their
1:15:27
treasures. One
1:15:29
Two and scripts and of a
1:15:32
royal architect named in Nanny gives
1:15:34
us a clue about these changing
1:15:36
priorities. He writes
1:15:38
that he constructed his kings
1:15:40
to not in an ostentatious
1:15:42
declaration of power, but in
1:15:44
total secrecy. I
1:15:48
supervise the excavation of the
1:15:50
cliff tomb of his majesty
1:15:52
alone. No. One seed
1:15:55
and no one hearing.
1:16:00
Even with the secret tombs,
1:16:02
grave robbers was still a
1:16:04
constant concern. One
1:16:06
Pharaoh of the later New
1:16:08
Kingdom would order an inspection
1:16:10
of his predecessors' tombs, and
1:16:12
his inspectors brought back troubling
1:16:14
news. The.
1:16:16
Tomb of the king. It was
1:16:18
found that the evil doers of damaged it. By.
1:16:21
Forcing an opening into the main chamber of
1:16:23
is to. Through. The passage wall
1:16:25
of the sanctuary have never met Superintendent
1:16:27
of the grain stores of the king
1:16:30
in the funerary place. The body of
1:16:32
the king had been removed and the
1:16:34
tomb of his royal spouse, the Royal
1:16:36
Lady of Noxious was empty. The
1:16:39
robbers had laid violent hands on them.
1:16:44
It wasn't just the precious trenches inside
1:16:46
that was stolen. As
1:16:48
the overseer might have had found,
1:16:50
cutting the limestone blocks from the
1:16:52
quarries of Tuna was one of
1:16:54
the most time consuming parts of
1:16:56
construction. For this reason
1:16:59
pharaohs he felt more pressed for
1:17:01
time sometimes to spoiled previous pyramids
1:17:04
of that cuts down in order
1:17:06
to speed along the own monuments.
1:17:09
One Middle Kingdom tax known
1:17:12
as the Instruction of Medicaid
1:17:14
I advise is kings against
1:17:16
the same for practice. Do
1:17:19
not to spoil the monument of
1:17:21
another. But quarry stone
1:17:24
in Tora. Do not
1:17:26
build your to mount of ruins.
1:17:28
Using what has been made
1:17:31
for was used to be
1:17:33
made. In
1:17:36
place of constructing the own pyramids
1:17:38
at Sakara or Chiesa, the later
1:17:40
pharaohs would be buried at a
1:17:43
place near Seeps the the Egyptians
1:17:45
called the great and majestic necropolis
1:17:47
of the millions of years of
1:17:49
the pharaoh. Who. Sometimes
1:17:51
the great field. But.
1:17:54
Today it is known as the
1:17:56
Valley of the King's. here
1:17:59
unnatural rock formation known as
1:18:01
El Curn or the Arctic
1:18:06
Red Cliffs. When
1:18:09
viewed from the Arctic
1:18:13
somewhat resembles a natural pyramid. It's
1:18:16
possible that this convenient landform may
1:18:19
have relieved some of the pressure
1:18:21
on Egypt's pharaohs and
1:18:23
allowed them an equally prestigious place
1:18:25
to be buried while freeing
1:18:27
up an untold amount of
1:18:30
energy and manpower in the
1:18:32
kingdom. Egypt's
1:18:34
manual laborers could perhaps breathe
1:18:36
a sigh of relief. Slowly,
1:18:39
the age of the pyramids
1:18:41
came to an end. Still,
1:18:51
that was a long time in the
1:18:53
future and throughout the
1:18:55
fourth and fifth dynasties of
1:18:57
Egypt, royal monument construction continued
1:18:59
confidently. But in
1:19:02
the sixth dynasty, around the
1:19:04
23rd century BC, construction
1:19:07
began to decline. Part
1:19:11
of the reason for this was
1:19:13
an increasing decentralization of the Empire
1:19:16
and a gradual weakening of the power
1:19:18
of the King. The
1:19:22
final pharaoh of the Old
1:19:24
Kingdom was named Pepe II.
1:19:28
He came to the throne at the age of six
1:19:30
and ruled for more than
1:19:32
60 years. Pepe
1:19:34
was an excitable and enthusiastic
1:19:37
child, as we can
1:19:39
see from one tomb inscription by
1:19:41
one of his officials named Harkouf.
1:19:45
Harkouf had a long and
1:19:47
illustrious career. He
1:19:49
served as the mayor of one
1:19:51
of Egypt's southern provinces in the
1:19:53
region of the Nile cataract of
1:19:55
Aswan, the narrow gate to the
1:19:57
south. his
1:20:00
life was the four journeys of his
1:20:05
pharaoh following the Nile down
1:20:27
from there all sorts of beautiful I
1:20:35
came back with 300 donkeys
1:20:37
laden with incense ebony
1:20:40
precious oil grain leopard
1:20:43
skins and elephant tusks the
1:20:47
boy pharaoh peppy was so delighted with
1:20:49
Harkov's trip that he wrote a letter
1:20:52
directly to him the
1:20:54
letter was likely written on fragile
1:20:56
papyrus and has not survived but
1:20:59
luckily Harkov was so proud of this
1:21:01
sign of royal favor that he had
1:21:03
the letter copied out word for word
1:21:05
on the wall of his tomb his
1:21:08
proudest moment etched into stone
1:21:11
for eternity in
1:21:13
it we get a sense
1:21:16
for the voice of this
1:21:18
excitable young king you know
1:21:20
how to do what your Lord loves and favors
1:21:23
you wake and you sleep planning to do
1:21:25
what your Lord loves favors and commands unique
1:21:28
friend Harkov peppy
1:21:31
was especially excited by a small
1:21:33
man that Harkov had come across
1:21:36
in East Africa and had brought
1:21:38
back with him perhaps
1:21:40
either a man with dwarfism or
1:21:42
a member of the so-called pygmy
1:21:45
tribes of Central Africa you
1:21:49
have further said in this message that you
1:21:51
have brought a dwarf of the gods dances
1:21:53
from the land of the horizon dwellers come
1:21:56
downstream to the residence at once hurry
1:21:58
and bring with you this dwarf that
1:22:01
you have brought, alive, prosperous and healthy,
1:22:03
for the king. When
1:22:05
he goes down with you into the boat,
1:22:07
have excellent people around him on deck, lest
1:22:09
he fall in the water. My
1:22:12
Majesty wishes to see this particular dwarf more
1:22:14
than the produce of the land." However,
1:22:18
as a pharaoh, Peppy
1:22:20
was relatively ineffectual. During
1:22:23
his childhood, his mother and grand
1:22:25
viziers seemed to have done much
1:22:27
of the ruling, and as
1:22:30
an adult, he continued a relatively
1:22:32
hands-off approach to the kingdom. For
1:22:36
much of its history, Egypt had
1:22:38
been governed by regional administrators
1:22:40
known as Noemaks, who
1:22:43
were appointed by the pharaoh to rule
1:22:45
over their regions on his behalf. Peppy's
1:22:49
long reign saw an increasing amount
1:22:51
of power passing to these regional
1:22:53
governors. Gradually,
1:22:56
their positions became hereditary
1:22:58
rather than appointed, so
1:23:00
that single families began to amass large
1:23:03
amounts of power, and
1:23:05
their tombs became larger and more
1:23:07
elaborate with every passing year. These
1:23:11
Noemaks were soon beginning to look
1:23:13
a lot like feudal lords or
1:23:15
even petty kings, and
1:23:18
even began fighting amongst themselves.
1:23:21
Meanwhile, the once-boy king Peppy
1:23:23
was now entering his 70s,
1:23:26
frail and increasingly detached from the
1:23:29
business of ruling. This
1:23:32
might not have been a death blow for
1:23:34
the kingdom, but it was
1:23:36
around this time that a record
1:23:38
drought descended over Egypt and the
1:23:41
entire eastern Mediterranean, starting
1:23:43
around the year 2200 BC. This climate shift we
1:23:45
have encountered before.
1:23:52
It is known as the 4.2-kilo-year event,
1:23:56
and has been implicated in the
1:23:58
collapse of the Akkadian Empire. in
1:24:01
Mesopotamia and perhaps even the
1:24:05
India and Pakistan. In
1:24:08
Egypt, the result in
1:24:12
which the Nile floods were much higher,
1:24:19
the drought was so severe and long-lasting
1:24:24
that the verdant lake at Fayum, that once stood 65 meters deep,
1:24:28
completely dried up over the next 50 years, and
1:24:31
crop yields would have plummeted. The
1:24:39
long reign of a pharaoh was usually
1:24:41
good news for the kingdom. It
1:24:44
tended to generate a period of
1:24:46
stability and often prosperity. But
1:24:49
when a king's rule went on too long,
1:24:51
it had the tendency to create what we
1:24:53
might call the old king problem. The
1:24:57
long reign of the pharaoh Pepe,
1:24:59
along with his multiple wives, meant
1:25:01
that he had countless children, many
1:25:03
of them now old men themselves,
1:25:06
with children and grandchildren of their
1:25:08
own. And they
1:25:10
were all impatient to see this
1:25:12
old king pass on so
1:25:14
that they would get their chance to rule.
1:25:17
When Pepe finally died around 2175
1:25:21
BC, what followed was
1:25:23
a succession crisis of
1:25:25
immense proportions. The
1:25:30
chaos serpent of Isfet now
1:25:33
wound its way around all the
1:25:35
lands of Egypt. In
1:25:47
the two decades that followed, the kingdom
1:25:49
would see no fewer than 17 pharaohs
1:25:52
come and go, some
1:25:55
perhaps dying of old age and
1:25:57
others no doubt killed by their
1:25:59
rivals. The
1:26:02
only one of these kings to survive named
1:26:07
Ibi, who even somewhat
1:26:30
On top of that, it was
1:26:32
lazily constructed King
1:26:37
Ibi, the man who was to be buried
1:26:42
only two years, one month, and a day,
1:26:44
and demonstrates
1:27:13
how the centralized power of
1:27:15
the king was declining. Ancteepi
1:27:43
recalls the time of famine that
1:27:45
swept over the land as
1:27:47
crisis after crisis rocked the
1:27:50
struggling old kingdom. But
1:28:00
I managed that no one died of hunger and
1:28:05
the country had become like a starved
1:28:07
grasshopper, with people going to the north
1:28:09
and to the south in search of
1:28:11
grain. Egypt
1:28:14
was now fracturing into something like
1:28:17
the shape it had been before
1:28:19
King Namer had fused it into
1:28:21
a stable centralized state nearly 800
1:28:23
years before. Refugees
1:28:27
were flooding the roads. Another
1:28:31
later Egyptian writer called Ipuer
1:28:33
who lived in the period
1:28:35
following this chaos describes people
1:28:38
resorting to theft to survive
1:28:40
and violence spreading. The
1:28:44
guardians of the house say, let
1:28:47
us go and steal. The
1:28:49
snares of birds have formed themselves
1:28:51
into armed bands. The
1:28:53
peasants of the delta have provided themselves with
1:28:56
shields. A man regards his
1:28:58
son as his enemy. The
1:29:00
wrongdoer is in every place. The
1:29:03
inundation of the Nile comes, yet
1:29:06
no one goes out to plow. Ipuer
1:29:11
describes a widespread economic
1:29:13
collapse during which trade
1:29:16
from foreign lands dried up.
1:29:20
The skilled masons who built pyramids
1:29:22
now labor on farms and
1:29:25
those who tended the boat of the gods
1:29:27
are yoked together in plowing. Man
1:29:29
do not go on voyages today. What
1:29:33
shall we do for cedarwood for our mummies
1:29:35
in coffins of which priests are buried and
1:29:38
with the oil of which men are embalmed? They
1:29:41
come no longer. Everything
1:29:44
is in ruins. Laughter
1:29:46
is dead. If
1:29:48
I only knew where God was, I would
1:29:51
make offerings to him. must
1:30:00
have dreamed of a better time will
1:30:19
come. He will take the
1:30:21
white crown. His
1:30:30
time, the Asiatics will
1:30:32
fall to his sword, and
1:30:35
the Libyans will fall to his flame.
1:30:38
The rebels belong to his wrath, and
1:30:41
the treacherous in heart belong to
1:30:43
the awe of him. The
1:30:48
man who would fulfill this prophecy, or
1:30:51
rather the man in whose reign the
1:30:53
prophecy was more likely written, would
1:30:55
reunite Egypt and usher in
1:30:58
a new age of stability.
1:31:01
His name was Nebepetre
1:31:03
Mentuhotep II. Mentuhotep was
1:31:19
a king in the city of
1:31:21
Thebes in Upper Egypt. Sitting
1:31:25
on the eastern bank of the Nile,
1:31:27
about 800 kilometers from the
1:31:29
Mediterranean, Thebes is one of the
1:31:32
sunniest and driest cities in the
1:31:34
world. It had
1:31:36
been the capital of its own province
1:31:38
throughout the Old Kingdom, but had always
1:31:41
been something of a backwater, and
1:31:43
somewhat influenced by the African
1:31:46
culture of Nubia. But
1:31:48
during the more than a century of
1:31:50
chaos that surrounded the collapse of the
1:31:52
Old Kingdom, Thebes slowly grew
1:31:55
to become the capital of the
1:31:57
south, and its kings began referring to the
1:31:59
Middle East. to themselves as the
1:32:01
great overlord of tightly
1:32:07
packed rows of houses, granaries,
1:32:12
and central temple to the god Amun,
1:32:15
and its people clearly sought a
1:32:17
break from the suffocating influence of
1:32:20
the kings in Memphis. But
1:32:23
in the north, near the
1:32:25
traditional center of Egyptian power,
1:32:27
an ambitious and ruthless rival
1:32:30
was also amassing its forces.
1:32:33
This was centered around the city
1:32:35
of Henan-Nasut in lower Egypt, in
1:32:37
the verdant region between the river
1:32:39
Nile and the Great Lake at
1:32:42
Fayyun, a region
1:32:44
that the desert Thebans dismissively
1:32:46
called the marshlands. This
1:32:50
city would later be known
1:32:52
as Herakkliopolis or the
1:32:54
city of Hercules. For
1:32:58
about a hundred years during
1:33:00
this time of dissolution, Thebes
1:33:02
and Henan-Nasut had fought bitter
1:33:04
wars over small border regions,
1:33:06
forts, and roads, but
1:33:09
neither side could ever gain the upper hand.
1:33:12
That was until the reign of the king
1:33:14
of Thebes, Mentu Hotep. He
1:33:18
was named after the Theban god
1:33:20
of war and came from a line
1:33:23
of warlike kings. He
1:33:25
clearly desired to bring this series
1:33:27
of conflicts to a decisive conclusion
1:33:30
and reunite the fractured kingdom of
1:33:32
old. The
1:33:34
final confrontation between north and
1:33:37
south would be sparked by
1:33:39
a rebellion in the city of Thinnis,
1:33:42
once home to King Namer and which
1:33:44
was now one of the
1:33:46
vassals of Thebes. Delighted
1:33:49
by this development, the northern
1:33:51
power of Henan-Nasut seized the
1:33:54
opportunity and marched south into
1:33:56
the desert to capture the town. War.
1:34:01
Soon raged across all Egypt.
1:34:05
At one point the Northerners
1:34:07
pushed south and captured the
1:34:09
ancient sacred city of Evidence
1:34:11
and their unleashed a wave
1:34:14
of destruction against it's tempos
1:34:16
and palaces. One.
1:34:23
Later text known as the Instruction
1:34:25
to Medical Day purports to be
1:34:28
written by a king of Northern
1:34:30
Henan Knesset who has racked with
1:34:32
guilt for the destruction of this
1:34:34
sacred city. Lower.
1:34:38
A shameful deed occurred in my
1:34:40
time. A province of
1:34:42
this was ravaged. There
1:34:44
would happen through my doing. I
1:34:47
learned it after it's with. There.
1:34:49
Was retribution for what I
1:34:51
had done. For. It
1:34:53
is evil to destroy. Be
1:34:56
of it. A blowers
1:34:58
repaid by it's like to
1:35:00
every action there is a
1:35:02
response. This
1:35:06
response would come in the form
1:35:08
of a thundering reprisal by the
1:35:10
King of Thieves, meant to hotel.
1:35:18
He would march into the North and
1:35:20
defeat the armies of Henin. A suit.
1:35:24
Next. He rounded on the northern
1:35:26
capital. When
1:35:29
he captured it, all of
1:35:31
the funerary monuments of it's
1:35:33
kings were defaced and destroyed,
1:35:35
perhaps suggesting a sacking of
1:35:38
the city. Whatever
1:35:40
the Northerners had done to
1:35:42
the sacred center of evidence,
1:35:44
it was clearly visited upon
1:35:46
them and their city tenfold.
1:35:50
Meant to haute up Now swept
1:35:52
through north in Egypt and the
1:35:54
provincial governors saw the writing on
1:35:56
the wall and swore fealty to
1:35:59
him. After nearly
1:36:01
two centuries of dissolution, the
1:36:03
two halves of Egypt will
1:36:05
once again united, The.
1:36:17
Period that followed known as
1:36:19
the Middle Kingdom of Egypt
1:36:21
would last for around three
1:36:23
hundred years, but it has
1:36:25
not left and impressive archaeological
1:36:27
record. Compared to
1:36:29
the towering pyramids of the Old
1:36:32
Kingdom and the architectural magnificence of
1:36:34
the later New Kingdom, it stands
1:36:37
out as something of a dull
1:36:39
time for grand monument construction. But
1:36:42
it did experience a flourishing
1:36:44
in another area that is.
1:36:47
In the realm of a gypsy and
1:36:49
literature. One
1:36:51
famous story written around this time
1:36:53
is called the Tale of Single
1:36:56
Hey. It know
1:36:58
rates the life of a man
1:37:00
who traveled north into Palestine and
1:37:02
beyond but to eventually becomes home
1:37:04
sick and decides to return to
1:37:06
Egypt. Another
1:37:09
collection of stories was written around
1:37:11
this time, a kind of Ancient
1:37:13
Arabian Nights known as the Tales
1:37:16
of Wonder. It
1:37:18
relates a number of fantastical stories,
1:37:20
imagining that they were told to
1:37:22
the great Pharaoh Khufu of the
1:37:24
Old Kingdom by his three sons.
1:37:28
Another story written during the Middle
1:37:30
Kingdom is known as the Tail
1:37:32
of the Shipwreck Sailor a kind
1:37:35
of ancient gullible travels. It.
1:37:37
Is remarkable for it's innovative
1:37:39
structure. A. Tale within a
1:37:42
tale about a sailor shipwrecked
1:37:44
in the Mediterranean who finds
1:37:46
himself on an island ruled
1:37:48
by a gigantic serpent. Evil
1:37:53
cents a mile said Sen
1:37:55
John in. he may
1:37:58
sneak in A
1:38:01
storm came up with
1:38:04
us on the open sea and no chance
1:38:06
for us to reach harbor. The
1:38:09
wind grew sharp and made a
1:38:11
constant moan and there were hungry
1:38:13
14-foot high waves. A
1:38:16
piece of wood of some sort hit me and
1:38:19
then the ship was dead. Of
1:38:21
all those fine men, not
1:38:24
a one survived. I
1:38:27
was carried to a desert island by a swell
1:38:29
of the great green sea. The
1:38:39
man speaks with the great serpent who
1:38:42
tells him a sad story of his
1:38:44
own that his whole family was killed
1:38:46
when a star fell to earth. The
1:38:49
serpent tells the man not to fear
1:38:52
that a ship will eventually pass by
1:38:54
the island and rescue him, and
1:38:57
reassures him that he will soon have
1:38:59
a great story to tell. Now
1:39:08
you are going to spend one month and
1:39:11
then another until you finish
1:39:13
four months on this island. Then
1:39:16
a ship will come from Egypt
1:39:18
with sailors in it whom you
1:39:20
know that you may go
1:39:22
with them toward home and die
1:39:24
in your own city. What
1:39:28
joy for one who lives to
1:39:30
tell the things he has been through when
1:39:33
the suffering is over. Finally,
1:39:36
the predicted ship arrives and
1:39:39
the man is rescued. At
1:39:48
last, the ship arrived just
1:39:51
like the other two. As
1:40:00
fast as he had foretold, I
1:40:02
climbed a lofty tree and recognized
1:40:04
the sailors in the ship, and
1:40:06
went running to report it. Then
1:40:09
I descended to the shore near where the ship was. I
1:40:12
hailed the crew and offered thanks beside the
1:40:14
sea to the Lord of the Isle, and
1:40:17
those on board did likewise. We
1:40:28
have examples of myths and
1:40:30
legends written before this time,
1:40:32
and religious texts, but
1:40:34
this is not the story of some
1:40:36
bygone king or the actions of the
1:40:39
gods. It's a
1:40:41
story about an ordinary man in
1:40:43
a fantastical situation, told
1:40:45
seemingly just for the entertainment value
1:40:48
of telling a story, and
1:40:50
for that reason, it is possibly the
1:40:52
first true piece of literature. It
1:40:55
was likely written around the year 1900 BC, and
1:40:57
is therefore nearly 4000 years old. The
1:41:12
lives of Egypt's pharaohs take up so
1:41:14
much of the usual discussion of its
1:41:17
history, partly because they are
1:41:19
the ones who commissioned the inscriptions,
1:41:21
the monuments, and the statues. But
1:41:24
as the Middle Kingdom's flourishing of literature
1:41:26
continued, we get more and more of
1:41:29
a sense of what life was like
1:41:31
for ordinary people in the Nile Valley.
1:41:36
One text of this period, known
1:41:38
as the Papyrus Lansing, gives
1:41:40
a fascinating insight into the lives
1:41:43
of Egypt's common people. It
1:41:46
is written as a piece of rhetoric
1:41:48
by a master scribe to one
1:41:51
of his pupils, attempting to
1:41:53
convince him to become a scribe
1:41:55
in turn. And
1:41:57
from this, we get a wonderful impression.
1:42:00
of all the ways that people could make than
1:42:19
clothing, than oil. Yes,
1:42:23
it is more in
1:42:26
Egypt than a tomb in
1:42:28
the West. Look for
1:42:30
thyself with your own
1:42:32
eye. Here all the professions are
1:42:34
set before you. The
1:42:37
washerman spends the whole day
1:42:39
going up and down. Every
1:42:41
limb of his is a
1:42:43
weary, whitening the clothes of
1:42:45
his neighbors every day. The
1:42:49
potter is smeared with mud, like
1:42:51
a man in mourning. His
1:42:53
hands and feet are full of clay. He
1:42:56
is like one who lives in the bog.
1:43:00
The cobbler makes his tanning lotions.
1:43:02
His odor is marked. His
1:43:05
hands are red with dye, like
1:43:07
one who is smeared with his
1:43:09
blood. The florist makes bouquets
1:43:12
and makes the wine-jar stands
1:43:14
beautiful. He spends a night
1:43:16
of toil, sweating, like one on
1:43:19
whose body the sun is shining. The
1:43:22
merchants fare downstream and upstream and are as
1:43:24
busy as can be, carrying
1:43:27
wares from one town to another and
1:43:29
supplying him that hath not. If
1:43:33
thou hast any sense,
1:43:36
be a scribe. Whether
1:43:40
or not daily life was truly that
1:43:43
bad for all these other workers, we
1:43:45
can't tell, because of course
1:43:48
none of them wrote down how they felt.
1:43:58
Most of Egypt's people We're peasant
1:44:00
farmers, and even when they
1:44:02
practice these other professions, they
1:44:04
likely engaged in some farmers
1:44:07
to. These peasants
1:44:09
did not own the land they worked
1:44:11
and were required to give most of
1:44:13
the food they produced to the crown
1:44:15
or to their local temple. To.
1:44:19
Supplement their diets. Most houses
1:44:21
kept private kitchen gardens to.
1:44:24
Which. The women would tend while the
1:44:26
men went out to the fields. Egyptian
1:44:29
women were also responsible for baking
1:44:31
the bread they ate every day.
1:44:36
Bread in Egypt was made
1:44:38
primarily with emma wheat, though
1:44:40
was often pressed into play
1:44:42
modes and faced and at
1:44:45
times people got creative baking
1:44:47
bread in spirals like cinnamon
1:44:49
swell and using shaped modes
1:44:52
to bake loaves in the
1:44:54
form of animals. Those.
1:44:57
Who could afford it? Also
1:44:59
makes cakes and pastries out
1:45:02
of the finest flower sweetened
1:45:04
with dates and funny. Alongside
1:45:09
their bread addictions, eight
1:45:11
a varied diet including
1:45:13
garlic and spring onions,
1:45:15
lettuce, salary cucumbers, goods
1:45:18
and melons. They
1:45:20
supplemented these with high protein beans
1:45:23
and pulses might lentils and chick
1:45:25
peas, and a kind of edible
1:45:27
Cuba known as a Tiger not
1:45:30
that grows at the base of
1:45:32
Wetlands Sedges. All of this was
1:45:34
cooked in olive oil, at least
1:45:37
from the time the pyramids were
1:45:39
built. At
1:45:42
times they would also eat
1:45:44
meat primarily beef, lamb poor,
1:45:46
and goat as well as
1:45:49
Quayle. Pigeon, duck,
1:45:51
geese and partridge. mice
1:45:55
were even eaten at times
1:45:57
and even hedgehogs the egyptians
1:45:59
cook these spiky creatures by
1:46:02
wrapping them in wet clay and baking them
1:46:04
in it. And
1:46:06
when the clay was cracked open afterwards,
1:46:09
it took the hedgehog's spines with it. The
1:46:12
Egyptians also made cheese and
1:46:15
even foie gras made from
1:46:17
force-feeding geese. One
1:46:20
text written by a scribe
1:46:22
to the Queen Nefertari urges
1:46:25
people to share with others the
1:46:27
food they have. Do
1:46:30
not eat bread while another stands by
1:46:32
without extending your hand to him. As
1:46:35
to food, it is here
1:46:37
always. It is man who
1:46:39
does not last. One man
1:46:42
is rich, another is poor,
1:46:44
but food remains for him who shares
1:46:46
it. Beer
1:46:49
was exceptionally popular in Egypt
1:46:51
and people consumed it daily.
1:46:54
As a result, breweries were important
1:46:57
centers of industry. Beer
1:47:00
was thought to have been given
1:47:02
to Egypt by the goddess Hathor,
1:47:04
the goddess of beauty, music, and
1:47:06
dancing, and breweries were
1:47:08
watched over by the goddess Tenonet. So,
1:47:11
fittingly, many beer factories were run
1:47:14
by women. Some
1:47:16
of these were enormous and were capable
1:47:18
of brewing more than a million liters
1:47:20
a year. They
1:47:22
used large pottery vats propped
1:47:25
up on mud bricks over
1:47:27
crackling fires, and
1:47:29
inside these they heated barley and
1:47:31
water, then left the mixture to
1:47:34
ferment before flavoring the brew with
1:47:36
honey and syrups made
1:47:38
of dates and other fruit. There
1:47:41
was even one annual festival
1:47:43
called the Tech Festival that
1:47:46
would become known as the Festival of
1:47:48
Drunkenness. During
1:47:54
This fiesa, Egyptians would drink as much
1:47:56
beer as they could and then fall
1:47:58
asleep together in a. Large who.
1:48:00
They would then be woken all
1:48:02
together by the loud beating of
1:48:05
drums. It was said that in
1:48:07
the moment just after waking some
1:48:09
of them would meet the gotta
1:48:11
hustle a self. Egypt.
1:48:24
Was one of the most stable
1:48:27
and prosperous agricultural societies in the
1:48:29
ancient world. was it was a
1:48:31
society built entirely on the collection
1:48:34
and storage have grown. As
1:48:36
a result, there was one ever
1:48:39
present danger that was the presence
1:48:41
of mice and rats. Grain.
1:48:45
Was stored in large circular granaries
1:48:47
within the town's shaped like bee
1:48:50
hives and freshly harvested wheat or
1:48:52
barley was poured into a hole
1:48:54
in the top to be preserved
1:48:57
in the hot dry air. When
1:48:59
gray was needed for bread making
1:49:01
or beer brewing, it was taken
1:49:04
from a small door in the
1:49:06
bottom of these grannies. But
1:49:09
if mice got into this storage
1:49:11
or even eight the grain one
1:49:13
it was still in the fields,
1:49:15
then thousands of hours of work
1:49:17
could be wasted and people might
1:49:19
even staff. But
1:49:21
thankfully, Egyptians were able to
1:49:24
rely on one particular set
1:49:26
of allies. That.
1:49:29
Was. The domestic cat. There
1:49:36
were two major breeds of
1:49:38
wild native to Egypt, the
1:49:40
Jungle Cat oh Phyllis Chaus
1:49:43
and the African Wild Cat
1:49:45
Felis Sylvester Liberty. Of
1:49:48
these, the African Wild cat had
1:49:50
something of a karma temperament and
1:49:53
so was most commonly bread as
1:49:55
a pact with evidence of that
1:49:57
domestication in Egypt from at least
1:49:59
five. thousand years ago. These
1:50:04
cats were kept around Egyptian
1:50:06
settlements for their obvious utility,
1:50:09
both in controlling mice and
1:50:12
with their almost supernatural reflexes
1:50:14
for their ability to kill
1:50:16
venomous snakes. But
1:50:18
it's clear that the Egyptians also
1:50:20
enjoyed their company and even loved
1:50:22
them. Some
1:50:25
particularly beloved pets were buried with
1:50:27
tiny offerings intended to serve them
1:50:29
well in the cat
1:50:32
afterlife. The
1:50:34
Greek writer Diodorus of Sicily
1:50:36
recalls seeing Egyptians performing burial
1:50:38
ceremonies for their cats. When
1:50:43
one of these animals dies, they wrap
1:50:45
it in fine linen and then, wailing
1:50:48
and beating their breasts, carry it
1:50:50
off to be embalmed. And
1:50:53
after it has been treated with seed oil and
1:50:56
such spices as have the quality of
1:50:58
imparting a pleasant odor and
1:51:00
of preserving the body for a long time, they
1:51:03
lay it away in a consecrated tomb.
1:51:08
While the earliest domestication of the
1:51:10
house cats took place elsewhere in
1:51:12
the Fertile Crescent, it
1:51:14
was in Egypt that it accelerated
1:51:16
dramatically. As cats
1:51:19
got used to their new survival
1:51:21
niche, they in turn began to
1:51:23
adapt. They largely
1:51:25
lost their original camouflage coatings,
1:51:28
became smaller, and
1:51:30
even developed new ways of
1:51:33
signaling to their human patrons
1:51:35
with soft, insistent cries, modulated
1:51:38
to similar frequencies as a
1:51:40
human baby. Fittingly,
1:51:43
the Egyptian word for cat
1:51:46
was mu. Over
1:51:52
time, this adoration of their
1:51:54
feline companions seems to have
1:51:56
become a religious reverence too.
1:52:00
ease and grace, cats in
1:52:02
Egypt were associated with femininity,
1:52:05
and paintings in tombs often show the
1:52:07
household dog sitting below a man's chair,
1:52:10
while a cat sits under the
1:52:12
woman's chair. One
1:52:14
goddess named Bastet would soon
1:52:17
become revered, and
1:52:19
she manifested as a woman with the head
1:52:21
of a house cat. Bastet
1:52:24
became a god of fertility, and
1:52:26
women would appeal to her during
1:52:29
times of childbirth and pregnancy. Diodorus
1:52:32
later records seeing an Egyptian
1:52:35
festival during which cats were
1:52:37
ritually fed. For
1:52:40
the cats, they break up bread into milk
1:52:43
and calling them with a clucking sound set it
1:52:45
before them, or else they cut
1:52:47
up fish caught in the Nile and feed the
1:52:49
flesh to them raw. All
1:52:52
who meet these animals fall down before
1:52:54
them and render them with honor. The
1:52:59
Egyptians were also fiercely protective
1:53:01
of their feline companions as
1:53:04
Diodorus recounts. Whoever
1:53:07
kills a cat, whether
1:53:09
intentionally or unintentionally, he
1:53:12
is certainly put to death. For
1:53:15
common people gathering crowds and
1:53:17
deal with the perpetrator most cruelly,
1:53:20
sometimes doing this without waiting for
1:53:22
a trial. The
1:53:26
worship and veneration of cats
1:53:28
would continue throughout all the
1:53:30
thousands of years of ancient
1:53:32
Egyptian history, and for
1:53:34
the cats, it is perhaps something
1:53:36
that they have never quite forgotten. The
1:53:44
Middle Kingdom was not just a
1:53:46
time of entertainment and pleasure. With
1:53:49
the Mania 4 pyramid building somewhat
1:53:51
subsided, certain pharaohs engaged
1:53:54
in large-scale construction projects to
1:53:56
strengthen and develop the Empire.
1:54:00
King spends much of his life
1:54:02
on Avast irrigation projects around the
1:54:04
oasis. At For You, I'm determined
1:54:06
to turn it into a productive
1:54:09
swathe of farmland. Another built a
1:54:11
large series of defensive wolves in
1:54:13
the Nile Delta, hemming Egypt off
1:54:16
from the people of the White
1:54:18
and Middle East, whom the Egyptians
1:54:20
called Asiaticks. These
1:54:23
people were often depicted in
1:54:25
their paintings with lighter more
1:54:27
yellowish skyn than the Egyptians
1:54:30
and were held in general
1:54:32
contempt as uncivilized barbarians. The.
1:54:36
Egyptians soon began pushing their sphere
1:54:38
of influence into this area. Expanding.
1:54:41
Their territory north along the
1:54:43
Mediterranean coast and into Palestine.
1:54:47
They crossed the Sinai Desert and
1:54:49
subjugated the Phoenicians city of people.
1:54:51
Us. Then. They turned
1:54:53
their attention south to East
1:54:55
and Africa. What the Egyptians
1:54:58
called the Horizon Lands the
1:55:00
lands of the nutrients. Like
1:55:10
the light skinned is the
1:55:12
six in the North, the
1:55:14
Egyptians considered the southern new
1:55:16
Peons different to them and
1:55:18
usually depicted them with darker
1:55:20
skin than Egyptians and more
1:55:22
typically African features. At this
1:55:24
time, these kingdoms well relatively
1:55:26
under developed and will easy
1:55:28
prey for an aggressive and
1:55:31
expansionist Egypt. We've
1:55:36
already seen that the first cataracts
1:55:38
of the Nile was at a
1:55:41
swan where the granite bedrock forced
1:55:43
the water into a series of
1:55:45
rushing white water rapids. If
1:55:48
an ancient Egyptian traveled up river,
1:55:50
beyond a swan and into the
1:55:52
horizon lands, they would encounter five
1:55:55
more major cataracts of the Nile.
1:55:58
visa each places where the
1:56:00
river becomes shallow and and
1:56:05
so they were natural stops along any
1:56:09
they were also the obvious place to
1:56:11
draw borders. During
1:56:13
the Middle Kingdom, Egypt marched
1:56:16
into the horizon lands multiple times
1:56:18
and pushed its southern border as far
1:56:21
as the Second Cataract. Around
1:56:24
the 1860s BC, one
1:56:27
Middle Kingdom king named Senusret
1:56:29
III marched even further
1:56:32
south into the Nubian kingdoms
1:56:34
of Kush and Punt. He
1:56:37
remembers this brutal campaign in
1:56:39
one inscription. The
1:56:44
Nubians are wretches,
1:56:46
craven-hearted. My Majesty
1:56:48
has seen it. It is not an
1:56:50
untruth. I have captured their
1:56:53
women. I have carried off their subjects,
1:56:55
poisoned their wells, killed
1:56:58
their cattle, cut down
1:57:00
their grains, set fire
1:57:02
to it. In
1:57:07
this remorseless fashion, Senusret marched
1:57:09
beyond the Second Cataract and
1:57:11
built a powerful set of
1:57:13
fortresses. We get
1:57:16
a sense for their purpose from the names
1:57:18
the Egyptians gave to them. One
1:57:21
of them at Askut was
1:57:23
named Crushing the Nubians, while
1:57:25
another at Shalfak was named
1:57:28
Subduing the Foreign Lands. In
1:57:31
another imposing fortress at Semna,
1:57:34
now more than 400 kilometers upstream
1:57:36
from the former border of
1:57:38
Aswan, Senusret left
1:57:41
a stone monument with the
1:57:43
following triumphant inscription. Year
1:57:47
16, third month of winter,
1:57:50
the king made his southern boundary.
1:57:53
I have made my boundary further south
1:57:55
than my father's. I have
1:57:57
added to what was bequeathed me. as
1:58:00
for any son of mine who
1:58:02
shall maintain this border which my
1:58:05
majesty has made. He
1:58:07
is my son, but
1:58:09
he who abandons it, who fails to
1:58:11
fight for it, he is not my
1:58:13
son. He was not born to me.
1:58:22
These forts were manned by powerful
1:58:24
units of Egyptian soldiers, tasked
1:58:27
with keeping order among the
1:58:29
newly colonized Nubians. To
1:58:32
this end, they engaged in a
1:58:34
paranoid surveillance regime of the local
1:58:36
people. To
1:58:38
the Pharaoh Senosrat, they sent back
1:58:40
constant updates on papyrus scrolls about
1:58:43
the movements of even the most
1:58:45
minute groups of Nubians, some
1:58:48
of which have survived. The
1:58:52
patrol who went forth to patrol the desert
1:58:54
edge from the fortress Kesev
1:58:56
Maja in year 3,
1:58:58
month 3 of the growing season, last
1:59:00
day have come to report to me saying, we
1:59:02
have found the tracks of 32 men and 3
1:59:05
donkeys. All
1:59:09
these dispatches end in the same
1:59:11
way, with the same comforting
1:59:13
offer of reassurance to the king.
1:59:17
All the affairs of the king's domain are safe
1:59:20
and sound. All the affairs
1:59:22
of the master are safe and sound. But
1:59:26
we have reason to believe that
1:59:28
King Senosrat was not entirely reassured.
1:59:32
He is famous for the numerous
1:59:34
sculptures he had made of himself,
1:59:36
statues carved from black diorite
1:59:39
that depict him in strangely
1:59:41
realistic fashion, unlike any
1:59:43
depictions of a pharaoh that had come
1:59:46
before. In these
1:59:48
statues, his ears are extended to
1:59:50
enormous proportions like a bat, Perhaps
1:59:53
projecting the image of a king
1:59:55
who heard every movement in his
1:59:58
kingdom, relayed by his extensive. System
2:00:00
of Spies. Three
2:00:02
of these statues in particular. so
2:00:05
the king first as a boy,
2:00:07
then as a man, and finally
2:00:10
in old age. In
2:00:12
this final statue we get a sense for
2:00:14
the mental toll and took on a man
2:00:17
to sit at the top of this
2:00:19
paranoid system. The. Pharaohs weary
2:00:21
sunken eyes is haggard
2:00:23
face contorted in an
2:00:25
expression of eternal worry.
2:00:29
Today. These three statues stand
2:00:31
as a kind of metaphor for
2:00:33
the state the Egyptian Middle Kingdom
2:00:35
had sunk into during it's final
2:00:38
decades. Sonos threat
2:00:40
Sun I met him at the
2:00:42
third did just as his father's
2:00:45
inscriptions had urged and held the
2:00:47
southern border against the new peons.
2:00:49
But following his reign, Egypt was
2:00:52
once more plunged into a succession
2:00:54
crisis. The.
2:00:59
Crisis was so severe that their
2:01:01
next king was something that had
2:01:03
until then been almost unthinkable. A
2:01:06
woman. Her
2:01:08
name was so back next room, possibly
2:01:10
the daughter, sister, or wife of the
2:01:13
previous pharaoh. She was probably not the
2:01:15
first woman to hold power in Egypt,
2:01:17
but she was the first one to
2:01:19
attain the full official title of a
2:01:22
king. So back
2:01:24
never used masculine titles in her
2:01:26
inscriptions, and one statue of her
2:01:28
even shows how wearing an unconventional
2:01:31
mixture of male and female clothing.
2:01:34
However, she did not succeed in
2:01:36
slowing the dinner steep decline. She.
2:01:40
Died after rulings only four
2:01:42
years and did not leave
2:01:44
any as. After
2:01:46
that. The serpent is
2:01:48
fat, uncoiled once more. And
2:01:51
Egypt slid into chaos. During
2:01:56
the time that followed known as
2:01:58
the second in. Immediate period.
2:02:01
There were one hundred and fifty
2:02:03
years during which at least fifty
2:02:05
kings ruled. Egypt.
2:02:08
Once again split into and local
2:02:10
governors stopped messing the king and
2:02:12
that to and script since. The
2:02:16
pyramids of this period had already
2:02:18
become a small and meager, mostly
2:02:20
built from mud brick. But.
2:02:23
Now that construction stopped. all
2:02:25
together. Some kings
2:02:27
were even buried, and simple
2:02:29
shaft tombs little better than
2:02:32
communists. Much
2:02:34
of the Nile delta of Lower Egypt
2:02:36
had already broken away from the empire,
2:02:38
and now in the south, the people
2:02:40
of New Be or were in open
2:02:42
rebellion. One
2:02:45
by one, the Egyptians were forced
2:02:47
to let go of their southern
2:02:49
forts, abandoning them to the nutrients.
2:02:52
Once a symbol of the
2:02:54
empire confidence, these powerful fortresses
2:02:57
now became unprecedented military assets
2:02:59
for their enemies. And
2:03:02
basis from which powerful raiding
2:03:04
parties ranged ever father into
2:03:06
Egypt. The cruelty
2:03:08
that the Egyptians had shown to their
2:03:10
new be a neighbor's was now being
2:03:12
paid back in full. With.
2:03:16
The northern and southern borders convulsed
2:03:18
in conflict. Egypt's trade links with
2:03:20
the rest of the world was
2:03:23
severely disrupted. It
2:03:25
was also during this time or
2:03:27
perhaps later, that the entire Mediterranean
2:03:29
in fact, most of the world.
2:03:32
Witnessed. One of the largest
2:03:34
natural disasters in human history.
2:03:37
That is the eruption of the
2:03:39
Volcano Thera. Now known
2:03:41
as the Greek Island of
2:03:43
Santorini. only seven hundred kilometers
2:03:45
from the Egyptian coast. it's
2:03:57
likely that the egyptians would have heard the
2:03:59
deep boom this explosion, which
2:04:01
went off with the Indonesian
2:04:07
volcano Krakatoa erupted in
2:04:13
1883, the explosion was heard more than 3,000 kilometers away, and it's thought
2:04:17
that the Thera explosion was at least four times more powerful. Today,
2:04:21
the seawater-filled volcanic crater left
2:04:23
by the eruption is
2:04:26
more than 10 kilometers wide. This
2:04:31
event may have ejected more than 40
2:04:33
square kilometers of rock into the
2:04:36
atmosphere. The black
2:04:38
plume would have been riven with
2:04:40
volcanic lightning, and it would
2:04:42
have triggered tsunamis 10 meters high that
2:04:45
would have devastated coastal regions, as
2:04:48
well as causing a volcanic winter. The
2:04:51
eruption may have wiped out the
2:04:53
Minoan civilization on Crete in one
2:04:55
blow, perhaps inspiring part
2:04:58
of the Atlantis myth, and
2:05:00
chronicles as far away as China
2:05:02
record a period when the sky
2:05:04
turned a strange yellow color and
2:05:06
crop yields fell. One
2:05:09
Egyptian inscription known as the
2:05:12
Tempest Stelae may record some
2:05:14
memory of this terrifying event.
2:05:20
The gods expressed their discontent.
2:05:23
The gods made the sky come with a tempest.
2:05:26
It caused darkness in the western region.
2:05:29
The sky was unleashed, more
2:05:31
powerful on the mountains than the turbulence
2:05:33
of the cataract at Uthuan. Each
2:05:36
house, each shelter that they
2:05:38
reached were floating in the water like
2:05:41
the box of papyrus outside the royal
2:05:43
residence for days. Volcanic
2:05:47
ash or tephra would have begun
2:05:49
to rain down on the whole
2:05:52
region, and today can be detected
2:05:54
at virtually every site in the
2:05:56
eastern Mediterranean. Spurred
2:06:01
by this natural disaster and
2:06:22
from across the Sinai desert, and
2:06:25
they intended to conquer Egypt and
2:06:27
rule it for themselves, these
2:06:30
people were known as the
2:06:32
Hyksos. The
2:06:43
word Hyksos comes from the
2:06:45
Egyptian phrase, Haka'u kesut, meaning
2:06:49
rulers of foreign lands. Where
2:06:53
exactly the Hyksos were from is
2:06:55
unknown, but it's thought they may
2:06:57
have originated in the region of Syria, and
2:07:00
one thing seems to have been
2:07:02
behind their great military success, and
2:07:05
that was the chariot. At
2:07:10
this point, some form of chariot
2:07:12
had been used by various societies
2:07:14
for many centuries. Vehicles
2:07:17
like a kind of war cart
2:07:19
with four solid wooden wheels pulled
2:07:22
by donkeys are depicted on the
2:07:24
Sumerian standard of Ur, which was
2:07:26
created around the time that the
2:07:28
pyramids of Giza were being built,
2:07:31
but Egypt had never experimented with
2:07:33
this kind of vehicle, and
2:07:36
over the preceding millennium, the technology
2:07:38
had taken huge leaps forward.
2:07:42
The chariots that the Hyksos brought
2:07:44
into Egypt for the first time
2:07:46
had two wheels with spokes, light
2:07:48
and fast, and they were each
2:07:50
pulled by two powerful animals that
2:07:52
had been recently introduced to the
2:07:54
region, the horse. These
2:08:01
chariots were strong and mobile
2:08:03
battle platforms that could break
2:08:05
enemy battle lines, while
2:08:07
onboard archers with powerful bows
2:08:10
compelled enemies with missiles. Whether
2:08:13
the Hixos arrived in Egypt as
2:08:15
a violent invasion or a more
2:08:17
peaceful migration is somewhat up for
2:08:20
debate. People from the
2:08:22
north have been settling in the Nile Delta
2:08:24
for centuries, and much of
2:08:26
the population there was already what the
2:08:28
Egyptians would consider foreign by the time
2:08:31
the Hixos rulers arrived. But
2:08:33
the Hixos were clearly not pacifists.
2:08:36
They set up their own kingdom in
2:08:38
the Nile Delta with its capital at
2:08:41
Avaris, and in a
2:08:43
devastating blow to Egyptian morale, even
2:08:46
swept south to capture the
2:08:48
ancient capital of Memphis. One
2:08:52
much later source named Manetho
2:08:54
records the arrival of the
2:08:56
Hixos. By
2:09:00
main force, they easily seized the
2:09:02
country without striking a blow, and
2:09:05
having overpowered the rulers of the land, they
2:09:08
then burned our cities ruthlessly, raised
2:09:11
to the ground the temples of the
2:09:13
gods. Finally,
2:09:16
they appointed as king one of the number.
2:09:19
He had a seat in Memphis, levying
2:09:21
tribute from upper and lower Egypt,
2:09:24
and always leaving garrisons behind in
2:09:26
the most advantageous positions. The
2:09:30
pyramids, that great symbol
2:09:32
of Egyptian prestige, were
2:09:34
now in foreign hands. Egyptian
2:09:37
kings would now retreat back to
2:09:40
their former capital in upper Egypt,
2:09:42
the city of Thebes. With
2:09:46
the Nubians increasingly powerful in the south,
2:09:48
and now the new threat of these
2:09:51
Hixos kings looming from the north, the
2:09:54
weakened Egyptians increasingly felt like they
2:09:56
were being crushed in a vice.
2:10:01
For a time, it must have seemed
2:10:03
like the age of an independent Egypt
2:10:05
was over. One
2:10:11
king named Camoza, who came to the
2:10:13
throne of Thebes around 1555 BC, would
2:10:15
put this intolerable situation
2:10:19
in the following terms. I
2:10:25
should like to know what serves
2:10:27
this strength of mine when a
2:10:29
chieftain is in Avaris and another
2:10:32
in Qush, and I
2:10:34
sit united with an Asiatic and
2:10:36
a Nubian, each in possession
2:10:38
of his slice of Egypt, and
2:10:41
I cannot pass by him as
2:10:43
far as Memphis. No
2:10:45
man can settle down when despoiled
2:10:47
by the taxes of the Asiatics. I
2:10:50
will grapple with him, that I
2:10:53
may rip open his belly. My
2:10:55
wish is to save Egypt and
2:10:57
to smite the Asiatic. King
2:11:02
Camoza may have had a very
2:11:04
personal reason to hate the Hyksos.
2:11:08
The mummified remains of the previous
2:11:10
pharaoh, his father, have been uncovered,
2:11:13
and modern analysis shows that he
2:11:15
suffered brutal wounds to the head
2:11:17
from a heavy bladed weapon. These
2:11:21
blows must have sliced his cheek
2:11:23
and fractured his jaw and skull,
2:11:25
leading many to conclude that he
2:11:27
died on the battlefield. The
2:11:30
king's body was then rushed back
2:11:32
to Thebes, where it was hastily
2:11:34
mummified. If Prince
2:11:36
Camoza saw his father's body in this
2:11:39
state as it was carried back into
2:11:41
the city, we can only imagine the
2:11:43
kind of hatred that must have burned
2:11:45
in his heart towards the
2:11:47
Hyksos invaders in the north. But
2:11:51
many in Camoza's court were clearly afraid
2:11:53
of what a war with the Hyksos
2:11:55
would do to the fragile
2:11:57
state of the country. One
2:12:00
text known as the Kanavon tablet
2:12:02
describes how they appeal to their
2:12:05
king to maintain the peace. We
2:12:09
are tranquil in our part of Egypt. Our
2:12:12
swan at the first cataract is strong and
2:12:14
the middle part of the land is with us. Men
2:12:17
kill for us the finest of their lands.
2:12:20
They allow our cattle to pasture in the papyrus
2:12:22
marshes. Corn is sent for
2:12:24
our swine. Our cattle
2:12:26
are not taken away. He
2:12:29
holds the land of Asiatics. We
2:12:31
hold Egypt. Only when
2:12:33
one comes against us should we act
2:12:35
against him. But
2:12:39
Camoza refused. He
2:12:43
wanted to strike a blow at the Hyksos, but
2:12:46
he knew that he would have to secure
2:12:48
the southern border first and
2:12:50
recapture the old fortress of Buhen
2:12:53
just before the second cataract of the Nile.
2:12:57
Buhen was one of the strong
2:12:59
walled bastions built by Senesret III,
2:13:02
and it was one of the only forts
2:13:04
the Egyptians built from stone rather than brick.
2:13:08
But since the collapse of the Middle Kingdom,
2:13:10
its garrison had served a Nubian lord
2:13:13
from the kingdom of Kush. If
2:13:16
the southern border was to hold while
2:13:18
Camoza expelled the Hyksos in the north,
2:13:21
he would need to recapture the fort
2:13:23
of Buhen. Camoza
2:13:28
marched south, preparing to
2:13:30
assault the fort, but it
2:13:33
seems that upon sighting the enormous
2:13:35
Egyptian army on the horizon, the
2:13:37
citizens of the fortress got the
2:13:39
message and decided to
2:13:41
swear allegiance to the pharaoh without a
2:13:43
fight. With
2:13:46
this powerful fort now holding the south,
2:13:48
Camoza marched back to Thebes and prepared
2:13:52
for the next campaign season, when
2:13:54
he would seek to bring war to the Hyksos
2:13:57
and unite Egypt once more. In
2:14:01
the third year of his reign, Camusus
2:14:03
struck. I
2:14:06
sailed north in my might to
2:14:08
repel the Asiatics through the command
2:14:10
of Amun, with my brave
2:14:12
army before me like a flame of
2:14:15
fire and the archers atop our fighting
2:14:17
decks. Camusus'
2:14:20
fleet descended swiftly on the
2:14:22
Hyksos in what appears to have
2:14:24
been something of a surprise attack. But
2:14:27
off guard, the foreigners were defeated,
2:14:29
and the vengeance of Camusus was
2:14:32
terrible. When
2:14:36
they dawned, I was upon him as
2:14:38
Iskit were a hawk. When
2:14:40
breakfast time came, I overthrew
2:14:42
him, having destroyed his walls
2:14:44
and slaughtered his people, and
2:14:47
made his wife descend to the riverbank. The
2:14:50
army acted like lions with
2:14:53
their spoils, jettles, cattle, fat,
2:14:55
honey, dividing their things their
2:14:58
hearts joyful. As
2:15:00
for a virus on the two rivers,
2:15:03
I laid it waste without
2:15:05
inhabitants. I destroyed their
2:15:07
towns and burned their homes
2:15:09
to reddened ruin heaps forever.
2:15:12
Because of the destruction they had
2:15:15
wrought in the midst of Egypt,
2:15:17
they who had allowed themselves to
2:15:19
hearken to the call of the
2:15:22
Asiatics had forsaken Egypt their mistress.
2:15:26
The king of the Hyksos immediately appealed
2:15:28
to his Nubian ally, the king of
2:15:31
Kush, for help.
2:15:33
At one point, the Egyptians intercepted
2:15:35
a secret message traveling south along
2:15:37
the desert roads, the
2:15:39
contents of which they recorded. Have
2:15:44
you noticed what Egypt has done
2:15:46
against me? The ruler
2:15:48
who is there, Camusse, penetrates my
2:15:51
territory even though I have not
2:15:53
attacked him as he has you.
2:15:57
He chooses these two lands in order to
2:15:59
afflict the land. my land
2:16:02
and yours, and he has
2:16:04
ravaged them. Come northward,
2:16:06
do not flinch. Then
2:16:08
we shall divide up the towns
2:16:10
of Egypt." When
2:16:15
this messenger returned to the
2:16:17
embattled Hixos king, shame-faced and
2:16:19
with the letter undelivered, he
2:16:21
must have known that all was lost. The
2:16:25
war came to a swift end, and
2:16:27
Camoso recounts with perhaps some
2:16:30
exaggeration his heroic return
2:16:32
to Thebes. What
2:16:36
a happy home trip
2:16:38
for the ruler. Life,
2:16:41
prosperity, happiness. With
2:16:43
his army ahead of him, they
2:16:45
had the casualties, nor did anyone
2:16:47
blame his fellow, nor did their
2:16:49
hearts weep. I moored
2:16:51
on home soil during the season
2:16:53
of inundation. The riverbank
2:16:56
was resplendent. Thebes was
2:16:58
vested. Women and men had come
2:17:00
to see. Every woman
2:17:02
hugged her neighbor. No
2:17:04
one was tearful. His
2:17:10
son, Ahmosa, would press this advantage,
2:17:13
and in an even more
2:17:15
devastating campaign, seized the ancient
2:17:17
capital of Memphis. Ahmosa
2:17:20
would be the first pharaoh in at
2:17:22
least a hundred years to recapture the
2:17:24
great pyramids of Giza, and
2:17:27
we can imagine his feelings as he
2:17:29
gazed up at the monuments of his
2:17:31
ancestors, Kufu and Kaphle, by now already
2:17:34
more than a thousand years old. It's
2:17:37
clear that the site inspired him, and
2:17:40
he would even build a pyramid of his
2:17:42
own in Upper Egypt at the site of
2:17:44
Abydos. This was
2:17:46
one of the first pyramids built for an
2:17:49
Egyptian pharaoh since the fall of the Middle
2:17:51
Kingdom, and it was
2:17:53
clearly designed as a symbol of renewal
2:17:55
of the Empire's great legacy. But
2:17:58
it would also be the last ever-ending empire. ever pyramid
2:18:00
built by an Egyptian ruler. After
2:18:05
securing the Nile Delta, Ahmosa
2:18:07
marched north and even crossed
2:18:09
the Sinai, smashing through the
2:18:11
traditional heartland of the Hixos
2:18:13
people and seizing territory in
2:18:15
Palestine in the region of
2:18:17
modern Gaza. After
2:18:20
that, he returned to the southern people
2:18:22
of Kush and pushed the Empire's borders
2:18:25
farther south than they had ever been,
2:18:28
beyond the second cataract to the river
2:18:30
island of Sa'i, now in
2:18:32
northern Sudan. From
2:18:34
its lowest ebb, Egypt had suddenly
2:18:37
re-emerged as a major regional power.
2:18:40
This was the age of the New Kingdom.
2:18:55
During the five centuries of the
2:18:57
New Kingdom, Egypt would reach its
2:18:59
greatest territorial extent and
2:19:01
construct some of its most impressive
2:19:04
monuments and artifacts. Despite
2:19:07
recapturing Memphis, its kings saw
2:19:10
no reason to move the capital again, and
2:19:12
so they now once again ruled from the
2:19:15
city of Thebes, far up the
2:19:17
river in Upper Egypt. By
2:19:20
now, Egypt had also adopted the
2:19:22
technology of the horse-drawn chariot from
2:19:25
their Hixos foes and its armies
2:19:27
were now made up of powerful
2:19:29
contingents of these vehicles. During
2:19:33
these centuries, Egypt saw the
2:19:35
rule of its first great woman
2:19:37
pharaoh, Hatshepsut, who was one
2:19:39
of its most prolific builders. She
2:19:42
constructed the towering temple complex
2:19:44
at Karnak and the stately
2:19:47
mortuary temple known as the
2:19:49
Holy of Holies. She
2:19:52
also undertook a voyage in five
2:19:54
ships to the land of Punt,
2:19:57
somewhere in Africa, and brought
2:19:59
back incense trees. and other goods
2:20:01
to Egypt which she ships
2:20:08
returned with the marvels of the land
2:20:10
of Punt and with all
2:20:12
the good woods of Tanuta with
2:20:14
heaps of incense with
2:20:16
trees producing green fragrance with
2:20:19
ebony and pure ivory with
2:20:22
gold and green agates found in
2:20:24
the land of the Amu with
2:20:26
hides of the panthers of the South. Never
2:20:29
since the beginning of the world have
2:20:32
the like of these wonders been brought
2:20:34
by any king. The
2:20:38
New Kingdom would also see some
2:20:40
of the most striking dramas emerge
2:20:42
in the royal courts of Egypt.
2:20:45
Of these, none have drawn so
2:20:47
much attention as the story of
2:20:49
one pharaoh. He has
2:20:51
been described by some as a
2:20:53
revolutionary, by others as a
2:20:56
visionary, and by others still
2:20:58
as simply insane. He
2:21:01
was a ruler named Amunhotep
2:21:03
IV. Amunhotep
2:21:11
came to the throne around 1350
2:21:14
BC. He had
2:21:16
inherited his name from his father
2:21:19
who had ruled as Amunhotep III.
2:21:22
Like most Egyptian names, it
2:21:25
included the name of a god, Amun, and
2:21:27
it meant Amun is satisfied. Amun
2:21:32
had long been the god of the
2:21:34
city of Thebes and was considered the
2:21:36
god of fertility and of the wind.
2:21:39
But when the Hixos were expelled
2:21:41
from Egypt and Thebes became the
2:21:43
capital once more, this god
2:21:46
Amun was given something of a
2:21:48
promotion. He was unified
2:21:50
with the sun god Ra to
2:21:52
create a compound deity now known
2:21:55
as Amun-Ra, the perfect symbol of
2:21:57
the power of a new united
2:21:59
Egypt. Egypt. Amun-Ra
2:22:07
was depicted as a man bearing a high
2:22:12
crown, and later would be shown
2:22:18
to be placed at the head of all the king
2:22:23
of the gods and creator of
2:22:25
the universe. One
2:22:28
hymn to Amun-Ra describes the
2:22:30
primacy of his position. The
2:22:46
Pharaoh Amunhotep IV would keep his
2:22:49
name for the first four years
2:22:51
of his rule, but around
2:22:53
his fifth year on the throne,
2:22:55
he made the unprecedented decision to
2:22:57
change his royal name. That's
2:23:00
because he had a vision of a new
2:23:02
system of belief that he wanted
2:23:04
to spread over all of Egypt. He
2:23:07
wanted to do away with the messiness
2:23:10
of Egyptian religion and the
2:23:12
system of different gods in different
2:23:14
cities, different temples and cults and
2:23:16
priests. He devised
2:23:18
a new system of worship that focused
2:23:21
not on any god but on the
2:23:23
sun itself, which he seems to have
2:23:25
believed was his true father. This
2:23:29
new god would be depicted as
2:23:31
a bare impersonal disk showering the
2:23:33
earth with beams of light. It
2:23:37
would be called simply the orb or
2:23:40
in Egyptian the arton. Even
2:23:44
surviving hymn to the arton, perhaps
2:23:46
even written by the Pharaoh himself,
2:23:48
shows the enormous power this new
2:23:50
god was supposed to have. written
2:24:00
motif. O
2:24:04
soul god, like whom there is no other. Thou
2:24:07
discreate the world according to thy
2:24:10
desire. You are in
2:24:12
my heart. There is no other who
2:24:14
knows you. Every land
2:24:16
chatters at its rising every day. Around
2:24:26
year five of his reign, the
2:24:29
Pharaoh Amunhotep abandoned his old name
2:24:31
that paid respect to the god
2:24:33
Amun and changed it to a
2:24:35
new name for his new god.
2:24:38
This new name meant effective spirit
2:24:41
for the Aten. He
2:24:43
was now the Pharaoh Akhenaten.
2:24:49
Akhenaten is the first recorded person
2:24:51
in history to have started a
2:24:54
new religion by himself. He
2:24:56
was also the first monotheist. In
2:25:00
Akhenaten's kingdom, only the Aten
2:25:02
could be worshipped. Temples
2:25:04
to Amun were eventually shut down
2:25:07
and all worship of the former god
2:25:09
was banned. The
2:25:11
king even sent out workmen and
2:25:13
soldiers to all corners of Egypt
2:25:15
where they burst into temples with
2:25:17
hammers and chisels and chipped the
2:25:19
name of Amun off the walls.
2:25:23
His determination to rid his kingdom
2:25:25
of Amun was so great that
2:25:27
he even sent workmen climbing to
2:25:29
the top of the red pyramid
2:25:32
of Sneferu to chip the name
2:25:34
of Amun from the pyramid's topmost
2:25:36
capstone. To the
2:25:38
Egyptians, used as they were
2:25:40
to placating a whole host of deities
2:25:43
with prayers and offerings, this
2:25:45
radical shift must have seemed like
2:25:47
a frightening and risky gamble. Many
2:25:50
must have feared to turn their
2:25:52
backs on their old, trusted gods
2:25:55
and consort with this new and
2:25:57
untested ideology. But
2:25:59
the kings The word was the king's
2:26:01
word and for the most part they
2:26:03
seem to have fallen into line. At
2:26:08
first I cannot and converted old
2:26:10
temples in thebes to the art
2:26:12
and and even began constructing some
2:26:14
new ones, but he soon went
2:26:16
off the idea. Thebes.
2:26:19
His old temples were covered with
2:26:21
carvings and hieroglyphs praising the other
2:26:23
gods and the depth of their
2:26:25
history Couldn't be a raised over
2:26:28
night. Thebes was
2:26:30
also home to a powerful
2:26:32
priestly class that resisted his
2:26:34
reforms. In
2:26:36
answer to this problem I can
2:26:39
I'm took the remarkable decision to
2:26:41
build an entirely new capital. He
2:26:43
would fill that out in the
2:26:45
middle of the desert as completely
2:26:48
uninhabited location. Half way between
2:26:50
Memphis and Thebes. He
2:26:53
would call this city the horizon
2:26:55
of the autumn or in Egyptian
2:26:57
Aca talked and. Standing.
2:27:01
Out on the back and level plane
2:27:03
where he hoped to build his new
2:27:05
city. The Pharaoh Akhenaten
2:27:07
gave the following proclamation to
2:27:10
his courtiers. The.
2:27:15
Arts and desires, but they're be
2:27:17
made for him. a monument with
2:27:19
an eternal and everlasting name. It
2:27:22
is Ah Tung my father who
2:27:24
gave may council concerning it's no
2:27:27
official has ever given May Council,
2:27:29
not any of the people who
2:27:31
are in the entire land. As
2:27:34
our cats are some I shall make
2:27:36
the house of us. This
2:27:45
new city would be furnished with
2:27:47
everything a royal capital needed. Palaces.
2:27:50
for i cannot and and
2:27:52
his chief wife never tt
2:27:54
along with his for otherwise
2:27:57
gardens tombs administrative buildings and
2:27:59
works and of course
2:28:01
a vast temple complex to this
2:28:08
city would take at least eight delegations
2:28:27
from all over the region, from
2:28:29
the Hittites, from Syria and
2:28:32
islands in the Mediterranean like Cyprus
2:28:34
and Crete, as well as
2:28:36
from the Nubian lands of Punt and Kush
2:28:38
in the south, all
2:28:41
here to bear witness to the glory of
2:28:43
his new city and his
2:28:45
successful conversion of his empire.
2:28:49
The priests may have grumbled, the
2:28:51
common people may have fretted, but
2:28:53
he had finally done it. The
2:28:56
ceremony must have been grand, full
2:28:59
of celebration and pomp, musicians
2:29:01
and dancers, the
2:29:03
burning of incense and feasts of
2:29:05
fine foods. We
2:29:07
can imagine the foreign guests listening
2:29:10
to the singing of hymns like the
2:29:12
following to the new god Artyn.
2:29:18
Thou didst create the world according
2:29:21
to thy desire. All
2:29:23
men, cattle and wild beasts, whatever
2:29:26
is on earth going upon its feet,
2:29:29
and what is on high flying with
2:29:31
its wings. The
2:29:33
countries of Syria and Nubia, the
2:29:36
land of Egypt, thou
2:29:38
sittest every man in his place,
2:29:41
thou supplyst their necessities, their
2:29:44
tongues are separate in speech and
2:29:47
their natures as well. Everyone
2:29:50
has his food and
2:29:52
his time of life is reckoned.
2:30:00
But the consequences of this piece
2:30:02
of been
2:30:06
spreading around the Middle East for some
2:30:08
time now, affecting lands in
2:30:10
Syria and the Hittite Empire in
2:30:13
what is now Turkey. One
2:30:16
group of texts written around this time
2:30:19
known as the Hittite Plague Prayers
2:30:21
invoke the gods to deliver them
2:30:24
from this disaster. For
2:30:27
20 years now people have been dying in
2:30:29
Hatti. Will the plague never
2:30:32
be removed from Hatti? I
2:30:34
cannot control the worry in my heart.
2:30:37
I can no longer control the anguish of
2:30:39
my soul. With
2:30:43
foreign dignitaries coming from all over
2:30:45
the region, with large entourages and
2:30:48
doubtless groups of slaves in tow,
2:30:50
a deadly dose of this disease
2:30:52
arrived that year in the heart
2:30:55
of Egypt, and from there
2:30:57
would have spread all up and down
2:30:59
the Nile. If
2:31:01
Akhenaten had hoped that this ceremony
2:31:03
would secure his people's confidence
2:31:05
in his new god, then it
2:31:08
couldn't have backfired more dramatically. In
2:31:12
the pandemic that followed, no
2:31:14
one was safe. Numerous
2:31:16
deaths may even have occurred
2:31:18
within Akhenaten's family, perhaps including
2:31:21
his mother, his wife, and
2:31:23
three of his daughters. If
2:31:25
the situation was so severe, even in the relatively
2:31:28
protected royal court, we can assume
2:31:30
that in the population at large,
2:31:33
the effects were even more devastating.
2:31:36
For the people of Egypt, this
2:31:38
incomprehensible disaster must have seemed like
2:31:41
the judgment of the old gods
2:31:44
on the man who had so arrogantly
2:31:46
turned his back on them. Akhenaten
2:31:49
died only a few years later, around
2:31:51
1335 BC, after 17 years of rule.
2:31:53
After his death, some of
2:32:00
his family attempted to maintain the plague-ravaged
2:32:05
new capital of Akataten.
2:32:11
They would take turns to rule for the
2:32:13
next four years, but
2:32:16
seemingly without much success. Now, the whole empire
2:32:18
seemed like it was teetering
2:32:22
on the brink of collapse. But eventually, one
2:32:24
of Akhenaten's sons, a boy of
2:32:28
only eight years old, came to the throne. His
2:32:30
father had given him the Akhenaten,
2:32:35
or living image of the Akhen,
2:32:37
but he would not rule under it for
2:32:40
long. Turning his
2:32:42
back on his father's new faith
2:32:44
and to enormous celebration around the
2:32:46
empire, in the third year of
2:32:49
his rule, he changed his name to the
2:32:51
one we now remember him by. The
2:32:53
living image not of Akhen was
2:32:56
of the old god Amun, now
2:32:58
triumphantly welcomed back by the
2:33:01
people of Egypt. His
2:33:03
name was Tutank-Amun. As
2:33:16
symbolized by his change of name, the
2:33:19
boy king Tutankhamun rode back
2:33:21
a great number of his
2:33:23
father's attempted reforms. He
2:33:25
ended all worship of the god Artun and
2:33:28
reinstated Amun to supremacy
2:33:30
in Thebes. Tutankhamun
2:33:32
lifted the ban on the cults
2:33:34
of other gods and
2:33:37
restored the traditional privileges of the
2:33:39
priesthood. Many
2:33:41
temples to the Artun in Thebes
2:33:43
and elsewhere were torn down, and
2:33:46
their painted bricks were used as filler
2:33:48
in the walls of other temples. Everyone
2:33:52
seemed to be in agreement. The
2:33:54
whole sorry business of Akhenaten
2:33:57
was better off forgotten. Today,
2:34:02
the boy-king Tutankhamun is
2:34:04
perhaps the most famous of all the
2:34:07
Egyptian pharaohs, more famous
2:34:09
than the great Khufu and Kaphre of
2:34:11
Giza, or the pharaohs
2:34:13
Josur and Sneferu, who perfected the
2:34:16
pyramid form. He's
2:34:18
more famous than Kamoza or
2:34:20
Ahmosa, who reunited the kingdom and
2:34:22
expelled the Hyksos, more
2:34:25
famous than his colorful father
2:34:27
Akhenaten or the great queen
2:34:29
Hatshepsut. But there's nothing
2:34:31
in his reign that really warrants that
2:34:33
level of recognition. In
2:34:35
fact, this boy-king died while still
2:34:38
a teenager, after only nine years
2:34:40
of rule. He
2:34:43
does seem to have been a good king and
2:34:45
popular, and set Egypt
2:34:48
back on course after his father's
2:34:50
erratic reign. But
2:34:52
the source of his fame was
2:34:54
really one of absolute historical accident.
2:34:58
When he died in 1323 BC,
2:35:02
the boy-king Tutankhamun was buried in a
2:35:04
tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
2:35:07
It was not a particularly resplendent
2:35:09
royal tomb and a far
2:35:12
cry from the glorious pyramids of the Old
2:35:14
Kingdom. But shortly after
2:35:16
it was sealed, there was a chance
2:35:18
flash flood in this portion of the
2:35:20
crotless, and the doorway to
2:35:22
the tomb was buried in sand and
2:35:25
rock. This left
2:35:27
it completely concealed. For
2:35:30
the next 3,300 years,
2:35:33
tomb robbers would scour the Valley
2:35:35
of the Kings, stealing from
2:35:37
nearly every one of the great pharaoh's
2:35:40
tombs, making away with their
2:35:42
treasures, removing their mummies, and
2:35:45
despoiling their decorations. But
2:35:48
buried in the sand, Tutankhamun's
2:35:50
tomb remained sealed. For
2:35:54
this reason, it was completely untouched until the
2:35:56
year 1922, when it was covered
2:36:00
by the Egyptologist Howard were
2:36:05
recovered to international astonishment.
2:36:09
Today, the most glorious of these,
2:36:11
the golden
2:36:13
burial mask of Tutankhamun, is one of the
2:36:16
most famous objects from the ancient world, a
2:36:19
resplendent image of royal wealth and
2:36:21
power. At times,
2:36:23
it can be hard to remember that
2:36:25
this golden image is also
2:36:27
a portrait of a boy who
2:36:30
had power thrust upon him in a
2:36:32
time of upheaval and strife, looking
2:36:34
up at us from the dark depths
2:36:37
of the ages. The
2:36:48
new kingdom of Egypt would
2:36:50
reach its highest point around
2:36:52
50 years after the reign
2:36:55
of Tutankhamun. It
2:36:57
would come during the rule of
2:36:59
perhaps the greatest Egyptian pharaoh. He
2:37:02
came to the throne under the name Ramesses
2:37:04
II, but he would
2:37:06
go down in history as Ramesses
2:37:09
the Great. Ramesses
2:37:14
came to the throne at the age of 14
2:37:16
in 1279 BC. At the time, Egypt's Mediterranean
2:37:22
coast was being ravaged by
2:37:24
groups of pirates, and
2:37:27
he spent much of his early rule dealing
2:37:29
with this nuisance, but he
2:37:31
is most famous for pushing the boundaries
2:37:33
of Egypt far to the north into
2:37:36
the region of Syria. Over
2:37:39
the preceding centuries, a powerful rival
2:37:42
had grown up in the mountains
2:37:44
of what is today Turkey, and
2:37:46
was steadily spreading its influence in
2:37:48
all directions. This was
2:37:51
the powerful Hittite Empire, centred
2:37:54
on their hill fortress capital
2:37:56
of Khattusha. a
2:38:00
relatively new power in the region, over
2:38:22
who would control the region of
2:38:24
Palestine. In
2:38:26
the fourth year of his reign, Ramses
2:38:29
II gathered an expeditionary force
2:38:31
and marched across the Sinai
2:38:33
desert to Gaza, and
2:38:36
from there marched north. One
2:38:41
epic poem written about this expedition
2:38:44
exalts in the enormous force
2:38:46
that Ramses brought. His
2:38:50
majesty journeyed northward, his
2:38:52
infantry and chariotry with him. He
2:38:55
began to march on the good way. Every
2:38:57
foreign country was trembling before him.
2:39:00
Their chiefs were bringing their tribute, and
2:39:02
all the rebels were coming, bowing
2:39:04
down through dread of the personality
2:39:06
of his majesty. Ramses'
2:39:12
aim was to capture the
2:39:14
strong fortress city of Kadesh,
2:39:17
situated along the sandy banks on
2:39:19
a fork of the Arontes River.
2:39:23
For years now, Kadesh had been playing
2:39:25
the Hittites and Egypt off against one
2:39:27
another, allying first with one,
2:39:29
then the other. Now,
2:39:32
Ramses was determined to finally
2:39:34
seize Kadesh for Egypt. He
2:39:43
marched north with four of his divisions, named
2:39:46
after the gods Amun,
2:39:48
Ra, Seth, and Bata.
2:39:51
With him, he brought thousands of
2:39:53
chariots, and one unit
2:39:55
of elite chariot riders he sent
2:39:57
by sea, telling them to take the land.
2:40:00
land on the coast and ride inland
2:40:02
to meet him on the day that
2:40:04
he arrived at Kadesh. At
2:40:08
first, everything seemed to be going well.
2:40:11
On his way, the Pharaoh's scouts
2:40:13
captured a pair of tribesmen from
2:40:16
the Shasu people who told
2:40:18
him that the Hittite king was cowering
2:40:20
further to the north. He
2:40:22
was afraid of the might of Egypt, they
2:40:25
said. He had left
2:40:27
Kadesh defenseless. Excited
2:40:30
by this news, Ramesses threw all
2:40:33
caution to the wind and hastened
2:40:35
northward to seize the city with
2:40:37
only one of his four divisions,
2:40:40
his prided Amun troops. But
2:40:43
this would prove to be a fatal mistake.
2:40:47
Ramesses didn't know it yet, but
2:40:49
these Shasu tribesmen were actually agents
2:40:51
of the Hittite king sent to
2:40:53
lure him into a trap. When
2:40:58
he arrived at Kadesh, Ramesses set
2:41:01
up his camp beside a stony
2:41:03
brook and his scouts set out
2:41:05
into the surrounding landscape to
2:41:07
detect any threats. Some
2:41:09
of these scouts ran into a pair
2:41:11
of Hittite soldiers who had been lying
2:41:13
low in the undergrowth, watching
2:41:15
them. They skirmished
2:41:18
and the Egyptians managed to capture
2:41:20
the Hittites. After
2:41:22
perhaps a stern beating, these men
2:41:25
revealed what lay waiting for the
2:41:27
Egyptians nearby, the full
2:41:29
might of the Hittite armies amass
2:41:31
in an ambush hidden
2:41:33
behind the looming fortress of Kadesh.
2:41:37
The Kadesh poem records this
2:41:40
imposing force. Now
2:41:44
the rich foe of Hati had come, having
2:41:46
gathered all foreign countries to the very ends
2:41:49
of the sea, the land of
2:41:51
Hati in its entirety. They
2:41:53
covered the mountains and the valleys like
2:41:55
the grasshoppers with their multitudes. He
2:41:58
left neither silver nor gold in his hands. his land,
2:42:01
but despoiled it of all its foreign
2:42:05
countries to bring them with him to combat. Ramesses
2:42:10
flew into a rage with his generals
2:42:12
for allowing this to happen. He
2:42:15
had hurried ahead with his Amun
2:42:17
division and now he was critically
2:42:19
overstretched, with his reinforcements in
2:42:22
the Ra division still on the
2:42:24
road. The
2:42:26
Hittites would not allow the Egyptians
2:42:28
to regroup. Before
2:42:31
the Ra division could arrive, a terrifying
2:42:33
force of 2,500 Hittite chariots
2:42:36
burst out of hiding and swept
2:42:39
across the river plain. Hittite
2:42:42
chariots were the tanks of
2:42:44
their day, heavy and armored, their
2:42:47
riders covered in chain mail down to
2:42:49
their toes. These
2:42:51
chariots rolled in and smashed into
2:42:53
the Ra regiment, who
2:42:56
frantically tried to form a shield
2:42:58
wall. The Hittites
2:43:00
scattered this division completely and
2:43:03
then rounded on the Egyptians camp. Ramesses
2:43:07
was surrounded, cut
2:43:09
off from his reinforcements and now
2:43:11
outnumbered. But in
2:43:13
this dire situation, he recounts
2:43:16
how he rallied his men and
2:43:18
led them in a desperate charge against
2:43:20
the enemy. I
2:43:24
found the 2,500 spans of
2:43:27
cherry troll in whose
2:43:29
midst I was, becoming
2:43:31
heaps of corpses before
2:43:33
my horses. Not
2:43:35
one of them found his hand
2:43:37
to fight for their hearts quailed
2:43:39
in their bodies from terror of
2:43:41
me. And all
2:43:43
their arms were powerless so they
2:43:45
could not shoot nor find their
2:43:48
courage to seize their javelins. Whether
2:43:54
or not this self-aggrandizing account
2:43:56
is an accurate depiction of
2:43:58
that day, it's clear... that
2:44:00
the tide did begin to turn. The
2:44:07
Hittite forces may have been
2:44:09
mercenaries or conscripts. After
2:44:12
destroying the Ra division and sweeping
2:44:14
into the Egyptians camp, the chariots
2:44:16
became bogged down, and
2:44:18
many of the Hittite soldiers, believing
2:44:21
the battle to be already over,
2:44:23
began looting rather than pressed their
2:44:25
advantage. More Egyptian
2:44:28
reinforcements were soon arriving from the
2:44:31
south, and as the bloody afternoon
2:44:33
wore on, that contingent
2:44:35
of elite charioteers that had been
2:44:37
sailing up the coast also
2:44:40
arrived on the scene. The
2:44:44
arrival of this cavalry on the
2:44:46
horizon was enough to steal the
2:44:48
resolve of the Egyptian troops and
2:44:51
break the will of the Hittites. Ramesses
2:44:56
gives a florid rendition of
2:44:58
what happened next. I
2:45:03
made them plunge into the water
2:45:05
as crocodiles plunged, for they were
2:45:07
falling upon their faces one on
2:45:09
another as I slew among them
2:45:12
whom I desired. Neither could
2:45:14
one look behind him nor could
2:45:16
another turn about, and whoever of
2:45:18
them fell, he could not
2:45:21
raise himself. The
2:45:27
Hittite army withdrew, with
2:45:30
many of their soldiers pushed into the
2:45:32
Orontes River. When
2:45:34
the next day dawned, the two
2:45:36
sides clashed again, but
2:45:39
both had been fatally weakened by the
2:45:41
previous day's fighting. After
2:45:44
a few hours of bloody
2:45:46
slaughter, Ramesses withdrew, and
2:45:48
the Hittite king sent him a peace offer.
2:45:53
The pharaoh's hands were tied. The
2:45:56
Egyptians lacked any siege equipment to
2:45:58
breach the strong walls. of Kadesh,
2:46:01
and the only option to take the city
2:46:03
would have been a lengthy siege, during
2:46:06
which Ramses would have found
2:46:08
his forces exposed to attack,
2:46:10
poorly supplied and prone to
2:46:13
encirclement. Instead, he
2:46:15
decided to declare victory and march
2:46:18
back to Egypt. The
2:46:20
Hittites in turn also declared
2:46:22
victory, and the city
2:46:24
of Kadesh would slip out of Ramses'
2:46:27
grasp. Despite
2:46:30
the overflowing praise of Ramses and
2:46:32
his glorious victory in the Kadesh
2:46:34
poem, the war actually
2:46:36
ended with a stalemate, and
2:46:39
the question of the city
2:46:41
remained unresolved. But
2:46:43
it's clear that Ramses thought back to
2:46:46
his role during the battle with no
2:46:48
small amount of pride, and
2:46:50
he would decorate the walls of his
2:46:53
temple at Abu Simbel with a vast
2:46:55
low relief carving of every one of
2:46:57
the battle's twists and turns. The
2:47:01
war with the Hittites would drag on for
2:47:03
a further 15 years, and
2:47:06
during this time, Egypt would
2:47:08
often capture territory along the
2:47:10
Mediterranean coast, only to
2:47:12
lose it again the very next year. Before
2:47:16
long, both sides grew weary
2:47:18
of this grinding conflict. The
2:47:22
war was finally brought to an end
2:47:24
with what has gone down in history
2:47:26
as the first written peace treaty, the
2:47:29
text of which has survived. Behold,
2:47:34
Hattusali, the ruler of
2:47:36
the Hittites binds himself
2:47:39
by treaty to Ramses, chosen
2:47:41
one of Ra, the great
2:47:43
ruler of Egypt, beginning
2:47:46
today so that perfect
2:47:48
peace and brotherhood may be
2:47:50
created between us forever, he
2:47:53
being in brotherhood and peace with me, and
2:47:56
I being in brotherhood and peace with him
2:47:59
forever. The
2:48:01
treaty was written on silver tablets,
2:48:04
with both the Hittites and the Egyptians
2:48:07
being given a copy. Its
2:48:09
text was written in both
2:48:11
hieroglyphics and Hittite cuneiform, but
2:48:14
the two translations do have slightly
2:48:16
different wordings. In
2:48:19
a diplomatic stroke of genius,
2:48:21
the Egyptian version claims that
2:48:23
the Hittites had come begging
2:48:25
Egypt for peace, which the
2:48:27
Egyptians graciously accepted. While
2:48:29
in the Hittite version, it is
2:48:31
the Egyptians who asked to end the war.
2:48:34
With both sides thus able to save
2:48:37
face, the destructive conflict was
2:48:39
allowed to come to an end and
2:48:42
nearly a century of relative
2:48:44
peace ensued. Despite
2:48:47
the pride Ramses took in his battles,
2:48:50
today it is this peace treaty that
2:48:52
we most remember and a
2:48:54
replica of it hangs on the
2:48:56
walls of the United Nations headquarters
2:48:58
in New York. After
2:49:05
what seemed like a lucky escape
2:49:07
at Kadesh, Ramses would turn his
2:49:09
attention away from war and
2:49:12
towards construction. He
2:49:14
spent the next decades of his
2:49:16
rule building temples and monuments up
2:49:19
and down Egypt, and
2:49:21
today his name is the one that
2:49:23
appears on the most surviving monuments of
2:49:25
any pharaoh. This
2:49:27
is partly due to his prolific
2:49:30
building campaign, but also due to
2:49:32
the fact that he ensured his
2:49:34
name was inscribed more deeply in
2:49:36
the stone than any other pharaoh,
2:49:39
so deep that it could never be
2:49:41
erased. Ramses
2:49:45
II would rule for a total of 66
2:49:48
years and would be remembered
2:49:50
as perhaps Egypt's greatest pharaoh.
2:49:53
His full Egyptian name
2:49:56
was Uzamatre Setepenre Ramses,
2:49:59
which the Greeks would later render into
2:50:01
a name they would
2:50:05
call him Ozymandias. More
2:50:08
than a diodorus
2:50:12
of Sicily would visit Egypt,
2:50:41
where I lie, let him surpass
2:50:43
one of my works. Ramesses
2:50:49
would also build a new capital
2:50:51
for his empire, and
2:50:53
with his military ambitions lying in the
2:50:55
north, he decided to place it in
2:50:57
the northeast of the Nile Delta, and
2:51:00
in characteristic fashion, he
2:51:03
named it after himself, calling
2:51:05
it Per Ramesses, or
2:51:08
the House of Ramesses. One
2:51:12
Egyptian poem would celebrate the
2:51:14
beauty of this new city.
2:51:19
The residence is pleasant in life. Its
2:51:22
field is full of everything good. It
2:51:25
is full of supplies and food every day,
2:51:27
its ponds with fish and its lakes
2:51:29
with birds. Its meadows are
2:51:32
verdant with grass, its banks
2:51:34
bear dates, its melons are abundant
2:51:36
on the sand, its granaries are
2:51:38
so full of barley and emmer wheat that they
2:51:40
come near to the sky. Red
2:51:43
wedge fish swim in the canal of
2:51:45
the resident city, which live on lotus
2:51:47
flowers. This
2:51:50
city of Per Ramesses has
2:51:53
long been associated with the
2:51:55
city of Ramesses, referred
2:51:57
to in the Hebrew book of Exodus.
2:52:00
the second book of the Hebrew
2:52:02
Bible. There
2:52:22
is no evidence for a large
2:52:24
population of Hebrew slaves ever living
2:52:26
in Egypt, or that
2:52:29
the city of Peramses was built by
2:52:31
slaves at all. More
2:52:33
likely, it was built using
2:52:36
the Egyptian's usual combination of
2:52:38
skilled artisans and seasonal peasant
2:52:40
laborers. But
2:52:42
with the proximity of the Nile
2:52:45
Delta to the Levantine coast, it's
2:52:47
certainly not impossible that some of
2:52:49
these laborers were Hebrew people who
2:52:52
had traveled across the Sinai to
2:52:54
sell their labor in Egypt. If
2:52:58
that were the case, then for one
2:53:00
reason or another, they left no impression
2:53:02
in the archaeological record, but
2:53:04
perhaps printed an indelible mark
2:53:07
on our collective imaginations. When
2:53:13
Peramses finally died in 1213 BC, he
2:53:16
was probably nearly 90 years old. His
2:53:22
reign had been one of Egypt's
2:53:24
golden ages, but his long
2:53:26
rule had once again created
2:53:28
that old king problem. All
2:53:31
of his heirs were now also old men.
2:53:35
By the time of his death, 12 of his oldest
2:53:37
sons had already died, and
2:53:40
now his 13th son took the
2:53:42
throne at the age of about
2:53:44
70. He was
2:53:46
the Pharaoh Merniptar. But
2:53:49
only a few years into this man's reign,
2:53:52
Egypt was attacked by a
2:53:54
devastating new enemy. These
2:53:57
were the Libyan people to the west of
2:53:59
the Nile. Delta. The
2:54:02
King of Libya, a man named
2:54:06
attack for some time. All
2:54:09
of a sudden, a group
2:54:13
of people came through Egypt's northwestern
2:54:17
border and they were reinforced
2:54:20
with groups of people from
2:54:22
all over the Mediterranean, perhaps from
2:54:25
Greece, Sardinia, Sicily, and elsewhere
2:54:29
across the sea. These were a diverse group
2:54:32
of peoples that had suddenly begun
2:54:35
to appear in increasing numbers across
2:54:37
the eastern Mediterranean. They The
2:54:43
Pharaoh, Merniptar, remembers this event
2:54:45
on one carved stele. The
2:54:50
wretched fallen chief of Libya, Maria,
2:54:52
son of dead, has fallen
2:54:54
upon the country of Tohunu with
2:54:57
his bowmen, Sheridan,
2:54:59
Shekelesh, Equesh, Luka,
2:55:01
Teresh, taking the best of every
2:55:03
warrior and every man of war
2:55:05
of his country. He
2:55:08
has brought his wife and his children,
2:55:10
leaders of the camp, and he
2:55:13
has reached the western boundary in the
2:55:15
fields of Perea. The
2:55:20
Pharaoh, Merniptar, defeated this
2:55:22
invasion, and as a
2:55:24
warning to any others who would try
2:55:26
such a surprise attack, he
2:55:29
had many of the invading
2:55:31
soldiers impaled along the road
2:55:33
into Memphis. The
2:55:36
princes are prostrate saying, mercy!
2:55:40
Not one raises his head among the nine
2:55:42
bows. Desolation is for
2:55:44
Tohunu. Hati is pacified,
2:55:46
plundered as the Kanan with every
2:55:49
evil. Her eyes
2:55:51
become a widow. All
2:55:54
lands together they are pacified.
2:56:00
these lands would not stay
2:56:02
pacified for strife,
2:56:23
with the descendants of Ramesses around.
2:56:29
Against this backdrop, the
2:56:31
entire region also once again
2:56:33
began to experience a series
2:56:35
of record droughts. What
2:56:38
caused this climate shift is uncertain.
2:56:42
As we saw in our second episode on
2:56:44
the Bronze Age collapse, the
2:56:46
cause may have been volcanic, with
2:56:48
a large eruption taking place in
2:56:51
the Icelandic volcano of Hekla around
2:56:53
this time. Others
2:56:55
have proposed that an eruption in
2:56:57
Sicily around 1300 BC
2:56:59
may have been to blame, or
2:57:02
that the supervolcano Thera in
2:57:05
Santorini may have resumed some
2:57:07
activity, some 500 years
2:57:09
after its last enormous eruption.
2:57:13
The cause may not have been volcanic
2:57:15
at all and could have been due
2:57:17
to variations in the sun's activity, or
2:57:20
weather systems in the Atlantic
2:57:23
depriving the Mediterranean of moisture.
2:57:26
The reality was much as it is
2:57:28
today. The planet's climate
2:57:30
system is fragile, interconnected,
2:57:33
and chaotic. Even relatively
2:57:35
small changes in its
2:57:37
equilibrium can have devastating
2:57:39
effects. During
2:57:42
this time, formerly green lands
2:57:44
became dry and arid, and
2:57:46
more plants suited to desert
2:57:48
landscapes flourished. Analysis
2:57:51
of sediment cores and oxygen isotopes
2:57:53
in cave mineral deposits have all
2:57:55
shown that the 13th and 12th
2:57:57
centuries be. see
2:58:00
saw much less rain than the
2:58:06
scientific evidence, we can see marks
2:58:08
of written
2:58:11
records too. Egypt's
2:58:15
great rivals, the Hittites, in
2:58:17
their stony mountains were hit
2:58:19
particularly hard by the drought.
2:58:22
One Hittite text has come down to us
2:58:25
that seems to capture the spirit of
2:58:27
this age, and it is
2:58:29
known as the myth of Telepino. It
2:58:33
comes from a poetic convention known
2:58:35
as the Vanishing God myth, which
2:58:38
describes how a certain deity is
2:58:41
so offended by the misdeeds of
2:58:43
humanity that he flies into a
2:58:45
fit of sorrow and abandons his
2:58:47
duties. Telepino was
2:58:50
a god of farming, fertility,
2:58:52
and the weather. The
2:58:54
beginning of the text has been lost, so
2:58:57
we don't know what it was humanity
2:58:59
did to provoke his rage, but
2:59:01
the poem describes its deadly
2:59:03
consequences. Thereupon
2:59:08
soot beset the windows, smoke
2:59:11
beset the house, the ashes
2:59:13
lay crammed on the hearth. Off
2:59:16
stalked Telepino, grain
2:59:18
and abundance he took away from
2:59:20
field and meadow. Off
2:59:22
to the copses stalked Telepino,
2:59:24
and in a copse he
2:59:26
buried himself. Forthwith
2:59:29
the seed ceased to yield
2:59:31
produce. Oxen, sheep
2:59:33
and men ceased to breed,
2:59:36
while even those that had conceived
2:59:39
did not bear. Hillsides
2:59:41
were bare, trees
2:59:43
were bare and put forth no
2:59:46
new branches. Pastures
2:59:48
were bare, springs ran
2:59:50
dry, a famine
2:59:52
arose in the land. Men
2:59:54
and gods alike Were
2:59:57
about to perish of hunger.
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