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- [00:00]
Dr. Joseph Manning
This is Dr. Joseph Manning, a Yale historian and Egyptologist. And today we're going to be discussing one of the most powerful pharaohs Egypt has ever seen, Ramses the Great. He reigned for over 60 years, built colossal temples and claimed victory in epic battles. And today we're breaking down who Ramses really was, how he actually claimed power and how he kept it for so long. This is not just the propaganda, but the man behind the monuments. We're talking war, politics, divine kingship, and. And why his legacy still towers over history like the statues he built. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Dr. Manning, how are you?
- [00:44]
Unnamed Historian
I'm well.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Thank you so much for being in the same outfit immediately after recording our first episode.
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Unnamed Historian
It's actually a different shirt. It looks the same.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, really?
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Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
That's your whole closet. It's just blue button down.
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Unnamed Historian
I'm one of those guys that has a closet full of blue shirts.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Exactly.
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Unnamed Historian
And cargo pants.
- [00:58]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yes. Steve Jobs desk. Yes, I like this. We spoke briefly, and by briefly I mean like over an hour about King Tut.
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Unnamed Historian
Yeah, we did.
- [01:08]
Dr. Joseph Manning
But there is another Egyptian ruler, a king, a pharaoh, if you will, an emperor perhaps named Ramses ii. And this is an interesting guy because in contrast to King Tut, who had a pretty inconsequential reign, Boy king, an undiscovered tomb that gets found in the 20th century. Ramses has a monumental reign and some would say deeply impacts the fabric of Egypt in this New Kingdom period. So take me to the context of Ramsay's reign. How does he get into power? What is the sort of layout of Egypt at the time? And ultimately what does he do in his reign?
- [01:50]
Unnamed Historian
Let's start with the context. So we talked the last hour about the New Kingdom and Dynasty 18, the age of kind of the formation of this great empire, complete with horses and chariots and conqueror kings, Dynasties 19 and 20. The other two ruling families in the New Kingdom continue on the military conquest and campaigning, but in some different ways. And they're from a different part of Egypt. So Dynasty 18 is a Theban based dynasty. They're from southern Egypt. Basically Ramses family. He's not. He's Ramses ii. Ramses the first comes first. They are a family from the eastern delta, which is really interesting. And that sounds like, oh, it's a different place in Egypt. But so what? But it is. From the Dynasty 19 all the way effectively through the Ptolemies and the Romans, there's a major shift geographically that the center of Egypt now is very much the Delta and the Mediterranean. Whereas in Dynasty 18, in earlier Egypt, in a sense, it's a. It's more southern, southern looking. But now the emphasis on. Is on the Delta. It's on lots more interaction with the Near East. We saw that in Dynasty 18:2 a bit. But this is really now going to be important for the rest of Egyptian history. It's going to be the Delta and the Mediterranean.
- [03:25]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Can we get a map of Egypt? Actually, that would be helpful. And I imagine with the technological innovations that happen as time progresses, you're going to have more trade and because of shipping and things like that, access to water is going to become very important.
- [03:40]
Unnamed Historian
Yes, yeah, indeed. And Egypt. So there is Thebes here, south of what's called the Kenne Bend there. So a lot of Egyptian history and of course the monuments that's so well survived, the temples are the stuff of history, which may be giving us a false picture because we're prejudiced for such things. Temples in southern Egypt because they're well preserved. The Delta is much less well preserved archeologically, for obvious reasons. It's a river delta.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
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Unnamed Historian
So a lot of stuff was underneath a lot of feet of mud.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
So harder to do some papyrus scrolls in a marsh. They're going to get damaged pretty quickly.
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Unnamed Historian
That's why we have almost no papyrus records from the delta.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
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Unnamed Historian
Ever.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Interesting. It's wet and does it feel humid, like if you're in the delta area versus other areas?
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Unnamed Historian
No, it doesn't. Especially these days because there's no longer any annual flood of the river, so because of the Heights Dam at Aswan. So. But it would. It'd be marshier and wetter in antiquity. So the eastern delta. I don't know if Tanis and places like that are on the, on the map there, but, you know, Tanis is famous for Raiders of the Lost Ark fame. But this is in the region where the Ramessid family is from. What's also interesting about that is the real. They were worshippers of this God Seth, this dog like God or Seti. And the real names are actually. Seti is common in, in this ruling family. Some of them keep them. Others kind of mask their ethnic identity, their background by taking on Ramessist. Because Ramessist rays, the God who bore him, is what the name means. Sun God Rey. See, we're legit. We're just like the Theban family. We're kind of, you know. But actually their background is quite different, even ethnically, at least culturally. Remember the Hyksos we talked about who brought, who ruled Egypt from the delta.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
In the intermediary period, in the second.
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Unnamed Historian
Intermediate period, they bring in the horse and the chariot with them. It might be. There is some speculation that the early Ramesses are actually ethnically Hyksos.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, interesting.
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Unnamed Historian
Yeah. So a continuation. They're from the same area of the eastern delta at a minimum. So how much is masked in terms of culture and ethnicity? Good question. Because the evidence we have is now Egyptian pharaohs, I mean even they're switching names and they're good Egyptian kings. Behind the scenes the reality is really interesting.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
And how did this, how does this Ram is his family come into power?
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Unnamed Historian
It's. Well, it's a military based rule.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
So there's, there's a succession problem that happens and then.
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Unnamed Historian
Yeah, and the Dynasty 18 sort of Peters out because the last couple of kings are actually, they're, they're technically kings but they're military guys with royal titles.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
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Unnamed Historian
So that continues, but it's a different family. It's a break in a sense from this, from the Theban family. And so it is, I wouldn't say it's a coup, but it's, it's essentially these are, you know, very strong, strong rulers with, with armies behind them that are establishing political control over the whole of Egypt and claiming kingship.
- [07:03]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Fascinating. So the raw of Ramesses comes from the sun God. Yeah, that is fascinating.
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Unnamed Historian
Yeah, it's Ray or Ra, the sun God. Hey, you know, a good old God. We're, we're legit.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
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Unnamed Historian
And you know, names like Moses, I mean that's an abbreviation of Ramesses. Messes.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
No way.
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Unnamed Historian
Yeah. So, you know, there's a whole story, another episode, but the whole story of the Jews in Egypt. Well, this is around the time people used to think Ramses II was the period of the Exodus. It's probably a little bit later, but there's always discussion about it. But it's just kind of a nickname for the current king, this family, the Ramessid family, the Ramesses. So mesas is just an abbreviation of Ra. Mesas.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Fascinating. So it's just Moses was adopted by an Egyptian family.
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Unnamed Historian
Yeah, it's an old story.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
So the, the Moses name is potentially given to him.
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Unnamed Historian
Common name at the time. It's like think of a current king or something. And you know, you name your kid Charles because King Charles is on the throne or something.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Wow.
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Unnamed Historian
It's this kind of thing. It would have been a common, common thing.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
That's fascinating.
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Unnamed Historian
Period. So this is the Ramessid period. This is, this is the Egyptian delta. And the reason that's so interesting in this period, let alone the Hyksos background, which, you know, we can speculate about, but that's interesting. They're from the same general region and it's a different region ethnically because all these Near Eastern connections and Mediterranean connections, that's going to be the dominant economic, what's the word trend, and we're talking about around Ramses II comes to the throne in 1279, I think.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Okay.
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Unnamed Historian
And he's going to rule for Most of the 1200s with this really long reign. But this is the, this is coming up near the end of the Bronze Age, the so called Bronze Age collapse. There's a lot of movement, there's a lot of migrations, there's massive drought, we know in certain part of the parts of the Mediterranean, which is driving some of the movement. And there's also new ways of doing business, which is embodied in the Phoenicians, who are expanding a little bit later. But they're probably already around in these great Near Eastern trading or commercial centers like Byblos and Tyre, so vilified in the Old Testament, these wealthy merchant cities and so on. They're a real thing and they're really important. And they're going to be the driver of the whole next phase in the history of the Mediterranean, which is the first millennium BC starting really, I think around 1200, around the time of Ramses II. Now we're in a kind of a new world, a more commercial world. The Phoenicians are going all the way out to Spain. So they have different ship technology. They are doing business by written contract. They are entrepreneurs literally taking Near Eastern textiles and they're exchanging it for the raw materials like silver from the Spanish silver mines that they're opening up and connecting the entire Mediterranean. It is a new or it's a continuation of a commercial world that we talked about before, but it's being reinforced. It's now bigger and it's operating quite differently. Interesting than the Bronze Age and the world of big palace economies like Mycenae or Egypt, with Pharaoh being the boss of everything.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
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Unnamed Historian
At least that's how they think they're operating. And now we have Phoenician merchants going around doing a very different kind of business.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
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Unnamed Historian
Like totally commercial written contracts, agreements all across the Mediterranean. And they're also founding cities like Carthage along the way.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Do they travel with armies?
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Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
So these merchants have protection.
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Unnamed Historian
They do as they always did, as they did in the Old Kingdom when the pharaohs are going to the Sudan in the time of the pyramids, they're military expeditions. That's how they're couched. I think the Phoenicians, my analog are they're like the Vikings around a thousand AD in Europe. They're not just raiders, they are merchants. But they're also military because they go together, right. As you'd expect. They need protection, they need enforcement. And so commercial expansion, trading and military power in some sense are going hand in glove, always. And so the Phoenicians are these great sailors like, like the Vikings were. And they're, they're the merchants par excellence in the world that we're going to call the Iron Age. We don't have time to talk too much about the Bronze Age collapse. I don't, I don't think it's a collapse because what I think happens is some cities go away, the Mycenaean palaces go away. The Hittite empire definitely goes away. There's massive movements of people all over the Eastern Mediterranean. They're called the peoples of the sea or the sea peoples in Egyptian tax. Ramses II encounters them. Ramsey III famously really encounters them and claims he, he beats them back. But what happens is these guys are increasingly integrated and settled into the western delta. They're part of the Egyptian army at a certain point. So it is, it's a wild world of movements of people, high mobility, which is partly Phoenicians being mobile, but other people too. So we're in a, we're in a new world that Egypt increasingly, what's the word, they're kind of outmoded, they're kind of old fashioned, you know, being the king at the center of the center of the world. We talked about Akhnaten trying to redo that in a world that's increasingly about trade and long distance trade and merchants being the really important people. Yes, we have priesthoods and rituals and kings, this concept, but the real world underlying all this is a different commercial world entirely. And I think this is what, this is what Ramsay II is sort of now facing.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Interesting.
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Unnamed Historian
And the Bronze Age world more broadly.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
On that topic of the Bronze Age collapse, you're describing more a slow, almost like commercial integration that occurs. So you don't have these societies collapsing because of some type of, you know, like what would be the, the traditional explanation for the Bronze Age collapse of.
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Unnamed Historian
These cities, drought and migration and these, these big states get overrun and you, and you can't control ancient states, can't control. I mean, there isn't passport control or, you know, borders that are defended at a Certain point they get overwhelmed. And Egypt under Ramses second, but later Ramses III in the 11th century BC beats these guys back. He claims he writes about this in his funerary temple.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
I see.
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Unnamed Historian
But not, but not, you know, it's military defeat. I conquered all these foreigners running around and they're depicted as guys with pointy sticks. Kind of military, but women and children too. So who is this military invasion? Is. Are these people fleeing from large scale drought? It is partly drought related. That's well documented now in some parts of the east of Mediterranean for 200 years. It probably does the Hittites in, but it's more complicated than that. So this idea of collapse is things were great and then we wake up and now everything's gone and all these cities are destroyed. When that's not really what happens. It's a process over a couple hundred years, as you intimate. And a lot of the destruction is probably post people leaving because it's hard to data site like that was destroyed on that day in 1150 BC. Well that's hard to pinpoint.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Right. I wonder if you could say it's like a Detroit having like an automotive collapse. It's like. It's not like you woke up one day in Detroit and there's no more automotive industry. Right. It's like slowly these things offshore and then the people there don't have jobs and then they have to move and then people migrate and then these things happen progressively over. Yes. Periods of time.
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Unnamed Historian
Yeah, exactly. And in Detroit in the 60s, you might, you know, compared to the late 40s or 50s, you might visit Detroit back then and say, oh, it's a, it's a collapse because there's nobody here anymore.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
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Unnamed Historian
Oh well, people moved, right. Is that a kind of collapse? Well, it's a different. I think the entire economies get transformed. Egypt's very late in transforming. The Phoenicians are leading the game. And then the Greeks in the north Mediterranean, the Aegean, same deal. These are merchants, highly mobile peoples. Whereas if you're a king in a place like Egypt, man, that is. That's increasingly old fashioned way of doing things and trying to control things which are not controllable. Not only trade, but also the movement of peoples in a increasingly what looks like a highly mobile world.
- [16:00]
Dr. Joseph Manning
What's up guys? We're gonna take a break really quick because I want you to know that there are still good people in the world and there are still people out there fighting for you. So here's a story. There's a guy riding a. Riding a Water slide, right? He's at this amazing water park. He's about to go down the slide. All of a sudden as he's going down, flies into the air, lands on his back and has permanent life changing injuries. He's still dealing with him four or five years later and he's having a hard time getting paid, you know what I mean? He gets injured at this massive, massive water park owned by Disney, of all people and can't even get a cent out of their attorneys. That's why he called Morgan and Morgan. He called Morgan and Morgan and quickly they represented him in his lawsuit against Disney for damages, citing what they called lax safety measures. The lawsuit alleges that Disney either failed to warn him properly or failed to make the ride safe. And they argue that the design itself created a dangerous condition. And thankfully for this guy, because he called Morgan and Morgan, he will get justice in his case. Just like the 500,000 other clients that got the compensation that they deserved over Morgan and Morgan's 35 year career. Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury law firm with over $25 billion recovered. I'm telling you, hiring the wrong law firm can be disastrous. And hiring the right one could substantially increase your settlement with Morgan and Morgan. It's so easy to get started and their fee is free unless they win your case. So just visit forthepeople.com gagnon g a g n o n or dial pound law. That's pound 529. That is for the people.com/gagnon or dal pound law. That's pound 529. This is a paid advertisement. Now let's get back to the show. So how does a king. How does a king deal with this? Where you have this antiquated empire that's getting overpowered by wealthy merchants?
- [17:55]
Unnamed Historian
If you know your party's Extension, press or say 1 to leave a message in our company mailbox. Press or say 2. Spoiler alert.
- [18:02]
Dr. Joseph Manning
It will be full representative.
- [18:06]
Unnamed Historian
Would you speak to your mother in that tone?
- [18:09]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Speak to a real human being.
- [18:11]
Unnamed Historian
You shouldn't need to shout into the void to get your health insurance questions answered. Pacific Source Health Plans.
- [18:17]
Dr. Joseph Manning
This is a real person. How can I help you? Human service, not automated phone trees.
- [18:22]
Unnamed Historian
Pacific Source Health Plans A Carlos no le gusta larina Por quesi pega todo cuando gabi organizo biaje en expedia. Parea sorfia lembito el dudoeniro nuna semana ne lagua vives paratener las cosas cascada Tina Yuna. Regadre encraible expedia vivimos paraviajar. Well, it's really tough to do. I mean, what happens I think in the end is Ramsay iii, as we talked about, gets bumped off. He's. He's a bit long in the tooth anyway. But there's a lot going on. And for whatever reason, it's a rival to the throne. It's. It's people who think this person should be on the throne. Now is the best, a stronger, younger, more vigorous ruler. It's a time when the Nile is failing to flood quite a lot. It's a time of the first labor strike we have in history that Ramses III at the end of the Dynasty 20, the last great king of the new kingdom. There's several small kings afterwards. The Egyptian texts tell us after Ramsay III, 70 kings rule in 70 days.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, wow.
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Unnamed Historian
Which is really kind of shorthand in Egyptian for no one knows what the hell's going on.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Just chaos.
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Unnamed Historian
It's chaos. It's like everybody and their brother was king. That's the Egyptian shorthand for wheat. There's no.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
When there's no.
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Unnamed Historian
There's just. We don't know. So it's hard. It's hard to hold on to it. We. We know and reasons why the now is failing a lot. There's a labor strike because you can't. They Ramses can't pay for the tomb builders of the royal tomb in Thebes. They go on a strike because they're not getting paid, which is amazing. And we have. We text to document this. These guys just down tools, these highly specialized workers who are building these huge tombs in the battle of the kings in a village we know a lot about, very well documented village. They down tools and go out in front of the temple where they know there's bread and food stored in these temples. And like doing this.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
No way.
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Unnamed Historian
We are not working until we're getting paid and we know there's food in there.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
How does that go? I imagine like any type of contractor that watches a strike is like, I wish I just killed all these people. Well, but you can't do that.
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Unnamed Historian
Well, turns out that the men building the royal tombs were really important. Really important. So it's a kind of a crisis. And all this happens within five years. We still got non Egyptians who are probably always in Egypt. But this is sort of. It's couched as this big problem. We're getting invaded. All of all these foreigners are overrunning us.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
The texts say that yeah, really I.
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Unnamed Historian
Mean Rams III's text. Sorry, thanks is is sort of claiming this. It's all stylized. You know, this is one of these things about the sources we have we have to take with a grain of salt because it's suiting the image of the king and his ability to be this successful defender of the bull. I protect the people. And there's a lot going on. There's a lot. They're getting overrun.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
It's just hilarious that they're talking about immigration. You know what I mean?
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Unnamed Historian
Well, yeah. It's a problem for, for states. Look at now, it's really hard and we have borders and passport control and, and so on. But with, with things like climate, it turns out when there's drought that's kind of sustained, people move.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Sure.
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Unnamed Historian
You know, there isn't collapse where people just sort of sit down and die.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
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Unnamed Historian
People move. Normal response to things like drought. It happened in middle America in the 1930s. They moved to California and they, they get treated really badly as like, stay out you foreigners. Essentially. There are signs that were. That were put up in the California border saying we don't want Okies and Arkies keep out of California. The, the sheriff of LA has a huge campaign to keep these people out of la. Incredible. These are felt, these are Americans, let alone at borders. So this is a problem for, for ancient states and you get population growth. That happens. You can't control that either. And then, oh, we can't feed everybody. So some guys, usually young males, gotta go, gotta go found a new colony or join the army. Don't be. Become a mercenary. And that happens later in ancient history a lot. So population movements are just really. You can't see them, but they're, they can be destabilizing, no doubt. Then how do you integrate them into society, which is what they try to do. So that's happening for sure. This is this Bronze Age collapse. It's. It's destabilizing for states. But also there's this underlying economic change. And economic change, which is technological, is really hard. And this is a shift from bronze to iron. Again, metal sources. Bronze is highly specialized. Copper plus tin coming from somewhere. Iron is called the democratic metal because it's more easily accessible to more people. But it changes a lot of things. And I think it's a. I think it's a case of economic transformation over a few centuries. That's how I would view it. Not as collapse. And it's a disaster. And everything goes away for two centuries. Oh my God. It's horrible. I mean People died, there were places destroyed. The Hittite empire is hit with famine. We know the great enemy of the Egyptian state. Egyptian kings send grain to Hittite capital.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, wow.
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Unnamed Historian
Which is amazing.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
I mean, a nation that they battled with.
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Unnamed Historian
Totally. Yeah. Like the bitter enemies, they're sending grain. And there's also a disease that the Hittite kingdom is facing of whatever kind. We just hear references to some kind of plague. Whatever it is, hopefully we'll identify it. So there's a lot going on that's hard to. Hard to understand, hard to manage with different kinds of change. So I think it's just we're looking at historical change that's significant. And to say it's collapse is really a little bit. A little bit lazy to say just. No. We're looking at major technologically driven transformations of societies, new ways of trading and new kinds of states that are going to happen. In the Iron Age. We know states are bigger. Population doubles after 400 BC and it's worldwide. It's also in China. So population is exploding in many places of the world. States are bigger, cities are bigger, there's new kinds of institutions. We have law codes that are exploding as an idea. We have coinage after 650 B.C. there's a lot of economic things going on. This really interesting in this Iron Age. So we're at the precipice of all these changes and it's kind of the Dark Ages because we used to not know much, you know, between 1200 and 1000. It's just. Oh, it's all kind of messy and a lot of destroyed sites. And it must be those sea peoples. They just overrun everybody and destroy everything. It's more interesting, complicated than that.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
It also just echoes so many modern parallels. Right.
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Unnamed Historian
Like it kind of does.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Technology precipitates economic change that then creates booms and busts. And then the people from the towns that were, you know, affected by it, they immigrate. And then there's an immigration problem and then they have to assimilate into the culture. Then there's riots. Like it just.
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Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
This is a story we've seen all through the 1900s and even now, you know.
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Unnamed Historian
Indeed. I would think that's a really good way to think about it. In fact, it's. It's these, these sort of changes. And there are winners and there are losers and you can sort of list them up. The Hittites lose, the Mycenaean palaces lose. Egypt, in a sense, loses. Although doesn't know it quite yet. It sort of continues through the end of the new kingdom. And 1069 is the final endpoint. Ramses III assassinated earlier than that. So it sort of drags on for a long time with all these short lived kings. And then Egypt's ruled by outside groups.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
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Unnamed Historian
With a couple of exceptions in the 4th century BC and then all the way to Nasser in the Egyptian revolution.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
No way.
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Unnamed Historian
Pretty much technically outsiders running Egypt. So this is, this is a major, a major thing.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
So it's interesting to Ramses, he is coming into a very sort of difficult political and economic time.
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Unnamed Historian
He's facing all this, but arguably successfully. He's very long lived. He's very successful on military campaign because that's what you do if you're looking for success. Military conquest, military power. Still got that, still got a really badass cavalry.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
We can signal to the world not to mess with us.
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Unnamed Historian
Yes.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
And we can signal to our citizens.
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Unnamed Historian
That we're the best, we're really strong. We build really big monuments like Ramses II's temple at Abu Simbel. This amazing, highly engineered temple.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Can we get a picture of that? Ramses the Second, his temple.
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Unnamed Historian
Yeah, it's. Well, it's one of his temples. It's a, it's a, it's not as mortuary temple. It's a temple at the border between Nubia and Egypt, which is part of the New Kingdom empire mostly. But there's a lot of mobile populations down there. And this temple looks like it's in the middle of nowhere. And they had to rebuilt it with the high dam flooding the valley. So they reconstructed this temple, which is amazing. There it is, Ramses ii and three gods next to him. Then they all look like Ramses ii.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
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Unnamed Historian
And it's engineered so at a certain, at a certain day the sun is shining right into the inner sanctuary of the temple.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Love that.
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Unnamed Historian
And it's also has these great military scenes. It's one of the first battle narratives we have in history. Complete with the artistic depictions of the battles against the Hittites. It's an incredible place, beautiful place to visit. But this looks like it's in the middle of nowhere. I mean, I think it's meant to convey to populations in the south. This is Egypt. Like stay away because this is a really badass king who. And he will hurt you.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
And this is right on the border of, of Sudan or Nubia.
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Unnamed Historian
Pretty much. Yeah. It's at, it's at the frontier of Egypt and it's sort of sending a.
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Dr. Joseph Manning
Signal if you're, if you're coming in here.
- [28:50]
Unnamed Historian
Dude, big dude built this. So yeah, you know, it's how effective it was, I don't know. But, you know, sort of the same issue it is. It is about trying to control populations with a lot of smoke and mirrors and building really big stuff, because you can do that. You can go on military campaigns and kick some tail, and that's kind of a way to reinforce. But in the end, it's a losing battle. But Ramesses II arguably is quite successful at it, and he's a great builder or a great usurper of earlier buildings, because if you look at his. His name is inscribed in a lot of buildings that weren't built by him.
- [29:25]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [29:26]
Unnamed Historian
But carved really deeply into the stone, always. That's typical Ramses second inscription. That's really deeply carved into the stone.
- [29:34]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, really?
- [29:34]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, it's quite distinctive. Why? Because it's harder to erase.
- [29:39]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Interesting. So some other going to be there, some other king might come by and kind of scrub this out. They have it a lot, right?
- [29:45]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [29:46]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And they know this.
- [29:47]
Unnamed Historian
Yes.
- [29:47]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And they said, no, carve really deeply.
- [29:50]
Unnamed Historian
Because we're claiming this building as mine.
- [29:52]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, that's so interesting.
- [29:53]
Unnamed Historian
He was good at that.
- [29:54]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I wonder if that's the case. Through all antiquity, anytime you have a large population you have to try to control, you need big, big established pieces of art to indicate to everyone who's running the show.
- [30:07]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [30:07]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Like, I've always heard it said that, like, if the president or the ruler of your country has images everywhere, like, you're not. You're not in a good place.
- [30:15]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [30:15]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Like I've heard people say, like, like Saddam, like in Iraq, like, like these giant monuments and pictures of him. And all across Baghdad you have images of Saddam and it's like, oh, yeah, you're under a dictatorship. Like, if they have to reinforce to the people constantly, like, hey, don't with me.
- [30:29]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [30:29]
Dr. Joseph Manning
It's like, yeah, you're under some type of autocrat.
- [30:31]
Unnamed Historian
Well, yeah, we would say cult of personality.
- [30:33]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [30:34]
Unnamed Historian
But that's what this is.
- [30:35]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right?
- [30:35]
Unnamed Historian
That is what this is. Precisely.
- [30:37]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Interesting.
- [30:38]
Unnamed Historian
That's how this world works.
- [30:39]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And because you have so many people, you don't have media, you don't have newspapers. Like, I mean, you might have some version of, like, you know, things people can read, but most people are illiterate. So, like, you just need to have giant statues that go, I'm the fucking man.
- [30:49]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. And later we have coinage and we starting to hit. We start after Alexander the Great, when these kings take over, like the Ptolemies. We have for the first time depictions of the living Rulers on the coins. Not gods, but rulers.
- [31:00]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Because this is my money.
- [31:01]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. And it circulates as a thing. These are like ancient. It's ancient Twitter. You can circulate messages with coinage because it's really transportable pretty far and wide.
- [31:10]
Dr. Joseph Manning
In what way?
- [31:10]
Unnamed Historian
Well, it's. Coins circulate, sure.
- [31:12]
Dr. Joseph Manning
But like how, like what kind of a met? Like I'm looking at a quarter. Like, what's the message here?
- [31:16]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, well, this is. This is the current king is sending some message about.
- [31:21]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I see.
- [31:22]
Unnamed Historian
Oh, benevolent ruler. I heard about this guy. He pays soldiers really well. He's. That's a really nice looking coin.
- [31:30]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I see.
- [31:31]
Unnamed Historian
So good place to do business. You know, I mean it's subtle, but it's a way to circulate some image of who these rulers were. This is my space. Rude and control. Any coin that circulates in this space is going to be our coinage. That's a nice one, Ptolemy. Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's Ptolemy1 with a nice eagle of Zeus on the back.
- [31:50]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I can see. So let's say there's some type of regime change or a new ruler and you're in Carthage or something and you get a coin and someone says, oh yeah, here's our new coin. They go, oh, this. Because you might not have heard the news, Right?
- [32:00]
Unnamed Historian
Exactly.
- [32:00]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, this guy.
- [32:01]
Unnamed Historian
This guy's king.
- [32:02]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [32:02]
Unnamed Historian
No, with a new regime, there's a new coin. So how effective again it was, I don't know. But it's a way of conveying a message that matters. I think in Bronze Age, Bronze Age world there's less of that.
- [32:14]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Sure.
- [32:14]
Unnamed Historian
It really is building really big stuff, which the Ptolemies later also copy. It is an age after Alexander the Great and those great campaigns of building really big stuff, building really big lighthouses.
- [32:28]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [32:28]
Unnamed Historian
Building colossus of roads, building a ship with 40 banks of ores that is so big it can't move out of the harbor of Alexandria. But we can build a really big ship.
- [32:42]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [32:43]
Unnamed Historian
It's conveying a message of strength. And I think earlier Egyptians like Ramses knew that that building lots of stuff means strength. Building a pyramid, right.
- [32:55]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I mean they're seeing the pyramids every day and they're like, oh yeah, these old guys that build this, we still talk about them.
- [33:00]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, you can look at that top. That.
- [33:03]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah. And did they know at that time, like, what was their perception of the pyramids in this new kingdom? Like, do we know what they thought? Did they think like, oh, this one was built for this guy. This was built for this person.
- [33:15]
Unnamed Historian
I don't know if they knew because there's no inscriptions at least preserved in the, the Old Kingdom pyramids themselves, I think. But they would know stories. They sure would know stories of Chaops. I think the architect, the famous architect of the step pyramid, the first kind of pyramid in the third dynasty, preceding the age of the proper pyramids, became a God. Imhotep, he was an architect, but he gets deified. He's deified under the Ptolemies also. Even so, what, two, 200 years after, he still considered like, this was a really important guy.
- [33:54]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Wow.
- [33:55]
Unnamed Historian
So there are those traditions we hear about. One of the sons, I think of Ramses II was a famous magician, but also a scholar. And there's stories about him that circulate later under the Ptolemies again where he's, he's going around cemeteries studying the ancient text, studying, studying monuments. So he was kind of the first Egyptologist.
- [34:16]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, interesting.
- [34:17]
Unnamed Historian
Again, kind of looking at the Egyptian tradition in some way. So, yeah, there's some, there's some of this. It must have been quite a lot of this. Certainly priesthoods and temples were the main people concerned with that. And that probably happened quite a bit.
- [34:31]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right?
- [34:31]
Unnamed Historian
They knew the tradition.
- [34:32]
Dr. Joseph Manning
What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you own a small business or maybe you work for a small business, and I am about to make your life so much easier. Let's say hypothetically, you own a little, you know, furniture business, right. And you're struggling to keep track of the raw materials, the production schedule, invoicing clients, all that stuff. Well, that's why I want to tell you about Odoo. Okay. Because with Odoo, it's an all in one business platform that streamlines everything. Now you have inventory management, you have manufacturing, you have accounting apps that will make everything so simple. So now if you have a small business, you can monitor the inventory in real time, schedule productions calls more effectively, and you can send invoices automatically, all from one platform. Plus, you get a customized CRM to track sales leads and follow up with potential clients, boosting your closing rates. Back in the day, you'd probably have to get, you know, some, you know, Ivy League operator, business person that's, you know, able to make everything happen for you. But now with Odoo, it cuts it all out. And I'm sure you're thinking, okay, if this is going to make my life easier, give me more free time to spend with my friends, family and playing softball and make me more money it must be crazy expensive. This is the good news. Listeners of this program are going to get a 14 day free trial. That's right. You get two weeks with Odoo completely for free. When you go to odoo.com camp. That's right, odoo.com, use the promo code camp and you will get 14 days for free just to try it out, see if you like it. If it's not for you, you don't need it. All right. But Odoo is going to make your life so much easier. Everything you need all in one place. Save time, make more money. Let's get back to the show. So why is Ramses the Second so important? Was it just the length of his reign or did he instill anything that was very important?
- [36:11]
Unnamed Historian
Well, good question. I mean in terms of. He's one of the great builders, but if you, if you believe, and I think it's the case that a lot of the building was usurped building still his name is everywhere. I mean growing up as a kid, I date myself as usual. But Yule Brenner in the Ten Commandments can. Ten Commandments, that is Ramsey's the second for me. It's really nice portrayal of this guy, this ego. Yeah. I, I think he of course the. Around the time of the Exodus. So he's famous in, in kind of biblical history as in sort of a negative way.
- [36:51]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I mean if it's, if he's not necessarily the king of the time of the Exodus, it's presumable that there were the Jews in Egypt.
- [36:59]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [37:00]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Under his reign.
- [37:01]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, yeah. It'd be. No, it'd be no surprise. There's lots of other ethnic groups as well, so as particularly in the delta from time immemorial. So you know, probably accepted as opposed to being treated as vilified like the Hyksos who were probably always in Egypt in the Delta.
- [37:21]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [37:22]
Unnamed Historian
But at a certain point. No, this is Egypt for Egyptians. We have to redefine our space in a certain way.
- [37:27]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Does the Old Testament, Torah, does, do they reference any of these Egyptian kings specifically by name?
- [37:35]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, they're, they're in there around Ramsay's time. This is an important moment. This, you know, it's an international age in a sense that Egypt is very much part of since the 18th Dynasty. This was so 19th Dynasty in particular was a bit more militaristic even the society was a bit more reorganized around the cavalry in particular as the high status soldiers. So it even gets more intensified more about military conquest or maintaining this. This empire. Yeah. What else is he, Ramses ii, famous for in terms of legacy? I think fundamentally long reign, one of the longer reigns.
- [38:19]
Dr. Joseph Manning
It's what, like 50, 60 years now?
- [38:22]
Unnamed Historian
You can check me.
- [38:23]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, here we go.
- [38:24]
Unnamed Historian
It's 1279 to the 1220s, maybe.
- [38:31]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Let's see.
- [38:32]
Unnamed Historian
Yahtzee.
- [38:34]
Dr. Joseph Manning
1279 to 1213.
- [38:36]
Unnamed Historian
1213 even.
- [38:37]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Okay, so even longer.
- [38:39]
Unnamed Historian
Long rain. Yeah, really long rain.
- [38:41]
Dr. Joseph Manning
So you try to take off some years on it. Come on. You're a hater. You're a Ramsey hater, dude.
- [38:46]
Unnamed Historian
I'm underestimating.
- [38:48]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah. 66 years.
- [38:49]
Unnamed Historian
So. Yeah. And of course, Pepe II, arguably the longest reigning pharaoh at the end of the old Kingdom. Maybe a few years longer. I think he has 66 years of reign. We. We think, anyway, one of the longer ones. And that in both cases creates succession problems because Ramses II outlived a lot of his heirs.
- [39:13]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Interesting. Right?
- [39:14]
Unnamed Historian
And then you get a free for all afterwards. And who's. Who's what? So his.
- [39:20]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Ramsey iii, one of his sons. Is he. Is he a direct descendant?
- [39:23]
Unnamed Historian
Not direct, I don't think. Not direct.
- [39:24]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Interesting.
- [39:25]
Unnamed Historian
But it's the next dynasty. It's the next ruling group. But certainly makes the claim, including the name, that he's related to Ramses ii.
- [39:36]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, that's fascinating.
- [39:38]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [39:38]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I wonder, do you know the exact name that the Jews reference in the Torah of the Exodus? I want. Could you Google that? I'd be so curious to know what, like, I'm always interested in, like, because I, again, growing up religious, like, I. I'm always curious to see, like, historical verification of, like, biblical text. So if there's things in Exodus that are like, oh, is this king and this guy did this to us? Which I imagine, you know, if you're talking about.
- [40:00]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, it's Joseph story in Genesis. Genesis would be the. The main one. And I cannot remember, honestly, if it's. If Ramses is named by name there.
- [40:08]
Dr. Joseph Manning
The name Ramses is not used for pharaohs, but rather the title Pharaoh or king of Egypt is used. The name Ramses appears in Torah as the name of a place par.
- [40:18]
Unnamed Historian
Ramesses. Yeah. The capital. The house of Ramses in the delta. That's where they're. That's their capital.
- [40:23]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, specifically. So it's just Pharaoh that's lived. Interesting.
- [40:27]
Unnamed Historian
Okay, that's also interesting that the pharaoh's not named by name.
- [40:32]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah. I wonder if that's done intentionally. Like if they're. If they're keeping story of this. I wonder, because I imagine a lot of this is oral Tradition. I don't know exactly when they would actually start scribing it, but I wonder later for sure. And I wonder if either gets lost to time or if they intentionally don't mention. It's a great question, because I wonder if they're like, yeah, I mean, if we put his name down, we're gonna get murdered.
- [40:53]
Unnamed Historian
I think the former, I think probably the loss of the, the gap in time, because even though this is going back to the end of the Bronze Age, the, the early parts of the Old Testament, it's not written down till much later.
- [41:04]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [41:04]
Unnamed Historian
Much, much later. So they, I think they probably lost the details.
- [41:09]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, interesting.
- [41:10]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [41:10]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And, and I guess if you're referencing per Ramses in the Bible, there's some verification that some one of the Ramses was around.
- [41:19]
Unnamed Historian
Well, that's their capital. Yeah, that's the whole Ramessid capital in the eastern Delta. Very close to where the Hittites are coming from and their capital of avarice, but it's in the same, same vicinity. So, yeah, the house of Ramses is what per Ramses means, But that's, I mean, that is their imperial center.
- [41:38]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, wow.
- [41:39]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [41:39]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, that's interesting. I, I, so many of my Jewish friends are like, you know, we're the ones that built the pyramids. I'm like, I don't know, dude. Especially if we're talking about the Exodus at this time, then that would mean there was like Jewish slaves at the going back 2,000 years.
- [41:53]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [41:54]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Which I guess is potentially possible.
- [41:55]
Unnamed Historian
I don't, Yeah, I don't think there's evidence for it. We have, we know a lot about tomb builders, not everything, but I don't think, you know, Judaism has an interesting history. When classical Judaism emerges later, really in the Hellenistic period, when it's defined as, in particular ways, there were these different ethnic groups who had certain religions, but it wasn't a single centralized sort of idea of what Judaism was. I think there's lots of different views of how you practice it until it gets formalized.
- [42:29]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right. And to my understanding, even in the Torah, like, they would just reference themselves as like, Israelites, you know, or like, like the children of Abraham. Like, I feel like they would, I don't know how often in the tour they would reference themselves like, as Jews, you know, because, like, I wonder if the philosophy and sort of the religious context around their belief system was not as nailed down. It was more like an ethnic, ethnic delineation. Yeah, we're Israelites.
- [42:50]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [42:51]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Interesting.
- [42:51]
Unnamed Historian
I think so. I think it was quite diverse in Terms of practice until. Until later.
- [42:55]
Dr. Joseph Manning
It got formalized in the Hellenistic period.
- [42:57]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, kind of.
- [42:58]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, okay, interesting. So Ramses ii. Do we know about his tomb?
- [43:04]
Unnamed Historian
We do. Yeah. We have. It's magnificent.
- [43:06]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Can we get a picture of that?
- [43:09]
Unnamed Historian
And we have a tomb of his. The tomb of his sons are also found in the Valley of Kings, famously not so long ago, which is quite rifled through and destroyed. But that's, you know, the entire 20th dynasty. I mean, it's sort of related in one way or another. I mean, he had a lot of wives and a lot of children.
- [43:26]
Dr. Joseph Manning
How many? How many?
- [43:28]
Unnamed Historian
Something like a hundred.
- [43:29]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Whoa.
- [43:29]
Unnamed Historian
Children.
- [43:30]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Damn. Yeah, this guy was getting after it.
- [43:32]
Unnamed Historian
He was. He was a busy man.
- [43:34]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah. For real.
- [43:35]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [43:36]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I feel like I remember hearing, like, stories about Ramsay's being like, being a child bearer. Like, I remember, like, hearing this, like, as a kid, like. Yeah. Ramsey's had, like, a bunch of kids.
- [43:45]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [43:46]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And if you got 100 kids, you gotta have very many wives, I imagine.
- [43:50]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. I mean, how do you remember all the names?
- [43:52]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I couldn't imagine, you know? Yeah. I mean, anniversary five.
- [43:55]
Unnamed Historian
First five I would get, but then.
- [43:57]
Dr. Joseph Manning
It would be a nightmare. Yeah, dude. I mean. Yeah. You don't even know your kids names. It's insane.
- [44:02]
Unnamed Historian
No, no, no.
- [44:03]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Guys like Nick Cannon, right? He's got like 16 kids.
- [44:06]
Unnamed Historian
Respect.
- [44:07]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I wonder how many people are related to Ramses.
- [44:09]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, a lot.
- [44:10]
Dr. Joseph Manning
You got to think One dude has 100 kids.
- [44:12]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, there's probably.
- [44:13]
Dr. Joseph Manning
There's probably people walking around the mad with like, Ramsey's DNA maybe.
- [44:17]
Unnamed Historian
Well, yeah, the DNA is probably still around. Yeah.
- [44:19]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right. I mean, 100 kids. That's pretty good. So that's his tune.
- [44:22]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. Nice modern light, but beautiful upload. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's magnificent. So, yeah, successful reign, because it's a long reign and you can do a lot of things and consolidate a lot of power, which doesn't last very long because all this is personality. It's what he. What he is doing. And then it's not automatic. It shrinks back almost instantly. Unless you're going out there and continue it.
- [44:49]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [44:50]
Unnamed Historian
Which. Which happens to some extent, but not the way Ramsay's doing. And really, the long reign is the thing.
- [44:57]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And that's. That's Seti. Seti there. The. The dog head.
- [45:00]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [45:01]
Dr. Joseph Manning
On the left there. Christos. Yeah, that. Yeah, that one.
- [45:04]
Unnamed Historian
Oh, that's Anubis, actually.
- [45:05]
Dr. Joseph Manning
That's Anubis.
- [45:06]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, that's Anubis. Funeral God. The king. Yeah. I see Seti is somewhere.
- [45:14]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And was. This was set to an accepted God of the.
- [45:17]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, there's a whole myth between. You know, Set is portrayed in Egyptian text as this evil God, you know, the murderer of his brother or. Or a legitimate king. So Seti has this sort of nebula double valence of, you know. Yeah. He's part of the pantheon, but an evildoer.
- [45:41]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Interesting.
- [45:42]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [45:42]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Which is the fact that the Ramses boys were so fond of him. Does that indicate anything? Is that like a cultural shift? Like the fact that they would take on the sort of deification of a guy that killed his brother? Seems ominous.
- [45:57]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. Because, you know, there's different myths in Egypt. There was not one myth that everyone believed. Each temple had their own cycle of stories. So in part, it's local. You know, they're homeboys from the Eastern Delta. So they're going to be really their goddess, Seth or Sethi, not Amen or Ray. I mean, they're. They're loyal to. Now, whether that's also an ethnic indicator is where the debate is.
- [46:24]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I see.
- [46:26]
Unnamed Historian
But it's certainly that part of the Eastern Delta. Even. So Egyptology is interesting field in a lot of ways. The way we do history in it is we're kind of led by the nose, by the text we have preserved, which tends to be telling good stories of kings. So we have to be a little.
- [46:45]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Bit skeptical, a little scrutinizing.
- [46:47]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, sort of. Well, what don't we know, what don't we have? And sometimes we can speculate, sometimes we're at the mercy of what we have. But the Delta is one of these places where it's not really. It's not Egypt. Egypt's not Egypt anymore. After a thousand bc, it's run by foreigners, by outside groups, Even though they call themselves pharaohs, it's not good Egyptian kings running the show. There's also this bias against Delta in some ways because of our lack of historical sources.
- [47:14]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [47:14]
Unnamed Historian
You know, there's a lot we don't know. It is Egypt. I'm going to give a paper, a lecture in October sort of on this. I mean, Egypt is, by a lot of classical scholars, sort of written out of history because it's not Mediterranean.
- [47:29]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Hmm.
- [47:30]
Unnamed Historian
It's sort of southward looking. It's. It's African. It's, you know, which is true. But it's not really part of the Mediterranean ever. But in fact, it was starting with the Ramessid family. This is Mediterranean. They're interacting with Phoenicians and others. The Delta is an extremely Active, really important part of Egypt, probably always, but it's a. It's an unwritten history because we don't have the records.
- [47:53]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right. And the area closest to the Mediterranean also is the worst preserved.
- [47:58]
Unnamed Historian
Exactly, exactly. But this is where all the Near Eastern influences. Influence is coming since before there was a civilization in Egypt. There was this interaction. This is where agriculture comes from. Comes from the near east via the Sinai into Egypt. The ideas of agriculture comes in late from the Nile, from the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Agriculture is. Agriculture in the Near east is 9,000 BC or so. In Egypt, it's between 5 and 4,000 BC.
- [48:27]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, interesting.
- [48:27]
Unnamed Historian
Egypt's late to the game. Egypt's also late to the Iron Age. They don't get the message that we're now in the Iron Age.
- [48:35]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Is that hubris? Is that.
- [48:37]
Unnamed Historian
No, it's lack of, the lack of metal.
- [48:39]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh. Because they don't have. They don't have irons.
- [48:41]
Unnamed Historian
They don't have iron sources. So they're still kind of in the Bronze Age technologically. Meanwhile, the Phoenicians and the Greeks, they're booming. 900, 800, 700 Egypt still. Well, we need a pharaoh. We're running things this way. Pharaoh centric state. But iron isn't documented. I could be wrong again. I'm partially guessing it's something like 7th century BC.
- [49:06]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Wow.
- [49:07]
Unnamed Historian
When we get iron. So Egypt's late to the game. It isn't necessarily their fault. They just, they don't have local iron sources or the technology. The furnaces you need to smelt iron, which is high temperature. And that, that is coming out of. Other places, like the Hittite kingdom, have these, in the near east, have these different kinds of ovens that can smelt iron.
- [49:30]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Interesting.
- [49:31]
Unnamed Historian
Egypt, Egypt is, in a sense, it falls behind in this economic world. You know, it's like Silicon Valley is booming, but some places are still kind of what's pre Silicon Valley, Right. I don't know, some kind of analog world.
- [49:47]
Dr. Joseph Manning
How do they do that technologically? How do they do the minting for their coins once they get to the later parts of the New Kingdom?
- [49:52]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. Oh, well, there's no coins until anywhere until 650 BC.
- [49:58]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Okay, so that's after New Kingdom.
- [49:59]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, yeah, Far, far after. They're doing bartering. There's metal, there is money. There's a strong conception of money can be metal, could be grain, and you have fixed values against which you exchanged. You know, I want those sandals. I can trade you these nice textiles here. And we think, you know, my Textiles are worth three pots of grain and a bit of gold metal strip. And we can exchange some amount of sandals or something. So it's barter against fixed values. So that is money. But coin, money is Weird form of money is 650bc it's invented in Turkey, Western Turkey. And then spreads.
- [50:45]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Wow.
- [50:45]
Unnamed Historian
Because it's a good idea and everyone gets it.
- [50:48]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I wonder if that has anything to do with haggle culture, you know what I mean?
- [50:52]
Unnamed Historian
Barter versus.
- [50:53]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, like, like if you had a long history, like, like generations of barter. I mean, I have Egyptian friends. You just met one of them recently. Yeah, they love to haggle, you know what I mean? Like you go over to Egypt, I'm sure everything, like I forget I was just talking to someone recently and I don't remember if it was Egypt, but that like you could go to a restaurant and even at the restaurant you could kind of be like, I don't know if we got this exactly right, is there any way to get a little discount? And they'd be like, yeah, we'll take a little. And like there's like a little like, like the barter culture still exists in certain extents.
- [51:24]
Unnamed Historian
Oh yeah.
- [51:24]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And I, I wonder if that's a remnant of generations of, of. Of bartering pre, like having commerce, pre currency.
- [51:32]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, it's all. Well, to some extent maybe it's also. It's kind of a nice feature of society. So it's not impersonal. I mean there are some famous economists, Carl Polanyi, this famous economist, thought that money, coin, money and so on, markets were evil because it destroys social relationships. If you have a market that's impersonal and I'm just giving you five dollar bill for that and I'm going on my way.
- [51:58]
Dr. Joseph Manning
We never have to talk to each other.
- [51:59]
Unnamed Historian
We're not talking, we're not, we're not meeting. But if we're face to face going, come on, I know your brother and you know, we have a, we have a, we have a history and how about two bucks and next time, you know, there's a relationship, you come to.
- [52:13]
Dr. Joseph Manning
My place and I'll get.
- [52:14]
Unnamed Historian
Social relationship. And you can argue that that is actually not backward. That's actually more sophisticated because it reinforces society.
- [52:22]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [52:22]
Unnamed Historian
Social bonds, social bonds and obligations and gift giving and all that stuff and character, right? Yeah, yeah, arguably. And sometimes you might need a friend who's got your back.
- [52:33]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [52:34]
Unnamed Historian
And so all of that is how the world goes around. That's actually, it's deep in human beings and it Ain't all bad.
- [52:41]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [52:42]
Unnamed Historian
As opposed to these impersonal exchanges at a grocery store or somewhere else, which is fixing its coins face down. Yeah, face down. You're like, you know, are buried in our cell phones walking down the street sort of, you know, that's kind of world. Kind of world are we living in?
- [52:55]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, it's bizarre.
- [52:55]
Unnamed Historian
It's pretty back to the Bronze Age.
- [52:56]
Dr. Joseph Manning
It's unhuman. You know what I mean?
- [52:58]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, exactly.
- [52:59]
Dr. Joseph Manning
If you think about the span of history, like, it's mostly haggling and trying to, you know, work out a deal.
- [53:06]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, yeah. And that has a social function.
- [53:08]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [53:09]
Unnamed Historian
As well. It's not just trying to screw the merchant out of an extra sandal.
- [53:14]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, of course.
- [53:14]
Unnamed Historian
It is actually like repeat business then. You know, there's things that come with that.
- [53:20]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Well, even when I was including trust when I was in Marrakesh, like, it was. People kind of told us, like, hey, it's a little rude if you don't haggle. Like, it. Like they can kind of feel like a way about it. Like if they say a price and you accept it, like they might renegotiate on the price if you just are too eager to do it.
- [53:35]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [53:35]
Dr. Joseph Manning
They'll kind of be like, oh, well, actually it's. It's more. I didn't realize which one this was. Da, da, da. Like they'll. They almost take it as a personal affront that you're not engaging with them in the social sort of dance.
- [53:44]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. It's insulting. I mean, very often in the souk, in the markets in Cairo or somewhere else, you know, you could be there for an hour. You could be. Come into the shop, sit down, let's have a. Let's have some mint tea, let's have some tea and let's have a conversation. Where are you from? Oh, you're from Chicago. My brother went to school in Chicago. And all of this sort of exchange, if you don't do that. Yeah. That culture would look at an American who's just in and out with a cash as really sort of alien. Yeah, yeah. Alien. Not trustworthy.
- [54:20]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah. Cold.
- [54:21]
Unnamed Historian
A little bit arrogant, maybe a lot arrogant. All sorts of bad things, actually, that we're impatient for. But if you. If you slow down in this world and have a. Have a cup of tea and have a human. Some human interaction, it actually is. It is sort of a nice thing.
- [54:36]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [54:36]
Unnamed Historian
Now, anyway, how do we get talking about the bartering here?
- [54:39]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I. Who knows? Welcome to camp, dude. That's what happens. I. I heard someone say recently and I. This might be apocryphal that the evolution of technology throughout the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom into the New Kingdom.
- [54:51]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [54:52]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Is not linear. That it's not like, oh, technology just progressively gets better. I had heard that like it kind of got worse and they sort of forgot how to do some things and a little bit of plague and they lose this technology and they kind of rediscover it and then it gets. And then they lose. And then it kind. I've even heard someone say that it just goes down, that it slowly gets less sophisticated technologically. Can you speak to that and what are your thoughts?
- [55:13]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, yeah. I mean this is what collapse really means is a loss of transmission of information in a society that's stable. The transmission culture really within families, of course. But then there's this sort of high technology ways of doing things. How do you make a pot? How do you, what kind of clay do you use? How do you make a chariot, whatever that's transmitted from generation to generation, father to son or in a profession. And if society goes through some bad times, some instability, some major famine or plague or other things like that, it can upset the transmission of knowledge. That happens all the time. And we've lost a lot from the ancient world. No doubt about it. So I think that happens continually in the world post industrial revolution with patent offices and so on and the diffusion of information in various places, libraries or patent offices or whatever. There's less of a chance. Except if we digitize everything and then now we're vulnerable.
- [56:19]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [56:20]
Unnamed Historian
Because if something happens, some kind of solar flare like. Yep. Oops, no hard copies.
- [56:25]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [56:26]
Unnamed Historian
You know, this is why I like books, by the way. Books are the most efficient store of information that's ever been invented.
- [56:32]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [56:33]
Unnamed Historian
And you know, it has a function also if we digitize everything and we don't have books anymore. Wow. Is that vulnerability? So, yeah, there's, there's end wars. You know, we, we lose a lot and you, you hope there's enough to fuse to continue, but often not in, in the tech world. I think we can make modern Egypt, Egyptian chariots. Now we can recreate it because we have these ancient ones.
- [56:59]
Dr. Joseph Manning
But could we have recreated them in 1500?
- [57:02]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. No.
- [57:03]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Could we have recreated them in the 1700s?
- [57:05]
Unnamed Historian
You know, this is my famous example when I'm teaching is the anti Kithra mechanism.
- [57:09]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yes. Let's get an image of this. I'm so glad you brought this up.
- [57:12]
Unnamed Historian
Really? Are you a fan?
- [57:13]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, I mean it's fascinating. This. It's basically like some People think it's a calculator. People think it's like an atlas. It's like this highly sophisticated mechanized gear system that was discovered in the bottom of the ocean.
- [57:24]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [57:24]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Just by happenstance. Yeah, it's. Yeah. Craziness. Pull this up.
- [57:28]
Unnamed Historian
This is a fascinating device discovered in 1900 by divers. This is a recreation of it. It's just being, it's still being worked out. It was found. Yeah, that's how it was found. Crushed together in the bottom. Bottom. Mediterranean in a, in a Roman pirate ship. I mean it's a bunch of loot coming from the eastern Mediterranean, probably back to Rome somewhere. Something like 100 BC I think is a normal date. It's, it's extraordinary. The manufacturer is extraordinary. The knowledge of differential gearing is extraordinary. It's a calculator for, for calendars, figuring out religious festival. So it's kind of an old fashioned and ancient purpose. But the, the ability to manufacture this thing. The knowledge of astronomy is extraordinary. Probably incorporating Babylonian astronomical observations as well as Greek ones. So this is the eastern Mediterranean world of cultures interacting. It is. I mean we can recreate this now. In fact, Hublot, the Swiss watch company recreated this as a watch for $350,000.
- [58:32]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, worth it.
- [58:33]
Unnamed Historian
Which home. Yeah, how about that? So I think, you know, maybe you can still buy one. I don't think they made many of them. So we can do it now. But this is, let's say it's 100 BC just for argument's sake. I think that's generally accepted date from the inscriptions which are still being worked out. It's inscribed. So the count, the different calendar system, the different astronomical observations is making these sophisticated calculations. It's really impressive. There's nothing like this anywhere until about 1500, maybe a little bit after that. So that's more than 1500 years, let's say of a gap. We only have one of these. It's hard to believe there's only one of them.
- [59:09]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [59:10]
Unnamed Historian
But there's only one that exists so far. Some kind of display piece. Some guy had it trying to impress his friends. It was, it was meant to, in a temple context to calculate when the festivals are happening in the world of lunar calendars and civil calendars and so on. But it is, it's amazing. I think this is for me kind of a. The image of the ancient world. We think, oh, you think we understand everything. How about this, which we're still working on. There's a great historian of science at NYU who's one of the experts on this Stuff they still have meetings about this really fine tuning what this thing was. It's extraordinary. And it says this world, even 100 BC, this is an extraordinary world. And we've lost all this. Really? And what else have we lost? Yeah, you know, a lot.
- [59:58]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I mean, like the non linearity of technology I find so interesting that you can have something like this in, you know, 100 BC and maybe they first built them in 300 BC. Like, who knows when the first one was made or even the understanding of differential gears, like when that was discovered. And then it just goes away and we live for another 1500 years without it. Like, that's just remarkable to me that that can occur.
- [60:21]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [60:22]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And what don't we have now that maybe we had in, you know, 500 AD, right? Like, and I think that there's a real modern arrogance to be like, oh, well there's. That's not. That didn't happen again. Like, well, maybe, I mean, maybe it did happen, right? Like, I mean, obviously people point to the pyramids and they go like, oh, how was it done? Yada yada. But like, there are features of the pyramids that are so precise and so perfect that I don't know if we were able to redo them or to make them up until, you know. Yeah, 1800, right?
- [60:49]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. There's a lot of guesswork.
- [60:51]
Dr. Joseph Manning
What were the, the vases? Do you, are you familiar with these vases, these Egyptian vases that are made out of granite? Would you mind googling it?
- [60:57]
Unnamed Historian
Oh, yeah. Even the old kingdom ones, they really, the really small ones.
- [61:00]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh my goodness. Yeah, these are so fascinating.
- [61:03]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, really small drills took a long time to manufacture.
- [61:06]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And they're so thin. They're like as thin as like an eggshell with some of them, like some of the most precise ones.
- [61:11]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. Going back to taught again, that, that ability, that fine craftsmanship is really impressive. Thousands, really impressive.
- [61:19]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Underneath a pyramid, there's 40,000, potentially like this, like a whole. Like how long did it take to, to make one, you know?
- [61:27]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, no, a lot. I mean, some of this stuff is not granite. It's diorite, which is almost as hard as the diamond. And so to, to shape these things with little drills, like what material, over what length of time. Good Lord. It's really amazing and underestimated. I, I totally agree with you, Mark.
- [61:47]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I mean, just, I'm just so fascinated and blown away by this. What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break really quick because you need to rebrand your crotch. That's right. You need A full rebrand on your dong. And you're gonna do it with Bluechew. Because Bluechew, their tablets aren't just for better sex. No, they are like if Tony Robbins give a motivational speech, rates your race, your wiener, you know, I mean, you're gonn amazing. Look, I just took one of Bluechew's tablets today and suddenly, I mean, look at me, I'm glowing. This table, absolutely getting crushed underneath it. Right. My penis is giving a press conference. Okay, Feeling great, Never been better. So whether you're trying to make, you know, a memorable moment with your. Your sweet love or you're just trying to give, you know, a friend of yours or a girl, you know, like a, you know, some crazy group chat fodder, something for the girls to gossip about. Bluechew is absolutely the chewable tablet delivery service that you need. The thunder. And the best part is that we got a special deal for the listeners of this lovely program. Get your first month for free@bluechew.com. just use the promo code Gagnon at checkout. All you gotta do is pay five bucks for shipping. That's like a cup of coffee. All right, five bucks for shipping. You're gonna get free Bluechew straight to your door. So upgrade your legacy. Let your name ring out for eons. And let's get back to the show. Now another question about Egyptology, broadly speaking.
- [63:08]
Unnamed Historian
Okay.
- [63:09]
Dr. Joseph Manning
We mentioned Ramsay's tomb.
- [63:11]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [63:12]
Dr. Joseph Manning
We all should check out the. The tomb of his sons. I've heard a criticism that Egyptologists will just. Anytime they don't know something, they go, funerary, tomb, burial. Yeah, that's what it is. What do you think of that criticism?
- [63:26]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, well, the broad criticism, that's true in anthropology, kind of broadly speaking. We don't want what it is. It's ritual.
- [63:34]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [63:34]
Unnamed Historian
You know? Well, really, no, I think that's kind of. It's a shorthand for it. We don't know because we don't understand the culture as well as we think we might.
- [63:42]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [63:42]
Unnamed Historian
Actually, I think that's the better answer is there's a lot we don't understand. There's a lot we don't know. And we have two choices. To fill in the gaps and create stories or to say, you know what we don't know. It's mysterious, it's amazing. The pyramids were built not by aliens, by humans who were really smart and really clever and really, the Egyptians were really good. The legacy of this whole culture. One of them is working in stone.
- [64:14]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [64:15]
Unnamed Historian
Because there's a lot of stone in Egypt. It's a natural resource. Unlike in the Near East. It's kind of more mud brick. I like Egypt for that reason. Sorry. Near Eastern.
- [64:26]
Dr. Joseph Manning
It's also probably great for preserving. Right. Like we have all of these pyramids, we have these statues and these monuments because they're in stone.
- [64:32]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, yeah. It survives. It's a curse also, because then, okay, we're just gonna. We're just writing. We're just PR men for the pharaohs.
- [64:39]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [64:39]
Unnamed Historian
We're just retelling their stories.
- [64:42]
Dr. Joseph Manning
All right.
- [64:42]
Unnamed Historian
Caution, because maybe there's another story and sometimes we're at their mercy. We should think about it anyway. And a lot of Egyptologists, I don't think, think hard enough beyond what's in front of them because of this. Lots of bias.
- [64:58]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [64:59]
Unnamed Historian
They're telling us stuff that they want us to know and none of the bad stuff. Sometimes we know, like Ramses III's body. Even though some texts survive that. Talk about the conspiracy. Now we know he. He actually was murdered. Yeah, but sometimes we don't know. And then it's one of the hard things about doing Egyptology because we want to know more. What an amazing civilization. Want to know more. How do we fill in the gaps? Yeah, do we fill in the gaps or do we say it's a gap? Yeah, you wish we knew. Maybe someday we'll have more information. But we don't. And the tendency is to fill in the gaps with a lot of stuff that's. And it gets out there in the world and. Oh, you know, and it's sort of. Well, Egypt's mysterious and you know, a lot of things about Egyptian culture that's in the. Our popular culture, the curse of the tombs and it's exotic and. And so on. Well, I mean, I think it's a better story. These are actual humans who are solving problems, which humans do. They're solving them in some cases really well. Sometimes. Sometimes they can't solve the problem. And maybe that society goes away or it changes radically because other people are solving the problem very differently. That is just historical change. That's where the lessons I think are with all this stuff is, well, how do you explain change? And it's. There's winners and losers. And the. The New Kingdom for Tot and for RAMSES is a 500 year period of reasonable political stability. Now go match that anywhere in the world at any point.
- [66:37]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [66:37]
Unnamed Historian
500 years is a pretty good run.
- [66:40]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah. Pax Romana maybe.
- [66:42]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, that's a couple hundred years technically. But you Know, we're talking anything over three generations, four generations, they're doing things that are probably on the right track anyway. And so again, this idea of collapse I don't like because 500 years is a, that's a long, that's a long run. And things are going to change in 500 years even in the ancient world.
- [67:06]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [67:06]
Unnamed Historian
And you're going to face new problems and you're going to come up to the point where we can't solve that problem. We just can't. So somebody else, somebody else take over.
- [67:16]
Dr. Joseph Manning
On the topic of the new kingdom. Hypothetically, if I was like, you know, maybe like a merchant or like, you know, someone that lived in like the more urban areas of Memphis or Thebes, if you will, what would my life look like? What kind of job could I have? How many kids would I likely have had? Like, how much do we know about just the average person daily life?
- [67:39]
Unnamed Historian
That's a great question. You know, I mean actual farmers living in a village or in a large city we know almost nothing about. Some villages we, we get lucky sometimes. My favorite, I think I probably told you this before last time I was here. The heck an octa letters in the Met Museum.
- [67:59]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yes.
- [68:00]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, they're extraordinary. Undervalued. I mean he's a mid level priest in the out of the way town, but he's a priest and he's either literate or dictating letters back home. But we have a sense of what that family was like. They were facing famine around the corner.
- [68:18]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [68:18]
Unnamed Historian
It looks like now failure. This is in Dynasty 12, so something like 1900 BC and some real insights there about how do you. It's a large household. The total household is like 18 or 19 people including household slaves, servants.
- [68:37]
Dr. Joseph Manning
A.
- [68:37]
Unnamed Historian
Wife, a new young wife. Thank you. Beautiful. These are, it's beautiful looking text. But these are, these are letters home with some urgency saying look, famine is imminent. We hear people are being eaten here, which is extraordinary. Whether that's actually true or just like, you know, pay attention because you know this is the extreme could happen. But he lays out a whole household budget and a strategy economically of go, go farm land there and put a crop of whatever grain over there and you can lease land here. And here's the budget of food for the household that you have to sort of keep to, et cetera. It really lays out a rational household strategy for running things. In 1900 BC, Middle Bronze Age we have nothing like this until the Ptolemaic period. So about 250 BC we start getting texts Again, that might be something like this, but.
- [69:34]
Dr. Joseph Manning
But ostensibly they were doing this. We just don't have it.
- [69:36]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, he's not the only one who would have been doing this. Can't be unique. These are unique texts, but they're important because we have. It's like a curtain being drawn onto an actual household in the center of Egypt in 1900 BC and then the curtain closes until like 250 BC. And it surprises economists because no such thing as economic rationality until much later. Oh, yeah, what's this?
- [70:04]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [70:04]
Unnamed Historian
This is a rational household budget planned out to the last bit of grain. Everyone gets xyz.
- [70:13]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And it would have been pretty similar, I imagine, to the 20th dynasty.
- [70:16]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, it would have been the same. Yeah. The basic household structure probably didn't change very much. Same life expectancy, same problems. In a world where, you know, what are you doing if you're not a farmer? You're doing what your dad did. There's very little social mobility. The only way to do social mobility if you're ambitious, Mark, like you would have been, is to join the army. Then, then you might. If you're successful, you're going to move up in rank and, you know, this was happening in the. Under Ramsey's time.
- [70:42]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I see you're getting army, you become a general.
- [70:45]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. You can move up.
- [70:46]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Maybe your kid could become a general, then you're in. And then if you're a general and there's a secession problem, then maybe you could become royalty.
- [70:52]
Unnamed Historian
It happen. It happens. So military power is always the thing that's the most important in a place like Egypt.
- [71:01]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [71:01]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. So otherwise you're. You're a farmer and now you're. You're at the mercy of the Nile river and they don't. Egyptians didn't understand. They knew the flood varied. But in a world where you can store food for a couple years, you can store grain for a couple years, probably that is your margin. And there's no Whole Foods down the corner.
- [71:23]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [71:23]
Unnamed Historian
So you're dependent on the river and hopefully the tax man's not coming and taking. Taking all the surplus. But the Nile might not flood one year. And then you're thinking, well, is that going to happen again? Because the last time that happened for a couple years, there was actual famine.
- [71:42]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [71:43]
Unnamed Historian
And disease and a quarter of the population died and a lot of animals died. And that happened repeatedly in Egypt.
- [71:48]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [71:49]
Unnamed Historian
We think about once a century, a real famine as opposed to a food crisis. So Egypt's doing pretty well. There's a lot of buffer and Resiliency and stored grain and royal granaries in the temples. And in a world where there was social solidarity kind of reinforced by religious festivals, which are really interesting also and I think underestimate. I have a colleague also in New York who's written this great book on famine in ancient Egypt, Ellen Morris, extraordinary scholar, who retells these stories of the myths the Egyptians had of cat and mice, which is recurring myth in a lot of societies, by the way, even in medieval Europe, was cat and mice. And it's social reversal at the. At the New Year Festival, when the Nile's at its lowest. There's this festival. It's sort of like role reversal. Mardi Gras. The wealthy dress like peasants and the peasants dressed like wealthy. And there's kind of this. A lot of drinking. And it's reenacted in this myth of the cat and the mice. Where there were. There was once war, a warrior class of mice who conquer the cats and the mice become the kings. And they're worshiped by the cats and they're depicted. There's a great. Actually, in the Brooklyn Museum, there's a wonderful depiction of one of these scenes of a mouse on a throne being worshiped by a cat. It's really cool. So go to the Brooklyn Museum in Park Slope and check this out.
- [73:14]
Dr. Joseph Manning
What year is it? This is Egypt.
- [73:15]
Unnamed Historian
So these are Ramesset period texts. Yeah, they're Egyptian, Ramessid period. But this was a festival the Egyptians celebrated yearly at the low ebb of the river, which is really sending a signal to the. The wealthy. Hey, if the Nile doesn't flood this year, up to you guys to open up your grain stores to help us, because there's more of us mice than there are you cats. It's really a subtle message of how the society worked.
- [73:45]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And would the wealthy participate in these?
- [73:47]
Unnamed Historian
Yes.
- [73:47]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And so they were kind of cool with it. Like, they were kind of acknowledging, like, yeah, we got you.
- [73:52]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. Because they had no choice. And we have stories also in this period. This is. It's published as the Tale of Woe, where this really wealthy person lost everything and he becomes a vagrant wandering the Egyptian countryside because he had lost all of his wealth. This probably happened. But this festival was a really clever way to reinforce the social solidarity of the community. Yes, there's the wealthy, and you have nice houses and grain stores and. And so on. But when time comes, you've got a healthy. The community. And of course, they did that in their tomb. Biographies of which we have lots. And this idea of they all Say the same thing. I clothed the naked, I fed the hungry. This was the morality of a wealthy person in Egypt. That goes into biblical literature as well. This is what you do, right?
- [74:48]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I mean, that's.
- [74:48]
Unnamed Historian
You take care of the community. So.
- [74:51]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And furthermore, like, the meek shall inherit the earth. Like, well, yeah, the mice will be worshiped, you know, like in the end of times, like all you poor people, people, you will have your day where you are the ones that are running the show.
- [75:03]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So that's a cool feature of Egypt. Oh, excellent. Good job. There it is. This is the one in the Brooklyn Museum. And that is. That is a mouse on the throne depicted. He's sniffing a lotus, I think, which is a funerary, standard funerary scene. But the cat is sort of the. The servant here. This is a pretty popular story and we have a lot of images of the story in this sort of like vignettes, like comic book sort of things. This was an active kind of way of reinforcing this. This idea that we're of social solidarity Again, societies matter. This sort of contract. The Egyptians figured out a long time ago that we need this because there's going to come a time when if we're going to survive as a society, we have to have this, you know, whatever the word is, this kind of social contract. Social contract, yeah.
- [76:02]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And also the way to think of it, the underlying threat of violence is also interesting. We will revolt if this doesn't work out.
- [76:10]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. Yes.
- [76:11]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Wow.
- [76:12]
Unnamed Historian
Yes.
- [76:13]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Which is kind of nice, I'll be honest. I mean, given like the, the modern day where we exist as far as, like wealth inequality, you know, like, it would be kind of nice to have a festival every year where we're like, hey, Bezos, Elon, if we got some starving people here, we're going to need some help.
- [76:28]
Unnamed Historian
Well, not to get too political, but, you know, we take away USAID and so on, you know, I mean, there's international components to this and moral components, but also the nature of the society that these wealth, the inequality is dangerous. The Egyptians knew that.
- [76:45]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right? I mean, I'm sure they've had their fair share of revolutions.
- [76:47]
Unnamed Historian
Oh, they have. And they have had a lot of. A lot of issues. Of course, like every society does. Does. But this kind of idea underlying the entire society probably all the time is we're dependent on the river that is our lifeblood. And it's a weird river. It's beautiful for 70 of the time. We know that now, but there's that 30% when. And also it's dangerous if you're a king, which maybe Ramsay is the third problem that we've talked about. It may have happened other periods too, where the kings make these claims and they control the entire environment that I create prosperity. I create the Nile river flooding every year and all the agricultural growth.
- [77:22]
Dr. Joseph Manning
If you're a God, if you're, you know, what is it? Ramsay is born of the one before me or whatever. Yeah, like, yeah, this is your fault. Like, figure it out.
- [77:33]
Unnamed Historian
Totally, totally. I mean, that's the downside of this, of that claim. And it's not a bad bet because it's. We know from the Nilometer, the medieval Cairo record of the now flood for 1300 years. We have these records. So we know about 70 of the years are good. Good enough floods. So it's not a bad bet. Like, okay, I got 70 chance that this is going to be okay this year. But man, there are times when the now fails to flood for four or five years in a row, which happens. And we have descriptions of that in a medieval source, which is the most extraordinary text I've ever read of a visiting guy from Baghdad, a physician seems pretty reliable in 1200 AD who talks about the. No flood, actually, the Nile confirms it's six years of low flood. In these years, around 1200, you can walk across the Nile. It's just like. It's just dirt, basically. It's really dry. It's green and stinky and really low, which suggests it's White Nile, maybe for particular reasons, but it's really low. And it gets so bad now. People migrate all over. They leave Egypt, but. But there's cannibalism all over the place. And the description of cannibalism by this author, which had just come out of an English translation, is the most extraordinary passage, passages lengthy of cannibalism I've ever read.
- [78:51]
Dr. Joseph Manning
What is the name of this text?
- [78:52]
Unnamed Historian
It's extraordinary. It's the. The. The. That's a long. A long name.
- [78:57]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Who was the guy? Like if we.
- [78:58]
Unnamed Historian
El Baghdadi, it's the physician along the. The Nile search.
- [79:02]
Dr. Joseph Manning
That Al Baghdadi cannibalism text.
- [79:05]
Unnamed Historian
I mean, that's web sign. It's extraordinary.
- [79:07]
Dr. Joseph Manning
This is 1200 A.D. yeah.
- [79:09]
Unnamed Historian
So speaking of cannibalism and all the way back in Hekonakta's letters, people always said, well, he's exaggerating, he's trying to motivate his family. Maybe not, but you know, at a minimum, it's a sign of extreme misery that's as miserable as society can get. And There it is. And this guy's a physician, and he's, you know, he's in detail. I mean, body parts and young children being boiled in pots in old Cairo. And it goes on and on for pages like. Like this.
- [79:36]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Wow.
- [79:37]
Unnamed Historian
It's just unbelievable. Really bad.
- [79:40]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I mean, that's wild. So you can imagine, especially in that time, 1200, you have, like, a little bit more mobility, it seems like, you know, they've invented a little bit of math. You got some algebra. You know what I mean? Like, things are kind of moving.
- [79:50]
Unnamed Historian
Well, imagine.
- [79:51]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, well, imagine if this happens in the old Kingdom. Right?
- [79:54]
Unnamed Historian
Like, yeah, less people. So, you know, that's fair.
- [79:57]
Dr. Joseph Manning
That's a good point.
- [79:58]
Unnamed Historian
Probably. Maybe, maybe. But. But, I mean, the same sort of phenomenon is there. There were times when it did get really bad, and Hekonacht is one of the first examples of. Oh, well, this. The references to cannibalism, not only in Egypt, which are a lot, but also other societies. There's a. Whenever there's famine, you hear cannibalism being described. And historians have always discounted it as exaggeration.
- [80:29]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Wow. So this is the letter here, translated into English from Plague Anthology. Go down one more paragraph here. And so the end of this paragraph, it says, they. I mean. Whoa, hold on. Let me read some of this. Really. This was because when the sun entered the sign of Capricorn, the air became infected and plague and moral disease began to spread. The poor, assailed by ever increasing famine, ate carrion, corpses, dogs, excrement, and animal droppings. They went further so far as to eat little children. It was not unusual to catch people with little children that have been boiled or roasted. The captain of the guard of the town had those who committed this crime or shared in such dishes burned alive. I myself saw a child roasted in a basket who was brought before the provost, together with a man and woman who were said to be father, mother of a child. He condemned them to be burned alive. Whoa. I mean, that is crazy.
- [81:19]
Unnamed Historian
It goes on like that.
- [81:21]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I mean, it gets even more grotesque. I mean, I'll spare the audience from the unsavory details here, but, I mean, wow.
- [81:29]
Unnamed Historian
No, it's extraordinary, really. And he seems reliable. Again, it's discounted. And if you look at the text edition, you know, there's not even. There's no note. It just in passing. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, is it real? Is it not? You know, the fact that he's a physician and maybe he's anti Egypt and he's creating stories, but it's. It is At a minimum, this idea of Nile flood failure, which happens regularly and misery that follows, it's.
- [81:58]
Dr. Joseph Manning
That is real and corroborating evidence that there was a drought in the time that he wrote this.
- [82:05]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. The nilometer record is clear, and there's a huge volcanic eruption, which stuff I work on now that perturbs the monsoon in East Africa, which drives the flood. So there may be a reason why there's this substantial flood failure, but this is the dynamic of Egyptian history. Until we get the high dam built, completed in 1970. This is the reason why you're trying to control the river that goes back all the way to the old kingdom that it is. It's not like the Yellow river, which is really violent and impossible to control. And China has its own history of dealing with this very violent river. The Nile's gentle, it floods reliably for a good part of the time. But when you're relying on it and it doesn't flood, oh, you're in trouble. You're. And there's a. There must have been a memory of this. If it's once every century where there's. There's a real famine in Egypt like this, that there might be already in the memory. And that's. That's in the back of every single person's mind, from the lowest farmer to the king, that this. Then what do we do? Because you can't control it it and you can't keep it at bay for too long. So this is Egyptian history in a nutshell. Which makes things like King Tut's mask or Ramses and some of the high civilization, the glorious art that we've been talking about, even more extraordinary because on top of this agrarian society that has that river to deal with and usually pretty well, and generating all this, this high culture, which is in itself, it's extraordinary. Yes, it's cult of personality and kings, we think, okay, that's bad.
- [83:41]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [83:42]
Unnamed Historian
But they're dealing with this environment that they don't fully understand, but they're. And they're trying to adjust and, you know, figure out a society that. That sort of is an equilibrium as much as they can be.
- [83:55]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, I mean, it's easy to look back on old history and be like, yeah, you know, this had this weird dichotomy, but I wonder if that's all civilization. Right? Like, you look at America and you're like. Like, look at what we've built and look at these cities and look at the art that we've made. And I mean, it's remarkable. But then also like, look at all the terrible things. Or like Rome or any, any, any nation that has this developed robust, beautiful civilization and contributions to art.
- [84:18]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [84:19]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Or science or math or whatever. But then also at the same time with the same people and the same governments can also just, you know, commit these atrocities and, you know, eat people alive and do terrible things.
- [84:30]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, well, I mean, this is the value of history in a nutshell. Hopefully it sends a message. Can we do better? What do we value?
- [84:44]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, Croesus. Did you have a question? Some just dumb. And I don't get the timeline of the most infamous pharaohs.
- [84:53]
Unnamed Historian
Okay.
- [84:53]
Dr. Joseph Manning
If we could do something like that, I guess. Yeah, he's curious. Like specifically the New Kingdom. Like the time we're talking about.
- [85:00]
Unnamed Historian
Sorry, we're kind of rambling. We're all over the place now.
- [85:03]
Dr. Joseph Manning
We're having fun, dude.
- [85:04]
Unnamed Historian
Okay, so to recap. Should we just get to. To recap. I mean, the focus of the conversation is the Egyptian New Kingdom, the age of empire.
- [85:12]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Could you pull up maybe a, A list of, of the, the, the pharaohs just kind.
- [85:17]
Unnamed Historian
Well, that'd be great. Of a chronology of the. Of the rulers. Yeah, that would be super helpful.
- [85:21]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I wonder if the. Yeah, Wikipedia scroll down and I wonder if there sometimes is a good list on here.
- [85:30]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [85:32]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh, keep going.
- [85:34]
Unnamed Historian
No depth down to the notes.
- [85:36]
Dr. Joseph Manning
What about Jip it Chat? Do you talk. Do you use ChatGPT? Do you use AI for any of your work?
- [85:44]
Unnamed Historian
I. I like Claude.
- [85:46]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Oh yeah. Claude is great.
- [85:47]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, I think it's solid. It's a little bit better on the not learning on your stuff. Yeah, it says I think it's better for writing. Yeah, not to use for writing, but it's good as an editor in some ways, so.
- [86:02]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And will you like just like quick reference stuff? You're like trying to remember something.
- [86:06]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, sometimes I use it for, you know, is this true? Is that. What is that date correct or right. What was the name of so and so? That's useful chat. TB has not used in a while.
- [86:15]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [86:16]
Unnamed Historian
I mean, getting kings.
- [86:17]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Okay, so scroll, scroll up really quick.
- [86:19]
Unnamed Historian
Quick.
- [86:23]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, just go to the top real quick. What is this? Oh, this is 18th dynasty. So this is still New Kingdom. So we got hat. Hat ship. Hat. Sep. Shut.
- [86:29]
Unnamed Historian
Hatshepsut. And that was the female king, the.
- [86:32]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Boss lady that was. That was very much so wrecking people.
- [86:35]
Unnamed Historian
Yep.
- [86:36]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And then Amen Hotep ii. That sounds important.
- [86:38]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. Amenhota is one of the great military pharaohs along with Tutmosis iii, who's called the Napoleon of Ancient Egypt.
- [86:48]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Thutmose iii.
- [86:50]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [86:51]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Okay. And now we're into Ramses the first.
- [86:54]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. Then.
- [86:55]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, pretty short reign. Only two years. Yeah, got it.
- [86:59]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah.
- [86:59]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And then Seti the first. This is what you're talking about. Sometimes they introduce.
- [87:02]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, that's probably the family name. And Ramses sort of a little bit made up, probably.
- [87:09]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right. Connected to Ra. Then Ramses II as we've talked about. Also known as Ramses the Great. Hold on, go back up real quick. Signed the first known peace treaty with the Hittites, as you're mentioning before. Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating. Okay. And then.
- [87:25]
Unnamed Historian
Oh, she's. She's in all the way 40 BC she's the last ruler. The last ruler.
- [87:30]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Typical Greek. Christos is like, yeah, where did Cleopatra. Enough, all right. You had your day in the sun.
- [87:35]
Unnamed Historian
All right. What'd you guys do?
- [87:37]
Dr. Joseph Manning
You banged kids? Okay. Yes, that they. What? No, no, no, no. Look up all these Greek. All. All these Greek philosophers. Christos, you're not fooling me. All right. What? Nidos. That's what that was the term. Anyway. And then all the way down to the bottom. Let's Ramsay's tenth.
- [87:54]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, Lots of short lived kings after Ramses iii, who's the last. Effectively last long reigning ruler of the new kingdom.
- [88:05]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And so this is what they talk about in the 70 kings and 70 days thing.
- [88:09]
Unnamed Historian
Well, at. No, actually after. I think. Yeah, I think it's the end of the. The whole dynasty 20. When it gets really messy and lots of short reign kings.
- [88:18]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I mean this is just.
- [88:19]
Unnamed Historian
And even down past this, there's a lot of rulers who.
- [88:22]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Seeing that survive is just like so funny because it just. You could just put U.S. presidents in here. You know what I mean? It would just be like. Yeah, a little known. As little is known about his brief reign. It's like, all right, that would be the guy that got pneumonia when he's given a speech or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And then like faced economic decline and administrative challenges. All of them, you know, like that would be like, I don't know, Nixon or something. Like you just have all like it just. There's so many parallels with ancient Egypt, which maybe that's the story. Right? Like there's so many parallels with all of. You know, it's useful world history.
- [88:52]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, it's useful to think about again, you know, what's. What matters and what are we looking at when we look at kings versus society? At least the kings, you know, we have their names at a minimum and the chronology is Relatively well worked out now. So that's. I guess that's something.
- [89:09]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [89:09]
Unnamed Historian
But it's not real Egypt in a sense. It's not the bulk of the population most of the time.
- [89:13]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Right.
- [89:14]
Unnamed Historian
Who are. Anonymous.
- [89:15]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, the people like you and I. Yeah. The priests.
- [89:18]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would be, no doubt anonymous.
- [89:22]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Well, Dr. Manning, I could talk to you all day. Truly, I enjoy, Man, I enjoy these conversations so much.
- [89:28]
Unnamed Historian
I do, too.
- [89:28]
Dr. Joseph Manning
When you come back, what are we going to talk about?
- [89:30]
Unnamed Historian
What's left? I think we've done Egyptian history. We should talk about climate and why that matters.
- [89:34]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, the, the historical perspective on climate, I think is really interesting.
- [89:39]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah, it's important.
- [89:40]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And I think it also paints a. A for me, at least a better picture sometimes. Like, you know, I remember listening to Al Gore back in the day and I was like, all right, this maybe is true, but I wonder if there's like a counter argument or like he's referencing data from the last, like, 40 years that doesn't seem like that, you know, relevant. Like it, you know, it seems like a very small sample set. But if you tell me, you know, hey, we got climate data from the last, you know, 10,000 years, now I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, I'm listening.
- [90:06]
Unnamed Historian
Yeah. No, there's a lot, a lot going on and there's still. It's controversial. It's not easy. It's not. We have a different angle on societies now. The Nile river is one which we think our project now understands pretty well why it's variable and how much so. And we're still working on it, but that's a big driver of history. It's not the only thing. It's never just climate alone. It's not just, oh, oh, my God, climate change, apocalypse. It's many things that we have to look at, including the politics and how are we going to respond to the pressures we're going to face, which is one pressure. Climate, disease, economics, change of technology, immigration. Societies have a lot of pressures on them. Climate change is just one, and it's never the only one. We, we should be looking at society, not just climate. And it is, it is changing. It is mostly us.
- [90:59]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And maybe just as a teaser for the book that you're gonna publish fairly soon, coming out soon, which when that's out, I would love for you to come back on. Oh, yeah, at the latest, I mean, if not earlier. But you mentioned something that was just so interesting, just as like a little tidbit. Like, I had always seen climate change and humans effect on climate change. And I'm like, okay, yeah, like post industrialization, right, like 1800s onward. Like I can conceive of this idea of like having these giant smokestacks of burning coal is probably gonna affect at least local climate undoubtedly and then probably global climate to some extent, depending on how far ranging it is. But then you said something that the massacre of the Native Americans from Christopher Columbus directly affected climate. And I just, I, it was, I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh wow, that makes, it's interesting. I, it didn't occur to me that like pre industrialization we could be affecting climate. But it makes sense.
- [91:47]
Unnamed Historian
The way you explained it, it makes sense. Massacre may be a bit strong, but pathogens introduced into the new world, north and South America destroyed these societies with a. The estimate is 90% of the population of the Americas die from these new pathogens that Europeans were used to. Because there's a long history in the old world of humans and animals working together.
- [92:15]
Dr. Joseph Manning
And then you're immune to smallpox.
- [92:17]
Unnamed Historian
And there's all sorts of things that are related to human animal interaction, which is brand new once Columbus hits the new World. And that changes landscapes. We've been altering landscapes for a long time and moving around, but significant loss of population like that does things to land use, which alters the chemistry, right. Alter CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which is kind of a thermometer. Warm, cold or warmer, colder. And so we can, I think we can see those, those effects. So humans have been affecting things for quite altering landscapes for quite a while. And it does have an impact. Not as dramatic as now, but it's, it's sort of there. It's nice to. Well, not nice. It's important to understand that climate scientists call this coupled natural human system dynamics, which is a fancy phrase for saying humans. We are animals living in environments and we're connected it both ways, humans and environments, environments and human societies are interacting always since we've been humans and we can talk about the effects in 10,000 BC versus now and the impacts and all that. It varies and it's a complex story but. And that shouldn't be news, but you know, we're not isolated from the environment and this is by the way, a pretty good environment. We're living in this Holocene since the last ice age. It's Earth gifts. Earth's gift to humanity, I call it. This is a fairly stable climate. It's great for agriculture, not a sending me, great for expansion. So far, so pretty good, right? You know, but it Is compared to the rest of Earth's climate history, it's a really weird period. And so that's important to keep in mind that we're living in this kind of. It's kind of heaven. I think it's my form of heaven. This is a beautiful planet, the only one we know. I think it's important. Even if you don't believe in climate change, by the way, even if you think it's not human induced and the climate's not even changing, it's always been variable. Even if you believe that the lesson is taken, I think from the Native American populations, we should be treading lightly on our head. Earth, it is kind of our mother and we even just uncertainty. We should be treading lightly on the Earth.
- [94:42]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah.
- [94:43]
Unnamed Historian
As opposed to saying, oh it's all uncertain. Screw, let's just light the. Light the planet on fire.
- [94:47]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Yeah. Who's pro pollution, you know what I mean? Like other than like, you know, like shipping magnates.
- [94:52]
Unnamed Historian
Well, yeah, there are certain, there are certain people that are. But you know, just again as we talked about, there's kind of a moral component here too. Even if you don't believe in climate science or the climate is changing or that humans are changing, it, it the attitude toward your environment, we should be thinking about taking care of it.
- [95:11]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I mean, undoubtedly, you know, no disagreement.
- [95:13]
Unnamed Historian
From me here for another conversation and.
- [95:15]
Dr. Joseph Manning
I look forward to it.
- [95:16]
Unnamed Historian
Mark, fantastic as always, man.
- [95:17]
Dr. Joseph Manning
Thank you so much, brother. Talk soon.
- [95:19]
Unnamed Historian
Yep.
- [95:19]
Dr. Joseph Manning
If you've made it to the end of this episode, you are clearly someone who understands that beneath every historical event lies a deeper truth waiting to be uncovered. You're the type of person who knows that real history is more than fascinating than any fiction. And we deeply appreciate that about you. I'll be honest, that's exactly why I personally invite you to sign up for Today in History, our free newsletter that goes beyond the surface of historical events. We dive into the stories that textbooks never told you, the secrets that challenge the course of nations, and the forgotten tales that deserve to be remembered. Let's continue this journey of discovery together. Take the conversation station from your headphones into your inbox. Sign up now through the QR code or link in the description Today in History. Because every day holds a secret waiting to be revealed. Thank you for being part of our historical journey. We'll see you next time.