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Fall of Civilizations Podcast
18. Egypt - Fall of the Pharaohs
03:58:22
Far in the distance, three colossal shapes tower …
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- [00:23]
Paul Cooper
Around the year 1200 AD the the medieval Arab traveler and scholar Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi departed from his hometown of Baghdad and set out on a journey of exploration. As a young man, Al Baghdadi had studied law, medicine and philosophy and was inspired by the works of classical philosophers, in particular Aristotle. At the turn of the 13th century century, Al Baghdadi embarked on a series of journeys that would take him to many of the great cities in the region. He traveled to Mosul, to Jerusalem, Damascus and Aleppo. And eventually, around the year 1204, his journey took him across the Sinai Desert to the banks of the Nile. On his travels, Al Baghdadi wrote a book the was part travel account and part philosophy, entitled the Book of Edification and Admonition. In it he recalls the remarkable impression that Egypt made on him.
- [01:39]
Herodotus
Egypt is a land of wondrous monuments and strange stories. It consists of a valley enclosed by two ranges of hills, one to the east and one to the west. The Nile runs between them until it reaches Lower Egypt where it divides into branches, all of which flow out into the sea. The Nile is unusual for its length. We know of no other river in the inhabited world that covers a greater distance.
- [02:16]
Paul Cooper
As Al Baghdadi traveled around Egypt, he was struck by the incredible variety of ancient remains. He saw great temples of stone and tomb complexes crumbling beside the waters of the Nile. But none of these compared to the most fabled of all Egypt's monuments which rose over the horizon not far from the city of Memphis at a place called Giza.
- [02:52]
Herodotus
The ancient monuments in Egypt are such as I have never seen nor heard tell of in other lands. First among them are the pyramids. They are very numerous. All are situated on the Giza side of the Nile and extend in the direction of Memphis, spread out along a distance of about two days journey. Some are big, others small. Some are of clay and mud brick, but most are of stone. Some are stepped, but most of them taper smoothly.
- [03:23]
Paul Cooper
And of all these pyramids, three stood out for their seemingly impossible immensity.
- [03:34]
Herodotus
Turning to the pyramids that everyone talks about, points at and characterizes in terms of their sheer size. There are three laid out in a straight line at Giza. Two of them are particularly enormous. And it is with these two that the poets have been infatuated. The spectacle is so awe inspiring that your sight will falter as you try to take it all in.
- [04:02]
Paul Cooper
Al Baghdadi wrote accounts of the local people who lived close to these vast remains. He describes some who climbed to the tops of these structures and others who quarried them for their fine cut stone. Others still became obsessed with exploring the hidden tunnels and chambers that branched out beneath the pyramids.
- [04:28]
Herodotus
In one of the great pyramids, there is an opening that allows people to gain entry. It leads them into narrow corridors, labyrinthine passageways, well shafts, pitfalls, and other such features as appear in the accounts of those who venture inside and explore the innermost parts. Many people, obsessed by the pyramid and filled with fanciful ideas about it, are inspired to penetrate its depths. But they always end up at some place beyond which they cannot go. They spoke of how the pyramid was full of bats and how these bats grow to the size of pigeons. There are inscriptions on the stones, written in the ancient characters that no one understands. In the entire land of Egypt, I have never found a single person who so much as claimed to have heard of anyone who knew how to read them.
- [05:22]
Paul Cooper
He even seems to have visited the Sphinx nearby, which was then buried up to its neck in the sands.
- [05:33]
Herodotus
Also by the three pyramids. At a distance from them of rather more than a bowshot, the likeness of a most enormous head and neck protrudes from the ground. The people call it Old Father Dread and assert that its body is buried in the ground. The face is handsomely, indeed admirably portrayed with a touch of elegance and beauty about the features, as if a smile were playing across them.
- [06:02]
Paul Cooper
Above all, Al Baghdadi was impressed by the mastery of engineering it must have required to build such constructions and to have them survive for such a stretch of time.
- [06:20]
Herodotus
The construction of the pyramids was carried out according to a methodology remarkable in respect both to design and to precision of execution. This is what has enabled the pyramids to endure times passing eras, or rather it has meant that time itself has had to endure the era of the pyramids. Noble intellects gave the pyramids their all pure minds, exhausted their every effort. For their sake, enlightened souls outpoured their loftiest capabilities on their design to stand as exemplars that are the pinnacle of the possible. Because of this, they all but speak aloud of their builders, telling us what sort of folk they were, giving voice to their intellects, relating the stories of their lives and times.
- [07:16]
Paul Cooper
When Al Baghdadi visited Giza around the year 1200, the Great Pyramid was the tallest man made structure in the world and had been for more than 3,700 years. All that time, it had testified to the greatness of the civilization that had grown up on the banks of the Nile. A civilization that had passed through countless periods of flourishing and decay and then finally disappeared. Beneath the sands of the desert. My name's Paul Cooper, and you're listening to the Fall of Civilization's podcast. Each episode, I look at a civilization of the past that rose to glory and then collapsed into the ashes of history. I want to ask, what did they have in common? What led to their fall? And what did it feel like to be a person alive at the time who witnessed the end of their world? In this episode, I want to tell the story of one of the most iconic cultures ever produced by humankind. The civilizations of Egypt's Nile Valley. I want to show how this series of related societies grew up in the floodplains of their great river and built some of the most enduring and recognizable structures in the world. I want to tell the story of how they rose, how they endured, and how they finally faded from history altogether. The story of Egypt is one of the greatest and longest epics in all of history. Many empires would consider themselves lucky to last through the reigns of 31 kings. But ancient Egypt would see the reign of 31 dynasties of kings lasting for more than 3,000 years. In the time since, historians have long struggled with this panoply of rulers and eras and have tried to wrestle the history of Egypt into neat categories. They typically split its history into three sets of dynasties, commonly known as the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom. Between these are a number of intermediate periods when the central power of its kings failed and the land divided. Throughout this history, Egypt's empire would ebb and flow just like the great river that gave it life. That river was the greatest watercourse of the entire Afro Eurasian landmass, the River Nile. The Nile finds its source in Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa. It's a body of water about the size of Georgia or nearly the size of Ireland. The gigantic Lake Victoria drains into the river known as the White Nile, which is joined by the so called Blue Nile further downstream at Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. From there, it flows for a further 2,000km across the Nubian and Egyptian deserts to Cairo, where it branches out into a wide delta and empties into the Mediterranean Sea next to the Amazon River. The Nile is either the longest or second second longest river on Earth. It runs for 6,800 km, or around a sixth of the way around the Earth. And its drainage basin covers a tenth of the entire landmass of Africa. Egypt itself has an extremely arid climate and its inland territories experience virtually no rainfall. If geography had been only a little different and late Victoria had not begun to drain westwards. We can only imagine how differently history might have gone for at least the last 5,000 years. Every blade of grass and every tree in the Nile Valley, every animal and every person to ever live, every priest and every king, owes their existence solely to this river. Human presence in Egypt is among the oldest in the world. After evolving in the region of East Africa, modern humans migrated primarily along this corridor, and from there spread to the rest of the world. The Nile is, in a sense, the highway down which all of humanity has once passed as one of our first stops along our great journey. Egypt is home to human remains of astonishing antiquity. Stone tools worked by archaic humans have been discovered in Nile deposits dating to as early as 600,000 years ago. And modern Homo sapiens followed followed in the last hundred thousand years or so. These migrations likely happened during one of the many African humid periods that have occurred over the last millions of years. These are times when shifts in the planet's climate caused rains to fall on the Sahara Desert. During these periods, the desert bloomed into a verdant grassland, home to animals and people. And when the period ended, the grasses would die, the animals would leave, and the sands would return. It's thought that this cycle has occurred more than 200 times since the desert first formed 8 million years ago. The earliest peoples in this region lived by hunting and fishing and left behind stone tools and a multitude of rock paintings from about the year 13,000 BC in one of the Sahara's driest periods in history, the Sibylian culture began gathering wild wheat and barley, and from there developed their own domesticated strains. From 9,000 BC, people began to weave thread from wool and another humid period began. One enigmatic stone circle at the desert site of Nabta Playa dates to around 7,500 BC when the Sahara was a range of rolling grasslands once more. This stone monument may have been used to mark the movements of stars at different times of the year so that people could keep track of cycles like the harvest and the migration of animals for hunting. Nabta Playa has been called Egypt's Stonehenge, but this doesn't quite do it justice, since it was built at least 5,000 years before the first stones of Stonehenge were ever laid. When the last Ice Age ended and the Sahara once more dried up, any peoples who had been living and herding in its grasslands would have been driven out of their ancestral home. They would have wandered across the newly formed desert until they reached the only stretch of green in the midst of all that sand that was the banks of the Nile, and here they would make their home. These peoples would build a collection of scattered settlements reaching up and down the river. But slowly, as more and more people were driven to the riverbank to survive, these began to coalesce into larger towns, cities, and finally kingdoms. The ancient Egyptians referred to the whole region by the name the two Lands, Referring to the long Nile valley in the south and the delta that spread out in the north, close to the sea. These were the two lands that today we call Upper and Lower Egypt. Surprisingly for a modern person who orients their maps facing north, the Egyptians thought of their world in the opposite direction. As a consequence, their word for east was the same as their word for left, and west the same as right. In the Egyptian mind, they were always facing upstream, waiting for the annual floods to arrive. If you find this confusing as we continue, just remember that southern Upper Egypt is the region upstream and northern Lower Egypt is downstream. For many people at this time, the lands along the riverbank would have constituted their entire world. The Egyptians referred to the river's floodplain as Kemet, or the Black Land, due to the rich, dark soil left behind behind by its life giving floods. This land was the realm of the noble God Horus, who had the head of a falcon, the God of life, protection and healing. If you walked just an hour in either direction, you would soon reach what they called Deshret, or the Red land. This was the inhospitable desert, stretching out on all sides, roasting hot, largely devoid of water and shade, and inhospitable to most life. These deserts were presided over by the God Set, the God of chaos and violence. The Nile itself. They knew simply by the name Iteru, or the river, since in their world there was no other. The Egyptian world began in Upper Egypt, far up the reaches of the Nile, at a place now known as Aswan. Here, a belt of hard granite crosses the landscape and forces the river waters into shallow whitewater rapids running over boulders and through rocky channels called cataracts. This word comes from the Greek word cataractes, or rushing down. Today, the waters of these cataracts have been tamed by the construction of the Aswan Dam. But in ancient times, they could be a rushing torrent. Each year, when the floodwaters passed through this rocky stretch of the river, they made such a thundering sound that the earth itself could shake. And this led the ancient Egyptians to believe that the waters were coming up from beneath the earth, bursting out of vast subterranean seas. At Aswan, they built a temple on an island in the middle of those rushing waters, and here worshipped that primeval force. The fast flowing waters at Aswan made it a natural barrier to ships and prevented any further exploration upriver. For this reason, for much of its early history, this was where ancient Egyptian influence ended, the final extent of their power and border of their empire. Beyond Aswan was the southern lands of Nubia, and for this reason, Egyptians would also refer to it as the narrow gateway to the south. The temple island in the Aswan cataracts was known to the Egyptians as Abu, the Egyptian word for elephant. Since it was a hub for the ivory trade with these southern lands, the Greeks would follow this example and named the place Elephantine. From here, trade caravans would pass overland south to the Darfur region of Sudan, bringing gold, ivory and other goods. But north of Aswan, everything was considered to be Egypt. As Herodotus records, all the land watered.
- [20:58]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
By the Nile in its course was Egypt. And all who lived lower down than the city Elephantine and drank the river's water were Egyptians. Such was the oracle given to them.
- [21:13]
Paul Cooper
Luckily for the Egyptians, the Nile flows from the south to the north, while the prevailing winds blow in the other direction, meaning that you could use the winds to sail against the current as far as Aswan without too much effort. But the return journey would be even easier, allowing the river waters to simply catch carry you along. A ship heading downstream to the north from Aswan would see for some time only rocky desert and the river bordered by cliffs of hard Nubian sandstone. This is not a land well suited to agriculture, but in ancient times, these valleys were sources of natural resources like gemstones, copper and gold. Further north, the red cliffs fall away and the floodplain around the river gets wider. Here, the landscape would have blushed green and a larger population could be supported. It was in this region that the desert city of Thebes would grow up, which the Egyptians called Waset. This would one day become the most powerful city in Upper Egypt, the capital of the desert regions, the living part of an Egyptian city. Its houses and markets and workshops tended to be built on the eastern bank of the river where the sun rises, while the western bank where the sun set, was used only for burials and tombs. Sailing further north, you would reach the area we call Middle Egypt, and the floodplain gets wider still. This region would have been full of wildlife and vegetation. Some way to the west of the river, the waters divert and fill a large oasis known as Fayoum, which sprouts like a broad leaf from the stem of the Nile. In Ancient times, this lake was home to large populations of Nile crocodile, so that the settlement on the shore would be known by the Greeks as Crocodilopolis, or Crocodile city. Here, Egyptians apparently even tamed crocodiles in their temples, as Herodotus.
- [23:34]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
Now, for some of the Egyptians, the crocodiles are sacred animals. Those who dwelt about Thebes and about the lake of Moeris hold them to be most sacred. And each of these two peoples keep one crocodile selected which has been trained to tameness. And they put hanging ornaments of stone and of gold into the ears of these and anklets round the front feet. And they give them food, appointed and victims of sacrifices, and treat them as well as possible.
- [24:09]
Paul Cooper
In other places, crocodiles were hunted for food using ingenious but risky methods.
- [24:19]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
A man puts the back of a pig upon a hook as bait and lets it go into the middle of the river, while he himself, upon the bank of the river, has a young live pig which he beats. And the crocodile, hearing its cries, makes for the direction of the sound. And when he is drawn out to land, first of all, the hunter plasters up his eyes with mud. And having done so, he very easily gets the mastery of him. But if he does not do so, he has much trouble.
- [25:00]
Paul Cooper
Also living in the river were the animals that the Greeks would call river horses or hippopotamus.
- [25:08]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
Our hippopotamus, the river horse, is sacred in districts of Papremis, but for the other Egyptians, it is not sacred. And this is the appearance which he presents. He is four footed, cloven, hoofed like an ox, flat nosed, with a mane like a horse and showing teeth like tusks, with a tail and voice like a horse and in size as large as the largest ox. And his hide is so exceedingly thick that when it has been dried, shafts of javelins are made of it.
- [25:47]
Paul Cooper
The most strategically important location was what the Egyptians called the balance of the two lands. This was the place where the river split into its delta as the crossroads between upper and lower Egypt. This was always the natural place for the capital. When the empire was united, this location would give rise to the city of Memphis and in turn, to modern Cairo. And it is here that the Egyptians would build their most famous and lasting monuments. Each year, the monsoon rains falling in the highlands of Ethiopia and Central Africa would swell the river and the annual flood would arrive. This happened with such regularity around the middle of August that the Egyptians timed it using the rising of the star Sirius. In the 5th century BC, Herodotus wrote the following description of these.
- [26:53]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
When the Nile is in flood, it overflows in places as far as two days journey from either bank. The Nile comes with a rising flood for a hundred days from the summer solstice. And when this tale of days is complete, it sinks again with a diminishing stream, so that the river is low for the whole winter till the summer solstice again.
- [27:20]
Paul Cooper
The Egyptian year was divided into three seasons. The flood season of Achat, the growing season of Peret, and the harvest season of Shemu. Once the floodwaters receded in early autumn, the land was refreshed and fertilized with rich Nile mud, and new crops could be grown in this black mud. Farmers grew emmer wheat, barley, beans and lentils throughout the cooler winter season. And when summer came again, the grain was ready to be harvested. Egyptian life was held in this delicate balance. Each year, if the river flooded too little or too much, the results could be devastating. As one ancient Egyptian hymn to the Nile makes clear.
- [28:23]
Unknown Speaker
If he is greedy, the whole land suffers great and small. FALL MOANING People are changed at his coming. When he rises, then the land is in joy. Then every belly is glad, Every jaw has held LAUGHTER.
- [28:53]
Paul Cooper
Since their lives depended so greatly on these floods, the Egyptians developed ingenious systems for measuring them. At the cataracts of Aswan, they built a series of devices known as Nileometers. These often take the form of towers with deep wells inside that allow the river to flow in with measurements inscribed on their walls in Egyptian cubits. Each year, ancient people would anxiously check these nilometers to see how high the water was rising that year and whether it would be a time of famine, a time of plenty, or a time when they would need to hastily build some flood defences. During the period known as the pre dynastic era, the two halves of Egypt were divided, and this division was cultural as well as political. The desert people of southern Upper Egypt worshipped their own God, Nekhbet, who was commonly depicted as a griffin vulture, a powerful and majestic bird. These people were likely darker skinned and had more of a cultural and linguistic connection with the southern lands of Nubia and sub Saharan Africa, their rulers sometimes even intermarrying with the royalty of southern kingdoms. Meanwhile, the people of northern Lower Egypt paid deference to the God Wadjet, usually shown as an Egyptian cobra. They had more genetic influence from North Africa and the Mediterranean and may have been somewhat lighter skinned. The kings of southern Upper Egypt ruled while wearing a white bulbous crown, while the kings of the north wore a red crown with a spiraling representation of A cobra emanating from it. The kingdoms that ruled over these regions were always fluid, but the geographical distinction between Upper and Lower Egypt always held sway. But around the year 3000 BC, or more than 5000 years ago, all that began to change. That was because of a king of a kingdom called Thinis. His name was Namer. The figure of Namer is wreathed in mystery, and what little we know about him has been pieced together from fragments of inscriptions and a few significant artifacts. Narmer was born under the personal name Menes, but chose Namer as his Horus name, or king name, when he came to the throne of Thinis. And this name perhaps gives us some sense of his personality. That's because Namer means something like fighting catfish. The Nile catfish that the king clearly admired is a remarkable species. It's a predatory fish, a nocturnal hunter that can grow up to 1.2 meters long, or about the size of a dolphin, and uses a form of naturally generated electricity as a weapon. Using a unique organ in its body, it can generate an electric shock of up to 350v that stuns its prey. In the largest catfish, this shock can be enough to stun an adult human. And the Egyptians were fascinated by this unique property. They depicted these shock and awe predators on painted wall murals and even experimented with using the weak electric charges of young specimens as a treatment for arthritis. We might imagine that this King Naamr wanted to emulate some of the characteristics of these surprise hunters. But whether it was their patience lying in wait for their enemies, the tenacity of their surprise attacks, or the shock and awe with which they stunned their prey, we may never know. Virtually the only source we have for this period is a carving known as the Na'amr palate, which contains only a handful of cryptic clues. One side of this carved artifact shows King Nhamer standing over a defeated enemy, gripping him by the hair in one hand and raising a mace in the other, it's a clear sign of domination. Here, Narmer is shown wearing the white bulbous crown of his native Upper Egypt, suggesting that he bludgeoned his rivals there into submission. On the other side, the carving shows the king leading an army, while ranks of his defeated enemies lie before him. Below this, an image of a bull is shown tearing down the walls of a fortress with its horns. On this side of the carving, Namer is wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt. From this, we might assume that he set out on a campaign of conquest and successfully brought the two lands of Egypt together. Two mythical Animals carved on one side of the Narmer palate stand with their long necks intertwined, perhaps representing the coming together of the two sides of Egypt, their lives and their fates now inextricably bound. This was a union that would see the newly united Egypt grow to become one of the most influential societies in early human history. At first, Egyptian culture was heavily influenced by the slightly older civilizations of Mesopotamia. Like the Sumerians, Egyptian palaces were often built to a Sumerian design, and they used Sumerian motifs in their art, too. But by at least the year 3000 BC, Egypt had matured its own indigenous artistic culture and its own system of writing. The Greeks would later refer to these by a word which means sacred carving or hieroglyph. The Egyptian hieroglyphs are a mixed writing system that uses a variety of phonetic symbols, as well as a collection of symbols that represent whole words. For example, an image of a man holding up his hand to his mouth could be used to represent the common word eat. But other symbols that represented groups of consonants could be used to spell out other less common words, names or places. Hieroglyphs emerged a little after the invention of cuneiform in Mesopotamia, and it's possible they were inspired by this older writing system. In Mesopotamia, we can see the gradual evolution of the cuneiform writing system from its earliest symbolic roots. But in Egypt, the earliest discovered example of hieroglyphs show the symbols springing into existence, already fully formed in a complex system. This suggests that they may have been developed all at once as a conscious effort, and were perhaps even devised by a single person. The Egyptian hieroglyph for ruler was the shepherd's crook, since the king was considered to be a kind of shepherd for his people. Egyptian kings would even symbolize their royalty by holding a gilded curved crook modeled after those used by shepherds. And these kings have come to be known as pharaohs. The word pharaoh derives from the Egyptian word per a meaning great house. And it has stuck in the popular imagination as the name used for any Egyptian ruler, partly due to its use in the Bible. But there is actually no evidence that it was used to refer to Egypt's rulers until nearly 2,000 years after Naamar's lifetime. Up until that time, throughout the first 18 dynasties of Egypt's history, its rulers were simply referred to as kings or neswet, and by epithets such as his Majesty. Still, the term pharaoh has gained such currency in popular usage that it's still used to refer to all the rulers of Egypt across the ages. The pharaoh in Ancient Egypt was considered the living embodiment of the falcon God Horus and the son of the sun God Ra. One later hymn praises the figure of the king.
- [38:09]
Unknown Speaker
Pharaoh is the lord of wisdom, whose mother knows not his name. Pharaoh's glory is in the sky, his might is in the horizon. Pharaoh is the bull of the sky.
- [38:21]
Who shatters all at will, who lives.
- [38:24]
On the being of every God, perhaps.
- [38:28]
Paul Cooper
Most famously of all. The Egyptians were compelled by their religious beliefs to embalm the bodies of the dead, ritually cleansing them in preparation for the afterlife. The Greek Herodotus, who travelled widely in Egypt, wrote about the specialist embalmers who would prepare bodies in this way in exchange for a fee.
- [38:53]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
They, whenever a corpse is conveyed to them, show to those who brought it wooden models of corpses made like reality by painting, and demonstrate on these the best of the ways of embalming. The second, which they show is less good and also less expensive, and the third is the least expensive of all. Having told them about this, they inquire in which way they desire the corpse of their friend to be prepared.
- [39:24]
Paul Cooper
With the price negotiated, the embalmer could begin their work, the grisly process of which Herodotus also describes.
- [39:34]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
First, with the crooked iron tool, they draw out the brain through the nostrils, extracting it partly thus and partly by pouring in drugs. And after this, with the sharp stone of Ethiopia, they make a cut along the side and take out the whole contents of the belly. And when they have cleared out the cavity and cleansed it with palm wine, they cleanse it again with spices pounded up. Then they fill the belly with pure myrrh and with cassia and other spices, and so it together again, having done so, they keep covered up in Natron for 70 days. And then they wash the corpse and roll its whole body up in fine linen cut into bands, smearing those beneath with gum, which the Egyptians used generally instead of glue.
- [40:34]
Paul Cooper
Mummification was expensive, and only those with wealth could afford it. Rich merchants, royal officials, and, of course, the pharaoh himself. One inscription on the walls of a tomb for the pharaoh Unas gives a sense of the kinds of prayers and blessings that might have been spoken while these rituals took place. This one to the sun God Amun Ra and the moon God Thoth.
- [41:15]
Unknown Speaker
Son and Thoth take Unas with you, that he may eat of what you eat, of that he may drink of what you drink, of that he may sit where you sit, that he may sail in what you sail in. The booth of Unas is plaited of reeds. The Flood of Unas is in the marsh of offerings. His feast is among you gods. The water of Unas is wine like the sun. Unas will circumnavigate the sky like the sun. Unas shall course the sky.
- [42:07]
Paul Cooper
Upon coming to the throne of the newly united Egypt, King Na Mer built a new capital perfectly placed at the balance of the two lands where the river met the delta. This city would become known as Inebu Hedge, or the City of White Walls. But today we know it as Memphis. The kings who followed Narmer would rule from this new capital, but they spent much of their time travelling between palaces. And when they died, their bodies were still taken back to Narmer's home region of Thinis in Upper Egypt to be mummified and buried in the city's ancestral burial ground at Abydos. That was until the reign of a king named Hotep Sachemwy. He ruled from about 2900 B.C. and started what has been called the Second Dynasty of Egypt. And he took the decision to start a new burial ground near Memphis, so that Egypt's pharaohs could be buried close to their new capital. For the site of this new burial ground, he chose a place on the western bank of the river, the side where the sun sets at a vast open place called Saqqara. Saqqara is situated on a raised plateau that the floodwaters of the Nile do not reach. Visually, it would have been striking to ancient people as the place where the green river lands end and the dead sand of the desert abruptly begins. For this reason, it may have been considered a crossing place between death and life. The perfect place for a necropolis or a city of the dead for kings who wanted their tombs to be remembered. It also had the benefit of being highly visible from the new capital of Memphis. Over the coming centuries, this site would become full of tombs of kings and queens and countless royal attendants and nobles who followed them into the afterlife. At first, these tombs were built in a form known as a mastaba, large, rectangular constructions built of mud brick and promising their inhabitants a rebirth into the next life. These could be very large, but they were still relatively unassuming. But soon, Egyptian pharaohs would get even more ambitious with their burial arrangements. This ambition truly began with the rule of a pharaoh named Netjeriket Djoser. The reign of Djoser begins the period known as the Old Kingdom, which would last for the next 500 years. Djoser was the son of a king named Khar Sakhemwi, who had reunited Egypt after A period of turmoil during which the northern delta rose in rebellion. With order now restored, Djoser clearly wanted to keep it that way. Rather than continuing to travel around the country as pharaohs before him had done, he moved to a permanent capital at Memphis, where he could keep a better eye on the restive northern riverlands. Over his nearly three decades of rule, he set about an ambitious program of construction, rebuilding temples and throwing up fortresses all along the river. But it was in the manner of his burial that he would truly leave his mark. When DJO began the construction of his final resting place, it looked a lot like the mastaba tombs of the kings that had come before. But his royal architect soon began dreaming of a more ambitious structure. He was a visionary chancellor and engineer who held numerous official titles in the kingdom, including head of the royal shipyard, royal seal bearer and overseer of all stone works. His name was Imhotep. Imhotep's name means the one who comes in peace, and he was born in the 27th century BC. But beyond that, much of what we know about him has been distorted by myth and legend. He was something of a polymath, a priest, a statesman, a scribe, physician and architect, and even gained fame as a magician. He also has the distinction of being perhaps the first non royal person to be recorded in any detail by history. As the king's most trusted architect, Imhotep was put in charge of the construction of Djoser's tomb. But it would not be a regular mud brick mastaba like his predecessors. In fact, Imhotep was determined to build this tomb out of stone. This stone would need to be quarried from the bedrock nearby, roughly cut into blocks. But as this stone mastaba rose out of the desert, Imhotep seems to have had an idea. With this stronger building material, the structure could support more weight. And so there was no real reason to stop building. Once the first mastaba was built, he experimented with placing another, smaller one on top of it, and then another on top of that, creating a stepped design like a wedding cake. Originally, Imhotep planned to build this construction four tiers high. But soon he became even more daring. By the time it was finished, Djoser's tomb stood six layers high. It was perhaps the world's first large scale construction. Made from cut stone and rising to a height of 62 metres, it was likely also the tallest building on earth. Finally, the stepped pyramid of Djoser was complete. And when the king died, he was laid to rest in a granite chamber beneath the great edifice, surrounded by A maze of tunnels. Djoser's pyramid was a revolutionary step in Egyptian architecture and it would stand as a challenge to all the kings who would follow him. A challenge that they would find irresistible. The difficulties that engineers like Imhotep faced in building these pyramids were enormous. But their achievement becomes even more impressive when you consider that these monuments also had to be built fast. Today, Egypt is littered with the remains of half built pyramids. These were abandoned halfway through their construction, usually because the pharaoh who commissioned them had died early. Once a pharaoh was dead, it seemed no one saw any point in continuing to build his tomb. After all, there was a new pharaoh now and construction on his pyramid would have to begin right away. For this reason, pyramids usually had to be completed, at the very least within 30 years. Only the kings with the longest and most stable reigns would ever live to see the final capstone placed. The next pharaoh after Djoser was a man named Sekhemket, who may have been Djoser's brother. And he would join the ranks of the unfinished. As soon as he came to the throne, he began the construction of another stepped pyramid of immense ambition, sure to dwarf his brother's achievement. But only the first layer of the pyramid was built when Sekhemket died, just six or seven years into his reign and the pyramid was abandoned, another king, Kaaba, also died after six years before his stepped pyramid could be completed. To build each pyramid, the Egyptians would require enormous amounts of labourers, as many as 100,000 per pyramid, with about 10,000 labouring at any one time. There's a widespread misconception that these monuments were built by armies of slaves, but most historians now believe this not to be true. Slavery was an aspect of Egyptian society as it was across the ancient world, and slaves were mostly taken from prisoners of war and also from those who fell into debt or committed serious crimes. But slaves were mostly used as domestic servants or, if they were unlucky, toiled in extraction industries like mining and quarrying. These were considered an underclass and would not have been trusted with the construction of such importance. Important and sacred buildings. In fact, evidence shows that the pyramid builders were a mixture of professional artisans and labouring peasants who worked seasonally in exchange for rations. The life of an Egyptian farmer was dictated by the coming and going of the annual floods and there were only a few times of year when they could be meaningfully employed in the fields. For the rest of the time, they would have leased out their services to construction projects, the digging of canals and other public works. And the construction of pyramids. While they labored for the king, these workers drank beer three times a day and ate meat regularly. They toiled in three month shifts and were divided into teams of 20 men. The discovery of their graffiti, hidden on the inward facing sides of some stone blocks in the pyramids, shows that they gave themselves playful and boisterous team names, some of which have been recorded.
- [52:49]
Unknown Speaker
The friends of Khufu, the Vigorous Gang.
- [52:53]
Herodotus
The followers of the powerful White Crown of Khufu.
- [52:57]
Unknown Speaker
Those who know the pharaoh.
- [52:59]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
The drunkards of men Quarry.
- [53:03]
Paul Cooper
It seems their supervisors fostered a sense of team pride and healthy competition, perhaps giving honors and extra beer rations for those who shifted the most blocks. Doubtless the work was backbreaking, but over the following millennium, millions of Egyptians would take this deal. Perhaps they also felt a sense of pride at the great constructions they were taking part in, which, if all went well, they would live to see completed. These labourers were sufficiently respected that any who died during the construction were buried in tombs within the royal complex, their bodies forever a part of the monolith they had given their lives to build an honour that would never have been given to a slave. The vast administrative effort of building these tombs over the next centuries required a fundamental restructuring of Egyptian government. In the past, most of the high positions of state had been doled out to the pharaoh's family. But with such ambitious projects to be completed, completed, skilled people would be needed. In the decades that followed, individual functions of government, such as the master of scribes and controller of workshops, were separated out, and these roles were delegated to capable individuals who were promoted on merit. The Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson summarizes the transformation in the following.
- [54:41]
Unknown Speaker
As Egypt embarked on pyramid building, the pyramids were building Egypt.
- [54:49]
Paul Cooper
This new caste of civil servants took pride in their work. One Egyptian text of the fifth dynasty records the advice that a vizier named Ptah Hotep gave to his son about how to be a successful administrator.
- [55:07]
Unknown Speaker
Let not your heart be puffed up because of your knowledge. Be not confident because you are a wise man. Take counsel with the ignorant as well as the wise. Good speech is more hidden than the emerald, but it may be found even among maidservants at the grindstone.
- [55:31]
Paul Cooper
Still, the failures of the kings that followed Djoser must have left a mark on the empire's morale. Their crumbling, half finished pyramids stood in the desert as an image of kingship that could also be fragile and fleeting. With his stepped pyramid, Djoser had laid down a provocation that would have to be answered. But it wasn't until the reign of a king named Sneferu that someone would rise to the challenge. Sneferu's full name was Horeneb Maat. Sneferu Waj Horus, Lord of Ma'at, has perfected me. Ma'at in Egyptian religious belief was the embodiment of justice and truth, sometimes portrayed as a goddess wearing an ostrich feather on her head, who kept the stars and the seasons in their regular patterns and maintained peace. Opposed to her in their theology was the concept of Isfet, chaos, darkness and disorder. This was sometimes depicted as a great coiling serpent. For the most part, Sneferu's name seems to have been appropriate. Under the protection of Maat, he reigned for as long as 48 years, a time of prosperity and stability. His accession to the throne is remembered in the later Egyptian source, the Prisp Papyrus.
- [57:19]
Unknown Speaker
The majesty of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Huni came to the landing place of death. And the majesty of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt. Sneferu was raised up as a beneficent king in this entire land.
- [57:37]
Paul Cooper
During his half century on the throne, Sneferu would secure his place as Egypt's most ardent and determined pyramid builder. With the failure of the last kings to build a stepped pyramid to match Djoser's, Sneferu began to wonder if he could build something even better. A pyramid that conformed to a perfect geometrical shape. He had a vision of a pyramid with polished smooth sides unlike anything the world had seen before. His first attempt to accomplish this would be at the pyramid of Meidum. There is some debate about whether the Meidum pyramid was built by Sneferu or by his predecessor Huni. But we can assume they wouldn't compete for the honour. As it stands as one of the most impressive failed pyramids in history. The Meidum pyramid was built in several stages. First, it was a stepped pyramid of similar design to Djoser's. And then this interior structure was encased in a steep shell of white limestone, creating a high and narrow point. The effect would have been beautiful, that is, until one day as the pyramid neared completion, when the entire weight of the stone facing began to collapse in all directions. We can only imagine the noise and calamity that must have accompanied this. The workers leaping clear of the wreckage, the overseers watching aghast as an avalanche of painstakingly cut stone poured off the side of the pyramid. The moment this happened, Sneferu ordered the construction to be halted. Workmen inside the interior chambers simply put down their tools and left. Today the burial chamber inside the pyramid is still unfinished with raw uncarved walls and wooden supports still in place which were usually removed after construction. Sneferu must have been devastated, but he wasn't discouraged. Soon he tried again with a pyramid at the site of Dahshur, just to the south of the royal necropolis of Saqqara. This pyramid was intended to be tall and its sides were even steeper than the first. His workmen began to construct it with a sharp 53 degree slope to its sides. And this time Sneferu must have hoped that he would get the pyramid he dreamed of. But this would not turn out to be the case. This second pyramid was built on ground that was only soft sand and shale. As the pyramid took shape and its weight climbed into the millions of tons, they found that the stone was sinking into the earth and causing cracks to appear in the structure. We can only imagine how it felt to be the architect who had to bring this bad news to the king, the son of Ra, the living embodiment of the God Horus. The workmen tried everything they could, from adding new supporting blocks to the base to propping up subsiding sections with huge beams of cedar wood. But it was hopeless. It became clear that if they continued the pyramid as planned, it would likely collapse just as the first one had. The pharaoh Sneferu seems to have listened to reason. He consented to allow his workmen to hurriedly finish the pyramid with a reduced angle of only 43 degrees and a final height reduced by 25 meters. This means that today the pyramid has a peculiar snub nosed appearance that has given it the name the Bent Pyramid. It's clear that Sneferu still wasn't satisfied. He now ordered the construction of a final pyramid one kilometer to the north. Combining everything his craftsmen had learned from the first two, this one was now built with a 43 degree incline from the beginning, more evenly distributing the weight on the earth. And finally, Sneferu got the pyramid he desired. This was the first structure that truly took the iconic shape of an Egyptian pyramid and would be used as a model for those that would be built in years to come. It was 105 meters high, nearly twice the height of Djoser's pyramid and the world's new tallest building. And its geometrical perfection was undeniable. When Sneferu died, he was buried in this pyramid according to his wishes and his son took the throne. He would be the greatest pyramid builder of all. His name was Khufu. As a boy, Khufu must have seen his father, Sneferu, obsessed with the construction of his three pyramids. We can imagine the young prince listening in on his father's conversations with his architects. The tension and anger as the first two pyramids failed and then the final triumph of the Red Pyramid. And perhaps, as a boy, he dreamed of one day building such a monument for himself. We know very little about Khufu or what his reign was like, but it's clear that he was inspired by one size and, above all, the desire to build the largest pyramid that would ever stand. Learning from his father's mistakes on the Bent Pyramid, and likely inheriting some of his architects, Khufu elected to build his tomb some 15 kilometers to the northwest of Saqqara, on a shelf of strong limestone just outside Memphis, at a place called Giza. When construction began on the Great Pyramid, there must have been some uncertainty about whether it would even be possible. It was built using an estimated 2.3 million large stone blocks, weighing a total of 6 million tons. And when its first layer was completed, it was the size of more than 10 football pitches. Its builders used predominantly local limestone quarried from nearby on the Giza Plateau to build the pyramid's interior structure. And these were bound together with lime mortar packed with straw and charcoal. Luckily, these organic remains in the pyramid mortar can be carbon dated, allowing archaeologists to date the pyramids with scientific certainty to this period. But while rough stone would do for the main body, the king's burial chamber at its heart was made of blocks of hard granite brought from Aswan, since it needed to resist the crushing weight of millions of tonnes of stone above it. The fine limestone blocks of its outer shell were quarried at a place called Tura, on the other side of the river. The stone from these quarries was of exceptional quality, a pale white in colour, almost like marble. For this reason, it was highly prized for use on the interiors of tombs and the perfect casing for a pyramid. This limestone was cut out of underground tunnels in these quarries and dragged down to the banks of the Nile, where it was loaded onto barges to be carried downstream. In order to ease the transportation of these stones, the Egyptians dug a series of canals and artificial harbours that came right up to the base of the pyramids, one of which was known as Shei Khufu, or the Pool of Khufu. One papyrus has been uncovered, the oldest ever found. That is the work journal of an overseer named Merer. In it, he records the process of this perhaps less than exhilarating task.
- [66:44]
Unknown Speaker
Day 25, Inspector Marre spends the day hauling stones in Torah south. Spends the night at Torah. Day 26, Inspector Morere casts off from Tuura loaded with stone, spends the night at the Pool of Khufu. Day 27, set sail. Loaded with stone, spends the night at the pyramid. Day 28, casts off from the pyramid in the morning, sails upriver to Toura South. Day 29, Inspector Marre spends the day hauling stones in Toura south. Spends the night at Torah. Day 30, Inspector Morere spends the day hauling stones in Torah south, spends the night at Tora.
- [67:37]
Paul Cooper
Remarkably, the pyramid was oriented perfectly to true north with one of its faces at each point of the compass, suggesting that the Egyptians must have used measurements of the stars in order to align it, the only method by which they could have achieved such accuracy. And with the kingdom's now exceptional organization, it's been estimated that it took only about 23 years to build, with the final stones being placed around 2560 B.C. upon its completion, the Great Pyramid of Giza would stand 147 meters high, or nearly 40 stories. It was the tallest man made structure in the world and would remain so for nearly 4,000 years. The building that eventually surpassed it, the wooden spire of Lincoln Cathedral in England, completed in 1311, would stand for listening more than two centuries before it collapsed in a storm. Today, Khufu has cemented his name into history with the construction of these monuments. But other than his ambitious pyramid, little else is known about him. The only representation of him ever found is a single statuette carved from ivory. And ironically, only for a man so obsessed with grand scale, this statue is only 7 cm or less than 3 inches tall. When Khufu died around 2525 BC, his son Djedefre would take the throne. But his reign was short, and when he died, another of Khufu's sons became pharaoh. His name was Khafre. The Pharaoh Khafre would follow in his father's and grandfather's footsteps and build a grand pyramid of his own. He would place it right beside his father's, but for some reason he declined to build it any higher. It could be that his builders, perhaps tiring of this mania for ever bigger and better pyramids, simply told him that it wouldn't be possible to build any bigger. It may be that Khafre worried that it would have appeared unseemly to one up his dead father quite so ostentatiously Perhaps for this reason, Khafre's pyramid would be a deferential three and a half metres shorter than his father's, although he was sure to place it on a slightly higher shelf of limestone, meaning that from many angles it appears taller. Coupled with slightly steeper angled sides, this meant Khafre was also able to build his pyramid with perhaps 350,000 fewer stone blocks, a saving that his teams of labourers and stonemasons no doubt appreciated. Today, the pyramid of Khafre is the only pyramid at Giza to retain any of its original casing stones of smooth white turah limestone, which still cling to the top third of the structure. Perhaps since its steeper sides made it more difficult for stone thieves to extract the very top of its masonry, this allows us to picture how these monuments would have looked in their Golden Age Age. The smooth white sides that must have gleamed blindingly in the desert sun and at night shone in the light of the moon. These pyramids were also likely capped with a stone known as a pyramidion, usually carved of diorite or granite and carved with hieroglyphs. Some examples of these pyramidions have been found with distinctive grooves that suggest that they were encased in a decorative metal, either copper or shining electrum, an alloy of gold and silver. Since the pyramidions for the Giza pyramids have never been found, it's unknown whether their tops were encased in metal. But if they were, it would have made them an even more impressive sight a gleaming pinnacle reaching up to the heavens. Within only a hundred years or so of the construction of Djoser's first stepped pyramid, all of Egypt's largest pyramids had already been built, all by only three generations of the same family. But almost from the moment the final capstone was placed on Khafre's massive monument, enthusiasm for enormous pyramids began to wane. The pharaoh Menkaure, the son of Khafre and grandson of Khufu, also built his pyramid at Giza around 2510 BC. But his would be significantly smaller. It's not even a tenth the size of the great pyramid, and only 2/3 the size of even Djoser's stepped pyramid. One explanation for this was that Menkaure didn't expect to live long enough to build such a grand construction as his predecessors. Herodotus records one piece of tradition about the pharaoh Menkaure, which recounts how an oracle told him that his reign would be short. As a result, he determined to make the best of the time he had, and perhaps this left him little time for pyramid building.
- [73:31]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
The king deemed this unjust and sent back to the oracle a message of reproach, blaming the God, why must he die so soon? Whereas his father and his uncle had lived long, he caused many lamps to be made and would light these at nightfall and drink and make merry by day or night. He never ceased from revelling, roaming to the marsh country and the groves, and whenever he heard of the likeliest places of pleasure.
- [74:06]
Paul Cooper
Whether there's any truth to this or not, it's clear Menkaure had different priorities to Khufu and Khafre and his more modest pyramid seems to have broken the spell of his family's one upmanship. For the next thousand years, pharaohs would continue to build pyramid tombs, but they would be mostly at a much reduced scale and they would cut bigger and bigger corners in their construction. Instead of a solid limestone structure, these later monuments would often be a simple limestone shell encasing a core of mud brick, or simply earth and sand. For this reason, little remains of these later pyramids other than melancholy heaps alone in the desert. Slowly the practice would begin to die out altogether. The reason Egyptians stopped building pyramids was partly due to changes in religious attitudes towards burial, but it also seems to have stemmed from concern over tomb robbers. After all, a pyramid was essentially an enormous sign announcing to the world that the richest man in Egypt was buried there. From the earliest days, people were drawn to the tombs of long dead kings to attempt to steal their treasures. One tomb inscription of a royal architect named Ineni gives us a clue about these changing priorities. He writes that he constructed his king's tomb not in an ostentatious declaration of power, but in total secrecy.
- [75:48]
Unknown Speaker
I supervised the excavation of the cliff tomb of His Majesty alone. No one seeing, no one hearing.
- [76:00]
Paul Cooper
Even with these secret tombs, grave robbers were still a constant concern. One pharaoh of the later New Kingdom would order an inspection of his predecessors tombs. And his inspectors brought back troubling news.
- [76:16]
Unknown Speaker
The tomb of the king. It was found that the evildoers have damaged it by forcing an opening into the main chamber of his tomb through the passage wall of the sanctuary of Nebamin, superintendent of the grain stores of the king. In the funerary place, the body of the king had been removed and the tomb of his royal spouse, the royal lady of Nubshas, was empty. The robbers had laid violent hands on them.
- [76:44]
Paul Cooper
It wasn't just the precious treasures inside that were stolen, as the overseer Merer had found. Cutting the limestone blocks from the quarries of Tura was one of the most time consuming parts of construction. For this reason, pharaohs who felt more pressed for time sometimes despoiled previous pyramids of their cut stone in order to speed along their own monuments. One Middle Kingdom text, known as the Instruction of Mericare, advises kings against this shameful practice.
- [77:20]
Unknown Speaker
Do not despoil the monument of another, but quarry stone in Tura. Do not build your tomb out of ruins using what has been made for what is to be made.
- [77:36]
Paul Cooper
In place of constructing their own pyramids at Saqqara or Giza, the later pharaohs would be buried at a place near Thebes that the Egyptians called the great and majestic necropolis of the millions of years of the Pharaoh, or sometimes the great field. But today it is known as the Valley of the Kings. Here, a natural rock formation known as El Khoorn or the Horn, rises above a series of dramatic red cliffs. When viewed from the entrance to the tombs here, this pointed peak somewhat resembles a natural pyramid. It's possible that this convenient landform may have relieved some of the pressure on Egypt's pharaohs and allowed them an equally prestigious place to be buried. While freeing up an untold amount of energy and manpower in the kingdom, Egypt's manual laborers could perhaps breathe a sigh of relief. Slowly, the age of the pyramids came to an end. Still, that was a long time in the future. And throughout the fourth and fifth dynasties of Egypt, royal monument construction continued confidently. But in the 6th dynasty, around the 23rd century BC construction began to decline. Part of the reason for this was an increasing decentralization of the empire and a gradual weakening of the power of the king. The final pharaoh of the old kingdom was named Pepi II. He came to the throne at the age of six and ruled for more than 60 years. Pepi was an excitable and enthusiastic child, as we can see from one tomb inscription by one of his officials named Harkuf. Harkuf had a long and illustrious career. He served as the mayor of one of Egypt's southern provinces in the region of the Nile Cataract of Aswan, the narrow gate to the south. The highlight of his life was the four journeys of exploration he undertook on behalf of his pharaoh. Following the Nile down into the heart of Central Africa, into what the Egyptians called the horizon lands. He wrote a full account of one of these expeditions on the walls of his tomb.
- [80:21]
Unknown Speaker
I accomplished it in seven months. I brought back from there all sorts of beautiful exotic produce and was praised for it very greatly. I came back with 300 donkeys laden with Incense, ebony, precious oil, grain, leopard skins and elephant tusks.
- [80:47]
Paul Cooper
The boy pharaoh Pepi was so delighted with Harkuf's trip that he wrote a letter directly to him. The letter was likely written on fragile papyrus and has not survived, but luckily Harkuf was so proud of this sign of royal favour that he had the letter copied out word for word on the wall of his tomb. His proudest moment etched into stone for eternity. In it we get a sense for the voice of this excitable young, young king.
- [81:20]
H
You know how to do what your lord loves and favors. You wake and you sleep, planning to do what your lord loves, favors and commands. Unique friend, Harkuf.
- [81:31]
Paul Cooper
Pepi was especially excited by a small man that Harkouf had come across in East Africa and had brought back with him. Perhaps either a man with dwarfism or a member of the so called pygmy tribes of Central Africa.
- [81:49]
H
You have further said in this message that you have brought a dwarf of the gods. Dancers from the land of the horizon dwellers, come downstream to the residents at once. Hurry and bring with you this dwarf that you have brought alive, prosperous and healthy for the king. When he goes down with you into the boat, have excellent people around him on deck lest he fall in the water. My Majesty wishes to see this particular dwarf more than the produce of the lands.
- [82:18]
Paul Cooper
However, as a pharaoh, Pepi was relatively ineffectual during his childhood. His mother and grand viziers seemed to have done much of the ruling and as an adult, he continued a relatively hands off approach to the kingdom. For much of its history, Egypt had been governed by regional administrators known as nomarchs, who were appointed by the pharaoh to rule over their regions on his behalf. Pepi's long reign saw an increasing amount of power passing to these regional governors. Gradually their positions became hereditary rather than appointed, so that single families began to amass large amounts of power power and their tombs became larger and more elaborate with every passing year. These nomarchs were soon beginning to look a lot like feudal lords or even petty kings, and even began fighting amongst themselves. Meanwhile, the once boy king Pepi was Now entering his 70s, frail and increasingly detached from the business of ruling. This might not have been a death blow for the kingdom, but it was around this time that a record drought descended over Egypt and the entire eastern Mediterranean starting around the year 2200 BC. This climate shift we have encountered before, it is known as the 4.2 kilo year event and has been implicated in the collapse of the Akkadian empire in Mesopotamia and perhaps Even the Indus Valley civilization in India and Pakistan. In Egypt, the result of this event was a series of years in which the Nile floods were much reduced and agriculture came under immense pressure. The drought was so severe and long lasting that the verdant lake at Fayum that once stood 65 metres deep, completely dried up over the next 50 years and crop yields would have plummeted. The long reign of a pharaoh was usually good news for the kingdom. It tended to generate a period of stability and often prosperity. But when a king's rule went on too long, it had the tendency to create what we might call the old king problem. The long reign of the pharaoh Pepi, along with his multiple wives, meant that he had countless children, many of them now old men themselves, with children and grandchildren of their own. And they were all impatient to see this old king pass on so that they would get their chance to rule. When Pepi finally died, around 2175 BC, what followed was a succession crisis of immense proportions. The chaos serpent of Isfat now wound its way around all the lands of Egypt. In the two decades that followed, the kingdom would see no fewer than 17 Pharaohs come and go, some perhaps dying of old age and others no doubt killed by their rivals. The only one of these kings to survive more than a year on the throne was a man named Ibi, who even somewhat optimistically, tried his hand at building a pyramid at the royal burial ground of Saqqara. But this monument was a testament to the now much reduced state of the empire. Standing at little more than 30 meters high, it was smaller than the pyramids of some of the earlier king's wives. On top of that, it was lazily constructed around a core of mud and limestone chips. King Ibi, the man who was to be buried under this sad monument, ruled for only two years, one month and a day, and likely did not control all of Egypt. Now local Nomarch governors declared independence and ruled their provinces alone. Their tombs around this time stop referring to the reign of a pharaoh and are full of boasts and elaborate titles that they seem to have invented for themselves. One tomb inscription for a powerful Nomarch named Anktifi demonstrates how the centralized power of the king was declining.
- [87:21]
Unknown Speaker
I am the vanguard of the men, the rearguard of the men, a leader of the land through active conduct, strong in speech, collected in thought. For I am without peer who spoke out when people were silent. On the day of fear, when Upper.
- [87:38]
Egypt was silent.
- [87:42]
Paul Cooper
Anktifi recalls the time of famine that swept over the land as crisis after crisis rocked the str struggling Old Kingdom all of Upper Egypt.
- [87:55]
Unknown Speaker
Was dying of hunger to such a degree that everyone had come to eating his children. But I managed that no one died of hunger in this province. The entire country had become like a starved grasshopper, with people going to the north and to the south in search of grain.
- [88:14]
Paul Cooper
Egypt was now fractured into something like the shape it had been before. King Na Mer had fused it into a stable, centralized state. Nearly 800 years before, refugees were flooding the roads. Another later Egyptian writer called Epouer, who lived in the period following this chaos, describes people resorting to theft to survive and violence spreading.
- [88:44]
Unknown Speaker
The guardians of the house say, let us go and steal. The snarers of birds have formed themselves into armed bands. The peasants of the delta have provided themselves with shields. A man regards his son as his enemy. The wrongdoer is in every place. The inundation of the Nile comes, yet no one goes out to plough.
- [89:11]
Paul Cooper
Ipuair describes a widespread economic collapse during which trade from foreign lands dried up.
- [89:21]
Unknown Speaker
The skilled masons who built pyramids now labor on farms. And those who tended the boat of the gods are yoked together in ploughing. Men do not go on voyages today. What shall we do for cedar wood but for our mummies in coffins of which priests are buried and with the oil of which men are embalmed? They come no longer. Everything is in ruins. Laughter is dead. If I only knew where God was, I would make offerings to him.
- [89:56]
Paul Cooper
Throughout this period of about 200 years. Some at least must have dreamed of a better time awaiting them in the future. Another text written after this time, known as the Prophecy of Neferti, contains a prediction that a ruler would come who would end this time of strife.
- [90:18]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
A king will come. He will take the white crown. He will wear the red crown. He will unite the two mighty lands. Rejoice, ye people of his time. The Asiatics will fall to his sword and the Libyans will fall to his flame. The rebels belong to his wrath, and the treacherous in heart belong to the awe of him.
- [90:48]
Paul Cooper
The man who would fulfill this prophecy, or rather the man in whose reign the prophecy was more likely written, would reunite Egypt and usher in a new age of stability. His name was Nebe Petre Mentuhotep II Mentu Hotep was a king in the city city of Thebes in Upper Egypt. Sitting on the eastern bank of The Nile, about 800 km from the Mediterranean, Thebes is one of the sunniest and driest cities in the world. It had been the capital of its own province throughout the old Kingdom, but had always been something of a backwater and somewhat influenced by the African culture of of Nubia. But during the more than a century of chaos that surrounded the collapse of the old Kingdom, Thebes slowly grew to become the capital of the south. And its kings began referring to themselves as the great overlord of Upper Egypt. It was a city where tightly packed rows of houses, granaries and workshops clustered around the central temple to the God Amun. And its people clearly sought a break from the suffocating influence of the kings in Memphis. But in the north, near the traditional centre of Egyptian power, an ambitious and ruthless rival was also amassing its forces. This was centred around the city of Henen Nasut in Lower Egypt, in the verdant region between the River Nile and the great lake at Fayum, a region that the desert Thebans dismissively called the marshlands. This city would later be known as Heracleopolis, or the City of Hercules. For about a hundred years during this time of dissolution, Thebes and Henen Nasut had fought bitter wars over small border regions, forts and roads. But neither side could ever gain the upper hand. That was until the reign of the king of Thebes, Mentuhotep. He was named after the Theban God of war and came from a lion of warlike kings. He clearly desired to bring this series of conflicts to a decisive conclusion and reunite the fractured kingdom of old. The final confrontation between north and south would be sparked by a rebellion in the city of Thinis, once home to King Namer, and which was now one of the vassals of Thebes. Delighted by this development, the northern power of Hanen Nasut seized the opportunity and and marched south into the desert to capture the town. War soon raged across all Egypt. At one point, the northerners pushed south and captured the ancient sacred city of Abydos, and there unleashed a wave of destruction against its temples and palaces. One later text, known as the instruction to Mericare, purports to be written by a king of northern Henen Nasut, who is racked with guilt for the destruction of this sacred city.
- [94:37]
I
Lo, a shameful deed occurred in my time. The province of Theis was ravaged. Though it happened through my doing, I learned it after it was done. There was retribution for what I had done. For it is evil to destroy. Beware of it. A blow is repaid by its like. To every action there is a response.
- [95:06]
Paul Cooper
This response would come in the form of a thundering reprisal by the king of Thebes, Mentuhotep. He Would march into the north and defeat the armies of Henen Nasut. Next, he rounded on the northern capital. When he captured it, all of the funerary monuments of its kings were defaced and destroyed, perhaps suggesting a sacking of the city. Whatever the northerners had done to the sacred center of Abydos, it was clearly visited upon them and their city tenfold. Mentuhotep now swept through northern Egypt, and the provincial governors saw the writing on the wall and swore fealty to him. After nearly two centuries of dissolution, the two halves of Egypt were once again united. The period that followed, known as the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, Would last for around 300 years. But it has not left an impressive archaeological record. Compared to the towering pyramids of the Old Kingdom and the architectural magnificence of the later New Kingdom, it stands out as something of a dull time for grand monument construction. But it did experience a flourishing in another area that is in the realm of Egyptian literature. One famous story written around this time is called the Tale of Sinuhe. It narrates the life of a man who traveled north into Palestine and beyond, but who eventually becomes homesick and decides to return to Egypt. Another collection of stories was written around this time, A kind of ancient Arabian nights known as the Tales of Wonder. It relates a number of fantastical stories, Imagining that they were told to the great Pharaoh Khufu of the Old Kingdom by his three sons. Another story written during the Middle Kingdom Is known as the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. A kind of ancient Gulliver's Travels. It is remarkable for its innovative structure. A tale within a tale about a sailor shipwrecked in the Mediterranean who finds himself on an island ruled by a gigantic serpent.
- [98:02]
Unknown Speaker
A storm came up with us on the open sea and no chance for us to reach harbor. The wind grew sharp and made a constant moaning. And there were hungry 14 foot high waves. A piece of wood of some sort hit me and then the ship was dead. Of all those fine men, not a one survived. Then I was carried to a desert island by a swell of the great green sea.
- [98:39]
Paul Cooper
The man speaks with the great serpent, who tells him a sad story of his own, that his whole family was killed when a star fell to earth. The serpent tells the man not to fear that a ship will eventually pass by the island and rescue him, and reassures him that he will soon have a great story to tell.
- [99:02]
Unknown Speaker
Beh in ek we mek nithir ridi and f. Now you are going to spend one month and then another until you finish four months on this island. Then a ship will come from Egypt with sailors in it whom you know that you may go with them toward home and die in your own city. What joy for one who lives to tell the things he has been through when the suffering is over.
- [99:43]
Paul Cooper
Finally, the predicted ship arrives and the man is rescued.
- [99:58]
Unknown Speaker
At last. The ship arrived just as he had foretold. I climbed a lofty tree and recognized the sailors in the ship and went running to report it. Then I descended to the shore near where the ship was. I hailed the crew and offered thanks beside the sea to the Lord of the isle. And those on board did likewise. Rinpy Ek.
- [100:28]
Paul Cooper
We have examples of myths and legends written before this time, and religious texts. But this is not the story of some bygone king or the actions of the gods. It's a story about an ordinary man in a fantastical situation, told seemingly just for the entertainment value of telling a story. And for that reason, it is possibly the first true piece of literature. It was likely written around the year 1900 BC and is therefore nearly 4000 years old. The lives of Egypt's pharaohs take up so much of the usual discussion of its history, partly because they are the ones who commissioned the inscriptions, the monuments and the statues. But as the Middle Kingdom's flourishing of literature continued, we get more and more of a sense of what life was like for ordinary people in the Nile Valley. One text of this period, known as the Papyrus Lansing, gives a fascinating insight into the lives of Egypt's common people. It is written as a piece of rhetoric by a master scribe to one of his pupils, attempting to convince him to become a scribe in turn. And from this we get a wonderful impression of all the ways that people could make their living in the land of Egypt.
- [102:07]
Unknown Speaker
Young fellow, writing to him who knows? It is more profitable than any profession. It is pleasanter than bread and beer, than clothing, than oil. Yes, it is more precious than an inheritance in Egypt than a tomb in the West. Look for thyself with your own eye. Here all the professions are set before you.
- [102:37]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
The washerman spends the whole day going up and down. Every limb of his is aweary, whitening the clothes of his neighbours.
- [102:47]
Unknown Speaker
Every day the potter is smeared with mud like a man in mourning. His hands and feet are full of clay. He is like one who lives in the bog.
- [103:00]
The cobbler mixes tanning lotions, his odor is marked. His hands are red with dye, like one who is smeared with his blood.
- [103:10]
Herodotus
The florist makes bouquets and makes the wine Jar stands beautiful. He spends a night of toil sweating like one on whose body the sun is shining.
- [103:22]
I
The merchants fare downstream and upstream and are as busy as can be, carrying wares from one town to another and supplying him that hath not.
- [103:33]
Unknown Speaker
If thou hast any sense, be a scribe.
- [103:40]
Paul Cooper
Whether or not daily life was truly that bad for all these other workers, we can't tell, because, of course, none of them wrote down how they felt. Most of Egypt's people were peasant farmers, and even when they practiced these other professions, they likely engaged in some farming too. These peasants did not own the land they worked and were required to give most of the food they produced to the crown or to their local temple to supplement their diets. Most houses kept private kitchen gardens too, which the women would tend while the men went out to the fields. Egyptian women were also responsible for baking the bread they ate every day. Bread in Egypt was made primarily with emmer wheat. Dough was often pressed into clay molds and baked. And at times, people got creative, baking bread in spirals like a cinnamon swirl and using shaped molds to bake loaves in the form of animals. Those who could afford it also baked cakes and pastries out of the finest flour sweetened with dates and honey. Alongside their bread, Egyptians ate a varied diet, including garlic and spring onions, lettuce, celery, cucumbers, gourds, and melons. They supplemented these with high protein beans and pulses like lentils and chickpeas, and a kind of edible tuber known as a tiger nut that grows at the base of wetland sedges. All of this was cooked in olive oil, at least from the time the pyramids were built. At times they would also eat meat, primarily beef, lamb, pork and goat, as well as quail, pigeon, duck, geese and partridge. Mice were even eaten at times, and even hedgehogs. The Egyptians cooked these spiky creatures by wrapping them in wet clay and baking them in it. And when the clay was cracked open afterwards, it took the hedgehog's spines with it. The Egyptians also made cheese and even foie gras made from force feeding geese. One text, written by a scribe to the Queen Nefertari, urges people to share with others the food they have.
- [106:30]
Unknown Speaker
Do not eat bread while another stands by without extending your hand to him. As to food, it is here always. It is man who does not last. One man is rich, another is poor, but food remains for him who shares it.
- [106:49]
Paul Cooper
Beer was exceptionally popular in Egypt, and people consumed it daily. As a result, breweries were important centers of industry. Beer was thought to have been given to Egypt by the goddess Hathor, the goddess of beauty. Music and dancing and breweries were watched over by the goddess Tenenet. So fittingly, many beer factories were run by women. Some of these were enormous and were capable of brewing more than a million litres a year. They used large pottery vats propped up on mud bricks over crackling fires, and inside these, they heated barley and water, then left the mixture to ferment before flavouring the brew with honey and syrups made of dates and other fruit. There was even one annual festival called the Teck festival, that would become known as the Festival of drunkenness. During this fiesta, Egyptians would drink as much beer as they could and then fall asleep together in a large hall. They would then be awoken all together by the loud beating of drums. It was said that in the moment just after waking, some of them would meet the goddess Hathor. Her Egypt was one of the most stable and prosperous agricultural societies in the ancient world. But it was a society built entirely on the collection and storage of grain. As a result, there was one ever present danger that was the presence of mice and rats. Grain was stored in large circular granaries within the towns shaped like beehives. And freshly harvested wheat or barley was poured in through a hole in the top to be preserved in the hot, dry air. When grain was needed for bread making or beer brewing, it was taken from a small door in the bottom of these granaries. But if mice got into this storage or even ate the grain while it was still in the fields, then thousands of hours of work could be wasted and people might even starve. But thankfully, Egyptians were able to rely on one particular set of allies. That was the domestic cat. There were two major breeds of wild cat native to Egypt. The jungle cat, or felis chaus, and the African wild cat, Felis silvestris libica. Of these, the African wild cat had something of a calmer temperament, and so was most commonly bred as a pet. With evidence of their domestication in Egypt from at least 5,000 years ago, these cats were kept around Egyptian settlements for their obvious utility both in controlling mice and with their almost supernatural reflexes, for their ability to kill venomous snakes. But it's clear that the Egyptians also enjoyed their company and even loved them. Some particularly beloved pets were buried with tiny offerings intended to serve them well in the cat afterlife. The Greek writer Diodorus of Sicily recalls seeing Egyptians performing burial ceremonies for their cats.
- [110:43]
I
When one of these animals dies, they wrap it in fine linen and then wailing and beating their breasts, carry it off to be embalmed, and after it has been treated with cedar oil and such spices as have the quality of imparting a pleasant odour and of preserving the body for a long time, they lay it away in a consecrated tomb.
- [111:08]
Paul Cooper
While the earliest domestication of the house cat took place elsewhere in the Fertile Crescent, it was in Egypt that it accelerated dramatically. As cats got used to their new survival niche, they in turn began to adapt. They largely lost their original camouflage coatings, became smaller, and even developed new ways of signalling to their human patrons with soft, insistent cries modulated to similar frequencies as a human baby. Fittingly, the Egyptian word for cat was mew. Over time, this adoration of their feline companions seems to have become a religious reverence, too. With their ease and grace, cats in Egypt were associated with femininity, and paintings in tombs often show the household dog sitting below a man's chair while a cat sits under the woman's chair. One goddess named Bastet would soon become revered, and she manifested as a woman with the head of a house cat. Bastet became a God of fertility, and women would appeal to her during times of childbirth and pregnancy. Diodorus later records seeing an Egyptian festival during which cats were ritually fed.
- [112:40]
I
For the cats, they break up bread into milk, and calling them with a clucking sound, set it before them, or else they cut up fish caught in the Nile and feed the flesh to them raw. All who meet these animals fall down before them and render them with honour.
- [112:59]
Paul Cooper
The Egyptians were also fiercely protective of their feline companions. As Diodorus recounts, whoever kills a cat.
- [113:09]
I
Whether intentionally or unintentionally, he is certainly put to death. For common people gather in crowds and deal with the perpetrator most cruelly, sometimes doing this without waiting for a trial.
- [113:26]
Paul Cooper
The worship and veneration of cats would continue throughout all the thousands of years of ancient Egyptian history. And for the cats, it is perhaps something that they have never quite forgotten. The Middle Kingdom was not just a time of entertainment and pleasure. With the mania for pyramid building somewhat subsided, certain pharaohs engaged in large scale construction projects to strengthen and develop the empire. One king spent much of his life on a vast irrigation project around the oasis at Fayum. Determined to turn it into a productive swathe of farmland, another built a large series of defensive walls in the Nile Delta, hemming Egypt off from the people of the wider Middle east, whom the Egyptians called Asiatics. These people were often depicted in their paintings with lighter, more yellowish skin than the Egyptians, and were held in general contempt. As uncivilized barbarians. The Egyptians soon began pushing their sphere of influence into this area, expanding their territory north along the Mediterranean coast and into Palestine. They crossed the Sinai Desert and subjugated the Phoenician city of Byblos. Then they turned their attention south to eastern Africa, what the Egyptians called the Horizon lands, the lands of the Nubians. Like the light skinned Asiatics in the north, the Egyptians considered the southern Nubians different to them, and yet usually depicted them with darker skin than Egyptians and more typically African features. At this time, these kingdoms were relatively underdeveloped and were easy prey for an aggressive and expansionist Egypt. We've already seen that the first cataract of the Nile was at Aswan, where the granite bedrock forced the water into a series of rushing whitewater rapids. If an ancient Egyptian traveled upriver beyond Aswan and into the Horizon lands, they would encounter five more major cataracts of the Nile. These are each places where the river becomes shallow and travel by boat becomes difficult. And so they were natural stops along any journey upriver. They were also the obvious place to draw borders. During the Middle Kingdom, Egypt marched into the Horizon lands multiple times and pushed its southern border as far as the second cataract. Around the 1860s BC, one Middle Kingdom king named Senusret III marched even further south into the Nubian kingdoms of Kush and Punt. He remembers this brutal campaign in one.
- [116:43]
Unknown Speaker
The Nubians are wretches, craven hearted. My majesty has seen it. It is not an untruth. I have captured their women, I have carried off their subjects, poisoned their wells, killed their cattle, cut down their grain, set fire to it.
- [117:06]
Paul Cooper
In this remorseless fashion, Senusret marched beyond the second cataract and built a powerful set of fortresses. We get a sense for their purpose from the names the Egyptians gave to them. One of them at Ascoot was named crushing the Nubians, while another at Shalfak was named subduing the foreign lands. In another imposing fortress at Semna, now more than 400 km upstream from the former border of Aswan, Senusret left a stone monument with the following triumphant.
- [117:47]
Unknown Speaker
Year 16, third month of winter, the king made his southern boundary. I have made my boundary further south than my father's. I have added to what was bequeathed me. As for any son of mine who shall maintain this border which my Majesty has made, he is my son. But he who abandons it, who fails to fight for it, he is not my son. He was not born to me.
- [118:22]
Paul Cooper
These forts were manned by powerful units of Egyptian soldiers tasked with keeping order among the newly colonized Nubians. To this end, they engaged in a paranoid surveillance regime of the local people. To the pharaoh Senusret, they sent back constant updates on papyrus scrolls about the movements of even the most minute groups of Nubians, some of which have survived.
- [118:52]
Unknown Speaker
The patrol who went forth to patrol the desert edge from the fortress Kesef Medjau in year three, month three of the growing season, Last day have come to report to me, saying we have found the tracks of 32 men and three donkeys.
- [119:09]
Paul Cooper
All these dispatches end in the same way, with the same comforting offer of reassurance to the king.
- [119:18]
Unknown Speaker
All the affairs of the king's domain are safe and sound. All the affairs of the master are safe and sound.
- [119:26]
Paul Cooper
But we have reason to believe that King Senusret was not entirely reassured. He is famous for the numerous sculptures he had made of himself, statues carved from from black diorite that depict him in strangely realistic fashion, unlike any depictions of a pharaoh that had come before. In these statues, his ears are extended to enormous proportions, like a bat, perhaps projecting the image of a king who heard every movement in his kingdom relayed by his extensive system of spies. Three of these statues in particular show the king first as a boy, then as a man, and finally in old age. In this final statue, we get a sense for the mental toll it took on a man to sit at the top of this paranoid system. The pharaoh's weary, sunken eyes, his haggard face contorted in an expression of eternal worry. Today, these three statues stand as a kind of metaphor for the state the Egyptian Middle Kingdom had sunk into during its final decades. Sennusret's son, Amenemhat III did just as his father's inscriptions had urged and held the southern border against the Nubians. But following his reign, Egypt was once more plunged into a succession crisis. The crisis was so severe that their next king was something that had until then been almost a woman. Her name was Subek Neferu, possibly the daughter, sister, or wife of the previous pharaoh. She was probably not the first woman to hold power in Egypt, but she was the first one to attain the full official title of a king. Sobekneferu used masculine titles in her inscriptions, and one statue of her even shows her wearing an unconventional mixture of male and female clothing. However, she did not succeed in slowing the dynasty's decline. She died after ruling for only four years and did not leave any heirs after that. The serpent Isfat uncoiled once more, and Egypt slid into chaos. During the time that followed, known as the Second Intermediate period. There were 150 years during which at least 50 kings ruled Egypt once again split in two, and local governors stopped mentioning the king in their tomb inscriptions. The pyramids of this period had already become small and meagre, mostly built from mud brick. But now their construction stopped altogether. Some kings were even buried in simple shaft tombs, little better than commoners. Much of the Nile Delta of Lower Egypt had already broken away from the empire. And now in the south, people of Nubia were in open rebellion. One by one, the Egyptians were forced to let go of their southern forts, abandoning them to the Nubians. Once a symbol of the empire's confidence, these powerful fortresses now became unprecedented military assets for their enemies and bases from which powerful raiding parties ranged ever farther into Egypt. The cruelty that the Egyptians had shown to their Nubian neighbours was now being paid back in full. With the northern and southern borders convulsed in conflict, Egypt's trade links with the rest of the world were severely disrupted. It was also during this time, or perhaps later, that the entire Mediterranean, in fact most of the world, witnessed one of the largest natural disasters in human history. That is the eruption of the volcano Thera, now known as the Greek island of Santorini, only 700 km from the Egyptian coast. It's likely that the Egyptians would have heard the deep boom of this explosion, which went off with the form course of several hundred atomic bombs. When the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883, the explosion was heard more than 3,000 kilometers away. And it's thought that the Thera explosion was at least four times more powerful. Today, the seawater filled volcanic crater left by the eruption is more than 10 kilometers wide. This event may have ejected more than 40 square kilometers of rock into the atmosphere. The black plume would have been riven with volcanic lightning and it would have triggered tsunamis 10 metres high that would have devastated coastal regions as well as causing a volcanic winter. The eruption may have wiped out the Minoan civilization on Crete in one blow. Perhaps inspiring part of the Atlantis myth and chronicles as far away as China record a period when the sky turned a strange yellow colour and crop yields fell. One Egyptian inscription, known as the Tempest Stelae, may record some memory of this terrifying event.
- [125:20]
Unknown Speaker
The gods expressed their discontent. The gods made the sky come with a tempest. It caused darkness in the western region. The sky was unleashed more powerful on the mountains than the turbulence of the cataract at Aswan. Each house, each shelter that they reached were floating in the water like the Barks of papyrus. Outside the royal residence for days.
- [125:47]
Paul Cooper
Volcanic ash, or tephra, would have begun to rain down on the whole region, and today can be detected at virtually every site in the eastern Mediterranean. Spurred by this natural disaster and exacerbated by the collapse of the Egyptian administration, soon famine once more descended on the land. Among all of this, a powerful and mysterious force of outsiders must have been watching. They came from the eastern Mediterranean region, from across the Sinai Desert, and they intended to conquer Egypt and rule it for themselves. These people were known as the Hyksos. The word Hyksos comes from the Egyptian phrase hekau kesut, meaning rulers of foreign lands. Where exactly the Hyksos were from is unknown, but it's thought they may have originated in the region of Syria. And one thing seems to have been behind the great military success, and that was the chariot. At this point, some form of chariot had been used by various societies for many centuries. Vehicles, like a kind of war cart with four solid wooden wheels pulled by donkeys, are depicted on the Sumerian standard of Ur, which was created around the time that the pyramids of Giza were being built. But Egypt had never experimented with this kind of vehicle, and over the preceding millennium, the technology had taken huge leaps forward. The chariots that the Hyksos brought into Egypt for the first time had two wheels with spokes, light and fast, and they were each pulled by two powerful animals that had been recently introduced, introduced to the region. The horse. These chariots were strong and mobile battle platforms that could break enemy battle lines while onboard. Archers with powerful bows could pelt enemies with missiles. Whether the Hyksos arrived in Egypt as a violent invasion or a more peaceful migration is somewhat up for debate. People from the north had been settling in the Nile Delta for centuries, and much of the population there was already what the Egyptians would consider foreign by the time the Hyksos rulers arrived. But the Hyksos were clearly not pacifists. They set up their own kingdom in the Nile Delta with its capital at Avaris, and in a devastating blow to Egyptian morale, even swept south to capture the ancient capital of Memphis. One much later source named Manetho records the arrival of the Hyksos.
- [129:00]
I
By main force. They easily seized the country without striking a blow. And having overpowered the rulers of the land, they then burned our cities ruthlessly razed to the ground the temples of the gods. Finally, they appointed as king one of the number. He had his seat at Memphis, levying tribute from Upper and Lower Egypt and always leaving garrisons behind in the most.
- [129:26]
Paul Cooper
Advantageous positions, the pyramids, that great symbol of Egyptian prestige, were now in foreign hands. Egyptian kings would now retreat back to their former capital in Upper Egypt, the city of Thebes. With the Nubians increasingly powerful in the south, and now the new threat of these Hyksos kings looming from the north, the weakened Egyptians increasingly felt like they were being crushed in a vice. For a time, it must have seemed like the age of an independent Egypt was over. One king named Camoser, who came to the throne of Thebes around 1555 BC, would put this intolerable situation in the following terms.
- [130:25]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
I should like to know what serves this strength of mine when a chieftain is in Avaris and another in Kush, and I sit united with an Asiatic and a Nubian, each in possession of his slice of Egypt, and I cannot pass by him as far as Memphis. No man can settle down when despoiled by the taxes of the Asiatics. I will grapple with him that I may rip open his belly. My wish is to save Egypt and to smite the Asiatic.
- [131:02]
Paul Cooper
King Carmoza may have had a very personal reason to hate the Hyksos. The mummified remains of the previous pharaoh, his father, have been uncovered, and modern analysis shows that he suffered brutal wounds to the head from a heavy bladed weapon. These blows must have sliced his cheek and fractured his jaw and skull, leading many to conclude that he died on the battlefield. The king's body was then rushed back to Thebes, where it was hastily mummified. If Prince Camoser saw his father's body in this state as it was carried back into the city, we can only imagine the kind of hatred that must have burned in his heart towards the Hyksos invaders in the north. But many in Camosa's court were clearly afraid of what a war with the Hyksos would do to the fragile state of the country. One text known as the Carnarvon Tablet, describes how they appealed to their king to maintain the peace.
- [132:09]
Herodotus
We are tranquil in our part of Egypt. Our swan at the first cataract is strong, and the middle part of the land is with us. Men till for us the finest of their lands. They allow our cattle to pasture in the papyrus marshes. Corn is sent for our swine. Our cattle are not taken away. He holds the land of the Asiatics. We hold Egypt. Only when one comes against us should we act against him.
- [132:39]
Paul Cooper
But Camosa refused. He wanted to strike a blow at the Hyksos, but he knew that he would have to secure the southern border first and Recapture the old fortress of Buhen, just before the second cataract of the Nile. Buhen was one of the strong walled bastions built by Senusret iii, and it was one of the only forts the Egyptians built from stone rather than brick. But since the collapse of the Middle Kingdom, its garrison had served a Nubian lord from the kingdom of Kush. If the southern border was to hold while Khamosa expelled the Hyksos in the north, he would need to recapture the fort of Buhen. Camosa marched south, preparing to assault the fort, but it seems that upon sighting the enormous Egyptian army on the horizon, the citizens of the fortress got the message and decided to swear allegiance to the pharaoh without a fight. With this powerful fort now holding the south, Camosa marched back to Thebes and prepared for the next campaign season, when he would seek to bring war to the Hyksos and unite Egypt once more. In the third year of his reign, Camosa struck.
- [134:06]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
I sailed north in my might to repel the Asiatics through the command of Amun. With my brave army before me like a flame of fire and the archers.
- [134:16]
Paul Cooper
Atop our fighting decks, Camozo's fleet descended swiftly on the Hyksos in what appears to have been something of a surprise attack. Caught off guard, the foreigners were defeated, and the vengeance of Camozo was terrible.
- [134:36]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
When day dawned, I was upon him as if it were a hawk. When breakfast time came, I overthrew him, Having destroyed his wall walls and slaughtered his people and made his wife descend to the river bank. My army acted like lions with their spoil chattels, cattle, fat honey dividing their things, their hearts joyful. As for avaris on the two rivers, I laid it waste without inhabitants. I destroyed their towns and burned their homes to reddened ruin heaps forever because of the destruction they had wrought in the midst of Egypt. They who had allowed themselves to hearken to the call of the Asiatics had forsaken Egypt.
- [135:24]
Paul Cooper
Their mistress, the king of the Hyksos, immediately appealed to his Nubian ally, the king of Kush, for help. At one point, the Egyptians intercepted a secret message traveling south along the desert roads, the contents of which they recorded.
- [135:44]
Unknown Speaker
Have you noticed what Egypt has done against me? The ruler who is there, Camose, penetrates my territory, even though I have not attacked him as he has you. He chooses these two lands in order to afflict them, my land and yours. And he has ravaged them. Come northward. Do not flinch. Then we shall divide up the towns of Egypt.
- [136:14]
Paul Cooper
When this messenger returned to the embattled Hyksos, King Shame faced and with the letter undelivered, he must have known that all was lost. The war came to a swift end and Kamoso recounts with perhaps some exaggeration, his heroic return to Thebes.
- [136:36]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
What a happy home trip for the ruler. Life, prosperity, happiness. With his army ahead of him, they had no casualties, nor did anyone blame his fellow, nor did their hearts weep. I moored on home soil during the season of inundation. The riverbank was receiving, Thebes was festive. Women and men had come to see me. Every woman hugged her neighbor. No one was tearful.
- [137:09]
Paul Cooper
His son Ahmoser would press this advantage and in an even more devastating campaign seized the ancient capital of Memphis. Ahmoser would be the first pharaoh in least a hundred years to recapture the great pyramids of Giza. And we can imagine his feelings as he gazed up at the monuments of his ancestors Khufu and Khafre, by now already more than a thousand years old. It's clear that the site inspired him. And he would even build a pyramid of his own in Upper Egypt at the site of Abydos. This was one of the first pyramids pyramids built for an Egyptian pharaoh since the fall of the Middle Kingdom. And it was clearly designed as a symbol of renewal of the empire's great legacy. But it would also be the last ever pyramid built by an Egyptian ruler. After securing the Nile delta, Ahmoza marched north and even crossed the Sinai, smashing through the traditional heartland of the Hyks people and seizing territory in Palestine in the region of modern Gaza. After that, he returned to the southern people of Kush and pushed the empire's borders farther south than they had ever been, beyond the second cataract to the river island of Sae, now in northern Sudan. From its lowest ebb, Egypt had suddenly reemerged as a major region power. This was the age of the New Kingdom. During the five centuries of the New Kingdom, Egypt would reach its greatest territorial extent and construct some of its most impressive monuments and artifacts. Despite recapturing Memphis, its kings saw no reason to move the capital again. And so they now once again ruled from the city of Thebes, far up the river in Upper Egypt. By now, Egypt had also adopted the technology of the horse drawn chariot from their Hyksos foes. And its armies were now made up of powerful contingents of these vehicles. During these centuries, Egypt saw the rule of its first great woman pharaoh Hatshepsut, who was one of its most prolific builders. She constructed the towering temple complex at Karnak and the stately mortuary temple known as the Holy of Holies. She also undertook a voyage in five ships to the land of Punt, somewhere in Africa, and brought back incense, trees and other goods to Egypt, which she celebrated in one inscription.
- [140:07]
Unknown Speaker
The ships returned with the marvels of the land of Punt and with all the good woods of Tanuta, with heaps of incense, with trees producing green fragrance, with ebony and pure ivory, with gold and green agates found in the land of the amu, with hides of the panthers of the south. Never since the beginning of the world have the like of these wonders been brought by any king.
- [140:38]
Paul Cooper
The new kingdom would also see some of the most striking dramas emerge in the royal courts of Egypt. Of these, none have drawn so much attention as the story of one pharaoh. He has been described by some as a revolutionary, by others as a visionary, and by others still as simply insane. He was a ruler named Amenhotep IV. Amenhotep came to the throne around 1350 BC. He had inherited his name from his father, who had ruled as Am Amenhotep iii. Like most Egyptian names, it included the name of a God, Amun. And it meant Amun is satisfied. Amun had long been the God of the city of Thebes and was considered the God of fertility and of the wind. But when the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt and Thebes became the capital once more, this God, Amun, was given something of a promotion. He was unified with the sun God, Ra to create a compound deity, now known as Amun Ra, the perfect symbol of the power of a new, united Egypt. Amun Ra was depicted as a man bearing a golden staff and wearing a high crown, and later would be shown with blue skin. This new deity was placed at the head of all the various gods that the Egyptians worshipped, the king of the gods and creator of the universe. One hymn to Amun Ra describes the primacy of his position.
- [142:34]
I
Lord of truth, father of the gods, maker of men, creator of all animals, Lord of things that are creator of the staff of life.
- [142:46]
Paul Cooper
The pharaoh Amunhotep IV would keep his name for the first four years of his rule. But around his fifth year on the throne, he made the unprecedented decision to change his royal name. That's because he had a vision of a new system of belief, belief that he wanted to spread over all of Egypt. He wanted to do away with the messiness of Egyptian religion and the system of different gods in different cities, different temples and cults and priests. He devised a new system of worship that focused not on any God, but on the sun itself. Which he seems to have believed was his true father. This new God would be depicted as a bare, impersonal disk, showering the earth with beams of light. It would be called simply the orb, or in Egyptian, the Aten. One surviving hymn to the Aten, perhaps even written by the pharaoh himself, shows the enormous power this new God was supposed to have.
- [144:03]
Unknown Speaker
O soul God, like whom there is no other. Thou didst create the world according to thy desire. You are in my heart. There is no other who knows you. Every land chatters that is rising every day.
- [144:26]
Paul Cooper
Around year five of his reign, the Pharaoh Amunhotep abandoned his old name that paid respect to the God Amun and changed it to a new name for his new God. This new name meant effective spirit for the Aten. He was now the Pharaoh Akhenaten. Akhenaten is the first recorded person in history to have started a new religion by himself. He was also the first monotheist in Akhenaten's kingdom. Only the Aten could be worshipped. Temples to Amun were eventually shut down, and all worship of the former God was banned. The king even sent out workmen and soldiers to all corners of Egypt, where they burst into temples with hammers and chisels and chipped the name of Amun off the walls. His determination to rid his kingdom of Amun was so great that he even sent workmen climbing to the top of the red pyramid of Sneferu to chip the name of Amun from the pyramid's topmost capstone. To the Egyptians, used as they were to placating whole host of deities with prayers and offerings, this radical shift must have seemed like a frightening and risky gamble. Many must have feared to turn their backs on their old trusted gods and consort with this new and untested ideology. But the king's word was the king's word, and for the most part, they seem to have fallen into line. At first, Akhenaten converted old temples in Thebes to the Aten and even began constructing some new ones. But he soon went off the idea. Thebes old temples were covered with carvings and hieroglyphs praising the other gods. And the depth of their history couldn't be erased overnight. Thebes was also home to a powerful priestly cloth class that resisted his reforms. In answer to this problem, Akhenaten took the remarkable decision to build an entirely new capital. He would build it out in the middle of the desert at a completely uninhabited location halfway between Memphis and Thebes. He would call this city the horizon of the Aten. Or in Egyptian, Aketaten. Standing out on the bare and level plain where he hoped to build his new city. The Pharaoh Akhenaten gave the following proclamation to his courtiers.
- [147:15]
Unknown Speaker
The Aten desires that there be made for him a monument with an eternal and everlasting name. It is Atun, my father, who gave me counsel concerning it. No official has ever given me counsel. Not any of the people who are in the entire land. At Achet Aten I shall make the house of Aten.
- [147:45]
Paul Cooper
This new city would be furnished with everything a royal capital needed. Palaces for Akhenaten and his chief wife, Nefertiti, along with his four other wives. Gardens, tombs, administrative buildings and workshops. And, of course, a vast temple complex to the new God Aten. Construction of this city would take at least eight years. And when it was finished in the 12th year of his reign, Akhenaten held a magnificent ceremony. The year was 1342 B.C. at his new capital, Akhenaten received delegations from all over the region. From the Hittites, from Syria and islands in the Mediterranean like Cyprus and Crete, as well as from the Nubian lands of Punt and Kush in the south. All here to bear witness to the glory of his Nubian city and his successful conversion of his empire. The priests may have grumbled, the common people may have fretted, but he had finally done it. The ceremony must have been grand. Full of celebration and pomp, musicians and dancers, the burning of incense and feasts of fine foods. We can imagine the foreign guest listening to the singing of hymns like the following. To the new God Aten.
- [149:19]
Unknown Speaker
Thou didst create the world according to thy desire. All men, cattle and wild beasts. Whatever is on earth going upon its feet and what is on high flying with its wings. The countries of Syria. Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt. Thou settest every man in his place. Thou suppliest their necessities. Their tongues are separate in speech and their natures as well. Everyone has his food and his time of life is reckoned.
- [150:00]
Paul Cooper
But the consequences of this piece of royal pageantry were dire. A plague had been spreading around the Middle east for some time now, affecting lands in Syria and the Hittite Empire in what is now Turkey. One group of texts written around this time, known as the Hittite Plague. Prayers invoke the gods to deliver them from this disaster.
- [150:27]
Unknown Speaker
For 20 years now, people have been dying in Hati. Will the plague never be removed from Hati? I cannot control the worry in my heart. I can no longer control the anguish of my soul.
- [150:43]
Paul Cooper
With foreign Dignitaries coming from all over the region with large entourages and doubtless groups of slaves in tow. A deadly dose of this disease arrived that year in the heart of Egypt, and from there would have spread all up and down the Nile. If Akhenaten had hoped that this ceremony would secure his people's confidence in his new God, then it couldn't have backfired more dramatically. In the pandemic that followed, no one was safe. Numerous deaths may even have occurred within Akhenaten's family, perhaps including his mother, his wife, and three of his daughters. And if the situation was so severe, even in the relatively protected royal court, we can assume that in the population at large, the effects were even more devastating. For the people of Egypt, this incomprehensible disaster must have seemed like the judgment of the old gods on the man who had so arrogantly turned his back on them. Akhenaten died only a few years later, around 1335 BC after 17 years of rule. After his death, some members of his family attempted to maintain the cult of the Aten in the now plague ravaged new capital of Akhetaten. They would take turns to rule for the next four years, but seemingly without much success. Now the whole empire seemed like it was teetering on the brink of collapse. But eventually, one of Akhenaten's sons, a boy of only eight years old, came to the throne. His father had given him the hopeful name Tutank Aten, or living image of the Aten. But he would not rule under it for long, turning his back on his father's new faith and to enormous celebration around the empire. In the third year of his rule, he changed his name to the one we now remember him by. The living image not of Aten, but of the old God Amun, now triumphantly welcomed back by the people of Egypt. His name was Tutank Amun. As symbolized by his change of name, the boy king Tutankhamun rode back a great number of his father's attempted reforms. He ended all worship of the God Aten and re reinstated Amun to supremacy in Thebes. Tutankhamun lifted the ban on the cults of other gods and restored the traditional privileges of the priesthood. Many temples to the Aten in Thebes and elsewhere were torn down, and their painted bricks were used as filler in the walls of other temples. Everyone seemed to be in agreement. The whole sorry business of Akhenaten was better off forgotten. Today, the boy king Tutankhamun is perhaps the most famous of all the Egyptian pharaohs more famous than the great Khufu and Khafre of Giza, or the pharaohs Djoser and Sneferu, who perfected the pyramid form. He's more famous than Kamoz or Ahmoser, who reunited the kingdom and expelled the Hyksos. More famous than his colourful father Akhenaten, or the great Queen Hatshepsut. But there's nothing in his reign that really warrants that level of recognition. In fact, this boy king died while still a teenager, after only nine years of rule. He does seem to have been a good king, popular and set Egypt back on course after his father's erratic reign. But the source of his fame was really one of absolute historical accident. When he died in 1323 BC, the boy king, Tutankhamun, was buried in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings. It was not a particularly resplendent royal tomb and a far cry from the glorious pyramids of the Old Kingdom. But shortly after it was sealed, there was a chance flash flood in this portion of the necropolis, and the doorway to the tomb was buried in sand and rock. This left it completely concealed. For the next 3,300 years, tomb robbers would scour the Valley of the King, kings stealing from nearly every one of the great pharaoh's tombs, making away with their treasures, removing their mummies and despoiling their decorations. But buried in the sand, Tutankhamun's tomb remained sealed. For this reason, it was completely untouched until the year 1922, when it was uncovered by the Egyptologist Howard Carter, and all its artifacts were recovered to international astonishment. Today, the most glorious of these, the golden burial mask of Tutankhamun, is one of the most famous objects from the ancient world, a resplendent image of royal wealth and power. At times, it can be hard to remember that this golden image is also a portrait of a boy who had power thrust upon him in a time of upheaval and strife. Looking up at us from the dark depths of the ages, the new kingdom of Egypt would reach its highest point around 50 years after the reign of Tutankhamun. It would come during the rule of perhaps the greatest Egyptian pharaoh. He came to the throne under the name Ramesses ii, but he would go down in history as Ramesses the Great. Ramesses came to the throne at the age of 14, in 1279 BC. At the time, Egypt's Mediterranean coast was being ravaged by groups of pirates, and he spent much of his early rule dealing with this nuisance. But he is most famous for pushing the boundaries of Egypt, far to the north into the region of Syria. Over the preceding centuries, a powerful rival had grown up in the mountains of what is today Turkish Turkey and was steadily spreading its influence in all directions. This was the powerful Hittite empire, centered on their hill fortress capital of Hattusha. The Hittites were a relatively new power in the region, but their territory was wealthy and extensive. They had mastered the use of chariots in warfare, turning them from light hit and run vehicles into heavy armoured shock troops. And for the last two centuries, Egypt had been fighting increasingly bitter wars with them over who would control the region of Palestine. In the fourth year of his reign, Ramesses II gathered an expeditionary force and marched across the Sinai Desert to Gaza. And from from there marched north. One epic poem written about this expedition exults in the enormous force that Ramses brought.
- [158:50]
I
His Majesty journeyed northward, his infantry and chariotry with him. He began to march on the good way. Every foreign country was trembling before him. Their chiefs were bringing their tribute and all the rebels were coming. Bowing down to a dread of the personality of His Majesty.
- [159:12]
Paul Cooper
Ramesses aim was to capture the strong fortress city of Kadesh, situated along the sandy banks on a fork of the Orontes River. For years now, Kadesh had been playing the Hittites and Egypt off against one another, allying first with one, then the other. Now Ramesses was determined to finally seize Kadesh for Egypt. He marched north with four of his divisions, named after the gods Amun, Ra, Seth and Ptah. With him he brought thousands of chariots and one unit of elite chariot riders he sent by sea, telling them to land on the coast and ride inland to meet him on the day that he arrived at Kadesh. At first, everything seemed to be going well. On his way, the pharaoh's scouts captured a pair of tribesmen from the Shasu people, who told him that the Hittite king was cowering further to the north. He was afraid of the might of Egypt. They said he had left Kadesh defenceless. Excited by this news, Ramesses threw all caution to the wind and hastened northward to seize the city with only one of his four divisions, his prided Amun troops. But this would prove to be a fatal mistake. Ramesses didn't know it yet, but these Shasu tribesmen were actually agents of the Hittite king, sent to lure him into a trap. When he arrived at Kadesh, Ramesses set up his camp beside a stony brook and his scouts set out into the surrounding landscape to detect any threats. Some of these scouts ran into a pair of Hittite soldiers who had been lying low in the undergrowth watching them. They skirmished and the Egyptians managed to capture the Hittites. After perhaps a stern beating, these men revealed what lay waiting for the Egyptians nearby. The full might of the Hittite armies amassed in an ambush hidden behind the looming fortress of Kadesh. The Kadesh poem records this imposing force.
- [161:44]
I
Now the wretched foe of Hati had come, having gathered all foreign countries to the very ends of the sea, the land of Hati in its entirety. They covered the mountains and the valleys like the grasshoppers with their multitudes. He left neither silver nor gold in his land, but despoiled it of all its possessions, possessions and gave them to all foreign countries to bring them with him to combat.
- [162:10]
Paul Cooper
Ramesses flew into a rage with his generals for allowing this to happen. He had hurried ahead with his Amun division and now he was critically overstretched. With his reinforcements in the Ra division still on the road, the Hittites would not allow the Egyptians to regroup. Before the Ra division could arrive, a terrifying force of 2,500 Hittite chariots burst out of hiding and swept across the river plain. Hittite chariots were the tanks of their day. Heavy and armoured, their riders covered in chainmail down to their toes, these chariots rolled in and smashed into the Rah Rah regiment who frantically tried to form a shield wall. The Hittites scattered this division completely and then rounded on the Egyptians camp. Ramesses was surrounded, cut off from his reinforcements and now outnumbered. But in this dire situation, he recounts how he rallied his men and led them in a desperate charge against the enemy.
- [163:24]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
I found the 2,500 spans of chariotry in whose midst I was becoming heaps of corpses before my horses. Not one of them found his hand to fight for. Their hearts quailed in their bodies from terror of me and all their arms were powerless, so they could not shoot nor find their courage to seize their javelins.
- [163:54]
Paul Cooper
Whether or not this self aggrandizing account is an accurate depiction of that day, it's clear that the tide did begin to turn. The Egyptian soldiers were elite fighters and many of the Hittite forces may have been mercenaries or conscripts. After destroying the Ra division and sweeping into the Egyptians camp, the chariots became bogged down and many of the Hittite soldiers, believing the battle to be already over, began looting rather than press their advantage. More Egyptian reinforcements were soon arriving from the south. And as the bloody afternoon wore on, that contingent of elite charioteers that had been sailing up the coast also arrived. On the scene. The arrival of this cavalry on the horizon was enough to steal the resolve of the Egyptian troops and break the will of the Hittites. Ramesses gives a florid rendition of what happened next.
- [165:02]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
I made them plunge into the water as crocodiles plunge, for they were falling upon their faces, one on another, as I slew among them whom I desired. Neither could one look behind him, nor could another turn about, and whoever of them fell, he could not raise himself.
- [165:27]
Paul Cooper
The Hittite army withdrew with many of their soldiers pushed into the Orontes River. When the next day dawned, the two sides clashed again. But both had been fatally weakened by the previous day's fighting. After a few hours of bloody slaughter, Rameses withdrew and the Hittite king sent him a peace offer. The pharaoh's hands were tied. The Egyptians lacked any siege equipment to breach the strong walls of Kadesh, and the only option to take the city would have been a lengthy siege, during which Ramses would have found his forces exposed to attack, poorly supplied and prone to encirclement. Instead, he decided to declare victory and march back to Egypt. The Hittites in turn also declared victory, and the city of Kadesh would slip out of Ramesses grasp. Despite the overflowing praise of Ramesses and his glorious victory in the Kadesh poem, the war actually ended with a stalemate and the question of the city remained unresolved. But it's clear that Ramesses thought back to his role during the battle with no small amount of pride, and he would decorate the walls of his temple at Abu Simbel with a vast, low relief carving of every one of the battle's twists and turns. The war with the Hittites would drag on for a further 15 years, and during this time Egypt would often capture territory along the Mediterranean coast, only to lose it again the very next year. Before long, both sides grew weary of this grinding conflict. The war was finally brought to an end with what has gone down in history as the first written peace treaty, the text of which has survived.
- [167:33]
Herodotus
Behold Hattusali, the ruler of the Hittites, binds himself by treaty to Ramesses, chosen one of Ra, the great ruler of Egypt, beginning today, so that perfect peace and brotherhood may be created between us forever. He being in brotherhood and peace with me, and I being in brotherhood and peace with him forever.
- [168:01]
Paul Cooper
The treaty was written on silver tablets, with both the Hittites and the Egyptians being given a copy. Its text was written in both hieroglyphics and Hittite cuneiform, but the two translations do have slightly different wordings. In A diplomatic stroke of genius. The Egyptian version claims that the Hittites had come begging Egypt for peace, which the Egyptians graciously accepted, while in the Hittite version, it is the Egyptians who asked to end the war. With both sides. Thus able to save face, the destructive conflict was allowed to come to an end, and nearly a century of relative peace ensued. Despite the pride Ramses took in his battles, today it is this peace treaty that we most remember, and a replica of it hangs on the walls of the United nations headquarters in New York. After what seemed like a lucky escape at Kadesh, Ramses would turn his attention away from war and towards construction. He spent the next decades of his rule building temples and monuments up and down Egypt, and today his name is the one that appears on the most surviving monuments of any pharaoh. This is partly due to his prolific building campaign, but also due to the fact that he ensured his name was inscribed more deeply in the stone than any other pharaoh, so deep that it could never be erased. Ramesses II would rule for a total of 66 years and would be remembered as perhaps Egypt's greatest pharaoh. His full Egyptian name was Uzamatre Setapenre Ramses, which the Greeks would later render into a name they found easier to pronounce. They would call him Ozymandias. More than a thousand years later, the Greek writer Diodorus of Sicily would visit Egypt and write an account of visiting one monument to Ramesses ii.
- [170:23]
I
At its entrance there is a pylon constructed of variegated stone, two plethora in breadth and 45 cubits high. The inscription upon it runs, King of Kings am I Ozymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.
- [170:48]
Paul Cooper
Ramesses would also build a new capital for his empire, and with his military ambitions lying in the north, he decided to place it in the northeast of the Nile delta. And in characteristic fashion, he named it after himself, calling it Per Ramesses, or the House of Ramesses. One Egyptian poem would celebrate the beauty of this new city.
- [171:20]
H
The residence is pleasant in life. Its field is full of everything good. It is full of supplies and food every day. Its ponds with fish and its lakes with birds. Its meadows are verdant with grass, Its banks bear dates. Its melons are abundant on the sands. Its granaries are so full of barley and Emma wheat that they come near to the sky. Red wedge fish swim in the canal of the resident city, which live on lotus flowers, flowers.
- [171:50]
Paul Cooper
This city of Per Ramses has long been associated with the city of Ramses referred to in the Hebrew book of Exodus. The second book of the Hebrew Bible, Exodus describes a population of enslaved Hebrews forced to work on the construction of the city. The reality of the Exodus story has long been told abated and most historians now consider it to be a piece of ancient literature. There is no evidence for a large population of Hebrew slaves ever living in Egypt, or that the city of Per Ramesses was built by slaves at all. More likely it was built using the Egyptians usual combination of skilled artisans and seasonal peasant laborers. But with the proximity of the Nile delta to the Levantine coast, it's certainly not impossible that some of these laborers were Hebrew people who had travelled across the Sinai to sell their labour in Egypt. If that were the case, then for one reason or another, they left no impression in the archaeological record, but perhaps printed an indelible mark on our collective imaginations. When Ramses finally died in 1213 BC, he was probably nearly 90 years old. His reign had been one of Egypt's golden ages. But his long rule had once again created that old king problem. All of his heirs were now also old men. By the time of his death, 12 of his oldest sons had already died. And now his 13th son took the throne. At the age of about 70, he was the pharaoh Merneptah. But only a few years into this man's reign, Egypt was attacked by a devastating new enemy. These were the Libyan people to the west of the Nile delta. The king of Libya, a man named Meri, had seemingly planned his attack for some time. All of a sudden, a large Libyan army suddenly flooded through Egypt's northwestern border. And they were reinforced with groups of people from all over the Mediterranean, perhaps from Greece, Sardinia, Sicily and elsewhere across the sea. These were a diverse group of peoples that had suddenly begun to appear in increasing numbers across the eastern Mediterranean. They would later become known as the Sea Peoples. The pharaoh Merneptah remembers this event. On one carved stelae.
- [174:50]
Unknown Speaker
The wretched fallen chief of Libya, Maria, son of dead, has fallen upon the country of Tehunu with his bowmen Sherden, Shekalesh, Ekwesh, Looka Teresh. Taking the best of every warrior and every man of war of his country, he has brought his wife and his children, leaders of the camp, and he has reached the western boundary in the fields of Perir.
- [175:20]
Paul Cooper
The Pharaoh Merneptah defeated this invasion. And as a warning to any others who would try such a surprise attack, he had many of the invading soldiers impaled along the road into Memphis.
- [175:36]
Unknown Speaker
The princes Are prostrate, saying mercy. Not one raises his head among the nine bows. Desolation is for Tehennu Hattie is pacified, plundered as the Canaan. With every evil Hrai is become a widow. All lands together they are pacified.
- [176:00]
Paul Cooper
But these lands would not stay pacified, for after the death of the Pharaoh Merneptah Around 1204 BC, Egypt entered a period of civil strife, with the descendants of Ramesses fighting over who would take the crown. Against this backdrop, the entire region also once again began to experience a series of record droughts. What caused this climate shift is uncertain. As we saw in our second episode on the Bronze Age Collapse, the cause may have been volcanic, with a large eruption taking place in the Icelandic volcano of Hekla around this time. Others have proposed that an eruption in Sicily around 1300 BC may have been to blame, or that the supervolcano Thera in Santorini may have resumed some activity some 500 years after its last enormous eruption. The cause may not have been volcanic at all, and could have been due to variations in the sun's activity or weather systems in the Atlantic, depriving the Mediterranean of moisture. The reality was, much as it is today, the planet's climate system is fragile, interconnected and chaotic, and even relatively small changes in its equilibrium can have devastating effects. During this time, formerly green lands became dry and arid, and more plants suited to desert landscapes flourished. Analysis of sediment cores and oxygen isotopes in cave mineral deposits have all shown that the 13th and 12th centuries BC saw much less rain than the preceding centuries. Alongside this scientific evidence, we can see marks of severe drought in the region's written records, too. Egypt's great rivals, the Hittites, in their stony mountains were hit particularly hard by the drought. One Hittite text has come down to us that seems to capture the spirit of this age, and it is known as the Myth of Telepinu. It comes from a poetic convention known as the Vanishing God myth, which describes how a certain deity is so offended by the misdeeds of humanity that he flies into a fit of sorrow and abandons his duties. Telepinu was a God of farming, fertility and the weather. The beginning of the text has been lost, so we don't know what it was humanity did to provoke his rage. But the poem describes its deadly consequences.
- [179:08]
Unknown Speaker
Thereupon soot beset the windows, Smoke beset the house the ashes lay crammed on the hearth. Off stalked Telepinu grain and abundance he took away from field and meadow off to the copses Stalked Telepinu and in a copse he buried himself forthwith. The seed ceased to yield, produce oxen, sheep and men ceased to breed, while even those that that had conceived did not bear. Hillsides were bare, trees were bare and put forth no new branches. Pastures were bare, springs ran dry. A famine arose in the land. Men and gods alike were about to perish of hunger.
- [180:02]
Paul Cooper
While the Egyptians may have celebrated this weakening of their great rival in Egypt, the situation was hardly any better. One text, dated to around the year 1200 BC is called the Lament to Amun, and it stands as a wail of sorrow in a darkening age.
- [180:24]
H
Come to me, Father Amun, protect me in this bitter year of confrontation. God shines in the sun, sun, yet he will not shine. Winter crowds hard upon summer months happen backwards Dishevelled hours lurch drunken by those cut down in high places cry out to you, Amun. These words came on the poisoned air, spoken by herdsmen in fields and marshes, by those who beat clothes on the banks of the river, by district police deserting their precincts, by horned beasts on our burning deserts.
- [181:04]
Paul Cooper
From this period of unrest and the chaos in Egypt's royal court, which lasted for about a century, a military strongman named Setnachte would eventually rise to power. He would rule for only three years before dying and passing the throne on to his young son. This boy was the empire's last hope to turn around its floundering fortunes. And if such a hope was to be sustained, there was only one name he could possibly rule under. His parents would name him after his great predecessor, who had ruled nearly a century before and fought at the Battle of Kadesh. And so this boy would rule as Ramesses iii. This new boy, king, Rameses, was a determined and tenacious ruler, and it's clear that he openly admired and sought to emulate the legendary pharaoh of old. He even went so far as to name all his own sons after the sons of Ramesses ii, and also gave them all the same positions in his court. It was clear he wanted to do everything he could to recreate the glory days that had slipped out of Egypt's grasp. As he writes in one of his.
- [182:38]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
Rejoice ye, O Egypt to the height of heaven, for I am ruler of the south and north upon the throne of Atum. The gods have appointed me to be king over Egypt, to be victor, to expel them for her from the countries. They decree to me the kingdom while I was a child and my reign is full of plenty.
- [183:06]
Paul Cooper
Under other circumstances, Ramesses might have been one of Egypt's great rulers. But the entire region was soon to be convulsed in a series of bitter wars. One of the great drivers of these conflicts was the loose collection of peoples that had first appeared in the reign of the pharaoh Merneptah, and who are known as the Sea Peoples. These invaders were now descending on the entire region in ever greater numbers, apparently spurred by widespread crop failures in northern and Western Europe. Already powerful trading cities, like the port town of Ugarit, had been attacked by sea, seemingly by complete surprise, and they were destroyed so thus thoroughly that they were never reoccupied. The Egyptians great rivals, the Hittites, were now on the brink of collapse, as trade networks around the region went into freefall. Ramesses remembers this time of strife as these northern invaders descended on the coast.
- [184:21]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
The countries the northerners in their isles were disturbed, swept away in battle. Not one stood before their lands. From Keta, Karchemish, Arvad, Alasa, they were wasted. They set up a camp in one place, in Amur. They desolated his people and his land like that which is not.
- [184:46]
Paul Cooper
When news of the Sea People attacks came to Rameses, he would have been pharaoh for about eight years. He had already repelled two further invasions from Libya and must have been rising in confidence. But the news troubled him, and soon he got word that the fleet of the Sea Peoples was on the move and were heading to Egypt. As he recounts in the inscription on his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu.
- [185:21]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
They came with fire, prepared before them, forward to Egypt. Their main support was Peleset, Theket, Shekelish, Denyin and Weshish. Their lands were united and they laid their hands upon the land as far as the circle of the earth. Their hearts were confident, full of their plans.
- [185:46]
Paul Cooper
Ramesses knew that these attackers would have to be stopped, and he decided that he would make his stand at the mouth of the Nile, the lush, fertile delta. He would have to play to what strengths the Egyptian army still had in this challenging terrain. He decided to lay an ambush and give the Sea Peoples a surprise attack of their own.
- [186:14]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
Now, it happened through this God, the lord of gods, that I was prepared and armed to trap them like wild fowl. I equipped my frontier at Zai, prepared before them the chiefs, the captains of infantry, the nobles I caused to equip the harbour mouths like a strong wall, with warships, galleys and barges. They were manned completely from bow to stern, with valiant warriors bearing their arms, Soldiers of all the choicest of Egypt, being like lines, roaring upon the Mountain tops. Their horses were quivering in their every limb, ready to crush the countries under their feet.
- [187:03]
Paul Cooper
As the enemy's ships amassed, Rameses gathered archers on the banks, supported by spearmen and cavalry in their thousands, all concealed in the reeds. The tension must have been tremendous, all the soldiers of the Egyptian army holding their breath and waiting for that first sign of an enemy ship. Then at last, a sail was sighted. After that came another and another, until the whole fleet of the Sea peoples was in sight. The Egyptians must have been able to hear the creak of 10,000 oars, the beating of the drums, the shouts of the helmsmen and soldiers. Then, once the Sea people's ships were within range, Ramesses struck. Arrows flew out of the reeds and rained down on the ships. Panicked, the invaders attempted to land on the banks. But as they did, the Egyptian spearmen appeared out of the treeline and met them with a shield wall. While the enemy was held at bay, the Egyptians navy sailed in down the river.
- [188:18]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
Those who reached my boundary, their heart and their soul, are finished forever and ever. As for those who had assembled before them on the sea, the full flame was in their front before the harbour mouth and a wall of metal upon the shore surrounded them. They were dragged, overturned and laid low upon the beach, slain, and made heaps from stern to bow of their galleys, while all their things were cast upon the water. Thus I turned back the waters to remember Egypt, and when they even mention my name in their land, may it consume them with fear.
- [189:04]
Paul Cooper
The Pharaoh's plan had worked. The Egyptians were the first people to turn back these sea going invaders and stop their campaign of destruction. Ramesses inscription at Medinet Hab ends on the following triumphant note.
- [189:25]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
Rejoice ye O Egypt of the height of heaven, for I am ruler of the south and north upon the throne of Atum. I have expelled your mourning, which was in your heart, and I have made you dwell in peace. Those whom I have overthrown shall not return.
- [189:50]
Paul Cooper
But despite their victory, the land of the pharaohs now stood alone in a devastated region. Region. Virtually every other society around them had been gutted and reduced to ash. Numerous long established civilizations, the Mycenaean Greeks, the Hittites, Ugarit and Babylon had collapsed and civil order had given way to chaos. The precarious trade routes on which they had all relied to supply them with bronze and other commodities, were now broken and Egypt's economy went into a steep and unstoppable decline. By the end of this period, which has become known as the late bronze Age collapse. Egypt was a shadow of its former self. As other enemies encroached on its borders, Egypt was able to fight them off. But its treasury became so depleted that it never fully recovered its imperial power. The first workers strike in recorded history happened during the 29th year of Ramses III's reign, when Egypt could no longer provide food rations for its elite artisans who were constructing the king's tomb in the village of Deir el Medina. The lack of rations went on so long that the workers eventually marched through the town shouting the following chant.
- [191:19]
Unknown Speaker
We're hungry. There's no more clothing, no more oil, no more fish, no more vegetables. Send word to the pharaoh.
- [191:28]
Paul Cooper
If food was not reaching these crucial workers, we can only imagine the dire situation in the wider kingdom. The dispute dragged on for weeks, with one leader of the protest even threatening to damage a royal monument if they were not paid. It was a threat that they would never have dared to make unless the authority of the pharaoh was beginning to be seriously undermined. Ramses III ruled for another two decades after his battle with the Sea Peoples for a total reign of 31 years. But by the year 1156 BC, some members of his family were beginning to get impatient in the Egyptian court. All of the women, the king's wives and mother and other consorts all lived together in a large palace complex with its own land. This was convenient for the king, but it could also encourage courtly intrigue. There was a strict hierarchy to the pharaoh's queens, and everyone knew that the children of his main wife were to be his heirs before any others. Some of the women who were lower down on this ladder could at times resort to plotting to improve their stations and perhaps get their own sons on the throne instead. One of these women was a queen named Tiye. Tiye was a secondary wife of Ramesses, and her son Pentawer was not in line for the throne. In order to remedy this situation, she began a plot that would go down in history as the Harem Conspiracy. Soon she brought in other members of the king's household and even high ranking members of the government. As one later papyrus records, they are.
- [193:38]
Unknown Speaker
The abomination of the land. The great criminal who was then chief of the chamber was in collusion with Taehy and the women of the harem. He had made common cause with them. He had begun to bring out their words to their mothers and their brothers, who were there saying, stir up the people, incite rebellion against their lord.
- [194:07]
Paul Cooper
Alarmingly, one of the palace women had written to her brother, named Khayyam Waset, a commander of Nubian troops in the south, and gained his support for their plot. Others had even turned to supernatural methods, making wax effigies of the king's bodyguards and laying curses on them. To help their scheme, their plan was clear, to kill Rameses and install Queen Tiye's son Pentawer as Pharaoh. The date they chose to strike was during the annual ceremony known as the beautiful Festival of the Valley, which was held in Thebes every year at the new moon of the second month of the harvesting season of Shemu. During this festival, which was one of the biggest of the year, the pharaoh would go down to the river in a grand and colourful procession, carrying the statues of the three gods of Thebes, Amun, Mut and Khonsu. He would then board his royal barge and sail with the statues down to the thief Theban necropolis to visit his grand temple. As one inscription by a Theban priest describes.
- [195:25]
H
We go giving praise to Amun, kissing the ground before the lords of the gods on his festivals. The first day of Shemu, shining on the day of voyaging to the valley.
- [195:37]
Paul Cooper
Here the citizens would give offerings of food and drink and flowers as the boats sailed on the river with the three statues. As the riotous days long festival progressed, the plotters took advantage of the disruption to make a strike at the king. It was day 15 of Shemu, when the pharaoh was relaxing in the royal harem in the western tower of Medinet Habu, perhaps thinking ahead to his role in the coming festivities, when a group of assassins crept up on him with knives. Their attack was swift and brutal. Modern scanning of Ramesses III's mummy reveals that his throat was cut right to the bone with a sharp weapon, severing the trachea, oesophagus and major blood vessels. Death would have followed within seconds. Ramesses has no defensive wounds, suggesting that he was caught completely unawares. But curiously, his big toe was severed at the time of the attack. This seems like an unlikely injury to sustain during a struggle, and studies of his mummy have shown that the embalmers fashioned him a prosthetic toe to take with him into the afterlife. This suggests that the original toe was never recovered, perhaps indicating that someone took it as proof that he was dead, or as a grisly trophy. Ramesses III had saved Egypt from the sea peoples, but now he lay dying in a pool of his own blood, betrayed by his own family. But the conspirators plot would not go as planned. In the aftermath of the bloody assassination, the son of Ramses III was able to crush the coup and seize the throne. The plotters were all put on trial, as well as any who had heard about the conspiracy but failed to report it. In all, 28 people were executed, and as a final punishment, they were even cruelly renamed after their deaths. The brother of one of the plotters who had commanded his Nubian troops in the south was originally named Khayyem Waset, a name which meant came from Thebes. But after his execution he was renamed Binemwasset, or Evil. In Thebes, another's name, Meri Ra, meant beloved of Ra, but he was given the somewhat spiteful new name Masetsu. Ra, or Ra, hates him. Although order had been restored to the royal succession, Egypt was in a much reduced state. The death of Ramses was followed by years of bickering among his heirs. Three of his sons would become king at different times, each feeling the need to memorialize him and shore up their own legitimacy by reigning as Rameses iv, sixth and eighth. In fact, the next eight pharaohs in a row would all be named Ramesses, after the slain king. But many of these rulers were ineffectual and reigned for only a few years each. Meanwhile, Egypt was increasingly beset by continuing droughts, lack of seasonal floodwaters, famines, civil unrest and official corruption. Against this backdrop, by the rule of Ramses xi, a new power had begun to fill the vacuum left by royal authority. These were the high priests of Amun in Thebes. This priesthood had become not only very powerful, but exceedingly wealthy. Through a centuries long game of acquisition. The Amun priests now controlled 2/3 of all the temple lands in Egypt and 90% of all Egypt's ships, along with mountains of gold. On top of that, they were the chief prophets and interpreters of the God Amun, Ra's will. Wielding a great deal of influence over the kings and their decisions. Over the last centuries. They had changed the rules of the priesthood so that they could pass their positions on to their sons, essentially becoming a kind of feudal royalty in the baking hot lands of Upper Egypt. One inscription on the tomb of a high priest named Nebwen Enef describes the power of this new hereditary role.
- [200:51]
I
You are now High Priest of Amun. His treasury and his granary are under your seal. You are chief executive of his temple and every foundation of his is under your authority. The house of Hathor, lady of Dendera, shall now be under the authority of your son, as heir to the offices of your forefathers. The position which you have occupied hitherto.
- [201:16]
Paul Cooper
Soon the high priests in Thebes became the de facto rulers of Upper Egypt, even having themselves buried in grand tombs and commanding their own armies. In many ways, the pharaoh had become something of an irrelevance. And perhaps for that reason, there would not be a Ramesses XII. With the death of Ramses XI, the Egyptian New Kingdom finally fractured. Less than 80 years after the victorious battle with the Sea Peoples, Egypt would never regain its former power. For the next four centuries, Egypt's influence would undergo a steady but unstoppable decline. One text written around this time is called the Tale of Wenamun. It describes an Egyptian diplomat who travels to the north to collect some cedar wood as tribute from the Phoenician city of Byblos. But while there, he finds that the name of the pharaoh no longer holds the kind of sway it used to when Amun is robbed on his journey and appeals to the ruler of Byblos for help.
- [202:47]
Unknown Speaker
That morning when I had risen, I went to where the prince was and said to him, I've been robbed in your harbor. Now you are the prince of this land. You're the one who controls it. Search for my money. Indeed, the money belongs to Amun Ra, king of gods, lord of the lands. He said to me, are you serious? Are you joking? Indeed, I do not understand the demand you make to me.
- [203:18]
Paul Cooper
To make matters worse, the king of Byblos refuses to pay the tribute of cedar wood that the pharaoh demands. Whether this story relates a true event or is simply a piece of literature, historians aren't sure. But either way, it points to the much reduced state of Egypt's standing in the world, something that had clearly become common knowledge. The 21st dynasty that ruled from the northern Nile Delta through much of the 8th century BC were even descended from Libyan invaders, peoples from along the north African coast to the west. While the earliest of these Libyan pharaohs adopted classical Egyptian names, by the 22nd and 23rd Dynasties, they reverted to giving their children more ethnically Libyan names and even wearing Libyan feathered headdresses to un underline their identity. Still, these Libyan kings were an unruly bunch who held close to their old tribal loyalties and were frequently distracted by warring amongst themselves and their own lords and generals. Meanwhile, the high priests of Amun continued to rule southern Egypt from Thebes. But even further to the south, in the lands of Nubia, another power was rising. This was the Nubian kingdom of Kush. As one of the two main African kingdoms to the south of Egypt, Kush was located at the fourth Cataract of the Nile around the region of Sudan today. For centuries now, this Nubian kingdom had been crushed beneath the boot of Egypt. Repeated expeditions up the Nile had seen Egyptian armies stamp out any sign of a powerful rival appearing in East Africa. But now, with the new kingdom of Egypt fractured and the Libyan kings ruling it in the north, fighting amongst themselves, the Kushites were free to build their own power base. During Egypt's many attempts to invade and hold on to the lands in Nubia, Egypt had left a number of powerful fortresses to the Kushites. One of these had even become the capital of Kush, the city of Napata. But the Egyptians had also left behind something else that is their religion. The upper classes in Kush had long adopted Egyptian gods and forms of worship. Kushite rulers even referred to themselves as the son of Amun. When Herodotus travelled down the Nile in the following centuries, he described this region, which he knew as Ethiopia.
- [206:32]
Herodotus
Above Elephantine, the country now begins to be inhabited by Ethiopians. And half the people of the island are Ethiopians and half Egyptians. Near to the island is a great lake on the shores of which dwell nomad Ethiopians. The people of the place worship no other gods but Amun and Osiris. These they greatly honour and they have a place of divination sacred to Amun.
- [207:02]
Paul Cooper
While Egypt had stopped building pyramids more than a thousand years earlier, Kushite kings had taken up the building of pyramids of their own in classic Egyptian style. In some ways, Kush had become more Egyptian than the Egyptians. The kingdom was becoming wealthy too, its economy boosted by the Nubian gold mines it controlled and trade with sub Saharan Africa. This wealth soon led to a powerful army. One king of Kush, named Kashta, would seize upon the opportunity that the situation afforded. While the Libyan kings of Egypt squabbled and fought among themselves, Kashta worked to gain influence over the high priests of Thebes. Eventually, he had his own daughter appointed to the powerful title of God's wife of Amun in the great temple of Thebes. Once she was in that position, she moved to consolidate her power and claimed Thebes and all Upper Egypt for her father's kingdom of Kush. The Libyan kings in the Nile delta, distracted by their civil wars, did nothing to stop them. Upper Egypt was now ruled by Nubians. When the Kushite king Kashta died, his son Piye inherited what was now the Kushite empire. Sometime around the 720s BC, King Piye marched his Nubian armies down the Nile and conquered the Fractious states of Lower Egypt. PI was clearly pragmatic in his approach and allowed any local governors to stay in their positions so long as they swore allegiance to him. A victory stelae that he carved records his victories, which he dedicates to the old Egyptian gods.
- [209:03]
I
Hear what I have done in exceeding the ancestors. I am the king. The representation of God who issued from the womb, marked as ruler, who is feared by those greater than he, whose father knew and whose mother perceived even in the egg, that he would be ruler, beloved of the gods, the son of Ra, beloved of Amun.
- [209:32]
Paul Cooper
His son Shebitku solidified these conquests and united Egypt once more. For the next century, Egypt would be ruled by the 25th Dynasty, the Nubian pharaohs. Over the decades that followed, these Nubian rulers showed an enthusiast, enthusiastic adoption of Egyptian culture. They used the Egyptian language, gave each other Egyptian names, and worshipped the Egyptian gods with apparent devotion. They even embarked on an enthusiastic program of pyramid building in Nubia, the first that the region had seen in centuries. If nothing quite like on the grand scale of the old king kingdom. But this flourishing of Egyptian culture would not last long. That's because to the north, a power had finally risen that would eclipse the Egyptian empire for good. That was the empire of Assyria. As we saw in our 13th episode, Assyria had arisen in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia, and by the 7th century BC was perhaps the most powerful empire on earth. They routinely amassed armies of more than 100,000 soldiers. And under the reign of the paranoid king Esarhaddon, they were now pressing their power far along the Mediterranean coast coast. And soon they dreamed of bringing it to the banks of the Nile itself. The Nubian pharaoh who would face them was a man named Taharka. Taharqa was the fifth king of the Nubian 25th Dynasty, and he was clearly proud of his heritage and his skin color. He made sure that statues he commissioned were carved from hard black granite, polished smooth. He had come to Egypt as a young prince and had been chosen to rule after the death of the previous pharaoh. As he writes in one.
- [211:51]
Unknown Speaker
I was brought from Nubia among the royal brothers that his Majesty had brought. As I was with him, he liked me more than all his brothers and his children, so that he distinctly I won the heart of all the nobles and was loved by all. It was only after the royal hawk had flown to heaven that I received the crown in Memphis.
- [212:13]
Paul Cooper
Curiously, Tahaka was also a believer in the benefits of long distance running and insisted that all his soldiers engaged in nighttime marathon practices.
- [212:26]
H
The king himself was on horseback to see his army running when he exercised with them on the desert behind Memphis in the ninth hour of the night. They reached the great lake at the hour of sunrise and they returned to the residence in the third hour of the day.
- [212:44]
Paul Cooper
This extreme stamina would serve them well and he would engage in successful assaults on Libyan positions across across the desert and capture territory in Palestine. Throughout his reign, Tahaka was lucky. A series of exceptional Nile floods led to a period of abundant crops. Funds were clearly so forthcoming that he donated large amounts of gold to the temple of Amun and restored several religious centres. As one of his inscriptions boasts.
- [213:19]
Unknown Speaker
As his Majesty is the one who loves the God, he spends the day and lies by night seeking what is useful to the gods, building their temples fallen into decay, giving birth to their structures as in the primeval times, building their storehouses, endowing altars, presenting them with offerings of fine gold, silver, copper. Now the heart of His Majesty is satisfied with doing what is beneficent to them. Every day this land is inundated in his time, as it was in the time of the Lord of all. Every man sleeping until dawn and never saying, oh, I wish I had.
- [214:05]
Paul Cooper
Egypt was now of a size and stability that it hadn't seen since since the collapse of the new kingdom almost 400 years earlier. It must have looked like the dawn of a new era of prosperity. But this luck was not to last. In the year 674 BC, in Taharqa's 17th year on the throne, news came of a terrifying army approaching from the north. This horde belonged to King Esarhaddon of Assyria. Few foes had ever beaten the Assyrians on the battlefield and fear must have spread up and down the Nile. But somehow, against the odds, Taharqa was able to repel this force. The later Greek historian Herodotus records a fantastical story in which the invading Assyrian army was attacked by a horde of nighttime pests.
- [215:15]
Herodotus
When the road comes into Egypt, their enemies came and during the night were overrun by a horde of field mice that gnawed quivers and bows and the handles of shields, with the result that many were killed fleeing unarmed the next day. For this reason, to this day, a statue to the Egyptian king stands in a temple with a mouse in his hand.
- [215:42]
Paul Cooper
What exactly this account records is difficult to tell. Perhaps it was an outbreak of plague among the Assyrian army that forced them to return home. Perhaps it was even a daring night time ambush by Taharka's men, conditioned as they were to run long distances in the middle of the night, strike, and then disappear into the darkness. With their camps smashed and their army in disarray, the Assyrian army would have been pursued by Egyptian chariots right back to their borders. But we may never know. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Assyrian sources make no mention of what must have been a humiliating defeat. The sting of this embarrassment was clearly sufficient that three years later, King Esarhaddon amassed an even larger Assyrian army and marched back to Egypt. This time there was no standing in its way. The Assyrians flooded into the Nile delta and Tahaka fled from Memphis and into the south. The Assyrian advance was so speedy that the pharaoh was not able to evacuate his family when he left the city. Esarhaddon's troops took Memphis and the Assyrian king wrote the following gloating inscription about his victory.
- [217:11]
Unknown Speaker
I slew multitudes of his men and I smote him five times with the point of my javelin, with wounds from which there were no recovery. Memphis, his royal city in half a day, with mines, tunnels, assaults. I besieged, I captured, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned with fire his queen, his harem, his heir and the rest of his sons and daughters. His property and his goods, his horses, his cattle, his sheep in countless numbers I carried off to Assyria, the root of Kush I tore up out of Egypt, and not one therein escaped to submit to me. Over all of Egypt. I appointed a new kings, viceroys, governors, commandants, overseers and scribes. My royal tribute and tax yearly, without ceasing, I imposed upon them.
- [218:09]
Paul Cooper
But if Esarhaddon had hoped to easily absorb Egypt into his empire, he was mistaken. Just a year later, the Nubian king Taharka reappeared in the south, reinforced with troops from the kingdom of Kush. Numerous governors that Esarhaddan had installed immediately reverted their loyalties and the whole Assyrian conquest looked like it might be undone. Enraged, King Esarhaddon marched back to Egypt to crush this rebel king. But his health failed on the journey and he died in the city of Harran without reaching Egypt. Esarhaddon's son who took the throne was the Assyrian king, King Ashurbanipal. Virtually his first act as king was to gather an army and march to the rebellious province of Egypt to finish what his father had started. Ashurbanipal easily overwhelmed, the now weakened Egyptian forces, recaptured Memphis and in 663 BC returned again to crush another round of rebellions. This time he marched south up the Nile river and bore down on the ancient Capital of Thebes. By that time the Nubian king Taharka had died and his nephew Tantamani sat on the precarious throne of Egypt. Tantamani met the Assyrians in battle, but he was defeated. And with him the last of Egypt's hope would die. The Assyrian army now rounded on the defenseless city of Thebes. Ashurbanipal records what happened next on one carved cylinder.
- [220:04]
Unknown Speaker
This city, the whole of it, I conquered it with the help of Ashur and Ishtar. Silver, gold, precious stones, all the wealth of the palace, rich cloth, precious linen, great horses, supervising men and women. Two obelisks of splendid electrum weighing 2,500 talents. The doors of the temples I tore from their bases and carried them off to Assyria. With this weighty booty I left Thebes against Egypt and Kush I have lifted my spear and shown my power.
- [220:51]
Paul Cooper
The Assyrian sack of Thebes was the symbolic end of Egyptian power. Though Assyria would not hold Egypt for long and would itself collapse within only about 50 years, Egyptian esteem would never truly recover. A century later, Egypt was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid empire and in 343 BC it was conquered again by the Macedonian forces of Alexander the Great. When Alexander's empire collapsed, Egypt would be left in the hands of one of his ex generals, Ptolemy Soter. For the next three centuries Egypt would be ruled by his Greek Ptolemaic dynasty who spoke Greek and mostly refused to learn the native Egyptian language. These Ptolemies were still in power when the tide of Roman expansion swept across North Africa and finally over Egypt. The last independent ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt had a name that in Greek meant glory of her father, from Kleos meaning glory and Patra meaning father. Her name was Cleopatra. It's unclear if Cleopatra had any Egyptian ancestry, as her mother is unknown, but she did at least make an effort to learn Egyptian. As Plutarch remembers, it was a pleasure.
- [222:28]
Unknown Speaker
Merely to hear the sound of her voice with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another. So that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter. To most of them she spoke herself, as to the Ethiopians, Hebrews, Arabian Arabians, Syrians, Parthians and many others whose language she had learned. Which was all the more surprising because most of the kings her predecessors scarcely gave themselves the trouble to acquire the Egyptian tongue.
- [223:02]
Paul Cooper
When Rome finally invaded and occupied Egypt, Cleopatra apparently committed suicide, most likely by drinking poison or scratching herself with a needle dipped in toxin. The more Florid and famous rendition of her using a venomous snake to kill herself was suggested by some ancient writers and whether true or not has proved irresistible to generations of poets, including, most famously, William Shakespeare. With her death in August of the year three, the final vestige of independent Egyptian power died too. On the day of her death, Cleopatra stood at the height of more than 3,000 years of Egyptian history. To her, the Great Pyramid of Giza was now more than 2,500 years old, meaning that Cleopatra lived closer to our time than she did to the building of the Great Pyramid. By more than 500 years. As Egypt came under ever more foreign influence, its ancient culture gradually underwent a transformation. Over the following centuries, as the Greek Alphabet became more prominent, the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphics was slowly lost, as one medieval Arab visitor records.
- [224:46]
I
I asked why the inscriptions which cover the pyramids and the temples were indecipherable. He answered, since the learned men and those who used this writing have disappeared and Egypt has been occupied by a succession of foreign peoples, the Greek Alphabet and writing have prevailed. And thus they lost the understanding of the writing of their ancestors.
- [225:11]
Paul Cooper
The last known hieroglyphic inscription was written in the year 394 AD at the temple of Philae, built on an island near the cataract of the Nile at Aswan. By then, the narrow Christianized Roman Empire had banned the worship of pagan gods in Egypt's temples. But this religious site was just outside of Rome's borders and so worship of the ancient gods continued here in the last of Egypt's great temples. Here, the names of Ra and Ptah, Anubis and Hathor, Amun and Bastet, Seth and Horus would still be spoken and sung. The incense still burned, the cats still fed, the offerings still given. But this island temple was increasingly isolated, surrounded by the crashing waters of a fast changing world. The last hieroglyphic inscription records the mournful wish of one scribe named Nesmet er Akhem, wishing that his inscription would endure forever, just like the carvings of his long dead ancestors.
- [226:33]
Unknown Speaker
Before Mandulis, son of Horus, by the hand of Nesmeterrachem, son of Nesmeta, the second priest of Isis, for all time and eternity. Words spoken by Mandulis, lord of the Abaton, great God, as the last ever.
- [226:57]
Paul Cooper
Inscription of its kind. In some ways, he got his wish. But it's likely that by the time he chipped this message into the temple wall, few people alive would know how to read it. As far as we know, the art of the hieroglyph died with him. The temple was finally closed at some point in the 530s by the Byzantine emperor Justinian, and it was converted into a Christian Church. To St. Stephen, the age of Ancient Egypt had well and truly come to an end. Some 1400 years later, in the year 1818, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley would enter into a friendly competition with his friend, the poet Horace Smith. They had both read in a London newspaper about the coming arrival in the British Museum of a remarkable fragment of a statue brought by ship from the Ramesseum Mortuary Temple in Thebes in Upper Egypt. It was the head and torso of a statue of Egypt's greatest pharaoh, the hero of the battle of Kadesh Rameses ii. The statue was one of a pair that had stood at the doorway of his temple. European colonial powers had long been hungering after that fragment of statue. Napoleon Bonaparte had even tried to remove it during his time in Egypt in 1798, but he found its bulk of black diorite too heavy to shift. Now, with wooden rollers and hundreds of workmen pulling ropes, the British team hauled the statue to the banks of the Nile, where it was transported down the river and on to London. After reading about this statue, Smith and Shelley agreed to a wager. They would each write a poem inspired by it. And they would base their work on an extract from the writings of the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily, who had once visited Ramses II's temple in Thebes. Unfortunately for Horace Smith, history has decisively concluded their competition, as his poem is little remembered. But Shelley's poem has become a classic, one of the greatest and most well known sonnets in the English language. Titled Ozymandias, it is a poem that has come to stand as an emblem of the vainglorious pride of rulers, the inevitable downfall of tyrants, the awe inspiring power of time and the transience of all things.
- [230:03]
Abd Al Latif Al Baghdadi
I met a traveler from an antique land who said, two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them on the sand half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive, Stamped on those lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear. My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare. The lone and level sands stretch far away way.
- [231:05]
Paul Cooper
On the tomb wall of a pharaoh intef of the Middle Kingdom is a piece of literature known as the Harper's Song. Written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, it was a song designed to be sung at funerals and is more than 4,200 years old. @ the time of writing his poem Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley could not have known about this piece of ancient literature, since hieroglyphics would not be conclusively deciphered for several more years. But across the gulf of four millennia, he and the unknown author of this song both describe a human emotion that is all too familiar, the deep sense of awe and melancholy we feel when we look at ruined places, at the crumbling palaces of long fallen emperors, at the tombs of kings whose age has passed into dust. As you listen, imagine the vast gulf of time that separates our world from theirs. Imagine the sadness of watching your language forgotten and your cities crumbled. Imagine the tombs of ancient kings lying opened and robbed, the fallen pillars of emptied temples half buried in the sand which shifts and rolls over the stones as the great disk of the sun sets red and blazing for a final time on the empire of Egypt.
- [232:56]
H
One generation passes, another stays behind. Such has it been since the men of ancient times, the gods of long ago rest in their pyramids, and yet the great and blessed likewise lie buried in their tombs. Yet those who built great mansions, their places are no more. What has become of them all? I have heard their words retold time and again. But where are their dwellings now? Their walls are in ruins and their places are no more. Like something that has never been, There is no return for them to explain their present state of being, to say how it is with them to gentle our hearts until we make our journey to the place where they have gone. So follow your heart and your happiness. Conduct your affairs on earth as your heart dictates, for that day of morning will surely come for you. So spend your days joyfully and do not grow weary of living. No man takes his things with him, and none who go can ever come back again.
- [234:26]
Paul Cooper
Thank you once again for listening to the Fall of Civilizations podcast. I'd like to thank my voice actors for this episode. Alexandra Boulton, Lachlan Lucas, Michael Hagi, Antonis, Tom Marshall Lee, Nick Denton, Peter Walters, R.E. brignall, Lou Millington and Paul Cassell. Reading Readings in Arabic were performed by Nassim El Bojufi. Readings in Ancient Egyptian were performed by Seknenra Mohammad Habib. I'd also like to thank my historical advisor for this episode, the Egyptologist, Dr. Chris Norton. You can find him on social media as ChrisNaunton. You can also read his book titled Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt. Major sources used in this episode were the Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson, as well as his Writings from Ancient Egypt, Edward Wenters Letters from Ancient Egypt, Miriam Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature, the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw and Mark van der me Roop's history of ancient Egypt. Abdul Latif Al Baghdadi's account of Egypt was translated by Tim McIntosh Smith. A full list of sources can be found in the description below and are publicly available on the show's Patreon page. As some of you may be aware, Fall of Civilizations will soon be available in book form around the world. The book is called Fall of Stories of Greatness and Decline by me Paul Cooper. It offers the definitive version of the show, updated, expanded and with maps and images attached. The book is coming in April of 2024 for UK readers and later in the year for listeners in the United States. Please head to fallofcivilizations.com to find out more information and for pre order links. Every pre order helps boost the book's rankings and supports the show. I love to hear your thoughts and responses on Twitter, so please come and tell me what you thought. You can follow me aaulmmcooper and if you'd like updates about the podcast, announcements about new episodes, as well as images, maps and reading suggestions, you can follow the podcast at fallofsivpod with underscores separating the words, this podcast can only keep going with the support of our generous subscribers on Patreon. You keep me running you. You help me cover my costs and you help keep the podcast ad free. You also let me dedicate more time to researching, writing, recording and editing to get the episodes out to you faster and bring as much life and detail to them as possible. I want to thank all my subscribers for making this happen. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider heading to patreon.com fallofcivilizationspodcast or just google fall of civilizationspatreon. That's P A t r e o n to contribute something and help keep the podcast running. For now, all the best and thanks for listening.