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00:08Their names are etched in stone, their stories carved into the very fabric of history to live
00:14on forever. This is the true story of Egypt's greatest rulers, from their meteoric rise,
00:22to absolute power, to their ultimate downfall. This is the rise and fall of the pharaohs.
00:50It is the 16th century before Christ, and Egypt is divided. In the northern half of the nation,
00:58a group known as the Hyksos reign, while in the south, the Egyptian forces centered in Thebes
01:05have been conducting a decades-long war of resistance and reconquest. Entering this struggle
01:13is the new king of the south, Amos. Amos is the younger brother of Kamos. He wants to unite
01:21Egypt as badly as his brother did. But the Hyksos are standing in the way of that.
01:27He has two goals. One is to drive the Hyksos out of Egypt. The other is to reunify Egypt,
01:35but under his rule as pharaoh. If successful, Amos will unite the divided lands and bring back
01:42the reign of the pharaoh. But if he loses, Egypt may forever be shattered.
01:49The Hyksos represented the first ever foreign rulers to be ruling Egypt, and that in itself
01:56brought chaos toward the Egyptian state and have threatened the universe for them.
02:03Will Egypt be united into another kingdom, or will we fall back into chaos?
02:10Everything is on the line here. As Amos takes the reins of leadership, he marches his armies
02:17north to the former capital of Egypt, Memphis. This battle will settle the fate of Egypt and the pharaohs.
02:36Armos takes his armies north, straight into Hyksos territory. The chariots that once dominated
02:42the Egyptian army are now being used against the Hyksos. The very weapon the Hyksos brought
02:48to Egypt will be their undoing.
02:50Armos, with his mighty host of warriors, is ready to finish the reconquest of Egypt.
02:57Armos' army earns a swift victory, annihilating the Hyksos army in battle. They then capture
03:04Memphis and other important northern cities. The Hyksos forces crumble. Soon, Armos and the
03:12Egyptian army have the Hyksos capital of Avaris, also known as Hawara, surrounded. The Egyptians
03:19storm the city and sack the Hyksos capital.
03:23Armos engages battle with the Hyksos, but succeeds finally in expelling them after a lengthy period.
03:32To remove the Hyksos and force them out of Egypt, he ravaged Avaris. The accounts of it
03:38are absolutely brutal. They talk not only about death, but mutilation.
03:46One of the particular elements that the Egyptians imposed upon the Hyksos was the removal of their
03:53hands. And this was done for two reasons. As an insult to the deceased Hyksos, but also by taking the
04:03hands and presenting them towards the king. You were proving that you had murdered people on the king's
04:09behalf, that you had carried out his edicts.
04:13We have accounts of the battles of Armos from someone who wasn't just an eyewitness, but was a
04:19participant. His name was Armos, son of Ebana. He was a soldier in the army of Kamos and later Armos.
04:27Armos, son of Ebana, captures this campaign in a series of writings that illustrate fury and anger,
04:33which the Egyptians brought upon the Hyksos.
04:39Armos, son of Ebana himself, describes some of the military campaigns he was on with Armosa.
04:45And this is how we get information about Armosa himself. So he details how the Egyptian forces
04:50pushed the Hyksos out of Egypt and they continued their campaign into the Levant. So outside Egyptian
04:57territory into the Hyksos homeland. It's believed that some of the Hyksos fled to Palestine, but
05:03Armos pursued them, sacking their cities for another three years until they were thoroughly defeated.
05:10You may wonder, why were they so harsh? Why were they so passionate about this particular war?
05:16They're not thinking of this as fighting fellow Egyptians. These are invaders. They took our country
05:23and we're taking it back. And they wanted to send a message to the Hyksos, we're not going to tolerate
05:29this ever again.
05:35By the mid 16th century BCE, Armos has completed his reconquest and has taken large swaths of the Levant.
05:44In this, Armos not only expelled the Hyksos, expanded the borders and reunited and re-established the rule
05:52of a single pharaoh, he also ushered in Egypt's third golden age, the new kingdom.
05:58Whilst Armos is seen as this great warrior king, and rightfully so,
06:03after the war he kind of retires and becomes much more focused on his family.
06:07One of the important aspects that we see in this new golden age for Egypt, the beginning of the new
06:14kingdom is the way in which the king incorporates his whole family. The court becomes expanded, enlarged,
06:25his wife becomes an important figure in her own right. We're no longer dealing with just an individual,
06:32and that's important from a dynastic point of view. Here we're dealing with whole families who can marry,
06:39who can strengthen bonds within other families in Egypt, and ensure that should the king die,
06:46there are people to step into his empty sandals.
06:52And some of the most powerful people in this family were the women of the dynasty.
06:57The female royal family becomes far more visible than any of what we know from earlier dynasties,
07:04and that in itself was quite distinctive. There's indications that the royal women
07:09or the women of the Theban ruling family are important and are playing important roles,
07:14not just ritually or ceremonially, but that they're actually playing important administrative
07:19and governmental roles. So some of the royal women involved would be Teddy Sherry,
07:25so that's Ahmose's grandmother, and Ahmose Nefertari. Some of these women holds titles that are normally
07:37affiliated with military service, military activity, and in their tombs there are weapons that are found,
07:43including axes and daggers. The fact that their weapons included in the tombs of women suggests that
07:49they played an actual active military role, if not in combat, at least in governing the country during
07:56the time when their husbands were up north fighting against the retreating Hyksos.
08:05And one of the most powerful women of this age is Ahmose's wife, Ahmose Nefertari.
08:11Ahmose Nefertari is a really important figure in the early 18th dynasty. She is
08:19Ahmose's primary wife. She's also the god's wife of Amun, so she's an important religious and
08:25political figure. Obviously those two things are deeply intertwined in Egypt. Raising Ahmose Nefertari
08:32into the level that she becomes the wife of god Amun, so she's the wife of one of the main
08:37creator gods,
08:38but equally the main god of the pantheon for Upper Egypt and for the royal house at the time during
08:44the
08:44reign of Ahmose, meant that she is sharing part of the royal power, even if symbolically, with the king. And
08:52this
08:52is a shift that we haven't seen before, to have an active role or to play an active religious role
09:01for the queen.
09:02She is sort of the principal head of the religious sect at this point.
09:13By uplifting his wife to the priesthood, Ahmose strengthened his family's control of the
09:19religion and the wealth of the Temple of Amun. And Ahmose would need this wealth and power
09:26as he embarked on a new slate of construction projects. During the new kingdom, what we see is
09:32a flourishing of architecture and monuments dedicated to life and worship rather than just
09:38death, as we'd seen in the old kingdom. This is where we really start to see this great temple
09:42architecture thriving. So here we have Thebes. Once a village, but it grows over time. And in the new
09:51kingdom, oh man, it becomes a huge city with great and magnificent works of architecture. The most obvious
09:59being the great temple of Amun at Karnak. And almost every king that ruled during the new kingdom period
10:07adds something to the temple of Karnak. Now if each king is adding to it, you can imagine how
10:13it grows and expands over time and becomes greater and greater with each generation.
10:20The power of the priesthood of Amun have increased so much to the extent that
10:25having a building construction in Karnak or contributing to the Karnak Temple's complex
10:31became a defining factor of the stability of a king's throne. So one of your royal duties was to
10:39contribute to the Karnak temples. That's how you become legally acceptable as the ruler of Egypt.
10:45Ahmose and his heirs are known as the 18th dynasty. This dynasty will transform Egypt into the most
10:53powerful and glittering civilization of the ancient world. Now Ahmose has a main wife and probably any
11:01number of other wives, but somehow only has one son that we know of, Amenhotep I. And Amenhotep I is
11:08crazy for building. And he enlarges Karnak and builds all kinds of great stuff there.
11:16Even though he is married, no babies. He has no children at all that we know of.
11:21And that's a serious matter. But when he dies, there is no heir. Now what you do in those circumstances
11:28in Egypt is you turn to your best friend, who preferably is a general. And his general is a man
11:35named Thutmose I. And he's probably a royal cousin of some sort, but he's not in the direct line of
11:42succession. So he's really starting a new family. And Thutmose I is already a grown-up man, maybe already
11:4935, 40. And he is a general. And he has a daughter named Hatshepsut, who is going to be one
11:56of the most
11:56extraordinary people who ever lived. Hatshepsut means foremost of noble women. And it was she who
12:04held the primary claim to the throne, as she is the daughter of Thutmose I by his great royal wife.
12:12But when Thutmose I dies, it is Thutmose II who ascends to the throne,
12:18even though he had been conceived by a secondary wife. While on the throne,
12:24Thutmose II marries his half-sister, Hatshepsut.
12:28Hatshepsut was probably only around 10 or 12 when she married the pharaoh. He dies as she comes into
12:35adulthood. We get the impression that this may have been a long 20 years for Hatshepsut.
12:40When Thutmose II died, his son, Thutmose III, was young, wasn't yet ready to
12:47take power. And so the kingdom was mostly in the hands of Hatshepsut.
12:53It's important to note that Thutmose III, the heir of Thutmose II, was actually the child not of the
12:59great wife, but of one of his other wives. This meant Hatshepsut had more legitimacy and more
13:06claim to the throne at the time of her ascendance. In 1780 BCE, Hatshepsut was made Queen Regent of
13:15Egypt. In ancient Egypt, Queen Dowager, who is the regent for a young king, was very much honoured.
13:24Some of the most honoured women in Egyptian history were regents. So Hatshepsut starts
13:29off as regent for her little nephew. But by year five, perhaps as the little boy is getting closer to
13:38being, hitting puberty, she realises she's got to make a move and actually be king.
13:44While Hatshepsut's position as Queen Regent gives her authority over Egypt, to become the pharaoh,
13:50she needs a strong ideological argument backing her claim. And there is no religious institution
13:56as powerful as the Temple of Amun during this time. This is a remarkable period in history.
14:03Hatshepsut understands how to lead the country and how to sell herself as a pharaoh. What she does is
14:12something we've never seen before. In order to establish her legitimacy, Hatshepsut knows she
14:19needs to go back to the well of religion. To this end, Hatshepsut works with the priests of Amun
14:25to create an origin story. This origin story would be depicted on the temples at Thebes. What this origin
14:35story says is that Hatshepsut was actually conceived by the god Amun. Amun came to Hatshepsut
14:42Hatshepsut's mother in the night in the form of her husband and conceived Hatshepsut. Therefore Hatshepsut was
14:50the daughter of the god himself and therefore divine rule. Now we've had female pharaohs on the throne
14:58before. It's usually sort of the last resort of a dynasty that doesn't really have much other option.
15:05But it's still not really ideal for an Egyptian pharaoh. A pharaoh is supposed to be male and is
15:13supposed to be, say, the leader of the army. So she's innovating to show herself as this age-old ideal.
15:22The priests of Amun are telling the people that she is in fact the daughter of Amun himself, which means
15:32she is also a god. And that is intended to bolster her power. Hatshepsut takes on the dressings and the
15:42iconography of a male king, whilst presenting herself as a female king. This is where we see the gender
15:50neutral term, pharaoh, or pere, great house, come into use.
15:58Amun is on the rise, swiftly becoming Egypt's chief deity, with other gods' cults rapidly succumbing to his
16:05influence. Amun is a very old god in Egypt. He'd been there since the pyramid texts. But in the 18th
16:12dynasty, under Hatshepsut and her family, Amun really comes into his own. God Amun was one of the
16:19main creator gods of ancient Egypt. He was also a major god for the royal family. And he was the
16:27one through him that the royal family would gain access to power. And he would be the god in charge
16:36of sustaining the power of the king or the pharaoh. So he was quite crucial. And given how the new
16:43kingdom was based in Thebes and god Amun was the main god of Thebes, that meant that the priesthood
16:49of Thebes, particularly the priesthood of Amun, were the most influential priesthood that existed
16:55in Egypt at the time. By expanding Amun's role at the center of Egyptian religious life,
17:03it's clear that Hatshepsut is expanding her own role, but also assisting the priests of Amun. The priests
17:13of Amun have a rather more important role to play. And that plays nicely towards Hatshepsut's strengths,
17:22whilst allowing them to take a bigger share of Egyptian religious life and Egyptian secular life
17:28also. They have control of a great number of resources. They end up owning an awful lot of the
17:35land in Middle Egypt and Upper Egypt. And Hatshepsut established at this point in history a move that
17:44would affect all of the pharaohs that would come after her. Essentially, what Hatshepsut has done
17:51is prime the priesthood of Amun to eventually challenge the throne of Egypt itself.
18:00Hatshepsut's relationship with the Temple of Amun underscores Egyptian society's relationship with
18:05its religion and gods, gods which affect all parts of the lives of ancient Egyptians.
18:11From the peasants in the fields to the pharaohs in their royal palaces, these gods are worshipped
18:17and revered. And the most powerful of the gods of this time was Amun.
18:23The prominence of the deity Amun in this period can't be overstated. He's not only a god of the
18:30kings, but he becomes almost the king of the gods. Instead of just being related to Horus,
18:37now the pharaoh is related to Amun, and in Hatshepsut's time, direct descendant of Amun.
18:44In this sense, we see the primacy of this god of Thebes becoming the god of all of Egypt.
18:52What were his attributes? Well, we find him depicted with a ram's head, for example,
18:57which is a powerful symbol of fertility. That helps us understand why he became very useful for the
19:04pharaohs. But Egypt is a land of many powerful and popular gods, chief among them Ra, the sun god.
19:15In ancient Egypt, the gods didn't have to be exclusive beings. So when you came to a new city
19:22as a royal, and you already had your local tradition with your own gods, you could basically combine
19:28these gods with the gods that were prominent in that region. So for instance, what we see in this
19:34period is something that we call religious syncretism. That is to take one god from one area who's very
19:39dominant in one region, and combine them with the god that's dominant in the area you're coming into.
19:45So we have an older deity like Ra, who is associated with the sun and kingship, and we have Amun,
19:50who is the new god associated with kingship. Then they became a new god, Amun-Ra. There was no
19:56contradiction in the Egyptian mindset. It just meant that this new god had all the qualities of Amun,
20:02and all the qualities of Ra. It was the best of both worlds.
20:06While Amun and Ra were the two most powerful gods of this age, three gods had a very important place
20:13in Egyptian history and society. Osiris, Isis, and Horus.
20:21Osiris is initially a god of agriculture, but following the mythology where he's killed,
20:26he also becomes god of the underworld. Isis, on the other hand, is a goddess of both magic and
20:33motherhood. She raises young Horus in the swamps of the delta. Isis is said to have
20:39learned the secret name of Ra, the foremost of gods, and using the secret name of Ra,
20:45she could control all of magic. Osiris, Isis, and Horus represented the microcosm of the family unit
20:52that the royal family have thrived to be. We've got Osiris symbolizing the male power of the king,
21:00then Isis, the female power, which would be the royal wife, then Horus, which is the son who would
21:05be the one, the successor to the throne. So by being affiliated to Osiris, you're affiliated to a
21:12divine family, and you're equally affiliated to eternity. While Egypt had many gods, Egyptian religion
21:22at the time of the new kingdom is not uniform. The Egyptian pantheon is eclectic in nature.
21:28It includes deities such as Hathor, the goddess of love, beauty, music, and motherhood. Anubis,
21:37the jackal-headed god of mummification and the protector of the dead. Thoth, the god of wisdom,
21:43writing, and magic. And Patar, the god of creation and craftsmanship. The pantheon encompasses gods for
21:53virtually all aspects of life. A notable characteristic of many of these deities is their depiction with
21:59animal heads or animal features, symbolizing their divine attributes and roles. You've always got to
22:06remember that we can't see the gods. We're not worthy of seeing the gods. Probably our human eyes
22:12wouldn't understand the gods if we did see them. So when we draw a picture of one of the gods,
22:17we're drawing a picture of that god's attributes, of maybe that god's character. So if you think about
22:23a dog, faithful friend, loyal, nasty if you're a bad person, good watch dogs, think of all the lovely
22:32things about dogs. Well then you think about the god Anubis, who is the god who meets you when you
22:38die.
22:39So when you die you're not meeting some horrible demon. There's this lovely big dog and he's going
22:44to help you through it all. He's going to make sure you're embalmed properly, that you get to the
22:49judgment, that the judgment is done properly. Think about Bastet, the cat goddess. Cats are beautiful,
22:57and we like to pat them. They are wonderful mothers if you've ever had a cat who had kittens.
23:01Wonderful mothers. Bastet is this goddess who is in charge of having babies and music and beauty and
23:08sweetness. Well she can be imaged as a cat. It works very well. And cats being the closest image to
23:16her
23:16become very special animals. The hawk who is halfway between earth and heaven, who is up there talking to
23:24god but who can swoop down and take care of the miscreants on earth. Horus, Montu, Sokar, they all have
23:33these attributes of the hawk. And usually if you think about the animal whose head you see on the god,
23:39then you understand something about the nature of that god. Whether or not they actually imagined the
23:45god to look this way, I kind of would imagine so. But I think that they also had a variety
23:51of ways that
23:51they imagined their gods. So the god Thoth is a really interesting example. He's the god of writing and
23:59and magic and a lot of other things. But he can be shown as an ibis. He can be shown
24:08as a baboon.
24:10He's got a lot of different ways of being represented. And so I think they're really
24:15flexible with how they portray their gods. And this is one of the ways of doing it. And I think
24:20it kind of signals that they see some sort of kinship between this animal and the attributes that
24:27this god is supposed to have. The ancient Egyptians had a very close relationship with many of their
24:35animals. Animals like cattle, donkeys and birds played crucial roles in agriculture and held special
24:43places in Egyptian art. Cattle in particular were important as they were used for ploughing fields,
24:50transporting goods and providing food. Hathor, goddess of motherhood and beauty,
24:56is closely connected to cattle. Pharaoh Hatshepsut incorporates elements of Hathor in her iconography
25:04to draw her closer to the goddess, further underscoring the importance of the gods and the
25:10animals they represent to all strata of Egyptian society. They invested a lot of spiritual meaning
25:18in the natural world around them. They felt they were part of the same cosmos and that they all had
25:24a purpose.
25:26But animals also served another religious function. They were often used in sacrifices to the gods.
25:36The Apisbol is a good example of an animal that the Egyptians believed held the divinity of a god,
25:43but only for a certain period of time. The Apisbol was eventually sacrificed in the name of the god.
25:48What we see particularly in later periods are temples dedicated to the production and then mummification
25:54of these animals to make them offerings for the afterlife and for the gods. It's fair to say that the
26:00Egyptian
26:00relationship with animals was somewhat complex. They didn't necessarily worship animals as gods
26:05themselves, except in very specific circumstances, and they weren't beyond raising and killing an animal
26:12to make it a sacrifice to the gods. That being said, there were moments in Egyptian history where the
26:20enemies of the Egyptians used their love of cats, for instance, against them. There's a famous myth that the
26:25Persian army strapped cats to their armor so that the Egyptians wouldn't strike them in combat because
26:31that would be seen as some form of blasphemy against Bast. So we know from these stories, at least, that
26:36these beliefs were circulating at the time as well. But the reality is much more complex. There were
26:41millions of mummified cats and ibis birds, for instance, discovered in one cache alone. So we know that
26:48the lives of the animals themselves wasn't necessarily sacred, certainly in later periods.
26:53It does signal this belief in an afterlife and that the body, the material world, had to make that
27:00journey with the spirit eventually to get to that world. So with the mummification of these animals,
27:07on the one hand, we understand them as sacrifices, but mummification is a very demanding process.
27:12And so to mummify, for example, cats or ibises, that's saying that you expect them to be with you
27:19in that afterlife. While the ancient Egyptians are a religious people,
27:26their relationship to the temple differs far more from that of many of the current major religious
27:31traditions. Ancient Egyptian temples are rather different than a synagogue, or a masjid,
27:39or a gudwada, or a little church. An Egyptian temple is the home of a god. And the god lives
27:45in usually a special little naos, a tabernacle, and he lives in a quiet, dark part of it. And depending
27:53on how big the temple is, there are rooms and rooms and rooms in front of this. So in an
27:59Egyptian temple
27:59like Karnak, where there's a big open court at the front, many of us can go into that court.
28:06I can't get anywhere near the god who lives, you know, 300 feet back that way. But I'm up here,
28:12and I'm in the temple. I'm in this holy space, like being in the square of St. Peter's. But I'm
28:18not
28:19inside. Now, if I have a religious duty, perhaps I'm a singer, I can go a little further in.
28:29Only the king and the high priest can go right back and meet the god. And then the king or
28:36the high
28:36priest every day will open the doors on the god's little shrine and give him some incense, wash him,
28:44and give him fresh clothes every day. The god will get fresh clothes, just as a statue of Krishna or
28:49Shiva
28:50in a Hindu temple. Gets clean clothes every day. So they're cared for very much in that way.
28:58Because of her close relationship with our moon and her role as pharaoh, Hatshepsut is one of the few
29:04people who can enter the deep sanctum of the temple. But for common Egyptians,
29:09there was a way to get close to our moon.
29:12The temple has all these big ceremonies, but it's for the god. It's the god's house.
29:17It's not our house to worship the god. But an interesting thing happens because of the god Amun.
29:24At Karnak, ordinary people like me who can't even get into the front court,
29:28I can go way around the back of the temple. And way around the back, I'm actually quite close to
29:34the
29:34shrine. I'm closer than I would have been in the front court. Maybe I'm only 20 feet away now,
29:40or 10 feet away. And the god knows I'm there. And I can go to that back wall and talk
29:46to the god.
29:47That's going to be the chapel of the hearing year. I can say, Amun, can you please listen to me?
29:52You know, I'm nobody, but I need your help. So that little chapel way at the back is more like
29:59our idea of a church.
30:05The priests of ancient Egypt lived apart from the common people. But in the time of the New Kingdom
30:12and Hatshepsut, they played an important part, not only in the religious life of ancient Egypt,
30:18Egypt, but also its economy and civil service. It's a very interesting dimension of religious
30:25culture in ancient Egypt that we can't understand priests as simply religious officiants. In fact,
30:33they had a very, very important and complex role to place in Egyptian society. For example,
30:39temples and temple complexes were places not only of religious observance, but they fulfilled
30:44many other functions. For example, priests were also healers. Medicine was a very important
30:51commandant of their role in ordinary society for ordinary people. They were also involved in politics.
30:59They would be consultants to the pharaoh. They would be reading the stars. We know that Egyptian astronomy
31:04was extremely sophisticated. And they were also involved as local administrators, as sources of charity,
31:14and even in money lending. So when we think about temple complexes and the priests that operated them,
31:21we should think of them as institutions that are integrated in the Egyptian economy, social culture
31:27life, as well as religious and political lives. Under the rule of Hatshepsut, the powers of the temple
31:35of our moon in Thebes grew substantially. The temple complexes are bustling centers of activity.
31:41They house not only the priests, but also craftsmen, laborers, and officials. These complexes
31:48include granaries, showing the temple's economic power as grain is the primary currency in ancient Egypt.
31:55The temple of our moon in Thebes also managed large swaths of agricultural lands and collected taxes
32:01from said lands, further underscoring their importance in society. Ancient Egyptian religion and the temple
32:09were also closely associated with another important aspect of Egyptian life, magic. Every aspect of Egyptian
32:19Egyptian life was affected by Heka or magic. Magic had an ability to offer a connection to the gods. And
32:30this is why incantations and spells and poetry, all of these things are spoken word. And spoken or written word
32:42is in turn an incantation.
32:45That's where the very word comes from, to cant or to speak the written words.
32:50So every single day of an Egyptian pharaoh's life, this was part of their ritual.
32:57It is said that in some cases, they started their day with an incantation to the rising sun,
33:05and they ended their day with an incantation to the setting sun.
33:11Heka or magic was a practical dimension of their lives. And it was also powerful because magic was
33:20understood as a dimension, a force that operated within the natural world in which they existed.
33:26It linked the supernatural and the natural realms. It was also coercive force, because the function of magic was to
33:36effect change in the lives of ordinary people.
33:43Later in her reign of pharaoh, Hatshepsut begins to suffer from mysterious ailments that trouble her reign.
33:51She calls upon the priests and their magic to aid in her recovery.
33:57In the temple, they perform rituals and offer prayers, seeking divine intervention to restore her health.
34:06While the high priests are the most celebrated users of magic during this time,
34:11they are not the only people in society gifted with magical abilities.
34:16When we look at ancient Egypt, we see that it develops specialties that give us a window into
34:22the daily lives of ordinary people. Because here we have people who have certain talents that give them
34:27the ability, for example, to charm scorpions. Well, why scorpions? Well, they're living in a desert environment
34:34in which scorpions are one of the most dangerous elements. We have midwives who help with birth,
34:40and they had to rely on magic as well and charms and other instruments of magic to help bring about
34:48safe
34:48births. Because birth was one of the most dangerous times in the lives, not only of women, but also of
34:54the child themselves. So magic is being used under the assumption that there are different talents that
35:00can be brought to keeping society safe, but also to help fulfill your needs.
35:10In ancient Egypt, magic is a powerful force. But knowing when, where and how to perform magic
35:17is crucial to success.
35:21In order to engage in magical practices, the priests of Egypt believed they had to be pure.
35:28To this end, they would always bathe, they were always clean-shaven, and they would wear white linen.
35:35They would abstain at certain times from different foods if they were to engage in magical practice,
35:42and they would do their rituals at certain times of day, depending on what they were trying to achieve.
35:47Usually daytime in the sunlight, so dawn or high sun, would be a good time to perform magic. But you
35:54don't
35:54want to be performing magic at night, because that's when the forces of darkness are more dominant.
36:00The professional Egyptian magician or sorcerer would use a multiplicity of different implements to
36:07perform his magical acts. Very often these would be wands, and these could be made from bronze in the
36:15shape of serpents. Others, rather more spectacularly, but more frequently, tend to be hippopotamus ivory tusks.
36:25It was clear that for the ancient Egyptians, these wands that were used in magical actions had great power.
36:34While magic is often associated with religious worship, it was also closely associated with
36:40medicine in ancient Egypt. Surviving medical papyri contain spells for the use of doctors.
36:47These spells are often targeted at the supernatural beings believed to be the ultimate cause of diseases.
36:54And in ancient Egypt, the keepers of this medical knowledge are the priest physicians.
37:00By the Middle Kingdom, they're starting to write down everything and codify things. And those nasty
37:06Hyksos up in the north, they are actually very interested in medicine. And our medical papyri,
37:12several of them come from them. They're the ones who had them copied. So over the years you have all
37:17these things copied out. So maybe you've got a dislocated shoulder. They can handle that, no problem.
37:22You've broken a bone in your arm. They can handle that, but it's going to be harder. Now if it's
37:27something else, if it's something internal, they might say, I'm not sure if I can treat this,
37:32but I'll try. Things like cancers. Sometimes they knew they couldn't treat it. And they would say,
37:36I cannot treat this. And then they would give you some prayers to say.
37:41Magic infiltrates the world of the Egyptians, but it's the everyday world as well. So we see
37:47medical treatments incorporating magical concepts and mythological concepts. A good example of this
37:54are late period stele that we found. They bear the image of the child Horus with a side lock.
38:01They also bear a spell on the reverse in hieroglyphs. The spell says, I am Isis, great of magic.
38:11Pouring water libation over this statue will charge the effluence and the child will be healed.
38:17So what we see here is an incorporation of magic into the very belief system of the everyday Egyptians
38:24that was used not only for supernatural means, but also for very everyday means.
38:32I think it's foolish to say, you know, saying a spell over somebody or making a wax figure and then
38:37melting it is not going to help somebody who's sick because I think if, if that person believes it will
38:43help, then it can. Along with magic, Pharaoh Hatshepsut sought medical advice from the healer priests.
38:54Hatshepsut suffers from a persistent skin ailment that troubles her daily life.
38:59She receives a healing balm from her priests, crafted from rare herbs and oils.
39:08Applying it regularly, she hopes for relief. As with nearly all aspects of Egyptian society,
39:16medicine and healing were closely linked to a number of gods.
39:20In a polytheistic society like ancient Egypt, it's not surprising that we have
39:25gods who emerge with attributes that are specifically dedicated to healing.
39:29Thoth was one of the gods associated with medicine, one of the many gods, but in particular,
39:35his association comes through his healing of the eye of the god Horus after Horus lost his eye
39:41battle to the god Set. Amulets such as the eye of Horus were often inscribed with protective symbols
39:48and spells and are worn by individuals to ward off illness and harm.
39:54What amulets do is they take the context of the mythology that they emerge from and they
39:59bring that power into the life of the everyday Egyptian. So if you couldn't read or write,
40:05you could still wear an amulet such as the eye of Horus and gain the benefit of that myth,
40:11of that power, which comes to represent health and protection. It's one of the most common amulets
40:17we find around Egypt and it was often buried in amongst the wrappings of the mummy. In the
40:22wrappings of the mummy, we find several different types of amulets. The eye of Horus is a very common
40:26one. We also see very small Jied pillars. This is the backbone of Osiris. It stands for stability.
40:33We'll see small amulets of various different gods, hoping to invoke their protective qualities.
40:39Even necklaces became popular and this was to show that all of these abilities of Toth
40:50were there to protect you. Healing rituals often involve invoking the power of gods and goddesses,
41:00such as Hathor, who was associated with healing and motherhood, or Bess, who protected households and
41:08children. In ancient Egypt, we see medicine practiced at a scale unseen in the rest of the
41:15ancient world. There are several papyrus dealing with very specific types of trauma. We have the
41:22leaden papyrus and the Edwin Smith papyrus and these deal with slightly different anatomical and medical
41:29problems. One deals with surgery, essentially, and trauma surgery. So the Egyptians, as a warrior
41:35people, would be coming back with various injuries. The Egyptians knew how to deal with broken bones.
41:43They understood, more or less, the organs. And even though the Egyptians believed that we thought with our
41:51hearts and not with our brains, they kind of thought the brain didn't do a lot. In fact,
41:55they disposed of it during mummification. But they roughly understood enough about the workings of
42:01the body that they developed quite an in-depth corpus of medical knowledge and how to deal with
42:08everyday ailments.
42:13The concern of one's health didn't end in death. The road to the afterlife is a perilous one,
42:20and by the reign of Hatshepsut, the ancient Egyptians are buried with the so-called Book of the Dead.
42:29Way back in the old kingdom, the king gets special prayers on the walls of his pyramid.
42:35The pyramid texts, we call them. And then queens get them and viziers get them. And gradually,
42:40a few more very, very elite people get them. Then during the first intermediate period, some of those
42:46texts survive. But they survive on papyrus, and they get written on coffins. And we now call them the
42:53coffin texts. Now, as we get into the new kingdom, people seem to be making choices of some of those
43:01texts that they like best, and some prayers that are new. But because they're written, and they can be
43:07written on papyrus, or they can be written on linen, they can be written right on the outside of your
43:12shroud, they're going to be much less expensive, obviously, than being carved onto the walls of a
43:17tomb, or painted inside a beautiful coffin. To find it in the tomb of people who were clearly
43:24successful, but ordinary, they're commoners, members of society, tells us not only that magic is
43:31pervasive, because these are books of spells that are required to help your passage through to the other
43:38life safely. But it also tells us, perhaps, that we're seeing a higher degree of literacy in society
43:44by this time. From the pharaoh to the commoners, the pervasiveness of the Book of the Dead
43:54shows how closely intertwined Egyptian life was with royalty. And in Egypt, the game of thrones was
44:02always in play. Hatshepsut succeeded in making herself a king. She's always shown with a male body
44:10and male clothing. Whether she ever actually dressed in male clothing, we'll never know. But she does need
44:18somebody to be her queen. If she's the king, she has to have a queen. Well, she has her daughter,
44:24Neferura, act the part of queen. Neferura is already God's wife of Amun, with this huge power base
44:31in the Amun temple. Now she's officially queen. She's still a girl, she's still a teenager,
44:36but she acts as her mother's queen. And there are lots of pictures that look like a king and a
44:41queen,
44:42but it's really Hatshepsut and her daughter. Many people have thought that Hatshepsut intended
44:48her daughter to succeed her. With her daughter, there are certain problems. Hatshepsut was the wife of a
44:56king. She was the daughter of a king. Her daughter is the daughter of a female king. She's not the
45:04wife
45:04of a king unless it's decided that she will marry Tupmosis III, in which case Tupmosis III trumps her
45:12possible reign. So really, the possibility of Hatshepsut's daughter succeeding her mother seems
45:19slight at best. Hatshepsut is probably in her late 40s, maybe into her 50s. For any ancient Egyptian
45:29to make it into your 50s and to make it to 60 was almost unheard of. And her nephew is
45:35growing up to
45:36be a wonderful king. He's going to be a heck of a good king. So what happened to her? You
45:42know,
45:42if you're writing a lurid novel, Tupmosis kills her. But he doesn't have to. He's busy. He goes off and
45:48he
45:48fights all the wars. While healer priests of Egypt were often successful, in the case of Hatshepsut,
45:56the work worsened her condition. The balm given to the female pharaoh contained benzopyrene,
46:03a dangerous carcinogenic substance. While this balm gave relief from the itching and irritation of her
46:10skin condition, the balm itself is full of cancer-causing chemicals, which hastened her demise.
46:17She dies. She gets buried in the valley of the kings, in a proper king's tomb. She presumably
46:23gets a proper king's funeral.
46:28Tupmos III became sole pharaoh in 1458 BCE and is considered one of Egypt's militant pharaohs.
46:37Under his rule, Egypt expands to its furthest boundaries and becomes the most dominant nation of
46:43the Bronze Age world. Tupmos III, you know, really publicizes his feats on the battlefield and he
46:50really cashes in on this military image. He does boast about how far his military reaches and this is
46:59part of portraying yourself as a good New Kingdom pharaoh. The dynasty really started with that military
47:08reconquest of Lower Egypt with the so-called expulsion of the Hyksos. And so New Kingdom kings really do
47:15fall in line with that. Tupmos III is in some ways the most bombastic of those kings.
47:26But by 1390 BCE, it was time for a new generation of pharaohs.
47:33Amenhotep III, who is called Amenhotep the Magnificent or the Glorious Sun, becomes king as a child,
47:41probably about 11 years old. And you can imagine an 11-year-old who is pretty smart being given pretty
47:48much unlimited power. While Amenhotep III's grandfather, Thutmose III, was a great conqueror,
47:55the young pharaoh dedicated his life to building.
48:01He adds an awful lot to Karnak. You have to add things to Karnak. But he also builds the biggest
48:08mortuary temple ever built and probably one of the biggest religious establishments
48:13ever built all at one time anywhere. And it's a brilliant idea. It's a temple that's right on the
48:21edge of the cultivation. So that when the Nile floods, the flood waters will pour into the building
48:28and renew the king and the gods inside. Sitting at the front of this temple are two unbelievably big
48:37statues that we call the Colossae of Memnon. Each one was originally a single block of quartzite,
48:44which is an incredibly hard stone and doesn't come from anywhere near there.
48:51Amenhotep III ties his rule closely to the gods. Most notable of all is his favorite,
48:58the sun god Ra. So Amenhotep III, when he rises to power,
49:04we find him moving the office of pharaoh and his own authority closer this time to a different god.
49:11It's the god Ra. In other words, he's moving away, he's distancing his office from Amun. Now,
49:18why is this interesting and significant? Well, I think what it tells us to begin with is that he's
49:25probably concerned about the power of the priests of the temple of Amun and Thebes, that they have become
49:32very wealthy by this time through their long alliance with the pharaohs, that they are very powerful
49:38in influential society, like other temple complexes and other priestly groups. So here he's clearly trying
49:47to align himself instead with a very different group of priests and a god that allows him to build
49:56a different power base for his authority. Among Amenhotep Magnificent's theological explorations,
50:06was this question of what is the relationship of the king and the gods? What is the relationship of the
50:13king
50:13and the sun god? He calls himself the dazzling sun and he revives an older version of the sun.
50:21So rather than talking all the time about Ra, that hawk-headed form of the sun,
50:27he talks about the Aten. And the Aten is an almost abstract idea of god.
50:34Amenhotep III declared himself a god and celebrated himself as a form of the solar deity, the Aten.
50:41I think Amenhotep is signaling that he has been chosen. His authority is now grounded in the very sort of
50:52blood and sand and air of Egypt.
50:58But the age of this living god would be relatively short-lived. At around the 38th year of Amenhotep III's
51:05reign,
51:06he dies of unknown causes, still only in his late 40s.
51:12Amenhotep III's spiritual revolution is just a taste of things to come for Egypt and the pharaohs.
51:19As his young son Amenhotep IV takes the throne, no one in Egypt would have dreamed of the revolution
51:25that is about to sweep the country. A revolution that will challenge every institution in Egypt,
51:31especially that of the pharaoh. A revolution that will rock Egypt to the core of the nation's soul.
51:40Amenhotep IV Leo
51:43Amenhotep IV
51:49Amenhotep IV
51:55Amenhotep III
52:07Amenhotep IX
52:08You
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