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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
00:21to absolute power to their ultimate downfall. This is the rise and fall of the pharaohs.
00:53After the chaos of Akhenaten's religious revolution, Egypt is reeling.
01:00But stepping into this chaos is a family whose name will become almost synonymous with the
01:05word pharaoh, Ramses.
01:08This is a military family going back 400 years. So they are as military as you can get.
01:13The Ramses based their ruling on bringing Egypt back to full power. That was lacking
01:22for thousands of years.
01:25The family of Ramses will place military might and monumental construction at the center
01:31of their rule, creating a legacy that will echo through human history.
01:37It has been suggested that the Ramesside dynasty is possibly one of the greatest and most glorious
01:43in Egyptian history.
01:45But this is an age of titanic change, where great empires rise and fall.
01:53Can the Ramesside pharaohs guide Egypt through the coming storm, or will Egypt collapse?
02:11In the early 13th century, before the common era, the pharaoh Horemheb, who works to erase the legacy of Akhenaten
02:19and his family, has finally died.
02:23And as Horemheb did not have an heir of his own, he made one of his trusted generals, Parameses, his
02:31heir.
02:33This is a decision that will have great impact on the history of Egypt, and usher in a new golden
02:39age for the nation.
02:41Parameses was a proven military man, a very serious fellow, law and order candidate kind of guy.
02:50When Parameses attains the office of pharaoh, he takes a new name, Ramses I, and he is the progenitor of
02:57one of the greatest dynasties Egypt will ever see.
03:01He was a wonderful man, and he'd been the vizier, he knew the country, but I suspect one of the
03:07main reasons he was chosen was he came with a family.
03:10We've run out of 18th dynasty people, Horemheb has no children, and here's a man who has a son, a
03:16grown son, Seti I,
03:18who is himself a general, and a diplomat, a brilliant man, who is going to be his father's vizier.
03:27But Ramses I was an old man when he took the throne.
03:31He soon dies, and is replaced by his son and heir, Seti I.
03:36The fact that Seti has the name that he has, which means man of Set, is particularly fascinating,
03:45because Seti had gone through various iterations in the history of Egypt.
03:52Sometimes he is just problematic, sometimes he is positively demonic in his depictions and the tales that are told of
03:59him.
04:00There's an archaic version of Set, who's an ally of the gods.
04:03This version of Set protects Ra on his solar bark, and we think this might be the association that Seti
04:09is going for.
04:10Seti I is a great military commander.
04:13This is a serious pharaoh.
04:15No one's going to stand in his way.
04:18The Egyptian army that Seti I inherited was one of the most powerful fighting forces in the Bronze Age world.
04:27The Egyptian army in earlier periods, the old and middle kingdom, for the most part, wasn't a standing army.
04:35They were really kind of conscripted when you needed people to fight.
04:39That shifts in the new kingdom.
04:41We get a standing army for the first time.
04:44We also get a lot of new, shiny military tech for the first time appearing in Egypt.
04:51So things like the composite bow and the chariot come in.
04:55The chariotry is a branch of the army that in some ways is the most elite branch.
05:01That's where young princes get their military training before some of them will go on to become kings.
05:09There's also the navy and the infantry, so your regular kind of foot soldiers.
05:16The key to the Egyptian military's power was in its organization.
05:23These are soldiers that are soldiers as a career.
05:26There was infantry organized into several groups of 5,000 men each.
05:31And all of these divisions are associated with different gods like Amun and Ra.
05:36The main one was the division of Amun, and this is the one usually that the pharaoh headed.
05:42And then there would be ones that were named after other gods.
05:45When we talk about the gods they've chosen, for example, we can see that they are chosen because they had
05:50attributes they thought would be useful not only to protecting them, but also helping them in their military adventures.
05:56Beset, for example, was the god of chaos.
06:01In other words, that's about power, disruption.
06:04It's also military might.
06:06And Amun, here is a god who's not only directly associated with the pharaoh and the office of pharaoh, but
06:15he's also a god of creation as well.
06:18So each of these were powerful deities.
06:23In the new kingdom, the army also served another function, a means for social mobility.
06:31If you were of the lower class, right, just common people, the chances normally of you being able to rise
06:37to a high position are next to nothing.
06:40But if you have a great military career and you distinguish yourself in this career, this could lead to better
06:48careers even after you're out of the military.
06:51Look at Horemheb.
06:52He was a military man.
06:54He was a commoner by birth.
06:55He was a nobody when he was born.
06:58But he ended up becoming pharaoh because of his distinguished military career.
07:04The army under Seti I conducted many successful campaigns, reinstating Egypt's place among the Bronze Age world as a force
07:13to be reckoned with.
07:15But it's his projects at home which might be what he's best remembered for.
07:20At Seti's mortuary temple at Abydos, we're going to meet all the old gods.
07:26So Amun is going to be prominent because he's a family god, and there are beautiful scenes celebrating Osiris and
07:33Isis and that family, but also some of the more minor gods that we don't see as often, like Hicot,
07:41a lovely, nice frog princess who is the goddess of fertility.
07:45You'll be hard-pressed to name all the gods.
07:47You have to start looking for the names.
07:49Oh, that's Mahes, and oh, there's Nefertum.
07:53They're all there.
07:54He's put everybody back.
08:01But unlike Akhenaten, who set himself as the sole god, Seti I is clearly stating he is one of the
08:09many to be worshipped.
08:10As Seti's father was a commoner, he used a great deal of his resources to communicate to the people of
08:16Egypt that he was part of a long line of pharaohs, a nearly unbroken line of kingship that went all
08:24the way back to Nama,
08:25the first king of Egypt, the first king of Egypt, the first king of Egypt.
08:28He establishes a king list.
08:30This records all of the kings going back to the beginning of unification, but he also excludes a number of
08:38pharaohs.
08:38You will not find Akhenaten or Tutankhamun, and notably, you won't find Hatshepsut.
08:46Seti I is making a determined effort to retell Egypt's story in the way that he thinks it ought to
08:53be told.
08:54The fact that the Amarna kings, including Tutankhamun and Horomeb and I, are missing shouldn't be too surprising.
09:06Horomeb had begun the destruction of Akhenaten's name, but clearly it was all still too close.
09:14There were remnants of those recollections continuing, so Seti I ensures that all of the Amarna kings are removed from
09:25the king list.
09:28On this king's list, Seti I makes an important addition.
09:33His son, Prince Ramses II, is declared the next king.
09:38And when Ramses II ascends to the throne, he follows in his forebearer's footsteps as a military man.
09:47Very early in his reign, he went on his first military campaign, a limited affair aimed at quelling a rebellion
09:55in Nubia.
09:56But his greatest battles were yet to come.
10:00Egypt was controlling much of the Levant, except for northern Syria, which the Hittites had.
10:05But the Hittites wanted to make their move into Egyptian territory up there,
10:09and they were starting to make overtures to some of the Egyptian vassals.
10:13One of the big ones was the king of Kadesh.
10:16Earlier, Ramesside kings had struggled with Kadesh because Kadesh was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place,
10:22between these major powers in the Near East, between loyalty to Egypt and loyalty to the Hittites.
10:28And so they were kind of a thorn in the side of the Egyptians for a while, going back into
10:32the 18th dynasty.
10:33But in the time of Ramses II, this really became a problem.
10:37The king of Kadesh had been a vassal of Egypt.
10:40Now he's a vassal of the Hittites.
10:43Ramses II now sets the city in his sights.
10:48Ramses set out to take over Kadesh and punish them with a force of 20,000 men broken into four
10:55units.
10:56As the forces of Ramses II near Kadesh, they happen upon what they believe to be nomads.
11:03Ramses believes these men are possibly spies, so they capture them and question them.
11:08The shepherds, who are in fact spies, lie to the army.
11:13And they say, oh, the Hittites are miles and miles away. Don't worry, sir, you're perfectly safe here.
11:18And Ramses believes them because they've confessed this after being beaten.
11:23But they are good spies.
11:26Ramses takes this as encouragement and decides to move ahead on his own with his division, without the backing of
11:33the different regiments of his army.
11:36It turns out that the Hittite army were laying in wait for Ramses, ready to ambush his forces.
11:42Luckily, his ahead scouts spot these armies, and he manages to avoid the worst of the ambush.
11:48As Ramses and his forces fight to defend their position from the onslaught of the Hittite army, help finally arrives
11:55when the Patar division makes their way into battle.
11:58They're about to be annihilated.
12:01The only reason that Ramses was able to survive this attack is because sometime earlier, he had sent out his
12:08braves, you know, his elite force, to go scouting north to see if they could find the Hittites.
12:12They didn't find anything.
12:14But they happened to be returning from their mission just as Ramses was being attacked.
12:19March in there, drive away the chariots, and save the day.
12:24On the next day, there was an engagement between the Egyptian forces and the Hittite forces that resulted in a
12:30stalemate.
12:30Losses on both sides, but no one closer to winning.
12:34But Ramses ends up leaving without really getting what he wants.
12:38While the Battle of Kadesh is a stalemate, that does not stop Ramses II from using it as a propaganda
12:45coup.
12:47The Battle of Kadesh is interesting to me more for how Ramses used it for PR or branding than it
12:57is for the actual events themselves.
13:00The battle didn't really decide much.
13:03Ultimately, it wasn't a major victory.
13:05It wasn't really a victory at all for the Egyptians.
13:07But despite the fact that really this is a draw, Ramses takes that and sort of spins the narrative to
13:18really portray him as the ultimate hero, the warrior pharaoh par excellence.
13:25He essentially says that his troops basically failed him, and that he was caught unawares by the enemy in the
13:34midst of battle, and that he pretty much single-handedly turned the tide of battle.
13:41He recorded this on inscriptions in the temples of the Theban region, including the Temple of Amun-Ra and his
13:48own mortuary temple, the Ramesseum.
13:50And he depicts himself fighting off the entire force of assembled Hittites.
13:59So some of his forces were so terrified that they ran away.
14:02Other forces hadn't arrived yet.
14:04And he shows himself single-handedly sort of fighting off the entire Hittite army.
14:12Just to illustrate the power of propaganda, you know, people go to the temple, and they see on the wall
14:18there his recounting of this great,
14:20great battle, and how he won it.
14:22Well, what does the average Egyptian think?
14:25He was a great victor.
14:27He showed our superiority.
14:28To the people who see that, it's the truth.
14:33At the southern temple of Abu Simbel, Ramesses II creates a temple that honors his actions at Kadesh.
14:41But who is the audience for this temple, built far away from the Egyptian heartland?
14:48One of the most famous buildings in the world is the Temple of Abu Simbel.
14:52It's right on the ancient border of Egypt with Nubia.
14:55And it was built with a very specific purpose.
14:58Of course, it honors the gods and honors Ramesses.
15:01But mostly, it's telling any Nubian who is trying to come up and maybe trade in Egypt without paying his
15:07taxes,
15:08that that god up there, those giant gods, you're entering his country.
15:14There are these four enormous statues carved from the bare bedrock, showing his strength.
15:23I mean, the statues themselves, arguably the sculpting, isn't brilliant, but there is a monumentality to them.
15:30There is a raw power to them, which presents Ramesses II as a major global ruler.
15:40It's all part of this royal propaganda.
15:42By just showing the greatness of your monuments, you are showing the greatness of the person.
15:57Like Akhenaten before him, Ramesses II sought to create a new capital for Egypt that reflected his reign.
16:05But this capital would have a very different function than that built by the heretic pharaoh.
16:12Ramesses chose a new capital city for himself, Pyramesses.
16:16And it's in the western delta.
16:18And this is an area that Ramesses' family was probably from.
16:22So, you know, it's his home territory.
16:23But also, the site was chosen for a few other reasons.
16:27One being, this was a site for industry, especially associated with the military,
16:32the creation of weapons, making of metals and things like that.
16:36And by having the capital so close to the border, it's also projecting power into that region.
16:43Like, here's the capital of Egypt.
16:45Here's the center of our military-industrial complex.
16:48Right here, you know, where you're going to try to enter into our country.
16:51And maybe it was a deterrent as well.
16:56Pyramesses is basically on the site of Avarus.
16:58Now, Avarus, that Hyksos capital, had been where it was because it was a port.
17:04It was a port city where you could send ships off all around the Mediterranean.
17:08So Pyramesses is a new, improved version of Avarus.
17:14By moving the capital to somewhere that is not affiliated to a major priesthood or a major cult as such,
17:23it eliminated their power a bit.
17:27While Ramesses II is best known for his battles,
17:31it is a peace treaty that could be one of his longest-lasting legacies.
17:36One thing that often gets ignored with Ramesses II is how his personality seems to change.
17:44Around year 20 of his reign, he becomes something of a man of peace.
17:49Not only does he sign one of the world's first peace treaties with the Hittites and his traditional enemies,
17:55but he starts to become, of course, a prolific builder.
18:00We think the change in his personality coincides with two great losses.
18:06It's at this time that Ramesses, at year 20 of his reign, Ramesses loses his great wife, his great love.
18:12And that seems to have really affected him.
18:14He also loses his firstborn son.
18:17But I think it's really interesting because it humanizes this great historical figure
18:23that actually suffers a great deal of tragedy and loss.
18:26He lives a very long time, and he sees most of his children die.
18:29But I think that first death, the loss of his great love, really affects him, really changes him.
18:34And you see that change in his policies.
18:36And that, to me, is really fascinating.
18:40The treaty that was made between the Hittites and Ramesses at this point is unique right now anyway
18:48because it's the earliest extant treaty we have.
18:50And also we have both versions of it, right?
18:53We have the Egyptian version and the Hittite version.
18:56I think a lot of people, when they think back to the Bronze Age, are like,
18:59Well, you know, in those days they're probably very simple people.
19:02Their trees were probably like, Oh, let's not fight with each other anymore.
19:05But they're sophisticated with provisions in there for both sides.
19:09It shows how well developed their political system was.
19:12And they're not the primitive brutes that you might think lived during the Bronze Age.
19:18Ramses II reigns for 66 years, the second longest reign in Egyptian history.
19:24But what is the true legacy of the pharaoh whom history has dubbed Ramses the Great?
19:31Ramses was quite a character.
19:33He distinguished himself on the battlefield early on, even before becoming king.
19:38But he was an excellent propagandist.
19:41He knew how to present himself.
19:43We call him Ramses the Great, mainly because he told everybody he was great and they believed it.
19:49Ramses II not only built prolifically, but he also, shall we say, appropriated several statues and colossi in ancient Egypt
20:00as well.
20:01That's why Egyptologists give him the nickname the Great Carver, because he would carve his name into everyone else's statues.
20:07Ramses II was very, very concerned about his name enduring for eternity.
20:12If anything, history has proven that Ramses II truly did stand the test of time and his name endures.
20:18For me, I think that is what the ancient record wants us to believe him to be, but that doesn't
20:27necessarily mean that it's a very objective assessment of his reign.
20:33When Ramses II finally dies in 1213 BCE, it is time for his heirs to take over the seat of
20:41the pharaoh.
20:42But they would struggle to match the greatness of Ramses.
20:48Following the reign of Ramses II, we enter essentially a period of tremendous disorder.
20:54Part of it has to do with succession.
20:57It's a patrilineal society in which ideally kingship passes from father to son.
21:02And if there's no male heir in the royal family, often it becomes a kind of matrilineal link that provides
21:10legitimacy for whoever does come to the throne if that person is a male ruler.
21:15Ramses II was not only prolific with his monuments, he was prolific biologically.
21:23He had over 50 sons and over 50 daughters, so many children.
21:29In fact, there was a joke in later times when a usurper would try to take over the Egyptian throne.
21:34He'd say, I'm a son of Ramses.
21:36And the response was, who isn't?
21:39Ramses had all those sons.
21:41Ramses, many of his sons, died when they were adults.
21:47He survived his 13 oldest sons.
21:50One of his sons, Mermpeta, is his vizier towards the end.
21:54And when Ramses dies, Mermpeta, who is 60 years old by this point, he becomes king.
22:01He's already old, so he doesn't last, he actually lasts very long.
22:04But there's a princess by the name of Tawostret who tries to take over herself as pharaoh.
22:11And then others who are against all this try to appoint a man to be the pharaoh, and they choose
22:16a military fellow, Settnacht.
22:18And a civil war erupts, and Settnacht ends up taking power.
22:22But who was this new pharaoh, Settnacht?
22:27Settnacht is not of royal blood, but has connections to the royal family through the female line, and that gives
22:34him some form of legitimacy.
22:35What he does quite cleverly is to marry well, and he marries a woman named Tai Merenzis, who has direct
22:44ties to the dynasty.
22:45And this means that through marriage, he forms his own legitimate stake in the office, and that enables him to
22:53assume the office.
22:56And Settnacht has another thing that strengthens his claim to the throne of the pharaoh, an heir ready to lead.
23:04His son, Ramses III.
23:08Ramses III probably comes to power as a grown man.
23:11He's a general, he's a smart man, and he's very ambitious.
23:15He wants to be just like Ramses II.
23:19And he starts building big, and he builds a very fine tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and he
23:24builds a very beautiful temple, Medinat-Habu, which is still there, and which is in very good condition.
23:32Ramses III, from the outset, attempts to connect his rule to that of Ramses II, emulating the elder Ramses in
23:41style and function.
23:45And by all accounts, Ramses III was a very capable ruler.
23:55But after many years of peace, Ramses III and Egypt will face an unrelenting and mysterious foe that threatens the
24:04nation's very existence.
24:12In Ramses III's reign, we have all kinds of stories that have been traveling the crescent of the Mediterranean, of
24:20these great civilizations falling to this unknown outside interference, wiping out absolute villages, cities, and complete territories.
24:36If you're living, in these times, it's a period of panic.
24:41The Hittites have gone.
24:42The Mitanni have gone.
24:44Kadesh, your ancient enemies who managed to fight off several pharaohs, are gone without a trace.
24:52Who are these people taking out these great Bronze Age civilizations?
24:57And when will they come for Egypt?
25:00This mysterious army that brought destruction to the kingdoms of the Bronze Age would come to be known as the
25:07Sea Peoples.
25:09We don't really know directly who these Sea People were.
25:13They could have been the progenitors of the Phoenicians.
25:16They could have been from an area around Greece.
25:20They could have been anywhere along the north shore of the Mediterranean.
25:26It was a consortium of different people, and they saw it that way.
25:30They might have even spoken different languages, and who were traveling, in some cases, with women and ox carts and
25:36children and cattle,
25:38clearly intent on migration, hoping to find a place to settle.
25:43How did the Sea Peoples get their name?
25:45Well, in Egyptian inscriptions, they're called people who come from the lands of the sea,
25:49as part of this confederacy of some kind.
25:53But what drove these various groups from across the Mediterranean world to ravage the Bronze Age kingdoms?
26:03The exact cause of this is really, really hard to pin down.
26:07A lot of it does seem to be climate changes that are wreaking havoc with people's livelihoods.
26:13Now, from the Sea People's point of view, they're thinking of themselves as like,
26:17we're just people who need somewhere to live where we can survive.
26:20We had to leave our homeland because of a famine, and we need to survive.
26:25And desperate people will do desperate things.
26:27If we have to fight to get a piece of land so that my wife and children can live, you
26:34know, I'm going to do that.
26:35But these mysterious Sea Peoples have sacked all the great powers of the Bronze Age world,
26:41and they're coming for Egypt next.
26:44With the existential threat of the Sea Peoples at Egypt's doorstep,
26:49only the pharaoh can protect his people from utter destruction.
26:56The accounts, I mean, it's so mysterious.
27:01What we do know is that at some point, we have the arrival of essentially these marauding invaders,
27:07and they came not just from one direction, but two.
27:10They came from Palestine in the north.
27:12They also came from across the Nile and the delta.
27:16And so Ramses, he had to face two fronts.
27:19Not only was this significant as a moment, as a time when he could improve himself as a worthy military
27:26leader,
27:27that he could protect his people.
27:29Now, the battle fought on land there at the border of Egypt did not go extremely well for the Egyptians.
27:34They did win, but they suffered heavy casualties.
27:37The one that was fought on the Nile River, however, was much different.
27:41Those Sea Peoples were able to make their way into the Nile Delta,
27:46and we have another battle there.
27:49Now, these battles were not, you know, ship-to-ship battles.
27:53The ships were coming in, and those warriors leaving the ships and fighting on land.
27:59But Ramses III is an excellent warrior.
28:04We have iconography and propaganda that shows us that Ramses III was the greatest war general of the time.
28:13And we see this massive iconography of him, and he's got the longbow pulled back and aimed out,
28:23and he's huge, many, many times larger than life.
28:26And so we know that, yes, he was successful.
28:31With the Sea Peoples' defeat, Ramses III is hailed as a national hero.
28:38Egypt has survived, for now.
28:41Just as Ramses II had used the Battle of Kadesh to promote his own royal propaganda,
28:48Ramses III builds a mortuary temple,
28:51and inside, he covers it with scenes of his victory over the Sea Peoples.
28:56The battle scenes of Ramses III really portray violence very viscerally,
29:04not just in terms of the battle, but also what happens to these enemies as captives.
29:09We have a lot of very kind of grotesque, torturous poses that these individuals are bound in.
29:17I think the point is to convey the pain and the humiliation of the enemy.
29:23It's not new by any means, but it's really on display at Medina-Habu.
29:28After his victory, Ramses III reigns for decades,
29:32and is seen as one of Egypt's greatest pharaohs.
29:36Now it is time to celebrate.
29:38Even though Ramses III is celebrating a great victory over the Sea Peoples,
29:43the cost to the Ancient Bronze Age world has been extremely high.
29:47Because the world at this time is a mutually dependent world of trade,
29:54the attacks of the Sea People have left this world in disarray.
29:59The Egyptians no longer have anyone to trade with abroad.
30:02Most of the great civilizations have been sacked.
30:06This causes particular problems for Egypt.
30:08They have issues in their supply chains.
30:10They can't get certain things anymore without moving out themselves to try and find them.
30:15So Ramses III's victory is something of a hollow victory,
30:19in the sense that, yeah, he's the last man standing.
30:22But Egypt is now on its own.
30:27The climatic problems that resulted in the Sea Peoples leaving their homeland
30:31are also affecting Egypt.
30:33So the food supplies are scarce just in general.
30:36So Egypt is now on the brink of possible extermination if they don't do something.
30:43And here's Ramses III, right in this perilous position.
30:48It's do or die.
30:54It is during this time of trouble that the first work strike in history takes place.
31:00Daryl Medina and the population there had an important role to play in the royal cult,
31:06given the responsibility for constructing and decorating the royal tomb
31:09that ensured the pharaoh's successful postmortem transformation.
31:12Very important job.
31:14Also, they knew the location of all the tombs,
31:16which were very well provisioned with all kinds of rich goods.
31:20So they needed to be kept happy.
31:21But in the time of Ramses III, they did not receive their wages.
31:26Green itself was currency.
31:29This is how you paid labor at the time.
31:33Traditionally, the Nile was a reliable source of nutrients for the soil.
31:38The Nile was responsible for ensuring that every year there was an oversupply of grain produced.
31:46But under Ramses III, we have a sustained period of agricultural crisis
31:53in which the Nile has no longer become a reliable source of nutrients.
31:58The land was not producing as much grain.
32:00Their families are suffering because they don't have food.
32:04Do you think they want to keep working?
32:05No.
32:06So we have our first ever recorded labor strike in history
32:10where the tomb workers,
32:12the ones working on Ramses' great tomb monument, refused to work.
32:18They're challenging in particular the pharaoh's role
32:21as a protector of the people and provider.
32:25In terms of the strikers now for Ramses III,
32:29it's vitally important that they finish his tomb
32:34because if they don't, there is no afterlife for Ramses.
32:38He has no place of rest, no residence to move into the afterlife.
32:46Now, how do you think the pharaoh's going to handle this situation?
32:49Is he going to send in the troops and, you know,
32:52kill a bunch of the workers to show them who's the boss
32:54to get them to get back to work?
32:56Or is he going to settle with them?
32:58Well, what Ramses does is he makes a deal with the workers.
33:03They ultimately win this strike because they get their grain.
33:07Now, he has to obtain this grain from elsewhere,
33:09but he does, and he gives the workers the food that they demanded.
33:13And then work continues on the tomb.
33:17While Ramses III has defeated the Sea Peoples
33:20and made amends with his workers,
33:22another threat is looming, this one in his own home.
33:28We need to understand the harem.
33:29This is the home of his wives, of his concubines,
33:33of the slaves, female slaves, his daughters.
33:35But more importantly, because it's part of the domestic space,
33:39it's also a political institution.
33:42And these wives and concubines also have access to the pharaoh
33:47through their personal relations,
33:49and therefore that makes them also conduits of power.
33:54It's 1157.
33:55Ramses III is old.
33:58His power is beginning to fade.
34:00You can imagine that in that kind of setting,
34:02many of the women were trying to ensure
34:04that their children, their sons,
34:07were in line to inherit the kingship of Egypt.
34:10And so there are many competing rivals
34:12trying to get their sons ahead.
34:16It's a hotbed of potential insurrection
34:21within the king's home.
34:24One of these wives, a secondary wife,
34:27has a son by Ramses III,
34:29but he is not an heir to the throne.
34:32This wife, T, starts a plot.
34:35She hatches a conspiracy.
34:38This conspiracy spreads amongst all of the elites of the court,
34:43and she manages to pull in several courtiers.
34:45The conspiracy is to end the life of Ramses III
34:49and put her son, Pentoraret, onto the throne.
34:52This is a grab for power through assassination.
34:56The plotters also involve elements of Egypt's two most powerful pillars,
35:01the military and religion.
35:04But the old pharaoh still has many loyal to him.
35:09So many people were involved.
35:11Some of them were members of the innermost sanctum of the court,
35:15wives, concubines, as well as these ministers,
35:19people who the pharaoh had trusted
35:20and were central to administration.
35:24Unfortunately, any conspiracy of this scale
35:28eventually leaks.
35:29Someone talks.
35:31Word gets back to Ramses III.
35:34He has all of the conspirators arrested and put to trial.
35:39Many of them are sentenced to death for betraying the pharaoh,
35:43and the ones who are allowed to live
35:45are permanently mutilated.
35:47As a reminder, an example,
35:49not to go against the power of the pharaoh.
35:54The question is,
35:55how much of the conspiracy succeeded?
35:58Because Ramses died the same year
36:01that the trials were going on,
36:04and so there's been some question
36:05as to whether Ramses was actually killed in the conspiracy
36:09or whether he survived it
36:10and just happened to die shortly thereafter.
36:13But initially, when Ramsey's mummy was examined,
36:17there didn't seem to be any signs of violence done to him.
36:20So for a long time, Egyptologists said,
36:23well, it probably failed,
36:25and he just happened to die shortly thereafter.
36:27But more recent investigation of the mummy
36:31has revealed that he had bandages all around his neck.
36:35And then when they submitted the mummy to a CT scan,
36:39they found there was a huge gash in his throat,
36:43deep enough to have killed him.
36:46So it appears that Ramses actually was assassinated,
36:51and perhaps the conspiracy was a success.
36:54As Ramses III's body is laid in state,
36:58ancient Egypt's embalmers began the long process
37:01of turning the dead king's body
37:03into something that was designed to last forever, a mummy.
37:08Over many years,
37:10the development of mummification
37:12from bodies placed in the sand,
37:14which become naturally desiccated by the heat,
37:17to bodies being placed into little matte coffins,
37:21the Egyptians were very aware
37:24that the corruption of a body begins from within.
37:27The Egyptians very quickly realized
37:30if we want to retain the body,
37:32then we have to find another way to do it.
37:35The fluids are what facilitate decomposition.
37:38Shortly after death,
37:39gut bacteria break through the gut
37:41and disperse throughout the body
37:42and contribute to the decomposition of the body.
37:45If you can remove fluid from the body,
37:47then you can limit the degree of decomposition that happens.
37:51And this is still the technique that we use today
37:53in mortuary sciences derived directly from Egyptian practice.
37:57So using a blade of fine obsidian,
38:01this cut was made in the lower left-hand flank
38:05through which the internal organs are removed
38:08and wrapping with bandages to keep the body together
38:12and then beginning to pad the bandages in certain ways
38:15to give a feeling of life almost.
38:19We can look at the Ramses' mummifications today
38:22and we can pretty much see exactly what they looked like as people.
38:27With Ramses III dead,
38:30the social contract that had kept Egypt together
38:33for thousands of years is fraying.
38:36After the death of Ramses III,
38:39a lot of bad things happen.
38:41There are plagues.
38:42There are problems with Libyans coming in from the desert
38:46and trying to steal food.
38:48They're probably starving out on their desert.
38:51Their savannah is drying up.
38:52The Nubians are in revolt.
38:54They're not getting the gold from Nubia.
38:56They need that gold in order to pay troops and do things.
39:00Around 1070 BC,
39:02one of the high priests, Pianki,
39:03starts robbing the actual tombs of the kings.
39:06This is unheard of in the history of Egypt,
39:10that an official would start raiding the tombs of pharaohs.
39:14What we're seeing here is a breakdown of central authority.
39:19After Ramses III,
39:20none of the other Ramses are all that remarkable.
39:23There is a decline.
39:25We have a succession of pharaohs
39:27that get just weaker and weaker and weaker
39:29and less notable.
39:31And we get finally to Ramses XI.
39:34You think by naming yourself Ramses,
39:36people are going to think better of you,
39:38but this is near the very end now.
39:40And he's in a situation where
39:43there are other rivals to his authority.
39:47Egypt is in very bad shape.
39:50And the generals are taking over,
39:52men like Pionk and Harryhor.
39:54And they have the title high priest.
39:57So people always used to think
39:58that the priesthood had taken over.
40:00But these guys are generals
40:02who happen to have this other title.
40:05Pionk goes down into Sudan to fight the Nubians,
40:09doesn't come back.
40:10Harryhor establishes himself in Thebes
40:13and tries to hold the south of the country together.
40:16And sometimes puts his name in a cartouche
40:19and calls himself King Harryhor.
40:20And up in the north,
40:22there's poor King Ramses XI,
40:26who has really no power.
40:28I don't know if he has any kind of army.
40:29He kind of fades away.
40:31And we wonder,
40:32whatever happened to Ramses XI?
40:34He had a tomb,
40:36started in the Valley of the Kings,
40:38never occupied.
40:39Where was he buried?
40:41We don't know.
40:45Ramses XI is the end of a line of weak kings
40:49who followed other weak kings.
40:52The power in Egypt is now split up once again
40:55amongst the governors.
40:56We have a divided north and south,
40:59a divided upper and lower Egypt.
41:02For a while,
41:03we have a man called Smedes.
41:05That's what we call him.
41:05His name is Nesubh Nebjed.
41:07And he becomes king in the north.
41:10Maybe he married the daughter of Ramses XI.
41:13He seems to have some connection with the royal family.
41:17In the south, we've got Harryhor.
41:20But these two groups of soldiers,
41:24they marry each other's daughters.
41:25They exchange.
41:27My son is going to be your prime minister.
41:29Your son can come up here.
41:30So they have pretty close ties.
41:32They're not fighting.
41:33But they've definitely divided the country up
41:35into two pieces.
41:37Will Egypt ever have again
41:39a single pharaoh
41:41from a native Egyptian dynasty
41:43ruling the whole country?
41:46By the 10th century BCE,
41:49the Bronze Age has gone
41:51and replaced by a new age of uncertainty,
41:55an age of iron.
41:59Prior to this, they had bronze weaponry.
42:02But it's kind of difficult.
42:03You have to make bronze.
42:04It's an alloy.
42:05You have to make it.
42:06And you need tin in order to do that.
42:08And this comes from afar.
42:10But iron, you can find that everywhere.
42:13You just need the technology,
42:15the smelting process, to be able to make it.
42:17But once you know how to do that,
42:18once you can build smelting furnaces,
42:21you can produce weapons and tools in mass quantities.
42:26And you can get things done faster.
42:29Just with things like carving and chipping away stone
42:32or whatever,
42:33iron tools are more efficient.
42:35They work more quickly.
42:36And on the battlefield,
42:38when an iron sword hits a bronze sword,
42:41what do you think is going to happen?
42:43What's going to break first?
42:44That bronze sword is gone.
42:48This is a revolutionary technology
42:51that's going to propel not only Egypt,
42:54but all of its surrounding neighbors
42:56into a whole new way of doing things.
42:59This new age saw expanded horizons
43:03as Egypt would encounter new peoples
43:05from across the Mediterranean world and beyond.
43:09But for the Egyptians of the early iron age,
43:12its oldest foes pose the most serious threats
43:15or the best opportunities for survival.
43:19Third intermediate period is very complex.
43:22There's a rule of Egypt is broken up
43:25into lots of different regions.
43:27Some of the regions are headed up by Libyans
43:31who were originally mercenaries
43:33employed by the armies of Ramses II
43:37and Ramses III,
43:38who established communities and then gained autonomy.
43:41Others were probably people who came in to the delta
43:45and settled in or near these communities of mercenaries.
43:50And so there are different rulers, different leaders.
43:52And the interesting thing about them
43:54is that they don't really seem to have fought with each other.
43:57Unlike other intermediate periods
43:59in which there's political fragmentation,
44:01in the third intermediate period,
44:03these Libyans don't seem to have fought over territory much at all.
44:07We now enter what we call the Libyan period,
44:09which is when Libyan kings were ruling Egypt.
44:13And you can tell that they're Libyans by their names.
44:15They don't sound anything like Egyptian names, you know.
44:19Osorkon, you know, Takalot, and people like that.
44:22That does not sound like the Egyptian names you're used to.
44:25Powers outside Egypt are seeing
44:27the centralized rule of Pharaoh undermined.
44:32This is a time when Egypt is under direct threat
44:35from foreign powers,
44:37and they're getting ready to strike.
44:40To Egypt's south,
44:42another of their old foes looked on with hungry eyes.
44:46To the rulers of Nubian Kush,
44:49Egypt was ready for conquest.
44:52Kush is a Nubian kingdom
44:54situated to the south of Egypt in modern-day Sudan.
44:57The Kushites see themselves in this period of history
45:02as the guardians of Egyptian culture.
45:05But how can this be
45:06coming from these ancient rivals to the Egyptians?
45:09What seems to have happened
45:10is when Tukmose I invaded Kush
45:13many centuries ago in the 16th century BC,
45:17he took with him priests of Amun.
45:20These priests of Amun dedicated temples
45:22to their gods in Kush.
45:24And the Kushites began to worship those gods.
45:28In many ways,
45:29the Kushites in the Libyan period
45:31would be looking at what was happening
45:33to the north in Egypt
45:34and be completely disgusted.
45:36They're not worshipping the proper gods.
45:38They're not doing the proper services.
45:40They're not maintaining the state in the proper way.
45:44Whether they use this as an excuse
45:45or whether they really believe it,
45:47this is one of their motivations for going back north
45:51and try to reunify Egypt under their own rule
45:55and bring back the old ways.
45:59In 780 BC, the leader of the Kush kingdom,
46:03Alara called himself the son of Amun.
46:05This is one sign, one of many indications
46:08that the Nubian peoples had adopted Egyptian religion.
46:13And what they saw going on in the kingdom
46:15was to their mind a direct threat
46:17to their traditions as well
46:18because they saw it as their tradition.
46:21And Alara passed along this idea to his son
46:26that it was the responsibility of the Kush people,
46:28they were the true inheritors of Egyptian culture,
46:31to restore it.
46:32And it was his son, in fact.
46:34Cashta would take on the title
46:36that he was the king of Upper and Lower Egypt.
46:40And he would use his claim to this throne
46:42to go and reunite the two kingdoms of Egypt.
46:48Cashta invades Upper Egypt
46:50and conquers a large portion of it.
46:53And then his successor, Pia,
46:55goes further and ventures into Lower Egypt.
46:58He doesn't conquer the whole country,
47:00but he begins the ball rolling.
47:01And now the Nubian dynasty
47:04holds the majority of the country.
47:08Pia would rule Egypt for another 12 years.
47:12But after his conquest,
47:14he never sets foot in Egypt again,
47:16ruling the land from Kush.
47:19The Kushite king takes the name Thutmose III.
47:23In this sense, he is not only adopting an Egyptian name,
47:26but he's hearkening back to former great kings of Egypt.
47:32For Pia, the conquest is about protecting the old ways
47:36and restoring the god Amun.
47:39In Pia's mind, his mission is complete.
47:42But for the Libyan elite that still govern much of Egypt,
47:47this is only the beginning.
47:49What we're going to see moving forward is Kushite kings
47:51calling themselves the rightful rulers of Egypt,
47:54pushing further into Egypt and battling the Libyans,
47:58undermining the Libyan rule.
48:00And then with Shabaka,
48:02Egypt is finally united under a single pharaoh.
48:05And now we are in the 25th dynasty.
48:08But in the face of the Nubian Kushite control,
48:12a Libyan governor makes a deadly mistake.
48:16In 720 BCE, there's a fellow by the name of Bakanreneth
48:20in Lower Egypt, not Nubian,
48:22who proclaims himself king in Lower Egypt.
48:27Now, this is the area that Shabakos just conquered.
48:30But this Bakanreneth says, now he's the king.
48:33And he commissions the making of this cup.
48:36And on it, it celebrates his victory
48:39and his ascension to kingship.
48:41But also, it shows Nubians in a very unflattering light,
48:45insulting light.
48:47And when Shabako has knowledge of this,
48:51he wants to punish Bakanreneth.
48:53So, he makes war on him.
48:55He invades the north, defeats Bakanreneth's forces,
49:00burns Bakanreneth at the stake.
49:03And then he commissions a sacred scarab.
49:07And on this inscription, he says,
49:09I slew all those who rebelled against him
49:12in Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt and in all foreign lands.
49:21With Egypt in the hands of the Kushites,
49:24they work to restore the land to its past glory.
49:29The Nubians begin to be more Egyptian than the Egyptians.
49:32One of the first things they would start to do
49:34is to restore it to their understanding
49:38of the ancient kingdom.
49:39But the kingdom that they were drawn to,
49:42that they were trying to replicate,
49:44was in fact the old kingdom.
49:46And we see this in their monumental architecture,
49:50in their art, that when they're going back in that art
49:53to evoke that power, it is the art and the traditions
49:57and the mechanisms of authority of the old kingdom.
50:02Remember way back when in the old kingdom?
50:04The capital was Memphis.
50:06Now, in the new kingdom, Thebes,
50:07that's where it had been for years.
50:09But as part of this trend to want to bring back
50:13the old kingdom, the Nubian dynasty,
50:15they ruled from Memphis.
50:18They get the army reorganized.
50:20They get the temples reorganized.
50:21They start building things at Karnak again.
50:24And that's how you show you're a king,
50:26by building for the gods.
50:28The Kushite obsession with the old kingdom
50:31will even see the resurgence of one of the most iconic symbols
50:35of Egyptian civilization, the pyramids.
50:38If you go down to Nubia, to the site where Napata,
50:43this capital was, right near there is the royal burial ground
50:47of Kuru.
50:48And what do you find there?
50:50Pyramids.
50:51They're not as big and magnificent as the old kingdom pyramids,
50:54but they are in imitation of that style.
50:58While the Nubians tried to return Egypt to its former glory,
51:01it is ultimately left weakened after years of foreign rule.
51:06control of the land will be wrestled away from the Nubians by the Assyrians
51:10in the 7th century BCE and then by the mighty Persian Empire
51:15in the late 6th century BCE.
51:18Egyptian traditions fade away under Persian rule.
51:22The people yearn for the glories of the past, the age of the pharaohs.
51:28And in 332 BCE, a pharaoh will rise.
51:32A pharaoh that will change human history forever.
51:58To be continued...
52:01To be continued...
52:03To be continued...
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