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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 to
00:22absolute power to their ultimate downfall. This is the rise and fall of the pharaohs.
00:56It is the fourth millennia before Christ.
01:00For generations, the lands we know as Egypt have been divided. But now they are united
01:06under one king, the most powerful ruler on earth, the pharaoh of Egypt.
01:12There is a strict hierarchy in ancient Egypt, and the pharaoh is at the top.
01:47The command that comes forth from the pharaoh's mouth is like a command from on high. You
01:51do it because a god is ordering you to do it.
01:55But to live under the pharaoh's rule is not easy.
01:58The pharaoh told you what to do, how to do it, when to do it. They were totalitarian.
02:07And they do exactly what other totalitarian rulers would do in the millennia to come.
02:13During the old kingdom, there is no opportunity for any local elite to go against the king's power.
02:21The king is absolute. He is completely monolithic.
02:26In order to keep and maintain power, the pharaoh had several avenues at his disposal.
02:31There is religious and political propaganda that all governments have.
02:35And in Egypt there was repression as well, quite brutal at times.
02:39Building of monuments also was a way of sending out this message about who you are and why you should
02:45be listened to.
02:45You've got the military which was used to make sure that people stay in line.
02:50The government had control of everything, even the economy.
02:53But how did the pharaohs of Egypt rise to prominence?
02:57How did they keep their power?
02:59What happened if this power was challenged?
03:02And why, 5,000 years later, are we still fascinated by their stories?
03:13The story of the pharaohs begins in Egypt's prehistory, a time when the Sahara Desert was a fertile pasture.
03:22At the beginning of Egyptian history, say, 6,000, 7,000 years ago, things were a little different.
03:29There was more rain, and areas that now are plain desert were savannah.
03:37In the early phases of agriculture in Egypt, the Neolithic period, Egypt had a far more diverse flora and fauna,
03:44animals and plant life.
03:47We had a lot of date trees and a lot of different fruits and vegetables that were just growing naturally.
03:56Of course you have the Nile, there was lots of fish available, lots of aquatic animals, turtles, even crocodiles.
04:04All of these things that you could benefit as a food source.
04:08This was a period where hunter-gatherers could exist in Egypt without being dependent on the Nile.
04:16But this way of life is coming to an end.
04:19We have these periods of inundation where it rains and rains and rains, and a lot of plant life dies
04:26off due to being waterlogged.
04:28And then we see these periods of intense heat, and so most plant life is killed off.
04:34And there were many wild animals that subsisted on the grass life there, and as the environment became more arid,
04:42those animals moved farther south into Africa, and they became less prevalent in the Egyptian environment.
04:49As the sand swallows up more and more of the savannah, the peoples of Stone Age Egypt congregate closer and
04:56closer to the waters of the river Nile.
04:59Famously, the Greek writer Herodotus is reported to have said that Egypt was the gift of the Nile.
05:06And it's absolutely true. Egypt is entirely dependent upon the Nile.
05:12Only those areas irrigated by the Nile can continue to grow crops, can continue to support life from the point
05:20of view of settlements.
05:22What we see, then, is a concentration of populations all the way along the Nile.
05:29And without the Nile, Egypt would be just one more piece of the Sahara.
05:35At over 6,000 kilometers long, the Nile is the longest river in the world.
05:41The Nile runs from south to north through the present-day nations of Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.
05:49The source of the Nile are the annual heavy rains from the Ethiopian highlands that flow into a number of
05:55tributaries.
05:58Every year, these heavy annual rains bring floodwaters that enrich the Nile's waters with mineral deposits,
06:05which makes its floodplains very rich for agriculture.
06:09If you live within several kilometers or miles of the banks of the Nile, you were set for life.
06:18You could live off of the river and its sustenance.
06:21This ability to harness the Nile in ancient Egypt through irrigation systems, to create fields of wheat and barley,
06:30meant that they could build a much larger population, build an army, and to expand their resources.
06:38It helped them become a great empire.
06:42You've got two parts of the Nile.
06:44The Nile Valley, where the Nile is hemmed in by cliffs on both sides.
06:48And then you've got the delta north, which is always going to be green.
06:52That's where you keep your cattle, because the cattle can always live up there.
06:57Downriver is always the direction in which the river flows.
07:01And in the case of the Nile, when you look at a map of Africa, to us that looks like
07:09the top of the continent.
07:10So we would think that would be upper, but that's actually lower, because the river flows out into the Mediterranean.
07:16And the upper is where the river begins.
07:19So that's how we decipher upper and lower Egypt.
07:24And that's how the people also deciphered that, is that in upper Egypt is where the water source began,
07:31and then lower Egypt was where the water exited into the Mediterranean.
07:38But also, the Nile River split the country in half, so you have an east and west of Egypt.
07:43And generally speaking, most of the cities are on the east bank of the Nile,
07:47whereas all the burial locations are on the west bank of the Nile.
07:50That's because they think of the west as where people go when they die.
07:54So you're looking towards the west, where the sun goes down at night, that's where you go when you die.
08:00And so there's this interesting dichotomy there.
08:02Then there's the dichotomy of the way they describe the land, the black land and the red land.
08:09Kemet, a lot of people know this as a name for Egypt.
08:11It refers to the inhabited area of Egypt, where the agriculture is being performed, right near the river.
08:17The land was dark, the fertile dark soil, so they call it the black land.
08:22But you go out further, you go to the red land, the desert, where nothing is grown, where people don't
08:27live.
08:28And so they have that interesting dichotomy as well.
08:32While the waters of the Nile give life, they can also destroy.
08:37They're largely dependent upon the Nile floods, the inundation, which happened in July each year, providing it happened.
08:46If it didn't happen, they were in serious difficulties and there would be famine.
08:50It doesn't rain that much in Egypt.
08:53So you have to rely on the flooding of the Nile.
08:58It wets the land down, now you can plant, but it was enough.
09:02It was enough to make the food grow, and then they would do it all again the next year.
09:08The abundance of food brought Egypt its first glimmers of civilization.
09:12They were able to create a situation in which they could really produce a surplus, especially grain.
09:19So that provided more security for the population that they would have enough to eat from year to year.
09:25And also, perhaps, allowed for some people to devote time instead of to their subsistence, but instead to perfecting certain
09:35craft.
09:35So we see craft specialization, like becoming an expert in making stone tools, or becoming an expert in making pottery.
09:43The more organized due to agriculture, the more you are able to build a class society.
09:49The more you are able to offer a division of labor between the various community members.
09:55There are lots of different small settlements around Egypt in this period, and many of their chiefdoms will be in
10:02competition with each other over resources.
10:05So even though agriculture is happening, we still have bands of raiding people, for instance.
10:10We would start to see settlements come together to pull their resources together.
10:16And when that happens, of course, these chieftains have to figure out what the hierarchy is.
10:25This abundance also allowed these early Egyptian rulers to raise armies.
10:31Armies these rulers will use to grab even more fertile territory.
10:35It seems like the bigger that cultures grow, the more people you have living there, the more people start thinking,
10:42this is mine, this belongs to me, this is my property.
10:45And before you know it, you've got the haves and you've got the have-nots.
10:50Before unification of Aper and Lower Egypt, these entities, they existed in isolation.
10:55And one would say they were at constant state of war.
11:01This animosity came from the varying resources that existed at the time.
11:06The south was far less fertile than the north, and that meant that there were resources in the north that
11:13didn't exist in the south and vice versa.
11:15And obviously the intention would be to take over it or to exploit rather than to unify.
11:21These two political entities are locked in war.
11:25The prize? Control of all of the Nile Valley.
11:32And in the fourth millennia before the Common Era, one man will unite this valley to become the first pharaoh
11:39of Egypt.
11:41Nama.
11:43Much of what is known about Nama comes from the Nama palette, a 63 cm tall ornate stone.
11:51Nama is a monolithic figure. He imposes himself at the very beginning of Egyptian history with the Nama palette.
12:01This wonderful schist, cosmetic palette which was used by priests to grind up the makeup for the eyes of the
12:09gods.
12:10We see Nama depicted on both sides of the palette as king of both Upper and Lower Egypt.
12:18Whether or not that's the case, whether or not there were previous kings that did this, whether or not unification
12:23actually happened in kind of one military push or whether it was this slow, complicated process, that we're still trying
12:31to piece together.
12:32There's so much that's unknown about this period in history.
12:36So any insight like this is really, really precious.
12:39But what we can say is even from this really, really early object, we're talking roughly 3000 BCE, you start
12:49to see the elements that will be kind of standard, par for the course, for Egyptian kings right through Egyptian
12:58history.
13:00And a key to Nama's success was the Nile.
13:04A lot of the warfare was done by going behind the Nile.
13:09If you arrive on the Nile in your boats, people say, hey, they're coming, they've got time to prepare.
13:15But if you sneak up behind them by coming down the cliff, that's how you can attack a city and
13:21take it.
13:23Nama succeeds in bringing peace to the whole country by using tactics that would certainly be frowned upon today.
13:32It would have been very nasty.
13:34Everybody is man to man.
13:36You've got clubs, mostly wooden.
13:38Some have stone.
13:39You've got some maces.
13:40You've got spears.
13:42And these battles are very small, with 50 guys on the field, maybe 100.
13:47So I think if you think more soccer riot and less Cecil B. DeMille, you've got a better idea of
13:54what those wars were like.
13:57If it weren't for the excessive use of military power by King Nama in the north of Egypt, the unification
14:05might not have ever happened.
14:16Nama would be the first pharaoh forging a system of government that is central to Egypt's national identity.
14:26Without the king in charge, Egypt would not exist.
14:30Egypt was there to support the king, and the king was there to protect Egypt.
14:35The office of the pharaoh, as it evolved over time, had multiple different functions that were considered central to good
14:44governance.
14:45One was to be the leader of the military.
14:49The other was as high priest to a complex set of temple systems within the kingdom.
14:56The third was as a good administrator.
15:00Someone who tended to the daily needs of his people in terms of the provision of food, but also peace.
15:08The office of the pharaohs, not built overnight, is a throne that stands on many pillars.
15:15And the first pillar is military might.
15:19Egypt, under the pharaoh, is a place of great violence.
15:26If you moved against the pharaoh, they made it very clear in most of their statecraft that you would be
15:33crushed.
15:33We can see this as early as the Nama pallet, for instance, where Nama is standing above registers of conquered
15:40people.
15:41And he's in this famous smiting pose, holding a mace very high.
15:45The message is very clear.
15:47If you move against the pharaoh, you're going to be crushed by pharaoh.
15:51That you had to fear their power so that you did not rebel against them.
15:56Because rebellion was ever-present source of danger to pharaonic power.
16:03Because the king is in charge of the priesthood, and the priesthood guides the people on behalf of the king.
16:10So the king is telling the priesthood, this is what I've done, this is what I can continue to do.
16:16These are the ways in which I'm holding back the forces of chaos.
16:20So the office of king, the office of pharaoh, is vitally important to your own continued existence.
16:29And in so doing, the king places himself squarely at the center of Egyptian life and culture.
16:38While the army is the first pillar of pharaonic power, Nama does not rule by brute force alone.
16:45The Nama palette was a piece of propaganda.
16:49Probably put up in a temple or some holy place for priests to benefit from.
16:55But it has a story on it. It's a historical document.
16:59You might just say, oh, it's just art. It's not just art.
17:03It has a message. And you can read it, actually, sort of like a graphic novel.
17:08There are panels. And if you follow the panels in order, you get a story.
17:12The Nama palette is one of the first documents to show the use of hieroglyphs to convey a message.
17:17So we know that the language existed, but also a script or some early form of hieroglyphic script existed there.
17:23We can see several examples of hieroglyphs used to depict the king and the status of the king.
17:29It's also the first place we see the use of a kind of serach or pre-cartouche type of symbol
17:37to denote the position of the king and the name of the king as separate from the other people displayed
17:44on the palette.
17:45He's larger than everybody else in the palette. You notice that? Like, he's big.
17:50You can see this in later Egyptian symbology as well. The king's always bigger than everybody else.
17:56So it's implying this sort of superhuman quality to him.
18:00We don't know yet if in these early days he was already being worshipped as a god, but you can
18:04see the pieces started to be put into place.
18:09Nama is keen to use art and symbols to legitimise his rule.
18:14And one of the most powerful of these symbols are the crowns of Egypt.
18:19Everything that continues with Egyptian art for the next 3,000 years is in some form displayed by the Nama
18:30palette.
18:32We see the king depicted wearing two very different crowns, the white crown of Upper Egypt, the red crown of
18:38Lower Egypt.
18:39But it's a composite crown. On the one hand, we've got the hedget, which is the white crown.
18:44This represents Southern Egypt or Upper Egypt.
18:47We also have the red crown, desheret, which represents Lower Egypt, which turns it into something called the pshent.
18:54This crown represents Upper and Lower Egypt combined into one powerful force.
19:01He is the all-seeing and all-controlling pharaoh.
19:08The crown is just one of the symbolic innovations the pharaohs of Egypt would create.
19:15He has the shepherd's crook with which he guides his people, being a good and loyal shepherd.
19:22But he also holds the flail, and the flail is a scourge.
19:27It's there as a threat to those who would be against his rule.
19:31It also shows that he has power that he can turn against Egypt's enemies.
19:38These symbols of authority are something that would be seen repetitively used throughout pharaonic history,
19:45but also incorporated into later civilizations and used as symbols of power and authority for them.
19:53The military art and symbolism are powerful pillars that legitimize the pharaoh's rule.
20:00But the most powerful of these pillars of legitimization is the state religion.
20:06What's so fascinating about ancient Egypt is this rich religious culture.
20:11It's just polytheistic. It's made up of many, many gods.
20:15It's always hard to understand what the importance of religion is to the population as a whole.
20:20We have no temples from this period.
20:22We think that the temples of this period were made of wicker work.
20:27So there are temporary structures, but from the very beginning you start getting amulets.
20:33You start getting things that will protect you.
20:35And you find amulets in the graves of the meanest, poorest people and in the graves of the rich.
20:41So from the very, very beginning people are believing in the gods and that the gods can help them.
20:49The ancient Egyptians believed that it was the pharaoh who kept the fine balance between chaos and the secret order
20:56of the universe, called Ma'at.
20:59One of the most important roles of the pharaoh was to uphold Ma'at.
21:06What this word translates into is really hard to pin down.
21:11There's not really an exact English translation.
21:14You might see it as order or truth or justice.
21:17But really what it is is order on a cosmic scale.
21:20It's the correct working of the universe.
21:23It's the way things are supposed to be.
21:25Everything from legal justice to, you know, being a nice person.
21:30And so it's the king's responsibility to maintain this.
21:33And one of the ways you can maintain this is to put down any kind of military threat that might
21:40affect Egypt.
21:42They believed that if you didn't do your Ma'at, this would lead to chaos.
21:47Bad things would start to happen naturally, not just with people.
21:51But nature would go into disorder.
21:56And it was the pharaoh's rituals and later the priest's rituals that helped maintain Ma'at so that the temples
22:02of Egypt almost become like the power stations creating Ma'at and driving this force into the universe on behalf
22:10of the pharaoh, importantly.
22:11One of the great benefits of linking yourself to divinity is that, of course, that means that anyone going against
22:20you is essentially challenging the existing order.
22:24They are, for all intents and purposes, heretics.
22:29While pharaoh's relationship with Ma'at was important, the god most connected to the office of the pharaoh is the
22:36falcon-headed god Horus.
22:37Horus.
22:39The king is more than just a statesman, more than just a priest.
22:44He is essentially an embodiment of the living god Horus.
22:50For Egyptian religion, Horus is the ruler of Egypt, and the king is his avatar, I suppose.
23:00Horus is an important metaphor because it combines that idea of the sky god.
23:05He is also the warrior god.
23:08But at the same time, he is a god.
23:10So, Norma is staying here that he is divine support for his rule.
23:20The myth of Horus is central to the Egyptian religion and the institution of the pharaoh.
23:27Horus, of course, is the son of Osiris, and Osiris is the god of the dead.
23:34He is murdered by his brother Set, who covets the throne of Egypt.
23:39So, he has to dispose of his brother somehow.
23:44He traps him in a box, throws the box into the Nile, then eventually chops the box into pieces.
23:51And in the process of doing all of this, Osiris' wife Isis, she is known as Isis' great of magic.
23:59She gathers the pieces together, she imbues them with a form of life sufficient for him to become the god
24:06of the dead.
24:06But in so doing, he also gives his wife a son, and that is Horus.
24:12And the villainous Set is horrified because he naturally assumed that he would assume the throne.
24:18He can no longer do so.
24:20He and Horus battle for, we are told, 80 years.
24:24This huge magical battle between two deities.
24:28This fight ends with a court case where Horus is represented by the god Tehuti, Thoth, who is seen as
24:35the first lawyer.
24:37And Set decides to represent himself.
24:39And, of course, that arrogance, if you will, of him representing himself becomes his undoing.
24:45Horus is crowned the king of Egypt in a court representing the kind of orderliness and legality of the Egyptian
24:53mythological system, which is reflected in their legal system.
25:00It's always an interesting question to figure out how divine the Egyptian king is.
25:05And is he Horus? Is he an avatar of Horus? What exactly is the relationship?
25:11And I don't think we quite know.
25:13We know he is like Horus when he's fighting in a battle.
25:17We know he is just like Horus.
25:20But he is not the same being as Horus.
25:22Horus is not inhabiting him.
25:24He's not a manifestation of Horus.
25:26And yet, there's this tremendously close connection.
25:29He is, in some ways, I guess, manifesting Horus' power.
25:34If you look at Horus on the Narmair Palette, Horus has one human hand and one talon.
25:40And in the human hand, he has a rope.
25:43And the rope goes through a ring in the nose of an enemy.
25:46And the enemy's body is a piece of land.
25:49So you can sort of read the hieroglyph.
25:52Horus, the king, is controlling the people of the land.
25:58Throughout Egypt, from the northern marshlands to the southern Nile Valley,
26:03all important gods are integrated into a religious system with the pharaoh as a living god at its core.
26:12Narmair dies in the early third millennium before the Common Era,
26:16and his successors continue to rule in the pharaonic model he creates.
26:23Approximately 400 years after Narmair, a new dynasty of pharaohs rises
26:29and finds new and innovative ways to express their power.
26:33What we have here is a concentration of power, a centralization of control of the Egyptian labor force in Egypt,
26:42and a surplus of grain controlled by a pharaoh.
26:46The farmers themselves didn't have to work for several weeks to several months of the year.
26:51We now see a surplus workforce that the pharaoh can direct into massive building projects.
26:58This is where we start to see massive tomb building of early dynastic Egypt.
27:04These buildings are erected to reinforce the rule of the pharaoh,
27:08and some of the most important of these buildings are the royal tombs.
27:13The first royal tombs are simple mustabas,
27:17large rectangular buildings made of mud, brick or stone.
27:21So from the very beginning the Egyptians are trying to build to last.
27:26And gradually they start adding to the mud brick, which is the usual construction material,
27:32and perfectly fine in a country that doesn't rain,
27:35they start adding bits of stone.
27:37And maybe at the beginning the stone is just for prestige.
27:41You know, a stone floor over here, a stone portcullis to block the door.
27:45But by all this building and all this experimentation with bits and pieces of stone,
27:52and bigger and bigger bits and pieces of stone,
27:54they gradually build up the ability to use stone and to understand it.
28:00They also make an awful lot of beautiful vessels of stone.
28:04They're learning the properties of those stones, they're learning how strong is this,
28:09what can you put on this, what kind of weight will it hold, is this waterproof.
28:12They're learning all that geology.
28:17Egypt and its pharaohs are poised to enter an architectural golden age unparalleled in human history.
28:23The individual most responsible for this development was not the pharaoh himself,
28:28but rather his chief advisor, Imhotep.
28:31Imhotep was the grand governor for King Joseph of the Third Dynasty of Egypt.
28:39What marks Imhotep out from all of the other governors is his incredible mind for creation.
28:47He kind of looks at Mastaba's and goes,
28:49well, what if we put another one on top of that,
28:52and another one on top of that, and another one on top of that,
28:55and you kind of keep going until you have what we call the step pyramid.
29:00Six steps of Mastaba over your tomb, and build it out so it's huge.
29:05Now, no one is going to get to the tomb of King Joseph,
29:09and he can secure eternity knowing that he'll be safe in his sarcophagus
29:13with all of his treasure for the rest of time.
29:15And that's thanks to Imhotep's great ideas.
29:24People attribute to him the art of building in stone,
29:27and they say he was the first man who really went at stone,
29:31instead of using it for a little bit here and a little bit there,
29:34built a whole monument out of stone.
29:37If you build something out of stone, it's going to last,
29:40and it's going to last through the wind and the storm,
29:43even fire isn't going to hurt it.
29:45This is a complete game changer.
29:47What we're seeing here is Pharaoh attempting to secure eternity
29:53through the use of different technology,
29:56and Imhotep is crucial in this process.
29:59To construct something as large and complex as the step pyramid of Djoser,
30:04Imhotep found it necessary to comprehensively reorganize
30:07Egypt's government and administration.
30:10This paves the way for the creation of the office of Vizier,
30:14the Pharaoh's chief political officer.
30:17As Vizier, Imhotep becomes the Pharaoh's primary aide,
30:21tasked with the responsibility of actualizing the Pharaoh's directives in all things.
30:27You can't manage a territory of that size without that kind of organization.
30:33And what that allows you to do, in turn, is to pull your labor resources from across the country to
30:42move goods and people.
30:45As you have a civilization that's growing, you're going to have more specialization.
30:50And this becomes important to the Pharaohs.
30:53They need people who are really good at what they do.
30:55And then you get to employ them on the king's projects.
30:59So you might have the architects themselves, they just do all the designing.
31:03But then you have all the people that go into this project, all doing separate tasks.
31:08From the stonemasons, all the way to the people carving reliefs into the sides of the stones.
31:17Think about the monumental task of organizing all of that.
31:21Now, this might be a bit of a chicken or the egg thing.
31:24Is this administration just about pyramids and is that why we have this administration?
31:29Or, more likely, does that improvement in bureaucracy lead to the ability to create things like these massive building projects?
31:42The pyramids serve many purposes.
31:45The first is to serve as the vessel of the Pharaoh's rebirth in the afterlife.
31:50Some people have called pyramids resurrection machines.
31:54It's a nice phrase.
31:55Certainly, once you're into the pyramid, the pyramid texts are all these prayers and rituals for getting the king safely
32:02into his burial chamber and enabling him, once we've buried him, to come out again.
32:08And to come out into the world safely.
32:11So, this is protecting the king's spirit.
32:15Remember, the king was almost a god while he was alive.
32:19And he protected us and ensured Maat was done in Egypt.
32:23So, now we are ensuring that he is safe in the next life and maybe he can still look after
32:28us.
32:30But the pyramids are more than just royal tombs.
32:34These massive building projects transform the relationship between the Pharaoh and his people.
32:4165 meters tall, which is the height of the Step Pyramid, might not seem like that much today.
32:46But we have to remember the context in which this thing was built.
32:5065 meters is huge for the ancient world.
32:5365 meters is probably taller than anything that the people around this area had ever seen before.
33:01So, this really is a huge statement.
33:05People spend their whole lives building these objects and then can see them constantly on the horizon.
33:13They are a very tangible element of the king's power that there's no escape from.
33:21What these pyramids are setting up is a way for the king not only to be worshipped during his life,
33:27but also after he's gone.
33:29And you go and you stand before this gigantic 65 meter tall step pyramid made of stone.
33:39Think about the awe of just being there.
33:42And then you get to thinking, we did this.
33:45No one else in the world has done this. This is ours.
33:48We put it together.
33:50It would have, of course, made you feel cultural pride, but also great appreciation for the king who built it,
33:56making you want to go there to worship him, and then it just spurs you on to do better the
34:02next time.
34:06As the monumental Third Dynasty of the Old Kingdom reaches its conclusion, a powerful new figure emerges.
34:14In around 2600 BCE, Sneferu would be crowned Pharaoh of Egypt, ushering in the Fourth Dynasty.
34:22By this time, the pharaoh has achieved nearly absolute control over Egypt.
34:28And the stage is set for one of the greatest builders Egypt will ever see.
34:34One of the fun things to examine is the evolution of pyramid design, how they go from the mastaba up
34:41to the Great Pyramid.
34:42And you can see sort of this growth and development.
34:47Sneferu, of course, is experimenting.
34:49And it took him several tries.
34:51Built three pyramids.
34:53Two of them didn't work out so great.
34:55You know, they've got mistakes in them.
34:56The bent pyramid, for example.
34:58It didn't come out how he wanted.
35:00All of this trial and error beforehand had to be done.
35:04All the mistakes had to be rectified to figure out, like, how can we do it better than the last
35:09time in order to get a great pyramid.
35:13Sneferu takes a title, necher nefer, the good god.
35:17And from then on, that's going to be the title of the living king.
35:21Now, necheru means divine.
35:24Neferu is one of those words that you can't translate.
35:27We usually translate it as beautiful.
35:29It can mean perfect.
35:31It can mean good.
35:33It can mean suitable.
35:34It has all that range of meanings.
35:36So when he says he is the necher nefer, he's the good god, the beautiful god, the perfect god.
35:43He's the god we got right now.
35:45He's the one who is suitable for us now.
35:49We're starting a new era.
35:51We're not in an experimental stage anymore.
35:54Everything is set.
35:55Everything is perfect.
36:04But the perfect god was still awaiting his perfect pyramid.
36:08They had developed, through trial and error, some rules of thumb about the different proportions that had to be used
36:14in order to carry the weight of the central part of the pyramid and how to alleviate that.
36:19Seneferu starts again.
36:21He then attempts to build a pyramid at Maidum.
36:24This pyramid is a step pyramid he decides to fill in the steps on to make a smooth pyramid.
36:30Unfortunately, they don't have the angles right.
36:33And this pyramid also collapses.
36:36Seneferu and his architects work tirelessly to figure out the correct angle and the correct size for a pyramid.
36:42And finally, finally, they land on the correct dimensions and the correct angle and the correct materials for the pyramid.
36:51They did this with the so-called Red Pyramid.
36:54And this is the first true pyramid in ancient Egypt.
36:57This is a masterpiece of engineering for its time.
37:01And all the more remarkable, because by this point Seneferu has built multiple pyramids just trying to get this right.
37:11At 104 metres tall, the Red Pyramid is taller than Big Ben.
37:17But the pyramid age is just getting started, and what comes next will ignite the imagination of the world for
37:24millennia to come.
37:26The Red Pyramid is the technological jump that was needed between the Step Pyramid and what would come to be
37:32known as the Great Pyramid built by Seneferu's son.
37:36And we see the development of what we would describe as the pyramid proper, culminating in the Great Pyramid of
37:43Khufu at Giza, the vast monument to one man.
37:49By the time you get to the Great Pyramid, you've got probably three generations of engineers and architects who have
37:57been thinking about this all along.
38:00How can we do that better? That didn't work. What will work better than that?
38:05What's the best stone for this? What's the best way to put in the burial chamber?
38:09So they've had a hundred years of practice. That's why Khufu's pyramid is just about perfect.
38:18The blocks that were used to construct the pyramids on the Giza Plateau were huge in comparison to those used
38:24for the Third Dynasty pyramids.
38:26Each one on the Giza pyramids weighed up to two tons.
38:31The Great Pyramid is composed of 2.3 million stones and spread over 5.3 hectares.
38:40This is the tallest building on Earth for thousands of years.
38:46The Great Pyramid takes about 20 years to build. In order to accomplish this, a stone block had to be
38:54set every two minutes.
38:57It held the record as the tallest man-made structure for about 4,000 years, until the spire of Lincoln
39:04Cathedral in England was erected.
39:05If you can imagine the Great Pyramid, it would have been completely white on the outside with the plaster, and
39:17then it had a gold top on it.
39:19So it would have gleamed across hundreds of miles of flat area. You would have noticed that.
39:28There's an old Arabic proverb, man fears time, but time fears the pyramids.
39:35And I think what it's trying to say is that they've lasted for so many thousands of years that time
39:43is afraid that maybe the pyramids will outlast it.
39:48But it's emphasizing the eternity of the pyramids, that they're still there after all this time, and they will still
39:55be there after we're gone.
39:57The grandeur of the pyramids at Giza has captivated humanity for millennia.
40:03That was precisely their intended purpose.
40:06There's another aspect of pyramids that we think about more nowadays, pyramids as propaganda.
40:12Because if you can build a pyramid, you are obviously the toughest, most powerful person in the world, and pretty
40:20close to being a god.
40:24People often talk about slaves having built the pyramid, and we know that that's not the case.
40:29We have the records of the workers.
40:30In fact, many of the work gangs working on the pyramids took names like the drunkards of Khufu, for instance,
40:37and they took pride in their work.
40:38They seemed to compete with each other on how well they could build the pyramids.
40:41They often marked their stones so that you could see which group had laid the foundation stones in different pyramids.
40:49The workers were actually living there during a certain time of year when they were assigned to it while working
40:55on the pyramid.
40:56And it was like an actual town with everything that a town would have because they want to sustain them.
41:01They got to feed them.
41:02You know, they got to have some place to live.
41:04So all living there right on the grounds while they're working on it.
41:08And we can get an idea about the types of people that were there by the structures and the things
41:13that were left behind.
41:15Like, for example, workshops for stone and things like that that were found in this village.
41:19So that really helped us to appreciate the great amount of organization and coordination that went into building this.
41:27This hierarchical work team structure reflects Egyptian society as a whole.
41:33We can think of the pyramid as being representative of how Egyptian society itself worked.
41:38At the very top, you've got the pharaoh, one ruler.
41:41And below the pharaoh, we have a priestly class.
41:45Below them, we have scribes and architects.
41:47And then we have the laypeople, the farmers, the workers of the fields, the builders themselves.
41:53And there were a few ways to rise up that structure.
41:57It's very possible that a farmer coming from a modest background would see joining one of the pharaoh's pyramid gangs
42:04as a potential way for social mobility.
42:06For instance, if you had a specific skill at carving, that may be recognized whilst you're working on pharaoh's pyramid.
42:12And maybe, just maybe, you would be taken in to be trained to do that.
42:16So specialized roles did exist, and there may have been some room for meritocracy as society became more and more
42:26complex.
42:31But how were the pharaohs able to muster this much workforce to construct the pyramids?
42:38Modern estimates are there might be a million and a half people in all of Egypt when the Great Pyramid
42:45goes up.
42:46So if you've got a million and a half people, some of them are probably under 15, a few of
42:51them are old, not too many.
42:52What's your actual pulling the rocks workforce?
42:56And you've got to make sure that every man is doing as much as possible.
43:02They would have bought into the concept of the pharaoh being a representation of God on earth.
43:10And this is because their pantheon of gods was very important to their day-to-day life.
43:15So why are these pyramids bigger? Because the pharaohs could command a massive workforce.
43:23But some take a darker view of the pyramids.
43:28This was extremely gruelling work and very dangerous work.
43:32In fact, there have been many human remains of the workers of the pyramids found between the stones themselves.
43:39So you were taking a chance going to work on Pharaoh's pyramid that you might become the mortar, so to
43:45speak, between the stones of the pyramid.
43:48But if it went well, you were part of one of the greatest building projects of all time.
43:55But the time of the Great Pyramids is coming to an end.
43:59Soon after the last of the Great Pyramids of Giza was erected, the focus of the nation shifted.
44:06Building the pyramids, it had its toll on the economy of Egypt and on the use of the resources.
44:12During the reign of King Ushurqaf, when Egypt was at a far less stable economic situation,
44:19having a pyramid complex was still important and was crucial.
44:23But having a pyramid complex that is at the same size of the Giza plateau would have been unfeasible.
44:30Ushurqaf builds quite a small pyramid, but he builds it in the corner, in the ditch that goes around the
44:37step pyramid of Djoser and Imhotep.
44:40He wants to be in that sacred, sacred place.
44:44But his pyramid is kind of pathetic.
44:46But he puts his money into the temple, into the art, and into the statues.
44:56Ushurqaf is unable to best the pyramids of his ancestors, so he makes an ideological leap instead of a monumental
45:03one.
45:04There are many ways to project power in ancient Egypt.
45:08One of them is the building of huge monuments.
45:10But what do you do when the resources start to run out?
45:14In the case of Ushurqaf, what Ushurqaf does is rely on one of the other pillars of pharaonic society, religion.
45:24Ushurqaf says he is Horus on earth.
45:28So no longer is he representing the gods on earth as a communicator between,
45:36now I am a god.
45:38I'm not just representative of the gods.
45:41In this way, you could shore up your status as pharaoh without necessarily having to follow the huge monumental tasks
45:50and organization and economic tasks of building a huge pyramid.
45:54In pharaonic Egypt, iconography and architecture are vital in conveying the image of kingship and power.
46:02While Ushurqaf and his successors attempt to change the focus from pyramids to ideology, the effect is not the same.
46:10Massive building constructions like the pyramids acted as an announcement of power or a way to communicate power to the
46:18rest of the population.
46:20The ability to read and write the sacred texts was only restricted to 10% of the majority of the
46:27Egyptian population.
46:29So having such massive buildings that are quite accessible from a distance that you would be able to connect with
46:35them on a visual level at least,
46:37even if you have no close access to them, it was an announcement of power.
46:41It was a way to communicate or to send messages out to the population announcing the power of the king
46:48and announcing the strength and the stability of the state.
46:52Is there a correlation between the size of the pyramid and the power of the pharaoh?
46:57Hard to say. It certainly appears that they have less absolute power.
47:03As Egypt enters the mid-24th century BCE, a threat arises to challenge the pharaoh, his own inner circle.
47:12When we think of those who might challenge a pharaoh, it would be a very dangerous thing to do,
47:18because not only do you have to face their forces, you have to face an ideological structure,
47:24which the people of Egypt believed in, that the pharaoh was a god, or at least an intercessor between god
47:33and the human world.
47:33That meant that you were automatically conceived of as a bringer of chaos,
47:37because to remove a pharaoh was to threaten the entirety of society.
47:44The pharaoh realizes he can't manage all of Egypt on his own.
47:48And so he creates a new governor class, the nomarchs.
47:51These nomarchs all rule different areas of Egypt, different districts.
47:56The problem with the pharaoh creating the nomarch class is it ultimately undermines his power.
48:01The nomarchs start to take their governance a little bit too seriously,
48:05and soon they're vying to control these areas for themselves.
48:09What we're seeing is the dissolution of the unified upper and lower Egypt
48:13into a more fractioned series of states governed by these nomarchs,
48:18all of whom are in competition for power, and all of whom can undermine pharaoh.
48:24Instead of having status or high office as a result of relation, blood relation to the king,
48:30people are chosen on the basis of their abilities or their skills, sort of more merit-based.
48:36So the highest officials, they have fewer family ties to the king and his family,
48:42and some of their tombs are increasingly large and elaborate and beautifully decorated.
48:46So that suggests a kind of access to resources by officials that hadn't really existed in the fourth dynasty,
48:53where everything was controlled by the king.
48:56In the mid-23rd century BCE, Pepe II ascended to the throne.
49:02His reign as pharaoh was characterized by two significant aspects of the decline in the power of the pharaoh,
49:09attributed to his incompetence.
49:12And it is an exceptionally long reign of six decades.
49:16He was one of the unluckiest kings of the old kingdom, one can say.
49:20The power that he has inherited was already weakened.
49:24Pepe II comes to the throne when he is a young boy, and we're told he lives to be, I
49:30think, 92.
49:32At the end of Pepe II's reign, he no longer has the strength, he no longer has the ability,
49:40and we begin to see local leaders, the Gnomarchs, ruling each individual little gnome or district of ancient Egypt,
49:49developing their own power bases.
49:54And then when Pepe II finally dies, we see a rush to consolidate this local power,
50:04these various individuals who want to have the power of the king.
50:09This spells the end for the old kingdom.
50:13With no pharaoh, Egypt is swept up in division and civil war.
50:18This era is known as the First Intermediate Period.
50:21The First Intermediate Period was the real test of the Egyptian state
50:26and how the Egyptian state can survive without a pharaoh having a strong grip over matters.
50:33We see many of the great state organizations falling away.
50:40The army has no single head. It splinters.
50:44Religion continues, but the individual priests develop their own power bases.
50:51We see everything changing.
50:54The economy continues much as before with people working in the fields,
50:59but without the additional major public works, people are beginning to starve.
51:08Can Egypt survive, or does it need pharaoh to rise again?
51:12With the end of the old kingdom, Egypt is in a state of swirling chaos.
51:18The order, Maat, that the pharaohs upheld against chaos is gone.
51:24Yet, in the southern provincial town of Thebes,
51:27there is an influential local family gaining power.
51:31Its members see their opportunity to reunite Egypt under one powerful pharaoh.
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