- 2 days ago
pharaohs rise and fall s01e01
Category
πΊ
TVTranscript
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.
01:18The pharaoh is a living god.
01:51You do it because a god is ordering you to do it.
02:51The pharaoh is completely monolithic.
02:54The pharaohs of Egypt rise to prominence. How did they keep their power? What happened
03:00if this power was challenged? And 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. There 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.
03:47And we had a lot of date trees and a lot of different fruits and vegetables that were just growing
03:54naturally.
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.
04:39And as the environment became more arid, those animals moved farther south in Africa
04:45and 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.
05:07And 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. The Nile Valley, where the Nile is hemmed in by cliffs on both
06:48sides.
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.
06:57Down river is always the direction in which the river flows.
07:02And 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,
07:13because the river flows out into the Mediterranean.
07:16And the upper is where the river begins.
07:20So 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.
07:58That'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, it refers to the inhabited area of Egypt,
08:14where the agriculture is being performed, right near the river.
08:17The land was dark, the fertile dark soils, they called it the black land.
08:22But you go out further, you go to the red land, the desert, where nothing is grown,
08:27where people don't live. And 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,
08:42which 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.
09:13They were able to create a situation in which they could really produce a surplus,
09:18especially of grain. So that provided more security for the population,
09:22that they would have enough to eat from year to year, and also perhaps allowed for some people
09:29to devote time instead of to their subsistence, but instead to perfecting certain crafts.
09:35So we see craft specialization, like becoming an expert in making stone tools,
09:40or 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,
10:00and many of their chieftains will be in competition 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 the cultures grow, the more people you have living there,
10:41the more people start thinking, this 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 Upper and Lower Egypt, these entities, they existed in isolation.
10:56And 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
11:13that didn't exist in the south and vice versa. And obviously the intention would be to take over
11:18or to exploit rather than to unify. These 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
11:39pharaoh of Egypt, Narma. Much of what is known about Narma comes from the Narma palette,
11:47a 63-centimetre-tall ornate stone.
11:51Narma is a monolithic figure. He imposes himself at the very beginning of Egyptian history,
11:59with the Narma palette, this wonderful schist cosmetic palette which would be used by priests
12:06to grind up the make-up for the eyes of the gods.
12:11We see Narma 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,
12:22whether or not unification actually happened in kind of one military push,
12:27or whether it was this slow, complicated process, that we're still trying to 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. But what we can say is even from this
12:42really, really early object, we're talking roughly 3000 BCE, you start to see the elements that will
12:52be kind of standard, par for the course, for Egyptian kings right through Egyptian history.
13:01And a key to Narma's success was the Nile.
13:04A lot of the warfare was done by going behind the Nile. If you arrive on the Nile in your
13:11boats,
13:11people say, hey, they're coming. They've got time to prepare. But if you sneak up behind them
13:17by coming down the cliff, that's how you can attack a city and take it.
13:22Narma succeeds in bringing peace to the whole country by using tactics that would certainly
13:29be frowned upon today.
13:32It would have been very nasty. Everybody is man to man. You've got clubs, mostly wooden. Some have
13:38stone. You've got some maces. You've got spears. And these battles are very small, with 50 guys on the
13:46field. Maybe 100. So I think if you think more soccer riot and less Cecil Bede Mill, you've got a
13:54better
13:54idea of what those wars were like.
13:57If it weren't for the excessive use of military power by King Narma in the north of Egypt,
14:05the unification might have not have ever happened.
14:16Narma would be the first pharaoh forging a system of government that is central to Egypt's national
14:22identity.
14:27Without the king in charge, Egypt would not exist. Egypt was there to support the king,
14:32and the king was there to protect Egypt.
14:35The office of the pharaoh, as it evolved over time, had multiple different functions
14:42that were considered central to good governance. One was to be the leader of the military. The other
14:49was as high priest to a complex set of temple systems within the kingdom. The third was as a good
14:59administrator, someone who tended to the daily needs of his people in terms of the provision of food,
15:05food, but also peace. The office of the pharaohs, not built overnight, is a throne that stands on many
15:14pillars, and the first pillar is military might. Egypt, 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
15:32would be crushed. We can see this as early as the Narma palette, for instance, where Narma is standing
15:38above registers of conquered people, and he's in this famous smiting pose, holding a mace very high.
15:46The message is very clear. If 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, because rebellion was
15:57the most 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
16:09the king. So the king is telling the priesthood, this is what I've done, this is what I can continue
16:15to do. These are the ways in which I'm holding back the forces of chaos. So the office of king,
16:23the office of pharaoh, is vitally important to your own continued existence. And in so doing,
16:31the king places himself squarely at the center of Egyptian life and culture.
16:38While the army is the first pillar of pharaonic power, Narma does not rule by brute force alone.
16:45The Narma palette was a piece of propaganda, probably put up in a temple or some holy place
16:53for priests to benefit from. But 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. It has a message. And you can read
17:05it,
17:05actually, sort of like a graphic novel. There are panels. And if you follow the panels in order,
17:11you get a story. The Narma palette is one of the first documents to show the use of hieroglyphs to
17:17convey a message. So we know that the language existed, but also a script or some early form
17:21of hieroglyphic script existed there. We can see several examples of hieroglyphs used to depict the
17:27king and the status of the king. It's also the first place we see the use of a kind of
17:33serach or
17:34pre-cartouche-type symbol to denote the position of the king and the name of the king as separate
17:41from the other people displayed on the palette. He's larger than everybody else in the palette.
17:48You notice that? Like, he's big. You can see this in later Egyptian symbology as well. The king's always
17:54bigger than everybody else. So it's implying this sort of superhuman quality to him. We don't know yet
18:01if in these early days he was already being worshipped as a god. But you can see the pieces
18:06started to be put into place.
18:10Narma is keen to use art and symbols to legitimize his rule. And one of the most powerful of these
18:16symbols are the crowns of Egypt. Everything that continues with Egyptian art for the next 3,000
18:24years is in some form displayed by the Narma palette. We see the king depicted wearing two very different
18:35crowns. The white crown of upper Egypt, the red crown of lower Egypt.
18:39But it's a composite crown. On the one hand we've got the hedget, which is the white crown. This
18:44represents southern Egypt or upper Egypt. We also have the red crown, desheret, which represents lower
18:51lower Egypt, which turns it into something called the pshent. This crown represents upper and lower
18:57Egypt combined into one powerful force.
19:00He is the all-seeing and all-controlling pharaoh.
19:09The 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. But he also
19:23holds the flail. And the flail is a scourge. It's there as a threat to those who would be against
19:31his rule. It 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
19:44pharaonic history, but also incorporated into later civilizations and used as symbols of power and
19:51authority for them. The military art and symbolism are powerful pillars that legitimize the pharaoh's
19:58rule. But 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. It's just polytheistic.
20:13It's made up of many, many gods. It's always hard to understand what the importance of religion is to
20:19the population as a whole. We have no temples from this period. We think that the temples of this
20:25period were made of wicker work. So they're temporary structures. But from the very beginning you start
20:31getting amulets. You start getting things that will protect you. And you find amulets in the graves of
20:38the meanest, poorest people and in the graves of the rich. So from the very, very beginning people are
20:44believing in the gods and that the gods can help them. The ancient Egyptians believed that it was the
20:52pharaoh who kept the fine balance between chaos and the secret order of the universe called Ma'at.
20:59One of the most important roles of the pharaoh was to uphold Ma'at. What this word translates into is
21:10really hard to pin down. There's not really an exact English translation. You might see it as order or
21:16truth or justice. But really what it is is order on a cosmic scale. It's the correct working of the
21:23universe. It's the way things are supposed to be. Everything from legal justice to, you know, being a
21:30nice person. And so it's the king's responsibility to maintain this. And one of the ways you can maintain
21:35this is to put down any kind of military threat that might affect Egypt. They believe that if you
21:44didn't do your Ma'at, this would lead to chaos. Bad things would start to happen naturally. Not just
21:50with people, but nature would go into disorder. And it was the pharaoh's rituals and later the priests'
21:58rituals that helped maintain Ma'at so that the temples of Egypt almost become like the power stations
22:05creating Ma'at and driving this force into the universe on behalf of the pharaoh, importantly.
22:12Well, one of the great benefits of linking yourself to divinity is that, of course, that means that
22:19anyone going against you is essentially challenging the existing order. They are, for all intents and
22:26purposes, heretics. While pharaoh's relationship with Ma'at was important, the god most connected to
22:35the office of the pharaoh is the falcon-headed god Horus. The king is more than just a statesman,
22:42more than just a priest. He is essentially an embodiment of the living god Horus. For Egyptian religion,
22:52Horus is the ruler of Egypt and the king is his avatar, I suppose. Horus is an important metaphor
23:02because it combines that idea of the sky god. He is also the warrior god. But at the same time,
23:09he is a god. So Narma 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. So he has to dispose of his
23:42brother somehow. He traps him in a box, throws the box into the Nile, then eventually chops the box into
23:49pieces. And in the process of doing all of this, Osiris' wife Isis, she is known as Isis' great of
23:58magic. She gathers the pieces together, she imbues them with a form of life sufficient for him to become
24:05the god of the dead. But in so doing, he also gives his wife a son, and that is Horus.
24:13And the villainous
24:14Set is horrified because he naturally assumed that he would assume the throne. He can no longer do so.
24:20He and Horus battle for, we are told, 80 years, this 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
24:35as the first lawyer. And Set decides to represent himself. And of course, that arrogance, if you will,
24:42of him representing himself becomes his undoing. Horus is crowned the king of Egypt in a court,
24:49representing the kind of orderliness and legality of the Egyptian mythological system, which is
24:55reflected in their legal system. It's always an interesting question to figure out how divine
25:04the Egyptian king is. And is he Horus? Is he an avatar of Horus? What exactly is the relationship?
25:11And I don't think we quite know. We know he is like Horus when he's fighting in a battle. We
25:17know he is
25:18just like Horus. But he is not the same being as Horus. Horus is not inhabiting him. He's not a
25:25manifestation of Horus. And yet, there's this tremendously close connection. He is, in some
25:31ways, I guess, manifesting Horus's power. If you look at Horus on the Namer palette, Horus has one
25:38human hand and one talent. And in the human hand, he has rope. And the rope goes through a ring
25:44in the
25:45nose of an enemy. And the enemy's body is a piece of land. So you can sort of read the
25:51hieroglyph.
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.
26:12Nama dies in the early third millennium before the Common Era,
26:16and his successors continue to rule in the pharaonic model he creates.
26:24Approximately 400 years after Nama, a new dynasty of pharaohs rises and finds new
26:30and innovative ways to express their power. What we have here is a concentration of power,
26:37a centralization of control of the Egyptian labor force in Egypt, and a surplus of grain controlled
26:45by a pharaoh. The farmers themselves didn't have to work for several weeks to several months of the
26:51year. We 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 mastabas, large rectangular buildings made of mud, brick or stone.
27:21So from the very beginning, the Egyptians are trying to build to last. And gradually,
27:28they start adding to the mud brick, which is the usual construction material,
27:32and perfectly fine in a country that doesn't rain, they start adding bits of stone. And maybe at the
27:39beginning, the stone is just for prestige. You know, a stone floor over here, a stone portcullis to block
27:44the door. But by all this building and all this experimentation with bits and pieces of stone,
27:52and bigger and bigger bits and pieces of stone, they gradually build up the ability to use stone
27:58and to understand it. They also make an awful lot of beautiful vessels of stone. They're learning the
28:05properties of those stones. They're learning how strong is this? What can you put on this? What kind
28:10of weight will it hold? Is this waterproof? They're learning all that geology.
28:17Egypt and its pharaohs are poised to enter an architectural golden age unparalleled in human
28:22history. The individual most responsible for this development was not the pharaoh himself,
28:28but rather his chief advisor, Imhotep. Imhotep was the grand governor for King Djoser
28:36of the third dynasty of Egypt. What marks Imhotep out from all of the other governors is his incredible
28:44mind for creation. He kind of looks at Mastaba and goes, well, what if we put another one on top
28:51of
28:51that and another one on top of that and another one on top of that? And you kind of keep
28:56going until
28:56you have what we call the step pyramid. Six steps of Mastaba over your tomb and build it out so
29:04it's
29:05huge. Now no one is going to get to the tomb of King Djoser and he can secure eternity knowing
29:11that
29:11he'll be safe in his sarcophagus with all of his treasure for the rest of time. And that's thanks
29:16to Imhotep's great ideas. People attribute to him the art of building in stone and they say he was the
29:28first man who really went at stone instead of using it for a little bit here and a little bit
29:33there,
29:33built a whole monument out of stone. If you build something out of stone it's going to last and it's
29:41going to last through the wind and the storm, even fire isn't going to hurt it. This is a
29:46complete game changer. What we're seeing here is Pharaoh attempting to secure eternity through the
29:54use of different technology and Imhotep is crucial in this process. To construct something as large
30:01and complex as the step pyramid of Djoser, Imhotep found it necessary to comprehensively reorganize
30:07Egypt's government and administration. This paves the way for the creation of the office of Vizier,
30:14the pharaoh's chief political officer. As 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. And what that allows you to do
30:36in turn is to pull your labor resources from across the country to move goods and people.
30:45As you have a civilization that's growing, you're going to have more specialization. And this becomes
30:51important to the pharaohs. They need people who are really good at what they do. And then you get to
30:57employ them on the king's projects. So you might have the architects themselves, they just do all the
31:02designing. But then you have all the people that go into this project, all doing separate tasks,
31:09from 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. Is this administration just about pyramids?
31:27And is that why we have this administration? Or more likely, does that improvement in bureaucracy
31:35lead to the ability to create things like these massive building projects?
31:43The pyramids serve many purposes. The first is to serve as the vessel of the pharaoh's rebirth in the
31:49afterlife. Some people have called pyramids resurrection machines. It's a nice phrase.
31:55Certainly, once you're into the pyramid, the pyramid texts are all these prayers and rituals for
32:01getting the king safely into his burial chamber and enabling him, once we've buried him, to come out
32:08again and to come out into the world safely. So this is protecting the king's spirit. Remember,
32:16the king was almost a god while he was alive. And he protected us and ensured ma'at was done
32:22in Egypt.
32:22So 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. These massive building projects transform the
32:37relationship 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. But we
32:47have to remember the context in which this thing was built. 65 meters is huge for the ancient world.
32:5465 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.
33:14They're 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. And you go and you stand before this gigantic, 65 meter tall,
33:35step pyramid made of stone. Think about the awe of just being there. And then you get to thinking,
33:43we did this. No one else in the world has done this. This is ours. We put it together. It
33:50would have,
33:51of 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,
34:39how they go from the mastaba up to the great pyramid. And you can see sort of this growth and
34:46development.
34:47Sneferu, of course, is experimenting. And it took him several tries, built three pyramids. Two of them
34:54didn't work out so great. You know, they've got mistakes in them. The bent pyramid, for example,
34:58it didn't come out how he wanted. All 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
35:09in order to get a great pyramid?
35:13Sneferu takes a title, necher nefer, the good god. And from then on, that's going to be the title of
35:19the living king.
35:21Now, necher means divine. Neferu is one of those words that you can't translate.
35:26We usually translate it as beautiful. It can mean perfect. It can mean good. It can mean suitable.
35:34It has all that range of meanings. So when he says he is the necher nefer, he's the good god,
35:41the beautiful god, the perfect god. He's the god we got right now. He's the one who is suitable for
35:47us now.
35:48We're starting a new era. We're not in an experimental stage anymore. Everything is set. Everything 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
36:13had to be used in order to carry the weight of the central part of the pyramid and how to
36:17alleviate that.
36:19Soneferu starts again. He then attempts to build a pyramid at Maidum. This pyramid is a step pyramid
36:25he decides to fill in the steps on to make a smooth pyramid. Unfortunately, they don't have the angles
36:33right. And this pyramid also collapses. Soneferu and his architects work tirelessly to figure out
36:39the correct angle and the correct size for a pyramid. And finally, finally, they land on the correct
36:46dimensions and the correct angle and the correct materials for the pyramid.
36:51They did this with the so-called Red Pyramid. And this is the first true pyramid in ancient Egypt.
36:57This is a masterpiece of engineering for its time. And all the more remarkable,
37:03because by this point Soneferu has built multiple pyramids just trying to get this right.
37:11At 104 meters tall, the Red Pyramid is taller than Big Ben. But the pyramid age is just getting
37:19started. And what comes next will ignite the imagination of the world for millennia to come.
37:26The Red Pyramid is the technological jump that was needed between the Step Pyramid and what would
37:31come to be known as the Great Pyramid built by Soneferu's son. And we see the development of what we
37:39would describe as the pyramid proper culminating in the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, the vast
37:46monument to one man. By the time you get to the Great Pyramid, you've got probably three generations
37:55of engineers and architects who have been thinking about this all along. How can we do that better?
38:02That didn't work. What will work better than that? What's the best stone for this? What's the best way
38:08to put in the burial chamber? So they've had a hundred years of practice. That's why Khufu's Pyramid is
38:16just about perfect. The blocks that were used to construct the pyramids on the Giza Plateau were huge in
38:22comparison to those used for the Third Dynasty pyramids. Each one on the Giza pyramids weighed up to two tons.
38:32The 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
38:54every two minutes. It held the record as the tallest man-made structure for about 4,000 years,
39:02until the spire of Lincoln Cathedral in England was erected.
39:06If you can imagine the Great Pyramid, it would have been completely white on the outside with the
39:15plaster, and then it had a gold top on it. So it would have gleamed across hundreds of miles of
39:23flat
39:24area. You would have noticed that.
39:28There's an old Arabic proverb, man fears time, but time fears the pyramids. And I think what it's
39:36trying to say is that they've lasted for so many thousands of years that time is afraid that maybe
39:45the pyramids will outlast it. But it's emphasizing the eternity of the pyramids, that they're still
39:53there after all this time, and they will still be 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,
40:19and pretty close 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. In fact, many of the work gangs working on the pyramids took
40:34names like the drunkards of Khufu, for instance, and they took pride in their work. They seemed to
40:38compete with each other on how well they could build the pyramids. They often marked their stones so that
40:43you 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
40:54it while working on the pyramid. And it was like an actual town with everything that a town would
40:59have because they want to sustain them. They got to feed them. You know, they got to have some place
41:04to live. So all living there right on the grounds while they're working on it. And we can get an
41:09idea
41:09about the types of people that were there by the structures and the things that were left behind.
41:14Like, for example, workshops for stone and things like that that were found in this village. So that really
41:20helped 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. At the very top,
41:39you've got the pharaoh, one ruler. And below the pharaoh, we have a priestly class. Below them,
41:45we have scribes and architects. And then we have the laypeople, the farmers, the workers of the fields,
41:52the builders themselves. And there were a few ways to rise up that structure. It's very possible that a
41:58farmer coming from a modest background would see joining one of the pharaoh's pyramid gangs as a
42:04potential way for social mobility. For instance, if you had a specific skill at carving, that may
42:10be recognized whilst you're working on pharaoh's pyramid. And maybe, just maybe, you would be taken
42:14in to be trained to do that. So specialized roles did exist. And there may have been some room for
42:22meritocracy as society became more and more complex.
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
42:44Pyramid goes up. So if you've got a million and a half people, some of them are probably under 15,
42:51a few of them are old, not too many. What's your actual pulling the rocks workforce? And you've got
42:57to 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. In fact, there have been many
43:34human remains of the workers of the pyramids found between the stones themselves. So you were taking a
43:41chance going to work on pharaoh's pyramid, that you might become the mortar, so to speak, between
43:46the stones of the pyramid. But if it went well, you were part of one of the greatest building projects
43:52of all time.
43:55But the time of the Great Pyramids is coming to an end. Soon after the last of the Great Pyramids
44:01of
44:01Giza 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. But having a pyramid complex
44:25that 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
44:36around the step pyramid of Djoser and Imhotep. He wants to be in that sacred, sacred place.
44:44But his pyramid is kind of pathetic. But he puts his money into the temple, into the art,
44:52and into the statues.
44:56Ushurqaf is unable to best the pyramids of his ancestors.
44:59So he makes an ideological leap instead of a monumental one.
45:05There are many ways to project power in ancient Egypt. One of them is the building of huge
45:10monuments. But what do you do when the resources start to run out? In the case of Ushurqaf,
45:17what Ushurqaf does is rely on one of the other pillars of pharaonic society, religion.
45:24Ushurqaf says he is Horus on earth. So no longer is he representing the gods on earth as a communicator
45:35between, now I am a god. I'm not just representative of the gods.
45:42In this way, you could shore up your status as pharaoh without necessarily having to follow
45:48the huge monumental tasks and 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,
46:08the effect is not the same.
46:10Massive building constructions like the pyramids acted as an announcement of power or a way to
46:17communicate power to the rest of the population. The ability to read and write the sacred texts
46:22was only restricted to 10% of the majority of the Egyptian population. So having such massive
46:31buildings that are quite accessible from a distance that you would be able to connect with them on a
46:36visual level at least, even 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. Is there a correlation between the
46:54size of the pyramid and the power of the pharaoh? Hard to say. It certainly appears that they have less
47:00absolute power. As Egypt enters the mid-24th century BCE, a threat arises to challenge the pharaoh,
47:10his own inner circle. When we think of those who might challenge a pharaoh, it would be a very
47:17dangerous thing to do. Because not only do you have to face their forces, you have to face an
47:23ideological structure which the people of Egypt believed in, that the pharaoh was a god, or at least
47:31an intercessor between god and the human world. That meant that you were automatically conceived of
47:36as a bringer of chaos, because 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, and so he creates a new governor class,
47:50the nomarchs. These nomarchs all rule different areas of Egypt, different districts. The problem
47:57with the pharaoh creating the nomarch class is it ultimately undermines his power. The nomarchs start
48:03to take their governance a little bit too seriously, and soon they're vying to control these areas for
48:09themselves. What we're seeing is the dissolution of the unified upper and lower Egypt into a more
48:14fractioned series of states governed by these nomarchs, all of whom are in competition for power,
48:21and all of whom can undermine pharaoh. Instead of having status or high office as a result of relation,
48:29blood relation to the king, people are chosen on the basis of their abilities or their skills,
48:35sort of more merit-based. So the highest officials, they have fewer family ties to the king and his
48:41family, and 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
48:53fourth dynasty, where everything was controlled by the king.
48:56In the mid-23rd century BCE, Pepe II ascended to the throne. His reign as pharaoh was characterized by
49:05two significant aspects of the decline in the power of the pharaoh, attributed 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. The power that he has inherited
49:22was
49:22already weakened. Pepe II comes to the throne when he is a young boy, and we're told he lives to
49:30be,
49:30I think, 92. At the end of Pepe II's reign, he no longer has the strength, he no longer has
49:38the ability,
49:40and we begin to see local leaders, the Gnomarchs, ruling each individual little gnome or district of
49:49ancient Egypt, developing their own power bases. And then when Pepe II finally dies,
49:58we see a rush to consolidate this local power, these various individuals who want to have the power of
50:08the king.
50:09This spells the end for the old kingdom.
50:18The first intermediate period was the real test of the Egyptian state and how the Egyptian state
50:28can survive without a pharaoh having a strong grip over matters.
50:33We see many of the great state organizations falling away. The army has no single head. It splinters.
50:45Religion continues, but the individual priests develop their own power bases. We see everything
50:53changing. The economy continues much as before with people working in the fields, but without the additional
51:01major public works, people are beginning to starve.
51:08Can Egypt survive, or does it need pharaoh to rise again?
51:13With the end of the old kingdom, Egypt is in a state of swirling chaos. The order, Maat, that the
51:21pharaohs upheld against chaos is gone. Yet, in the southern provincial town of Thebes, there is an
51:28influential local family gaining power. Its members see their opportunity to reunite Egypt under one
51:35powerful pharaoh.
51:37? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
52:00? ? ? ?
Comments