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pharaohs rise and fall s01e05
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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.
00:53After 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.
01:14The Ramses based their ruling on bringing Egypt back to full power. That was lacking for thousands of years.
01:25The family of Ramses will place military might and monumental construction at the center of their rule, creating a legacy
01:34that will echo through human history.
01:37It's been suggested that the Ramesside dynasty is possibly one of the greatest and most glorious in 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.
02:24And 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.
02:49When Parameses attains the office of pharaoh, he takes a new name, Ramses I.
02:55And he is the progenitor of one of the greatest dynasties Egypt will ever see.
03:01He was a wonderful man, and he'd been the vizier, he knew the country.
03:05But I suspect one of the main reasons he was chosen was he came with a family.
03:10We've run out of 18th dynasty people. Horemheb has no children.
03:14And here's a man who has a son, a grown son, Seti I, who is himself a general and a
03:22diplomat, 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.
03:37The fact that Seti has the name that he has, which means Man of Set, is particularly fascinating.
03:45Because Set 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.
03:59There'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. This is a serious pharaoh. No 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. We 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.
05:22These 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.
05:39And 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
05:49because they had attributes they thought would be useful not only to protecting them
05:53but also helping them in their military adventures.
05:57Beset, 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
06:12and the office of pharaoh, but he'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,
06:35the chances normally of you being able to rise to a high position are next to nothing.
06:40But if you have a great military career and you distinguish yourself in this career,
06:46this could lead to better careers even after you're out of the military.
06:51Look at Horemheb. He was a military man. He 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,
07:09reinstating Egypt's place among the Bronze Age world as a force to 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.
07:30And there are beautiful scenes celebrating Osiris and Isis and that family,
07:35but also some of the more minor gods that we don't see as often,
07:40like Hicot, a lovely nice frog princess who is the goddess of fertility.
07:45You'll be hard-pressed to name all the gods.
07:48You have to start looking for the names.
07:49Oh, that's Mahes. And oh, there's Nefertum.
07:53They're all there. He's put everybody back.
08:01But unlike Akhenaten, who set himself as the sole god,
08:06Seti I is clearly stating he is one of the many to be worshipped.
08:10As Seti's father was a commoner, he used a great deal of his resources
08:15to communicate to the people of Egypt that he was part of a long line of pharaohs,
08:21a nearly unbroken line of kingship that went all the way back to Nama,
08:25the first king of Egypt.
08:28He establishes a king list.
08:30This records all of the kings going back to the beginning of unification.
08:35But he also excludes a number of pharaohs.
08:38You will not find Akhenaten or Tutankhamun.
08:42And notably, you won't find Hatshepsut.
08:46Seti I is making a determined effort to retell Egypt's story
08:51in the way that he thinks it ought to be told.
08:54The fact that the Amarna kings, including Tutankhamun and Horomeb and I,
09:02are missing shouldn't be too surprising.
09:06Horomeb had begun the destruction of Akhenaten's name,
09:11but clearly it was all still too close.
09:14There were remnants of those recollections continuing.
09:19So, Seti I ensures that all of the Amarna kings are removed from the king list.
09:29On 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,
09:42he follows in his forebearer's footsteps as a military man.
09:47Very early in his reign, he went on his first military campaign,
09:52a limited affair aimed at quelling a rebellion in Nubia.
09:56But his greatest battles were yet to come.
10:00Egypt was controlling much of the Levant,
10:02except 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.
10:16The earlier Ramesside kings had struggled with Kadesh,
10:19because Kadesh was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place,
10:22between these major powers in the Near East,
10:25between 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,
10:31going back into the 18th dynasty.
10:33But in the time of Ramses II, this really became a problem.
10:38The 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
10:52with a force of 20,000 men broken into four units.
10:56As the forces of Ramses II near Kadesh,
11:00they happen upon what they believe to be nomads.
11:03Ramses believes these men are possibly spies,
11:06so they capture them and question them.
11:08The shepherds, who are in fact spies, lie to the army.
11:13And they say,
11:14Oh, the Hittites are miles and miles away.
11:16Don't worry, sir, you're perfectly safe here.
11:18And Ramses believes them,
11:20because they've confessed this after being beaten.
11:23But they are good spies.
11:26Ramses takes this as encouragement
11:28and decides to move ahead on his own with his division,
11:32without the backing of the different regiments of his army.
11:36It turns out that the Hittite army were laying in wait for Ramses,
11:40ready to ambush his forces.
11:42Luckily, his ahead scouts spot these armies,
11:45and he manages to avoid the worst of the ambush.
11:47As Ramses and his forces fight to defend their position
11:51from the onslaught of the Hittite army,
11:54help finally arrives when the Patar division
11:57makes their way into battle.
11:59They're about to be annihilated.
12:01The only reason that Ramses was able to survive this attack
12:05is because sometime earlier he had sent out his braves,
12:09you know, his elite force, to go scouting north
12:11to see if they could find the Hittites.
12:12They didn't find anything.
12:14But they happened to be returning from their mission
12:16just 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
12:26between the Egyptian forces and the Hittite forces
12:29that resulted in a stalemate.
12:31Losses 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,
12:41that does not stop Ramses II from using it as a propaganda coup.
12:47The Battle of Kadesh is interesting to me
12:50more for how Ramses used it for PR or branding
12:57than it is 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.
13:09But despite the fact that really this is a draw,
13:13Ramses takes that and sort of spins the narrative
13:17to really portray him as the ultimate hero,
13:22the warrior pharaoh par excellence.
13:25He essentially says that his troops basically failed him
13:30and that he was caught unawares by the enemy
13:33in the midst of battle and that he pretty much
13:36single-handedly turned the tide of battle.
13:41He recorded this on inscriptions in the temples
13:45of the Theban region, including the Temple of Amun-Ra
13:48and his own mortuary temple, the Ramesseum.
13:50And he depicts himself fighting off the entire force
13:57of 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
14:08the entire Hittite army.
14:12Just to illustrate the power of propaganda,
14:15you know, people go to the temple,
14:17and they see on the wall there his recounting of this great battle
14:21and 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,
14:36Rameses II creates a temple that honors his actions at Kadesh.
14:41But who is the audience for this temple,
14:44built far away from the Egyptian heartland?
14:48One of the most famous buildings in the world
14:50is 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 Rameses,
15:01but mostly it's telling any Nubian who is trying to come up
15:05and maybe trade in Egypt without paying his taxes.
15:08But that god up there, those giant gods,
15:13you're entering his country.
15:15There are these four enormous statues
15:18carved from the bare bedrock showing his strength.
15:23I mean, the statues themselves,
15:25arguably the sculpting isn't brilliant,
15:27but there is a monumentality to them.
15:30There is a raw power to them
15:32which presents Rameses II as a major global ruler.
15:40It's all part of this royal propaganda.
15:42By just showing the greatness of your monuments,
15:46you are showing the greatness of the person.
15:57Like Akhenaten before him, Rameses II
16:00sought to create a new capital for Egypt
16:03that reflected his reign.
16:05But this capital would have a very different function
16:08than that built by the heretic pharaoh.
16:11Rameses chose a new capital city for himself,
16:15Pyrameses, and it's in the western delta.
16:18And this is an area that Rameses' 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,
16:31especially associated with the military,
16:32the creation of weapons, making of metals,
16:35and things like that.
16:36And by having the capital so close to the border,
16:40it'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
16:50to enter into our country.
16:51And maybe it was a deterrent as well.
16:56Pyrameses is basically on the site of Avaris.
16:59Now, Avaris, that Hyksos capital,
17:02had been where it was because it was a port.
17:04It was a port city where you could send ships off
17:07all around the Mediterranean.
17:08So Pyrameses is a new, improved version of Avaris.
17:14By moving the capital to somewhere that is not affiliated
17:19to a major priesthood or a major cult as such,
17:23it eliminated their power a bit.
17:27While Rameses II is best known for his battles,
17:30it is a peace treaty that could be one of his longest-lasting legacies.
17:36One thing that often gets ignored with Rameses II
17:40is how his personality seems to change.
17:44Around year 20 of his reign,
17:46he becomes something of a man of peace.
17:49Not only does he sign one of the world's first peace treaties
17:52with 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
18:03coincides with two great losses.
18:06It's at this time that Rameses, at year 20 of his reign,
18:09Rameses loses his great wife, his great love.
18:12And that seems to have really affected him.
18:15He also loses his firstborn son.
18:17But I think it's really interesting
18:19because 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,
18:32really 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 Rameses
18:44at 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,
18:58are like, well, you know, in those days,
19:00they're probably very simple people.
19:02Their treaties were probably like,
19:03oh, 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
19:15lived during the Bronze Age.
19:18Ramses II reigns for 66 years,
19:22the second longest reign in Egyptian history.
19:24But what is the true legacy of the pharaoh,
19:28whom history has dubbed Ramses the Great?
19:31Ramses was quite a character.
19:33He distinguished himself on the battlefield early on,
19:36even before becoming king.
19:38But he was an excellent propagandist.
19:41He knew how to present himself.
19:42We call him Ramses the Great,
19:45mainly because he told everybody he was great,
19:48and they believed it.
19:50Ramses II not only built prolifically,
19:54but he also, shall we say, appropriated several statues and colossi
19:59in ancient Egypt as well.
20:01That's why Egyptologists give him the nickname the Great Carver,
20:04because he would carve his name into everyone else's statues.
20:06Ramses II was very, very concerned about his name enduring for eternity.
20:13If anything, history has proven that Ramses II truly did stand the test of time,
20:17and his name endures.
20:19For me, I think that is what the ancient record wants us to believe him to be.
20:25But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a very objective assessment of his reign.
20:33When Ramses II finally dies in 1213 BCE,
20:38it is time for his heirs to take over the seat of the pharaoh.
20:42But they would struggle to match the greatness of Ramses.
20:47Following the reign of Ramses II,
20:50we 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,
21:05often it becomes a kind of matrilineal link
21:08that provides legitimacy for whoever does come to the throne
21:12if that person is a male ruler.
21:15Ramses was not only prolific with his monuments.
21:21He was prolific biologically.
21:23He had over 50 sons and over 50 daughters.
21:27So many children.
21:29In fact, there was a joke in later times
21:31when 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.
21:41Many of his sons died when they were adults.
21:47He survived his 13 oldest sons.
21:50One of his sons, Merempata, is his vizier towards the end.
21:54And when Ramses dies, Merempata, who is 60 years old by this point,
21:59he becomes king.
22:01He's already old, so he doesn't actually last very long.
22:05But there's a princess by the name of Tawostret
22:07who tries to take over herself as pharaoh.
22:11And then others who are against all this
22:13try to appoint a man to be the pharaoh,
22:16and they choose a military fellow, Setnacht.
22:18And a civil war erupts, and Setnacht ends up taking power.
22:23But who was this new pharaoh, Setnacht?
22:27Setnacht is not of royal blood,
22:30but has connections to the royal family through the female line,
22:33and that gives him some form of legitimacy.
22:35What he does quite cleverly is to marry well,
22:40and he marries a woman named Tai Merencis,
22:42who has direct ties to the dynasty.
22:45And this means that through marriage
22:48he forms his own legitimate stake in the office,
22:51and that enables him to assume the office.
22:56And Setnacht has another thing
22:59that strengthens his claim to the throne of the pharaoh,
23:01an 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,
23:21and he builds a very fine tomb in the Valley of the Kings,
23:24and he builds a very beautiful temple, Medina d'Habu,
23:27which is still there and which is in very good condition.
23:32Ramses III, from the outset,
23:35attempts to connect his rule to that of Ramses II,
23:39emulating the elder Ramses in style and function.
23:45And by all accounts, Ramses III was a very capable ruler.
23:55But after many years of peace,
23:58Ramses III and Egypt will face an unrelenting and mysterious foe
24:02that threatens the nation's very existence.
24:12In Ramses III's reign, we have all kinds of stories
24:16that have been traveling the crescent of the Mediterranean,
24:20of these great civilizations falling to this unknown outside interference,
24:28wiping 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. The Mitanni have gone.
24:44Kadesh, your ancient enemies who managed to fight off several pharaohs,
24:48are 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
25:03to the kingdoms of the Bronze Age
25:05would come to be known as the Sea 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,
25:32and who were traveling in some cases with women and ox carts
25:36and children and cattle, clearly intent on migration,
25:40hoping to find a place to settle.
25:43How did the Sea Peoples get their name?
25:45Well, in Egyptian inscriptions,
25:46they'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
25:56from across the Mediterranean world
25:58to 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
26:10that are wreaking havoc with people's livelihoods.
26:14Now, from the Sea People's point of view,
26:16they'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,
26:23and we need to survive.
26:25And desperate people will do desperate things.
26:27If we have to fight to get a piece of land,
26:31so that my wife and children can live, you know, I'm gonna do that.
26:35These mysterious Sea Peoples have sacked all the great powers
26:39of the Bronze Age world, and 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,
27:04we 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,
27:23as a time when he could improve himself as a worthy military leader,
27:27that he could protect his people.
27:29Now, the battle fought on land there at the border of Egypt
27:32did 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 people 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,
27:54and those warriors leaving the ships and fighting on land.
27:59But Ramses III is an excellent warrior.
28:04We have iconography and propaganda
28:07that shows us that Ramses III was the greatest war general of the time.
28:14And we see this massive iconography of him,
28:19and he's got the long bow 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 People's defeat,
28:33Ramses III is hailed as a national hero.
28:38Egypt has survived for now.
28:41Just as Ramses II had used the Battle of Kadesh
28:45to 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.
28:56Amanita and Habu, the battle scenes of Ramses III,
29:00really portray violence very viscerally,
29:04not just in terms of the battle,
29:05but also what happens to these enemies as captives.
29:09We have a lot of very kind of grotesque,
29:13torturous 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.
30:03Most 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.
30:16So Ramses III's victory is something of a hollow victory,
30:20in the sense that, yeah, he's the last man standing.
30:22But Egypt is now on its own.
30:26The 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 post-mortem 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.
31:25Grain 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
31:42there 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? No.
32:06So we have our first ever recorded labor strike in history
32:10where the tomb workers, the ones working on Ramses' great tomb monument, refused to work.
32:18They're challenging in particular the pharaoh's role as 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, kill a bunch of the workers
32:53to show them who's the boss to 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, but he does,
33:10and 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 and 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, of the slaves, female slaves, his daughters.
33:35But more importantly, because it's part of the domestic space, it's also a political institution.
33:42And these wives and concubines also have access to the pharaoh through their personal relations.
33:49And therefore, that makes them also conduits of power.
33:54It's 1157. Ramses III is old. His power is beginning to fade.
34:00You can imagine that in that kind of setting, many of the women were trying to ensure that their children,
34:06their sons,
34:07were in line to inherit the kingship of Egypt.
34:10And so there are many competing rivals trying to get their sons ahead.
34:16It's a hotbed of potential insurrection within the king's home.
34:24One of these wives, a secondary wife, has a son by Ramses III, but he is not an heir to
34:31the throne.
34:32This wife, T, starts a plot.
34:36She 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, Pentoweret, 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 and were central to administration.
35:24Unfortunately, any conspiracy of this scale eventually 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 are permanently mutilated.
35:47As a reminder, an example, not to go against the power of the pharaoh.
35:54The question is, how much of the conspiracy succeeded?
35:58Because Ramses died the same year that the trials were going on.
36:04And so there's been some question as to whether Ramses was actually killed in the conspiracy,
36:09or whether he survived it and just happened to die shortly thereafter.
36:13But initially, when Ramses' 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 and he just happened to die shortly thereafter.
36:28But more recent investigation of the mummy has 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, deep enough to have killed him.
36:46So it appears that Ramses actually was assassinated.
36:50And perhaps the conspiracy was a success.
36:55As Ramses III's body is laid in state,
36:58ancient Egypt's embalmers began the long process of turning the dead king's body
37:03into something that was designed to last forever, a mummy.
37:08Over many years, the development of mummification
37:12from bodies placed in the sand, which become naturally desiccated by the heat,
37:17to bodies being placed into little matte coffins.
37:22The Egyptians were very aware that the corruption of a body begins from within.
37:28The Egyptians very quickly realized, if 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, gut bacteria break through the gut
37:41and disperse throughout the body and 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 in mortuary sciences,
37:55derived directly from Egyptian practice.
37:58So 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 for thousands of years is fraying.
38:36After the death of Ramses III, a lot of bad things happen.
38:41There are plagues.
38:43There are problems with Libyans coming in from the desert and 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.
38:59Around 1070 BC, one of the high priests, Pianki,
39:04starts 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, none of the other Ramses are all that remarkable.
39:23There is a decline.
39:25We have a succession of pharaohs that get just weaker and weaker and weaker and less notable.
39:31And we get finally to Ramses XI.
39:34You think by naming yourself Ramses, people are going to think better of you.
39:38But this is near the very end now.
39:41And he's in a situation where there are other rivals to his authority.
39:47Egypt is in very bad shape.
39:50And the generals are taking over.
39:52Men like Piank and Harry Hoare.
39:54And they have the title High Priest.
39:57So people always used to think that the priesthood had taken over.
40:00But these guys are generals who happen to have this other title.
40:06Piank goes down into Sudan to fight the Nubians, doesn't come back.
40:10Harry Hoare establishes himself in Thebes
40:13and tries to hold the south of the country together.
40:16And sometimes puts his name in a cartouche and calls himself King Harry Hoare.
40:21And up in the north, there's poor King Ramses XI, who 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, whatever happened to Ramses XI?
40:34He had a tomb, started in the Valley of the Kings, never occupied.
40:39Where was he buried?
40:41We don't know.
40:45Ramses XI is the end of a line of weak kings who followed other weak kings.
40:52The power in Egypt is now split up once again amongst the governors.
40:56We have a divided north and south, a divided upper and lower Egypt.
41:02For a while, we have a man called Smedes.
41:05That's what we call him.
41:05His name is Nesiba 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 Harry Hoare.
41:20But these two groups of soldiers, they marry each other's daughters.
41:25They exchange, my 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 into two pieces.
41:37Will Egypt ever have again a single pharaoh from a native Egyptian dynasty ruling the whole country?
41:47By the 10th century BCE, the Bronze Age has gone and replaced by a new age of uncertainty, an age
41:56of iron.
41:59Prior to this, they had bronze weaponry.
42:02But it's kind of difficult.
42:03You have to make bronze.
42:05It'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.
42:09But iron, you can find that everywhere.
42:13You just need the technology, the smelting process to be able to make it.
42:17But once you know how to do that, once 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 or whatever,
42:33iron tools are more efficient.
42:35They work more quickly.
42:37And on the battlefield, when 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 that's going to propel not only Egypt,
42:54but all of its surrounding neighbors into a whole new way of doing things.
42:59This new age saw expanded horizons as 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.
43:22The rule of Egypt is broken up into lots of different regions.
43:27Some of the regions are headed up by Libyans who were originally mercenaries
43:33employed by the armies of Ramses II and Ramses III,
43:38who established communities and then gained autonomy.
43:41Others were probably people who came into the delta
43:45and settled in or near these communities of mercenaries.
43:50And so they're different rulers, different leaders.
43:52And the interesting thing about them is that they don't really seem
43:56to have fought with each other.
43:57Unlike other intermediate periods in 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,
44:10which 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.
44:18Osorkan, 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 the centralized rule of Pharaoh undermined.
44:32This is a time when Egypt is under direct threat from foreign powers
44:36and they're getting ready to strike.
44:40To Egypt's south, another of their old foes looked on with hungry eyes.
44:46To the rulers of Nubian Kush, Egypt was ready for conquest.
44:51Kush is a Nubian kingdom situated to the south of Egypt in modern-day Sudan.
44:57The Kushites see themselves in this period of history as the guardians of Egyptian culture.
45:05But how can this be coming from these ancient rivals to the Egyptians?
45:09What seems to have happened is when Tutmose I invaded Kush many centuries ago,
45:15in the 16th century BC, he took with him priests of Amun.
45:20These priests of Amun dedicated temples to their gods in Kush.
45:24And the Kushites began to worship those gods.
45:28In many ways, the Kushites in the Libyan period would be looking at what was happening
45:33to the north in Egypt and 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 or 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 and 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,
46:09that the Nubian peoples had adopted Egyptian religion.
46:13And what they saw going on in the kingdom was to their mind
46:16a direct threat to their traditions as well because they saw it as their tradition.
46:21And Alara passed along this idea to his son that it was the responsibility of the Kush people,
46:28they were the true inheritors of Egyptian culture, to restore it.
46:32And it was his son in fact, Kashta, would take on the title that he was the king of Upper
46:38and Lower Egypt.
46:40And he would use his claim to this throne to go and reunite the two kingdoms of Egypt.
46:48Kashta invades Upper Egypt and conquers a large portion of it.
46:53And then his successor, Pia, goes further and ventures into Lower Egypt.
46:58He doesn't conquer the whole country, but he begins the ball rolling.
47:01And now the Nubian dynasty holds the majority of the country.
47:08Pia would rule Egypt for another 12 years.
47:12But after his conquest, he never sets foot in Egypt again, ruling 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 and 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, this is only the beginning.
47:49What we're going to see moving forward is Kushite kings calling themselves the rightful rulers of Egypt,
47:55pushing further into Egypt and battling the Libyans,
47:58undermining the Libyan rule.
48:00And then with Shabaka, Egypt 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, a Libyan governor makes a deadly mistake.
48:15In 720 BCE, there's a fellow by the name of Bakanrenif in Lower Egypt, not Nubian, who proclaims himself king
48:25in Lower Egypt.
48:27Now, this is the area that Shabakos just conquered.
48:30But this Bakanrenif says, now he's the king.
48:33And he commissions the making of this cup.
48:36And on it, it celebrates his victory and his ascension to kingship.
48:41But also, it shows Nubians in a very unflattering light, insulting light.
48:47And when Shabako has knowledge of this, he wants to punish Bakanrenif.
48:53So, he makes war on him.
48:56He invades the north, defeats Bakanrenif's forces, burns Bakanrenif at the stake.
49:03And then he commissions a sacred scarab.
49:07And on this inscription, he says, I slew all those who rebelled against him in Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt
49:14and in all foreign lands.
49:21With Egypt in the hands of the Kushites, they work to restore the land to its past glory.
49:28The Nubians begin to be more Egyptian than the Egyptians.
49:32One of the first things they would start to do is to restore it to their understanding of the ancient
49:39kingdom.
49:39But the kingdom that they were drawn to, that they were trying to replicate, was in fact the old kingdom.
49:46And we see this in their monumental architecture, in their art, that when they're going back in that art to
49:54evoke that power,
49:55it is the art and the traditions and the mechanisms of authority of the old kingdom.
50:02Remember way back when in the old kingdom? The capital was Memphis.
50:06Now in the new kingdom, Thebes, that's where it had been for years.
50:09But as part of this trend to want to bring back the old kingdom, the Nubian dynasty, they ruled from
50:16Memphis.
50:18They get the army reorganized, they get the temples reorganized, they start building things at Karnak again.
50:24And that's how you show you're a king, by building for the gods.
50:28The Kushite obsession with the old kingdom will even see the resurgence of one of the most iconic symbols of
50:35Egyptian civilization, the pyramids.
50:38If you go down to Nubia, to the site where Napata, this capital was, right near there is the royal
50:46burial ground of Kuru.
50:48And what do you find there? Pyramids. They're not as big and magnificent as the old kingdom pyramids, but they
50:54are in imitation of that style.
50:57While the Nubians tried to return Egypt to its former glory, it is ultimately left weakened after years of foreign
51:05rule.
51:06Control of the land will be wrestled away from the Nubians by the Assyrians in the 7th century BCE, and
51:13then by the mighty Persian Empire in the late 6th century BCE.
51:18Egyptian traditions fade away under Persian rule. The people yearn for the glories of the past, the age of the
51:27pharaohs.
51:28And in 332 BCE, a pharaoh will rise. A pharaoh that will change human history forever.
51:58I'm being prepared for the goldie. Chandrushkaolyam China.
52:00I've made the first part of the shoreline inter-corporatedå®®u Chath~?
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