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00:14For over 3,000 years, a story has lain hidden beneath the sands of Egypt, a story we are
00:21only now beginning to reclaim. It is a story of a time we call the New Kingdom.
00:32It left us the greatest treasures of the ancient world, an extraordinary legacy in papyrus,
00:39stone and gold. But behind these treasures lies an epic tale of real people, people like
00:47Ramesses the Great, Tutankhamun, the boy king, and one of the most beautiful and powerful
00:54women of the ancient world, Queen Nefertiti. It is a story brought to life by their own
01:05words and those of the ordinary men and women who would change the course of history. In
01:24the world, pharaohs record how they created their own legends and became the richest rumors
01:29in the world.
01:40And ancient craftsmen reveal how they turned Egypt's unimaginable wealth into tombs, temples,
01:48and treasure. And how in the end, they would be forced to destroy the very tombs they had
01:55built. This is the story of the rise and fall of Egypt's golden empire.
02:26Over a thousand years after the pyramids were built, the greatest chapter in Egypt's history
02:31was just beginning. The New Kingdom, an explosion of creativity, wealth, and power. It would be
02:40the envy of civilizations to come. The Greeks, the Romans, Napoleon, all would look for inspiration
02:48to the men and women who built the first empire in recorded history. Yet the golden age might never have
02:57happened.
03:02In 1560 BC, Egypt was in crisis. For the first time in history, the kingdom of the ancient pyramid builders
03:11was now occupied and divided. Egypt was on the verge of extinction.
03:26In the north, a foreign king had invaded and declared himself pharaoh. His people, the Hyksos,
03:36now occupied the rich Nile Delta. To the south, the warlike Nubians threatened the last remnants of Egypt.
03:47The invasion of the Hyksos to Egypt was really a shock, a surprise. Because this is the first time
03:53that Egypt was completely invaded. This is the first time that strange people entered in Egypt
03:59and lived for 150 years.
04:14The Egyptian royal line and its city, Thebes, had fallen on hard times.
04:22But one local family was determined to revive Egypt's former glory. The king of Thebes and his two sons,
04:30the young princes, Kamos and his brother, Akmos. The fate not only of their capital, Thebes,
04:38but Egypt itself, lay in their hands.
04:42Essentially, it was a time of great trial for the traditional ruling family of Egypt.
04:48And the Thebans are really just pawns in this, between these two superpowers. They are not the superpower.
04:57So really, Akmosa and Kamosa had become minor princes. And there was a feeling that Egypt, as it had been
05:06known
05:06for the past 1,500 years, could cease to exist.
05:16Kamos and Akmosa's hatred of the Hyksos was personal. Their father tried to rebel against the invaders in the north.
05:24He paid a terrible price.
05:28Three and a half thousand years later, his corpse still bears witness to his brutal slaughter at the hands of
05:35the enemy.
05:41The face is grisly, partly because it wasn't well preserved, and there are many, many axe marks all over the
05:48head.
05:49It must have been Hyksos struggle, and it must have been fairly bloody.
06:01Traditionally, Egyptians viewed foreigners as primitive and barbaric.
06:08For young Kamosa, the death of his father at the hands of the Hyksos must have been humiliating, as well
06:15as tragic.
06:17In the ideology of the Egyptians, the foreigner is the inherent enemy, the inherent inferior,
06:24over whom the Egyptians have been given divine power by the deities.
06:29They are described as that vile foe, people who are beyond the pale.
06:35Foreigners are dirt under the feet of the pharaoh.
06:39Images of foreigners were carved on footstools like this,
06:42so Egyptians could show their superiority by literally trampling on them.
06:49Nubians, Libyans, Asiatics were depicted as ugly, as savages,
06:55not worthy of placing a foot on Egyptian sand.
06:59But now northern Egypt, and even the pyramids, stood on land governed by foreigners.
07:07This was the worst thing to the mind of the Egyptians.
07:09The pyramid to Ahmus, to Amosi, and Kamos was a kind of a reminder.
07:16Tell them, we need the glory of Egypt to come back.
07:19And this gave them the power to unite, to defeat those strange people,
07:24and dismiss them away from Egypt.
07:27With his father dead, his land divided, Kamos was determined to defeat the Hyksus.
07:34His actual words have survived, carved on this large stone, a stela.
07:40Kamos bluntly states his intention to destroy the enemies to the north and south of Egypt.
07:47What power can I claim to have when I'm stuck between an Asiatic and a Nubian?
07:53Each of them has a piece of Egypt, too, and shares the land with me.
07:58My aim is to liberate Egypt and crush the Asiatics.
08:06But Kamos could not fight alone.
08:08He had to get his people behind him first.
08:11And as the stela records, most Thebans did not object to living in a divided Egypt.
08:19We're satisfied with our share of Egypt.
08:22The best fields are ours to cultivate.
08:25Grain is still being sent to our swine, and our herds have never been seized.
08:32Not everyone would have been upset with the Hyksus rule.
08:35I'm sure times were good for lots of Egyptians under the Hyksus rulers.
08:40What then would rally the forces? What would get people going?
08:47The Hyksus soon gave the people of Egypt good reason to be alarmed.
08:55On a remote desert road, far from Thebes, Hyksus messengers raced south on a secret mission.
09:07Hyksus messengers were carrying this letter, which must have been rolled up piece of papyrus with a mud seal on
09:13it.
09:19And they were going through the desert probably at high speeds.
09:27And Kamos's spies must have intercepted these messengers.
09:43Kamos's men had captured a messenger from the Hyksus king.
09:47The letter he was carrying was addressed to Egypt's other enemy, the king of Nubia.
09:53It was an invitation to unite and conquer what was left of Egypt.
09:59Come north. There is no need to worry.
10:03Kamos is busy with me here.
10:06We'll divide the towns of Egypt between us and Nubia will rejoice.
10:14The Hyksus were inviting the Nubians to join them in a plot to converge on Egypt and destroy Kamos.
10:23We can think perhaps of the United States.
10:26It would really be as if Canada and Mexico were pressing against the U.S.
10:30and actually managing or talking about invading.
10:37Kamos knew it was time to fight.
10:42The Hyksus were certainly not backward people.
10:46They come from the area of the Levant where the towns are fortified towns,
10:52where the weapons of war are if anything more advanced than the weapons of the Egyptians.
10:59These are fighting people.
11:20Kamos, still only a young boy, watched from the sidelines as his brother Kamos prepared his army for the fight.
11:27Kamos and his brother Ahmose would become the liberators, the freedom fighters.
11:34They would become the initiators of the greatest period of Egyptian history.
11:43Twenty-year-old Kamos set off leading his troops north into Hyksus territory.
11:58My mighty army went before me like a blast of fire.
12:07Kamos and his army soon came across a fortified Hyksus town.
12:12Kamos was now face to face with his foe.
12:16When the next day dawned, I swooped down on him like a falcon.
12:21By breakfast time, I had already defeated him.
12:29I demolished his defenses, killed his men.
12:40Kamos recorded the capture of the town with unconcealed delight.
12:46My soldiers were like lions after the kill.
12:50As they carried off cattle and slaves, wine, fat and honey, gleefully dividing the loot.
12:57The Egyptian army now headed towards their ultimate goal.
13:02Avares, the Hyksus capital.
13:05Kamos felt confident that victory was in his grasp.
13:10He tombs the king of the Hyksus and shouts to him, he's a coward, that he's no good, that he's
13:20going to vanquish him.
13:28But Kamos would not sack Avares.
13:31The records do not say what happened to him.
13:34But on the verge of expelling the Hyksus from Egypt, Kamos died.
13:57Egypt's hopes now rested on the shoulders of his ten-year-old brother, Akmos.
14:03Although his mother had lost both her husband and eldest son to the Hyksus,
14:07she now groomed Akmos to continue the war of liberation they had begun.
14:13Kamos would have been learning the ways of battle.
14:16And his mother and courtiers would have been training him to become a great military leader.
14:21And he had the example of Kamosa to follow.
14:24So he's got to get it right.
14:26Not only for his own case, but because the nation depends on it.
14:31After ten years of preparation, Akmos was ready to take on the Hyksus.
14:41It would be his greatest test.
14:47The consequences would determine the rest of Egyptian history.
14:55Only one eyewitness account remains of this critical moment.
15:00It lies in the tomb of a soldier who fought in Akmos's army against the Hyksus.
15:10The story inscribed on the walls of his tomb, his role in the battle against the Hyksus,
15:16is the only written record of what would be the decisive battle for Egypt.
15:27Let me speak to you and tell you the honors I received, how I was decorated with gold.
15:35During the siege of Avaris, the king noticed me fighting bravely on foot and promoted me.
15:42We took Avaris. I carried off four people there, a man and three women.
15:49And his majesty let me keep them as slaves.
15:55These few words of an old man are the only record of the historic defeat of the Hyksus by Akmos'
16:03army.
16:08Akmos returned victorious to Thebes.
16:10He presented his ceremonial acts to his mother as a symbol of his great victory.
16:16The work his father and brother had begun, he had finally completed.
16:23He actually dismissed the Hyksus.
16:26His father and grandfather and his brother did start,
16:30but he's the one that he actually succeeded to expel the Hyksus away from Egypt.
16:39Akmos was no longer merely the king of Thebes.
16:42He was now pharaoh of a united Egypt.
16:47The reunification of Egypt is crucial.
16:49It means a new beginning.
16:51It means that Egypt is back to where it should be
16:55as a unified land under the rule of one king, one pharaoh.
16:59It's a seminal moment. It's a beginning moment.
17:02There is sometime around maybe 1520 is the opening act in the New Kingdom.
17:22Akmos attributed his victories to one source,
17:25the god Amen-Re, a mysterious god whose name means the Hidden One.
17:35In the darkest recesses of the Temple of Thebes, the god spoke to Akmos.
18:00The Egyptians were so in awe of Akmos's victory over the Hyksus,
18:05that the pharaoh himself was worshipped as a god.
18:08that the pharaoh himself was worshipped as a god.
18:09Amose, he was a hero.
18:12In the eyes of everyone, they were smiling, calling his name,
18:16building a chapel for him, asking God to protect him because he's God.
18:22But Akmos's ambition went beyond uniting Egypt.
18:25He wanted gold to build Egypt into a powerful nation.
18:29He headed south with his army to Nubia.
18:33Some of the richest gold mines in the ancient world were controlled by the powerful Nubian king
18:39from his capital here at Kerma.
18:44In a series of battles, Akmos's army crushed the Nubians.
18:49Once again, Akmos was victorious.
18:55After 25 years on the throne, Akmos died.
19:00But his legacy would live on.
19:02To ensure that foreigners would never rule his country again,
19:06he had pushed Egypt's borders beyond the Sinai Desert in the north
19:10and deep into Nubia in the south.
19:18The warrior pharaoh had laid the foundations of an empire.
19:23It was the beginning of the light of the day.
19:26It was the beginning of the sun that got rise.
19:29It was the beginning of the pyramids to come back.
19:32It was the beginning of the glory of Egypt.
19:34This is why we called it the Golden Age.
19:46Akmos had spent his life securing peace for Egypt.
19:49Now Egypt could be rebuilt and Thebes, the religious capital, could flourish.
19:57One pharaoh in particular, Hatshepsut, transformed the city, constructing beautiful temples as well as the strange new obelisks that towered
20:07over them.
20:09Weighing over 300 tons and standing 30 meters tall, obelisks were cut from a single piece of granite.
20:19Building and erecting these stone spires was a spectacular achievement that still puzzles engineers today.
20:29Obelisks became the defining monuments of the new kingdom.
20:33Bold and innovative.
20:35They have been emulated around the world ever since.
20:39But the obelisks also represented a mystery.
20:43For years, archaeologists had known that obelisks were built during Hatshepsut's reign.
20:49But this name was missing from the list of kings on these temple walls, the official records.
20:54It was as if Hatshepsut had never existed.
20:58It remained a mystery for 3,000 years.
21:08In 1903, British archaeologist Howard Carter was working in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
21:18Sifting through the sand, Carter came across a tomb and honoured the name of the pharaoh, Hatshepsut.
21:29Hatshepsut had been wiped from the historical records for a very simple reason.
21:35This remarkable pharaoh was a woman.
21:43Early in her life, Hatshepsut had been an ordinary queen.
21:48When her husband died, her stepson Tothmosis came to the throne.
21:53But he was too young to rule alone.
21:56So Hatshepsut ruled as co-regent.
21:59This was not exceptional.
22:01What was shocking was her next step.
22:03Hatshepsut declared herself pharaoh.
22:07Hatshepsut must have been an extraordinary woman.
22:10She found herself the most important ruler of the time.
22:17The next ruler to come to the throne, Thatmosis III, was only a small child.
22:23So she took action.
22:24And from being a regent, she had herself proclaimed, not queen, but king of Egypt.
22:38What drives her? Is it ambition? Or is it politically the right thing to do at that time?
22:51She saw the opportunity and she seized it.
22:53It was the desire for power.
22:55She saw that this system of female regents could be turned into securing full power for a senior woman of
23:05the royal family like herself.
23:09Only two women had been pharaoh before Hatshepsut and both had failed to rule for long.
23:15But this did not deter her.
23:18She believed Egypt could be persuaded to accept a woman on the throne.
23:22After all, women in Egypt were held in high regard compared with other cultures of the time, as ancient texts
23:30reveal.
23:32I hereby make my will for my wife.
23:35I leave her all of the property which I inherited from my brother.
23:38Don't give your wife grief at home when you know that she's in control.
23:42Never say, where is it, find it for me, when she has put something where it's supposed to be.
23:45Keep your eyes open, but keep your mouth shut.
23:48If you appreciate her quality...
23:50You were better off as a woman in ancient Egypt than in most ancient societies.
23:54But it was very difficult for them to branch out independently, had their own careers.
23:59It was still a man's world.
24:02Egyptian women were known as lady of the house, or if you like, housewife.
24:07Hatshepsut is no housewife.
24:09Despite the rights women possessed at the time, Egyptians struggled with the idea of a female pharaoh.
24:16It went against the natural order of life, a concept Egyptians described as Mart.
24:22Mart meant the order of the whole cosmos.
24:26The way the universe was constructed, Egypt's place in the cosmos, relationships with foreigners and Egypt were part of that.
24:35Foreigners are inferior, Egypt is superior and dominant, and the king should be male.
24:45She knew that she has no right for the throne, and the Egyptians will never accept that.
24:53Hatshepsut's need to legitimize her role as pharaoh would dominate her entire reign.
25:00First she turned to her ancestry.
25:03Hatshepsut stressed the fact that she was the daughter of a king.
25:07Hatshepsut can be seen as the Queen Elizabeth I of ancient Egypt.
25:11And one of the strongest features in her life is her relationship with her father.
25:17She may be a woman, she may be somebody whose claim to the throne was rather shaky,
25:22but do not ever forget that she was the daughter of Tuthmosis I.
25:28Queen Elizabeth used to interview ambassadors underneath a portrait of Henry VIII.
25:33The message was the same, I am my father's daughter.
25:38Hatshepsut even put words into her dead father's mouth, claiming he had publicly appointed her as his successor.
25:47This is my daughter, Hatshepsut. I hereby appoint her in my place.
25:53She alone will sit on my majestic throne.
25:57Listen to her commands and work together on whatever she orders.
26:03But she went further.
26:05On her temple walls, she carved a tale of how the god Amun took on her father's appearance and made
26:13love to her mother.
26:15Hatshepsut was not only the daughter of a pharaoh, now she was the daughter of a god.
26:24Hatshepsut personally embraced her sexuality, reveling in descriptions of her own beauty.
26:31Her body was covered with the finest incense. Her scent was a divine shower.
26:38Her skin glittered like the stars. To look at her was more beautiful than anything.
26:45But Hatshepsut was pharaoh, and the pharaoh had to be male.
26:50So she had herself depicted with a male body, a male kilt, and the false beard of a pharaoh on
26:56her chin.
27:00Hatshepsut had to carefully choose who to trust at court.
27:05Hatshepsut is a woman trying to be a king.
27:07She inherited a court from her father, but she replaces them with people that she herself has chosen.
27:15And it's in their interest to keep their patron, even if that patron is a woman, in place.
27:21They know that if she goes, they go.
27:26One of the pharaoh's favorite courtiers was a man named Senenmut.
27:33He had started life as a commoner.
27:36But his rise to power had been meteoric, sparking rumors about the nature of his relationship with Hatshepsut.
27:47Senenmut was promoted from the army to the royal household.
27:52Hatshepsut even entrusted him with raising her own daughter.
28:00But it was as her chief architect that Senenmut did the most for his pharaoh.
28:06He had been responsible for the creation of Hatshepsut's giant obelisks.
28:13Now she entrusted him with her most ambitious plan.
28:18The building of her mortuary temple.
28:34The temple would be Hatshepsut's ultimate attempt to prove herself worthy of the title of pharaoh.
28:41It was one of the most lavish and monumental buildings of the ancient world.
28:47Deir el-Bahri.
28:56Below the great temple, an additional tomb had been carved out of the rock.
29:02Halfway down the corridor is a drawing of the owner of the tomb.
29:06And next to it, a name, Senenmut.
29:11The tomb's position, so close to Hatshepsut's temple, may simply have been the ultimate reward for a loyal architect.
29:20But perhaps, it was a reflection of the intimacy between Hatshepsut and her favorite courtier.
29:35There was speculation at the time that Senenmut was Hatshepsut's lover, and a series of graffiti in a tomb near
29:43the temple of Deir el-Bahri make it fairly clear that the person who wrote the graffiti thought that that
29:48was what they were up to.
29:49This is a problem that female rulers tend to get. They pick up salacious views of what they're doing. I
29:57suspect that's unlikely. It's too dangerous a game for Senenmut to be playing.
30:03I suspect the relationship was one of mutual respect and not going beyond the boundaries of that respect.
30:12But while the inner temple harbored private secrets, the outer walls of Deir el-Bahri became a place for propaganda
30:20and self-aggrandizement.
30:24Carved reliefs boast the crowning achievement of her reign, an unusual and bold military adventure.
30:32Every pharaoh was expected to prove himself on the battlefield, but Hatshepsut's army was under the control of her stepson,
30:40Tothmosis.
30:41Tothmosis was acutely aware that the throne was rightfully his.
30:46Like Elizabeth I of England, she doesn't trust the army. She's got a problem.
30:51If she sends the army out to extend the empire, if it loses, she will be blamed and will almost
30:59certainly lose power.
31:00What happens, on the other hand, if it wins?
31:03The generals in charge of the victorious army are likely to turn round and say,
31:07see, we can achieve victory, we don't need this queen upstart on the throne.
31:12So, Tothmosis and his army represents a major problem for Hatshepsut.
31:21The pharaoh devised an ingenious plan that would not only keep Tothmosis and his army occupied, but would also enhance
31:29her status.
31:30She commanded her soldiers to prepare for an epic trading mission to a place where no Egyptian had been for
31:37over 500 years.
31:38The land of Punt.
31:42As well as keeping her stepson busy, Punt offered Hatshepsut the promise of exotic goods.
31:49Above all, incense.
31:52Incense was a very important part of Egypt's foreign relations.
31:56The Egyptians valued incense tremendously.
31:59The elite liked to perfume their environments.
32:02But even more importantly, when you released incense in a temple, the god or the goddess actually embodied themselves in
32:10the incense.
32:11So, what you were smelling wasn't just the incense, it was the aroma of the deity.
32:17In the ninth year of her reign, the pharaoh launched the expedition to Punt.
32:23An epic quest for the rarest treasures of the ancient world.
32:38in the Drug Kland Conference and the drilled bag.
32:38In the ninth game.
32:53And there there is a pleasure playing.
32:56The LP Berg Chaotic CQuest.
32:56was the essence of this trip. It was a huge piece of theatre, it was a huge piece of propaganda
33:02to show that Hatshepsut can deliver the exotic, the unusual, the divine. It also creates work
33:11for an unemployed army. It's a feat that they can talk about to their grandchildren that they can say
33:16we did under the famous Queen Hatshepsut.
33:34The walls of Hatshepsut's temple proclaim the mission to have been a triumphant success.
33:40The reliefs depict the exotic treasures her soldiers brought back to her.
33:47Look, they are returning and they have brought something truly amazing.
33:52Trees heavy with fresh incense ready to plant, ebony and whitest ivory, baboons, monkeys and dogs,
34:01countless leopard skins, even slaves and children. Nothing like this has ever happened to another king of Egypt.
34:10The scribes who accompanied the army carefully recorded the wonders of that exotic land.
34:16houses on stilts, giraffes and strange tropical trees.
34:22Along with the flora and fauna, the Queen of Punt was depicted as a huge, fat woman.
34:28These reliefs are regarded as the first anthropological study in history.
34:37The expedition to Punt did more than legitimize Hatshepsut's position as pharaoh.
34:44It set her apart as the pharaoh who had opened Egypt and reached out to foreign lands.
34:52Under her reign, you really have the explosion of wealth, of power, of vision in a way.
35:00It's a great reign.
35:05After 22 years on the throne, Hatshepsut died.
35:10She hoped that her obelisks towering over Karnak would forever remind the world of her greatness.
35:17But she had stolen the name of pharaoh from her stepson.
35:21And for this, he would make her pay.
35:28Tuthmosis III, rightful heir to the throne, was 25 years old and ready to claim his inheritance.
35:39Amun opened the gates, and I flew up to heaven as a divine hawk.
35:43He gave me his strength and his might.
35:52Tuthmosis quickly reconnected himself with the line of warrior pharaohs, Akmos and Kamos.
36:03It would be as if his stepmother had never reigned.
36:08Tuthmosis would make sure of that.
36:26Tuthmosis had her obelisks bricked up and ordered that Hatshepsut's name and image be carefully removed from every corner of
36:34Egypt.
36:35Tuthmosis III is saying we don't need the memory of this female ruler, this interlude, in the history of Egypt
36:44as an imperial power.
36:46Even Hatshepsut's beautiful temple was defaced.
36:55It would be like it was in the days when it was being built and decorated, but in reverse.
37:00The scaffolding would be up.
37:02There would be hundreds of workmen scurrying around, busily chipping away at the wall.
37:09To organize the defacing of the royal image of Hatshepsut was certainly a major bureaucratic task.
37:16And if there was anything the ancient Egyptians liked, it was a major bureaucratic task.
37:21So I'm sure this was some high official's acme of his career.
37:27All evidence of Hatshepsut's reign was destroyed.
37:32If you erase someone's image from their mortuary monument, you are in effect erasing them from continuing existence in the
37:38afterlife.
37:39And for any Egyptian, royal or otherwise, that's total disaster.
37:44And so by defacing a monument like that, you're saying, no, you don't have eternity.
37:51With her name erased throughout Egypt and excluded from all the lists of kings,
37:57it was as if Hatshepsut had never existed.
38:08The death of a pharaoh was always a time for neighboring nations to test the resolve of a new successor.
38:16Now a coalition of Middle Eastern princes moved south and gathered in the city of Megiddo,
38:22threatening Egyptian trade and influence in the region.
38:27Perhaps his enemies thought Tuthmosis would be weak.
38:31If so, they had made a terrible mistake.
38:36Tuthmosis had waited over 20 years for this moment.
38:40He intended not just to push back these warlike rulers, but to take over their countries.
38:46Tuthmosis was planning what no Egyptian pharaoh had ever dreamed of.
38:50To build an empire.
38:53The strategy was hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer.
38:56He realized that in order to build up a secure basis of power in the eastern Mediterranean,
39:04that it was going to take a great military effort, that it was going to take many, many campaigns.
39:09And so that's what he did.
39:16To increase the size of his army, Tuthmosis launched a huge recruiting campaign.
39:22Soldiers were enlisted either voluntarily or by force.
39:31They had to be armed, and we know there were these great armories filled with weapons and shields and things
39:38of this kind.
39:39And every soldier was given his gear, his kit.
39:45Finally, the four great divisions of the powerful Egyptian army headed north, across the scorching Sinai Desert.
39:55They moved boldly up the Mediterranean coast.
40:11The Egyptian army on the move would be an impressive affair.
40:15The leadership was quite interested in maintaining the movement of the army as something that had considerable visual impact.
40:23And it was partly to impress the enemy.
40:26They would be hearing, what is the Egyptian army like?
40:29Does it look intimidating?
40:30Is it straggling?
40:32Is it not well organized?
40:34But it was also very important for the army that it should have a sense of itself as a very
40:40well organized entity with very high spirit.
40:47Led by the pharaoh Tuthmosis himself, 20,000 men marched toward Megiddo.
41:04At the end of every day, when the troops made camp, the pharaoh's scribes recorded the army's latest achievements.
41:13They were the first war correspondents in history.
41:17He has scribes write down in a day book all the events that take place.
41:22When they start, where they start marching, where they set up camp, how many troops there are, how much they
41:29need to eat.
41:30All the actual day-to-day life of an army on the move.
41:35Fourth month of winter, day 25.
41:37His Majesty passed the fortress of Sil on his first victorious campaign to crush the people who were assaulting Egypt's
41:45borders.
41:48Back in Egypt, their accounts were recorded on the walls of the Karnak Temple.
41:53The faces of foreigners bear the names of all the cities conquered by Tuthmosis.
41:58Here, the word Israel is recorded for the first time in history.
42:05The scribal records also include intimate details of what it was like to be a soldier in Pharaoh's army 3
42:13,000 years ago.
42:15The trees I lie under at night have nothing to eat on them.
42:19Sand flies keep biting me and sucking my veins dry.
42:23I'm hobbling about like a cripple because I have to go everywhere on foot.
42:29Tell Amun to bring me back alive from this hell hole where I've been abandoned.
42:36Tuthmosis and his soldiers had finally arrived at their ultimate goal.
42:40Beyond their camp, behind the mountain, lay Megiddo.
42:45This is the town in the Levant where all the princes of the area have gathered.
42:50And if you manage to conquer this fortress town, then you've pretty well conquered the whole area.
42:56In the words of Thuthmosis III, the capture of Megiddo is the capture of a thousand cities.
43:08On the 16th day of the first month of summer, 1456 BC, the 25-year-old Pharaoh stood on the
43:16Carmel Ridge
43:17and faced one of the greatest dilemmas in Middle Eastern warfare.
43:24The great fortress of Megiddo lay before him.
43:28Three paths led to the city.
43:30Two were long but safer routes.
43:33The third path was the quickest.
43:36But it was also the most dangerous, since Thuthmosis men would have to go in single file.
43:44Thuthmosis called a council of war.
43:47He later recorded how his generals were firmly against taking the dangerous path.
43:52They said to his majesty,
43:54How will it be to go on this road which becomes narrow
43:57when it is reported that the enemies are waiting there beyond?
44:01There are two other roads here.
44:03Do not make us go on that difficult road.
44:11Ultimately, the last word fell to the young Pharaoh.
44:15His generals and men would have to live and perhaps die by his decision.
44:22The enemy expected Thuthmosis III to come from the easy road.
44:26They were waiting for him there.
44:28They never thought that the army of Thuthmosis III will come from the left side
44:33and take this narrow, impossible road.
44:36But he said,
44:37Now, that is the road to victory.
44:52Suddenly, as Thuthmosis had planned, the Egyptian army appeared among the enemy.
44:59In Megiddo, there was panic.
45:01The enemy army rushed out of the city to take on the Egyptians.
45:29It would have been clanking, noisy, dusty.
45:32It would have been clanking, noisy, dusty.
45:35The smell and the noise and the whinny of the horse.
45:42It would just be this wild melee and all this blinding dust
45:46with enemy soldiers looming up in front of you, just as frightened and angry as you are.
45:58His majesty set out on his electrum chariot, dressed in his battle gear, strong-armed like Horus the Lord.
46:06His father, Amun, strengthening his arms.
46:12The Egyptians forced the enemy to flee back within the walls of Megiddo.
46:18The enemy kings are galloping back to the city
46:22and having to abandon their wonderful gold and silver chariots
46:25because the city has closed its gates.
46:27The city is not going to open its gates while the Egyptian army is out there.
46:31And these kings have to be hauled up the city walls in knotted garments that the people had let down.
46:39It was a complete rout.
46:41The enemy crumpled completely before the Egyptian attack.
46:55But on the verge of victory, Tuthmos' plan went wrong.
47:01He wanted his forces to continue immediately to the city and take the city.
47:06But the Egyptian troops stopped to plunder the enemy dead and the enemy camp.
47:11He can't stop it.
47:12The army is going to plunder and he can't get them to stop it.
47:22They don't do a head count in ancient Egypt.
47:24They do a hand count.
47:26They cut their hands off.
47:28They pile them up in a whole mound and then they count them one at a time.
47:32Pretty gory business, but I suppose it's not quite as horrid as cutting their heads off.
47:37Each enemy hand was worth its weight in gold.
47:41But in their plundering, Tuthmos' army had given the enemy time to gather safely behind the city walls.
47:47The Egyptians had no choice but to surround Megiddo and wait.
47:52He did not have to conduct an attack on the city because by setting up this stockade, he signaled that
48:00he intended to starve them out, not attack them and try to take the city by storm.
48:06For the next seven months, while the princes in Megiddo slowly starved, Tuthmos' and his army raided the surrounding countryside.
48:18Finally, Megiddo surrendered.
48:24Hundreds of years later, when the writer of the book of Revelation spoke of the last battle of doomsday, he
48:30would set it here in Megiddo.
48:32He would call it Armageddon.
48:39The pharaoh returned in triumph to Thebes.
48:46Megiddo and all its wealth now belonged to Tuthmosis.
49:00On the walls of Karnak Temple, his scribes recorded the staggering scale of the booty they had captured.
49:08Living prisoners, 340.
49:12Chariots of his wretched army, 892.
49:16Cows, 1,929.
49:20Male and female slaves and their children, 1,796.
49:25Walking sticks with human heads, 3.
49:29The war booty and tribute that poured into Thebes would make it one of the greatest cities of the ancient
49:36world.
49:37In a stroke of genius, the pharaoh also brought back the children of the defeated princes to indoctrinate them in
49:45the ways of Egypt.
49:47They would grow up in an Egyptian school. They'd learn Egyptian.
49:50It was rather like what the British did in India by taking the children of Maharajas and bringing them back
49:57to public schools in England.
49:59That way, the princes became semi-Egyptian.
50:03But at the same time, of course, they were hostages to their father's good behavior.
50:08And as their father aged, they were sent back to replace him, now thoroughly inculcated with Egyptian attitudes.
50:17In Nubia, Tuthmosis went one step further.
50:21He appointed a viceroy to rule over Nubia.
50:24The viceroy was called Overseer of the Gold Countries.
50:29He secured Egypt's lifeline.
50:31All the gold the pharaoh needed to rule his empire.
50:37Tuthmosis established that empire, and he gave this empire the leadership.
50:43He gave the empire how the empire became to be strong.
50:47How he controlled the south at the sixth cataract, and controlled the eastern Syria-Palestine and this area in Iraq.
50:55Then the whole world was under Thebes, under his control.
51:06For all these successes, Tuthmosis pledged thanks to one god, Amun-Re.
51:15The pharaoh's first task on returning from Megiddo was solemn.
51:20The king approached the inner sanctuary.
51:23Alone, Tuthmosis made offerings to the god he credited with his victory.
51:29The god who granted him an empire.
51:32According to Tuthmosis, the god spoke to him.
51:37I gave you valor and victory over all lands.
51:42I set your might, your fear, in every country, that you may lead the living forever.
51:54Tuthmosis.
51:55Stepping back, the king cast sand on the floor to obscure his footprints and ensure no one else entered the
52:02god's presence.
52:06Tuthmosis could return into the light with the blessing of Amun for his new empire.
52:12Only 100 years earlier, Egypt had been on the verge of extinction.
52:17But by the end of Tuthmosis' reign, Egypt controlled Nubia, the Syrian and Lebanese coasts, and parts of Israel and
52:26Palestine.
52:29Egyptians moved into territories that they never thought they probably would reach at all.
52:34It is an enormous empire.
52:36It's the biggest empire that has ever been conquered.
52:39And it is ruled by one king.
52:53And the wealth of the world arrives in Egypt, and receiving it is the king of Egypt.
52:58He is the richest man in the world at that time.
53:01He is the ruler of the greatest empire.
53:07It was the beginning.
53:10It was a first attempt to create a unified whole from among nations of different faiths, different traditions, different languages.
53:22That concept had not been realized before in history.
53:33The Egyptian empire was born.
53:36The question now was, what the pharaoh would do with his empire of gold?
53:55The forbidden ideia of gold?
53:55The 어� umm be indigenous?
54:18The
54:18The
54:19It would
54:19You
54:19Of
54:19Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen
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