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00:16For over 3,000 years, Egypt was ruled by pharaohs.
00:23But in that vast sweep of time, one pharaoh stands out.
00:28He would reign for 67 years, command the largest empire on earth,
00:34and capture the imagination of the world.
00:40His name was Ramesses.
00:51Ramesses built a reputation that has resounded through history.
00:55It was a reputation deliberately crafted by the pharaoh himself.
01:05Ramesses was in fact a master of propaganda,
01:08projecting his power beyond the battlefield across the ancient world.
01:26This is the story of how one man created his own legend.
01:31The legend of Ramesses the Great.
01:35And how in the end, not even a legendary pharaoh could save Egypt's golden empire from destruction.
01:49The End
02:16In 1327 BC, a tragic event brought Egypt to the verge of crisis.
02:24The pharaoh Tutankhamen had died.
02:32His death marked the end of Egypt's most powerful dynasty and the beginning of a period of great
02:40uncertainty.
02:48A great deal was at stake.
02:51In just two centuries, Egypt's royal family had built a massive empire stretching far
02:56beyond the Nile, from Syria in the north to the gold fields of Nubia, modern-day Sudan,
03:02in the south.
03:07A succession of powerful pharaohs had made Egypt the richest and most powerful nation in the
03:13world.
03:16When Tutankhamen died, the big problem was that there was no heir to the throne, so obviously
03:21Egypt must have been in a bad state.
03:23There was nobody there to take over and things were in a state of flux.
03:30But now, with the end of the great dynasty, a new enemy had emerged to challenge Egypt's
03:35might, the Hittites.
03:38The Hittites, living in what is now Turkey, were a more technologically advanced power
03:43than Egypt.
03:44Already, they were pushing against the northern border of Egypt's empire.
03:57In 1279 BC, the fate of the threatened empire became the responsibility of a young boy, the
04:05new pharaoh of Egypt.
04:06Egypt.
04:09He was crowned Ramesses, meaning, offspring of the sun god Ra.
04:22Ramesses comes to the throne fairly young, probably about the age of 15, and he's got
04:28an enormous task ahead of him.
04:30He looks back over the history of his country.
04:35A hundred years or so earlier, there were kings who were the epitome of wealth, power,
04:41and good taste.
04:43That's an enormous legacy to have to live up to.
04:49Ramesses had not come from a royal background.
04:52In fact, the boy king had been born a commoner.
05:01Ramesses' family was a military family who were fairly new on the throne.
05:07They were certainly not from the royal line.
05:09They were near the royal line.
05:11They lived and worked for the kings of Egypt, but they did not belong to the royal family.
05:20It was military prowess that had won Ramesses' family its place on the throne.
05:27And it would be through military action that the young Ramesses would have to prove himself.
05:38To the north of Egypt, the Hittites were preparing for war.
05:43They intended to take advantage of the young and inexperienced boy king.
05:47Ramesses' family.
05:49Ramesses was about to face the biggest challenge of his life.
05:57You have two superpowers, each one trying to grab bits from the other, and eventually they're
06:05going to clash.
06:06By the fifth year of Ramesses' reign, the massive Hittite army moved into Egypt's territories,
06:11advancing toward the town of Kadesh.
06:14As the crossroads for trade with the Near East, Kadesh was of extreme strategic importance.
06:22Ramesses II realizes that the battle for the area of Kadesh, for this border, is the battle
06:30that will eventually decide which of these two empires will be the leaders of the world
06:35in the entire century, in the entire 13th century.
06:42Here was the opportunity Ramesses had been waiting for.
06:45It was the chance to prove his power and might to the world.
06:55There was only one problem.
06:57Egypt was not ready for war.
07:00Ramesses needed an army quickly.
07:02He mobilized not just Egyptian soldiers, but other subjects from his empire, including
07:07Nubians and Libyans.
07:15The primitive bronze weapons of the Egyptian forces were soon to be pitted against the Hittites'
07:20iron armory.
07:22The odds didn't look good.
07:26I can't imagine what it must have been like to be a soldier in Pharaoh's army.
07:30First of all, in all likelihood, you don't want to be there.
07:33You've been conscripted.
07:36Secondly, you're rather poorly fed.
07:38You're rather poorly clothed.
07:40You have a spear or, if you're lucky, a bow and arrow.
07:44And that's it.
07:46You are expected to give your all.
07:51Soon, Ramesses' army was ready.
07:53The Pharaoh's scribes also came along to record what the Pharaoh was confident would be a glorious
08:00victory.
08:01He had all the self-confidence that can go with being young.
08:05He thought that everything was doable.
08:08He thought that problems would not exist.
08:11He probably thought that compromises wouldn't need to be made.
08:14You could just go out and do it and get it.
08:21Finally, the twenty-year-old king set off with his army, leading an advance guard out of
08:27the lush Nile Delta into the scorching heat of the Sinai Desert.
08:33The figure he cut at the helm of his army was impressive.
08:39I can imagine that he had a great deal of power and authority.
08:44He was very strong and muscular.
08:46He was himself about five foot eight, five nine.
08:51That's about, not a wet much, four inches or so taller than the average Egyptian man.
08:57But taller nevertheless.
08:59He had red hair, which was a very unusual feature in ancient Egypt.
09:03And it set him apart.
09:17The Egyptian army surged across the desert through Israel and Lebanon.
09:24A few miles from Kadesh, Ramesses and his advance guard made camp and waited for the rest of the
09:31army to catch up.
09:38When Ramesses established this camp, he obviously was not thinking that there was going to be a battle
09:44any time soon.
09:45This was a time to stop, have a picnic, talk about life in general, and await, maybe a week,
09:51two weeks, three weeks later, some kind of a battle which, of course, the Egyptians knew they would win.
09:57But things weren't going to be so easy.
09:59We know from scribal accounts that the inexperienced Pharaoh was about to be the victim of a dangerous trap.
10:11There were two Bedouin in the desert who were brought in by Ramesses soldiers and interrogated.
10:18Ramesses or whoever said, where's the king of the Hittites?
10:22And they said, oh, he's way off there. Don't worry about him. He's far away.
10:26What Ramesses didn't realize was that his informants were Hittite spies sent to mislead him.
10:32They released them and sent them off and said, ah, great. Well, let's set up camp and relax.
10:37We've got plenty of time before the battle begins.
10:42The Pharaoh had fallen for a simple trick.
10:47Ramesses goofed seriously and badly to have taken those two Bedouins at their word,
10:53to have avoided sending out scouts to check the veracity of what they were saying.
10:58I think it was a terrible, terrible military mistake.
11:01Ramesses soldiers captured two more spies.
11:04This time, Ramesses had them beaten and interrogated.
11:07He got a very different story.
11:10The Hittites were not hundreds of miles away.
11:12They were just across the river, ready to attack.
11:22In panic, Pharaoh sent word back for reinforcements.
11:30Suddenly, the Hittites attacked.
11:37Ramesses' scribes left an eyewitness account of the battle.
11:44The Hittite wretch with his army forded the river south of Kadesh,
11:48smashing into his majesty's army when it least expected an attack.
11:59The dust, the choking dust, the blood pouring onto the desert,
12:04at Sands, these soldiers, who looked death in the face at every moment of one of these battles,
12:10must have been absolute hell.
12:16Ramesses' troops fell before the Hittites' iron weapons.
12:19The Egyptian army stood on the brink of defeat.
12:26Then, at the last minute, Ramesses' reinforcements arrived.
12:31They took the Hittites by surprise.
12:36Ramesses.
12:44Ramesses has been unbelievably lucky.
12:47And he ends up, at the end of the day, holding the battlefield.
12:51Actually, it was something of a goalless draw, and snatched from defeat, at the last moment,
12:57by the arrival of the Egyptian equivalent of the U.S. cavalry.
13:08Ramesses had failed in his mission.
13:11The Hittites would be back, and Egypt's trade routes and empire were still vulnerable.
13:18The Battle of Kadesh did not go according to plan.
13:21At the most, it was a way for the Egyptians to prevent the Hittites from moving further south.
13:27But it was certainly not the flamboyant victory that Ramesses wanted.
13:33Ramesses, however, was determined to have his victory.
13:37Back in Egypt, he would tell a far different story of the Battle of Kadesh.
13:48What Ramesses does is say, right, I'm going to rewrite history.
13:52So it's going to be the big gesture.
13:54It's going to be the vainglorious boast.
13:58It's going to be the huge publicity machine.
14:00It's going to be the hieroglyphic equivalent of spin doctoring.
14:07Ramesses now masterminded an extraordinary propaganda campaign.
14:14He sent out legions of artisans to carve epic depictions of the Battle of Kadesh on temple walls around the
14:21empire.
14:26The story he told begins truthfully, but then veers off into fantasy.
14:32The young king claimed he had won a clear victory at Kadesh.
14:36And it was not the Egyptian reinforcements, but he himself, who all alone had saved the day.
14:46In Ramesses' version, he transformed himself from a gullible, inexperienced commander into a godlike warrior.
14:58Every temple wall carried the same story.
15:03His majesty leapt up raging against them.
15:07He grabbed his weapons and set off at a gallop completely alone.
15:13His majesty was an unstoppable fighting force.
15:20Everything near him was ablaze with fire.
15:24All the foreign lands were blasted by his scorching breath.
15:38He claims that single-handedly, after his troops had deserted him, he went into the field of battle, slashing, swaying
15:48his sword back and forth, decimating the enemies of Egypt.
15:55He charged straight into the Hittite troops.
15:59The infantry and chariotry fell on their faces.
16:05His majesty struck them down and killed them where they stood.
16:11The claims of Ramesses II, that his army totally abandoned him.
16:15That he was left alone on the field of battle and single-handedly defeated the Hittites, of course, is an
16:23utter load of rubbish.
16:34Despite his boasting, Ramesses knew that his army could not defeat the Hittites.
16:39He had to cut a deal.
16:42Secretly, Ramesses began to negotiate with the Hittites.
16:46After lengthy debate, Ramesses signed a treaty with the Hittite king.
16:51Ramesses the spin doctor was now Ramesses the statesman.
17:00A copy of the treaty is still preserved in the most holy of temples at Karnak, chiseled onto a wall.
17:14I, the great Hittite ruler, am at peace with Ramesses, the great king of Egypt, and enjoy his brotherhood.
17:24All the people of Egypt and all the Hittite people will be at peace like us forever.
17:37Covering issues of royal succession, extradition and amnesty for refugees, the treaty remains a model that is still followed today.
17:47Here you have the two superpowers of the day, sitting down around a table and saying,
17:52what we need to do is to build up a lasting peace, to build up an alliance which will mutually
17:58benefit both our sides.
18:05To seal the treaty, Ramesses married one of the Hittite king's daughters.
18:25The Hittite princess was part of the terms of the peace treaty.
18:30She was, if you like, the cement in the treaty.
18:36She's brought into the presence of Ramesses and therefore, by extension, into the Egyptian empire.
18:49The Hittite princess was brought to Egypt's new capital, located in the Nile Delta in northern Egypt.
18:57It was called Per-Ramesses, meaning the House of Ramesses.
19:07Far from the old aristocracy center of power in Thebes, Per-Ramesses was carefully situated in the north, to keep
19:15an eye on the Hittites.
19:16It was to be a new capital for a new regime.
19:20This was the Brasilia of ancient Egypt.
19:24This was the new capital.
19:27This was something that was going to be the beginning of a new regeneration of the country.
19:33He's saying, I am a new man, this is a new Egypt.
19:36And the traditional aristocracy had just better come to terms with this.
19:42On the banks of the Nile, Ramesses adorned his capital with all the treasures the empire had to offer.
19:51Eyewitnesses tell of a lushness and opulence, unsurpassed in Egypt.
19:59I have reached Per-Ramesses.
20:02It seems like an amazing place.
20:05A beautiful area unlike any other.
20:09Its pools are alive with fish, and its lakes are covered in ducks.
20:15Its gardens are lush with vegetation.
20:22From the river banks come fruit as sweet as honey.
20:26Everyone who lives there is happy, and none has any regrets.
20:31Even the lowliest person there lives in style.
20:53Not content with glorifying himself in this world, Ramesses turned his attention to the afterlife.
21:01Far from Per-Ramesses, deep in the south of Egypt was a place dedicated to securing Ramesses' immortality.
21:10Hidden behind the mountain that looms over the Valley of the Kings,
21:14was the carefully guarded village of Deir el-Medina.
21:53The
21:54They lived in a self-contained community that was quite tightly policed,
21:58because they had secrets which were not meant to be divulged to the public at large.
22:04They can be watched in their journey from the village to their point of work.
22:09Therefore, the workmen can't be accosted, they can't be asked for information.
22:16This security was vital, because these villagers were the Pharaoh's tomb builders.
22:22They held the key to the greatest secret of the Empire.
22:26The location of the royal tombs.
22:32Buried in the hills around them, lay the treasures of the richest and most powerful kings in history.
22:41The mountain the tomb builders climbed over to work each day, was literally a mountain of gold.
22:54At work, these men not only dug the Pharaoh's tombs out of the mountain, they also were designers, artists, painters.
23:03They produced exquisite scenes and hieroglyphic texts on tomb walls, spells and rituals that were essential for guiding the Pharaoh
23:12to the afterlife.
23:28What could be more important?
23:30You were, after all, ensuring that the Pharaohs would be able to travel from this life to the next.
23:35One mistake in those hieroglyphic texts, one error in those scenes, and there might have to be a detour and
23:41the king wouldn't make it from this life to the next.
23:49But Ramesses did not intend to spend the afterlife alone.
23:52The greatest work of the villages of Deir el-Medina was not in Ramesses' own tomb, but in the tomb
23:58for the most important woman in Ramesses' life.
24:02In 1312, Ramesses married an Egyptian noblewoman, Nefertari, and made her his chief wife.
24:12For Ramesses, the building of her tomb was to be the ultimate tribute to his greatest love.
24:19It is really the very best, possibly the last of the marvellous tombs of ancient Egypt.
24:29The reliefs and the fineness of the drawings, the way the colours were applied, it almost indicates a love affair
24:37between the man who did it and the figure of the queen.
24:43My love is unique. No one can rival her, for she is the most beautiful woman alive.
24:51Slender-necked and milky-breasted she is, her hair the colour of pure lapis.
24:58Gold is nothing compared to her arms, and her fingers are like lotus flowers.
25:04Her buttocks are full, but her waist is narrow.
25:08Just by passing, she has stolen away my heart.
25:24The tomb is decorated in the most exquisite taste of the time, and some snippets of the life of then
25:32have appeared now.
25:34They discovered a thumb imprint of one of the ancient workmen, who must have held his hand to the ceiling
25:41while he was painting,
25:42took his fingers away and forgot to repaint and retouch that part.
25:47So there is the fingerprint of one of the ancient workmen still there.
25:54The villagers who once walked these streets have left an incredibly detailed picture of daily life during the reign of
26:01Ramesses.
26:05Written on stone flakes and pottery shards that littered the remains of the village,
26:10archaeologists have found the tomb builders' notes in correspondence.
26:15Laundry lists, recipes, news, poems, and love letters.
26:23It is an archaeological gold mine, a cultural gold mine.
26:27The people at Daryl Medina were inveterate record keepers.
26:31They kept tabs on everything, and they left it behind on Ostrica,
26:35the ancient Egyptian equivalent of a post-it note, I suppose.
26:39Records about who was ill on which day, who was going on holiday, when did the in-laws come to
26:45visit,
26:46whose son went out carousing, got drunk, and did unspeakable things to the girl next door.
26:51All of this kind of thing is there, and in glorious, wonderful detail.
27:00Why are you treating me so badly?
27:03I'm no better than a donkey in your eyes.
27:06If, God forbid, I was the type that couldn't hold their drink, then you'd be right not to invite me.
27:11But I'm just someone who's a bit short of beer in his own house.
27:14When it's feeding time, you fetch an ox.
27:17But when there's beer, you never invite me.
27:19You only ask for me when there's work to be done.
27:24When they weren't working on the royal tombs, the villagers used their unique skills on their own tombs.
27:31But instead of the formal religious scenes of the royal tombs, their tombs portrayed pictures of the afterlife the tomb
27:37builders hoped for.
27:40Idealized versions of everyday life.
27:46In their spare time, the family would go, make their own tomb, add to the decoration.
27:51Probably at dinner parties, the question would be, how's the tomb getting on then?
27:59From the paintings and writings left behind by Ramesses' villagers, we know who lived in each house and even the
28:06intimate details of their relationships.
28:10Nowhere else in the ancient world can we listen to ordinary people and eavesdrop on their scandals and gossip.
28:21There was a foreman called Peneb, and we know a lot about the foreman Peneb, because we have a whole
28:26series of complaints about him.
28:28He did various things. He stole equipment from the Valley of the Kings.
28:32He embezzled the salary of some of his colleagues.
28:36He went around seducing the wives of villagers, presumably when the villagers were out at work.
28:45Even Peneb's own son denounced him for his behavior.
28:50My father slept with tea while she was married to Kenna, and with Hunro when she was with Pendua.
28:57And after he had slept with Hunro, he even slept with her daughter.
29:05These people at Daryl Medina quite clearly are human beings.
29:10And to read what they are writing, to see what they are doing, what they have in their homes,
29:16what kinds of drawings they have made, is to realize that we and they are really, truly kindred spirits.
29:25He's been arguing with my mother and threatening to throw her out.
29:29Your mother never does anything for you, he tells me.
29:31I didn't tell you to check what your wife has been up to, just for you to turn a blind
29:35eye to it.
29:36I'm going to make you face up to her whoring around.
29:38When you told me to give Ib a job, I did exactly that.
29:42But he takes ages to bring a jug of water.
29:44You're still no man. You can't even get your wife pregnant.
29:48And another thing, you're the biggest miser around. You never give anyone anything.
29:56By the time Ramesses was in his forties, his tomb had been finished for several years.
30:02With the average Egyptian life expectancy at around 35 years,
30:07Ramesses must have known that he was already living on borrowed time.
30:14He focused his attention on securing his legacy,
30:18siring children to succeed him on the golden throne.
30:21As well as his chief wife, Nefertari,
30:24Ramesses had a number of minor wives in his harem.
30:27He even married three of his own daughters.
30:36In his inscriptions, he boasts of something like 80 sons and something like 60 daughters,
30:42although the number of daughters is about a lot vaguer than the number of sons.
30:47But he boasts of a huge offspring,
30:49and he's rather like one of those modern dictators
30:51who were known as father of their country, in many cases literally.
30:58Confident that he had produced an heir,
31:01Ramesses turned with renewed vigour to his building programme.
31:23Soon the Nile Valley began to overflow with monuments dedicated to Egypt's greatest king.
31:32When Ramesses builds, he builds big.
31:36It is enormous.
31:38It's on a scale that has never really been seen in Egypt.
31:41Aargh!
31:44Aargh!
31:49Aargh!
31:50Aargh!
31:56Everywhere, Ramesses' title could be seen carved into rock.
32:00Hieroglyphs that read,
32:02Ruler of Rulers.
32:20Practically every town in Egypt gets its temple either rebuilt, or refounded, or revamped.
32:28Ramesses isn't modest. If he sees a rather nice monument, let's say an obelisk, put up by a previous king,
32:34he puts his own names all over the obelisk as well.
32:38Where great temples already existed, such as here at Luxor, Ramesses simply erected a new entrance with four statues of
32:46himself to claim the temple as his own.
32:54At Karnak, Egypt's holiest temple, all the pharaohs of the new kingdom had built monuments, but Ramesses soon outdid them
33:04all.
33:14In the great hypostyle hall begun by his grandfather, Ramesses ordered a work of awesome proportions.
33:29An army of artisans carved a field of 134 columns in the shape of papyrus.
33:35Each column stood 69 feet tall, 6 feet wide, and weighed over 100 tons.
33:47The Greeks, the Romans, even Napoleon would one day attempt to emulate its grandeur.
33:58It doesn't seem to be the work of human beings it is on such a scale.
34:03It looks as though it's very much part of the personality of the man to have to prove a point.
34:09He's always scoring points over everybody else.
34:14Through propaganda, diplomacy, and a building program that humbled his rivals,
34:20Ramesses had finally become the legend he had set out to create.
34:24The boy king born a commoner was truly Ramesses the Great.
34:37But at the height of Ramesses' reign, just when his empire seemed stronger than ever, tragedy struck.
34:46Ramesses' chief wife, Nefertari, died.
34:56Ramesses had her body sealed in her exquisite tomb.
35:12After Nefertari died, Ramesses completed the ultimate tribute to his wife.
35:19In an audacious act, Ramesses turned two entire mountains into temples.
35:25Side by side, one dedicated to himself and one to his wife, Nefertari.
35:40Abu Simbel was not intended simply as a memorial to Nefertari.
35:45Ramesses had chosen the location of the temples carefully.
35:51The two temples at Abu Simbel are another piece of the propaganda exercise of Ramesses.
35:58They are situated at the southernmost border of Egypt to indicate the power of Egypt to people living further south.
36:07And it shows to everybody, you can't really mess around with the Egyptian kings.
36:13Here, overlooking the Nile, 3,000 years later,
36:17Ramesses still stands beside the woman he once called the one for whom the sun shines.
36:28Nefertari left Ramesses an important legacy, sons to rule Egypt after his death.
36:37But the long life that had been the pharaoh's greatest blessing was now fast becoming his curse.
36:44While he lived on, his children began to die.
36:49One by one, he groomed twelve of his heirs for power, named each as crown prince, only to watch them
36:58die.
37:01While bereavements wore down the old king, Ramesses made sure that the world still only heard of his successes.
37:13Tales of Ramesses' greatness were manufactured at a new temple the pharaoh had built for himself, the Ramesseum.
37:26Behind the temple sanctuary was the intellectual heart of the empire, the house of life.
37:45The scribes who worked here were responsible for carefully crafting the image Ramesses projected to the world.
38:01They composed the texts glorifying the pharaoh.
38:04They managed his campaign funds, and they were the designers of his buildings and monuments.
38:22The house of life was Ramesses' ministry of propaganda.
38:26Its task, to create and exploit the larger than life image of their king.
38:32They were masterminding the royal presentation of pharaoh as this superhuman hero.
38:40They were image makers, so spin doctors, we would say in modern terminology,
38:47that would use traditional knowledge and apply it to the promotion of a particular individual, in this case of King
38:55Ramses II.
38:57All of this knowledge was written on rolls of papyrus and stored in the house of life.
39:04The temple library might have contained 10,000 papyrus works,
39:09some of them copied from books that were already 2,000 years old when Ramesses was on the throne of
39:15Egypt.
39:17It would have been a storehouse of intellectual wisdom.
39:23This library of knowledge would not have been possible without the invention of papyrus.
39:35The papyrus plant that grew along the Nile provided a medium to record Egypt's knowledge.
39:57The papyrus scrolls that filled the house of life gave Egypt a recorded history.
40:09Ramesses' scribes continued to build the image of the pharaoh as a strong and vibrant warrior king.
40:22The reality, however, was that by 1213 BC, the 93-year-old king was ailing.
40:30At the end of his life, he was in rather frail condition.
40:34He had lost his teeth, he had dental abscesses, he had curvature of the spine,
40:39he had scoliosis, numerous problems.
40:41He must have been in great pain.
40:43A terrible thing for a man who, in his younger days,
40:47was strong and virile and very muscular and very enthusiastic.
40:55At the end of that year, preparations were underway to celebrate Ramesses' 67th year in power.
41:07The ordinary people of Egypt could have been forgiven for thinking that he would live forever.
41:12Yet they were wrong.
41:18Just before the celebrations began, news broke.
41:23Ramesses the Great was dead.
41:45The death of Ramesses must have been so traumatic.
41:48Most of the people of Egypt had never known another king.
41:52Probably not more than a few, dozen people,
41:55could remember what happened before Ramesses had ascended the throne.
42:00This could be the end of the universe.
42:03The sun may stop rising, the moon waxing and waning, the Nile won't rise.
42:07It must have been panic time.
42:12This is truly an important event.
42:15And nobody knows quite what to do.
42:36The frail body of Ramesses that rests in the Cairo Museum today,
42:40bears little resemblance to the heroic figure carved on nearly every temple facade along the Nile.
42:53A small, shriveled corpse with tufts of red hair.
42:58This was the man who cast his shadow over Egyptian history.
43:05Every pharaoh who followed would strive to recreate his greatness.
43:14The legacy of Ramesses the Great is that everybody tried to be like him.
43:20It is the name of Ramesses that they take on.
43:24So from Ramesses the Second, the one we know, the great one,
43:28we go on a whole series of Ramesses until Ramesses 11.
43:31But they're all Ramesses of a minor scale.
43:37Nothing that can be compared to Ramesses the Second.
43:42Through sheer determination and the power of his personality,
43:46Ramesses had maintained the empire for over half a century.
43:50He had assumed that his legacy would last forever.
43:58But the world was changing.
44:00And within a generation, Ramesses' legacy was in peril.
44:05At the edges of the empire, city after city began to fall under pressure from invading hordes.
44:13Well armed, aggressive and dangerous, these foreigners arrived by ship and decimated everyone in their sight.
44:21Ancient texts referred to them only as the Sea People.
44:26Eventually, these Sea People even destroyed the powerful Hittite Empire.
44:32With its greatest ally gone, Egypt itself was now vulnerable.
44:38No country could withstand their onslaught.
44:41The Hittite land was the first to fall.
44:43Then they came onwards, on towards Egypt itself.
44:48The fading reliefs on the walls of this Egyptian temple are the only record that remains of the Sea People.
44:55Yet they were changing the whole political structure of the ancient world.
45:01The Sea People were attacking the edges of the empire.
45:05Allies were lost and trade routes blocked.
45:16Egypt's once vibrant economy began to falter.
45:20And now problems within Egypt began to mount.
45:23Ramesses' successors expected the same standards of craftsmanship from their builders as during the reign of the great king.
45:30But they no longer had the means to finance these great works.
45:35The Egyptian state was living as if it was still the time of Ramses II.
45:42But what is important here is as if it was not the time of Ramses II.
45:46It was not the time of Ramses II internationally.
45:49But it was also not the time internally.
45:52Egypt had begun to crumble.
45:57The government couldn't even pay its elite craftsmen at Deir el-Medina.
46:04There came to be a frustration with the Egyptian administration.
46:10Promises are made and then broken.
46:12Promises are made and then forgotten.
46:14And of course, as usual, it is the little man who suffers.
46:18The tomb workers faced starvation.
46:22Putting down their tools, the villagers went on strike.
46:26The first recorded industrial strike in history.
46:30We have no clothes, no oil, no fish, no vegetables.
46:35Send a message to our good lord, the pharaoh, asking for them.
46:39And send another message to our boss, telling him to provide us with emergency rations.
46:45The little people wouldn't take it anymore.
46:48And they did go on strike.
46:50And they did protest their not being paid.
46:52Didn't do them much good.
46:54At least for a couple of months, they had to make several protests.
46:57But additionally, they went off in search of treasure to try and pay their bills, if you will.
47:17In desperate circumstances, the tomb builders did the unthinkable.
47:24They knew the secret location of the royal tombs.
47:27And now they betrayed the pharaohs of the new kingdom and violated their sacred burial chambers.
47:47Even the tomb of Ramesses the Great did not escape desecration.
47:55The confessions beaten out of the few that were caught allow us a glimpse of the magnificent treasures they found.
48:05We fetched our copper picks and tunneled into this royal tomb.
48:10We discovered the king's mummy lying at the back of the tomb.
48:16It was covered with gold from head to toe.
48:20And the mummy cases were also lined with silver and gold inside and out.
48:26And were studded with all sorts of precious stones.
48:38We tore off the gold, took the amulets and jewellery.
48:47We split the gold we'd found into equal shares.
48:50And then we sailed back across the river to Thebes.
48:56By 1080 BC, most of the treasures buried with the pharaohs had been plundered.
49:02The mountain of gold had been stripped bare.
49:07The same people who had built the royal tombs had desecrated them.
49:14The very men who had assisted the pharaohs in their quest for immortality had taken it away.
49:24As order broke down within Egypt, the empire finally collapsed.
49:31States in the Near East were no longer loyal to the Egyptian pharaoh.
49:36Even Nubia seized their chance for independence, cutting Egypt's last lifeline, its access to gold.
49:48The loss of Nubia meant the loss of gold.
49:51And the loss of gold means that you do not have any clout on the international political scene.
49:57So other people are going to become the dominant ones.
50:01And Egypt becomes a little bit of a backwater.
50:19In a final humiliating act, the priests of Karnak were forced to perform a sorry duty.
50:28They gather together 40 royal mummies from the desecrated tombs and carry them to secret locations where they might finally
50:37find peace.
50:59Ackmos. Founder of the New Kingdom.
51:04Thothmos. Thothmos III. Warrior and empire builder.
51:11Even Rameses. The last great pharaoh.
51:16Once they had been treated like gods.
51:21Now their bodies were piled up in caves in a mountainside.
51:25Where they would rest for 3,000 years.
51:45It seemed that Rameses' struggle for immortality had been in vain.
51:53Less than 200 years after the end of his reign, the empire had fallen.
51:59And with the death of Rameses the 11th, the Ramesai dynasty became extinct.
52:07The New Kingdom was over.
52:11During the New Kingdom, Egypt became this mixture of reality and fiction
52:16that has always represented the most fascinating aspect of the civilization.
52:22The reality of a very powerful and successful empire, but also the fiction of a display of power that goes
52:32well beyond the reality.
52:40All the other empires of the ancient world tried to emulate Egypt.
52:47From the Assyrians to the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans, you always look back to the greatest empire of
52:56all, which is the empire of Egypt.
52:58Everybody wants to be like the Egyptian pharaohs.
53:19Today, millions still come to pay tribute to the pharaohs.
53:25Three thousand years later, Egypt's golden empire is still conquering the imagination of the world.
53:56Four thousand years later, Egypt's golden empire.
54:06Amen.
54:33Amen.
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