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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,
00:22to absolute 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 word
01:05pharaoh, Ramses. This 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
01:32rule, creating a legacy that will echo through human history.
01:37It's been suggested that the Ramesside dynasty is possibly one of the greatest and most glorious
01:43in Egyptian history. But this is an age of titanic change, where great empires rise and fall.
01:52Can the Ramesside pharaohs guide Egypt through the coming storm?
01:58Or will Egypt collapse?
02:11In the early 13th century, before the common era, the pharaoh Horemheb, who works to erase the legacy of
02:18Akhenaten and his family, has finally died. And as Horemheb did not have an heir of his own,
02:26he made one of his trusted generals, Parameses, his heir. This is a decision that will have great
02:35impact on the history of Egypt and usher in a new golden age 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. And he is the
02:56progenitor 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. But I suspect one of the
03:07main
03:07reasons he was chosen was he came with a family. We've run out of 18th dynasty people. Horemheb has no
03:14children. And here's a man who has a son, a grown son, Seti I, who is himself a general and
03:22a diplomat,
03:23a brilliant man, who is going to be his father's vizier.
03:27But Ramses I was an old man when he took the throne. He soon dies and is replaced by his
03:34son and heir,
03:35Seti 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. Sometimes he is just
03:53problematic. Sometimes he is positively demonic in his depictions and the tales that are told of him.
04:00There's an archaic version of Set who's an ally of the gods. This version of Set protects Ra on his
04:06solar bark. And we think this might be the association that Seti is going for. Seti, first,
04:11is 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
04:21was 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,
04:33wasn't a standing army. They 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. So things like
04:52the composite bow and the chariot come in. The chariotry is a branch of the army that in some ways
04:58is the
04:59most elite branch. That's where young princes get their military training before some of them will go
05:07on to become kings. There'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.
05:23These are soldiers that are soldiers as a career. There was infantry organized into several groups
05:29of 5,000 men each. And all of these divisions are associated with different gods like Amun and Ra.
05:36The main one was the division of Amun, and this is the one usually that the pharaoh headed. And then
05:42there would be ones that were named after other gods. When we talk about the gods they've chosen,
05:47for example, we can see that they're chosen because they had attributes they thought would be useful
05:52not only to protecting them, but also helping them in their military adventures.
05:57Beset, for example, was the god of chaos. In other words, that's about power, disruption. It's also
06:04military might. And Amun here is a god who's not only directly associated with the pharaoh and the
06:13office of pharaoh, but he's also a god of creation as well. So 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, the chances normally of you being able to
06:37rise to a high position are next to nothing. But if you have a great military career and you
06:43distinguish yourself in this career, this could lead to better careers even after you're out of the
06:51military. Look at Horemheb. He was a military man. He was a commoner by birth. He was a nobody when
06:57he
06:57was born, but he ended up becoming pharaoh because of his distinguished military career.
07:04The army under Seti I conducted many successful campaigns, reinstating Egypt's place among the
07:11Bronze Age world as a force to be reckoned with. But it's his projects at home which might be what
07:18he's best remembered for. At 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. And there are beautiful scenes celebrating,
07:33Osiris and Isis and that family, but 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. You'll be hard-pressed
07:46to name all the gods. You have to start looking for their names. Oh, that's Mahes. And oh,
07:52there's Nefertum. They're all there. He's put everybody back.
08:01But unlike Akhenaten, who set himself as the sole god, Seti I is clearly stating he is one of the
08:08many to be worshipped. As 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,
08:20a nearly unbroken line of kingship that went all the way back to Nama, the first king of Egypt.
08:27He establishes a king list. This records all of the kings going back to the beginning of unification.
08:35But he also excludes a number of pharaohs. You will not find Akhenaten or Tutankhamun,
08:41and notably you won't find Hatshepsut. Seti I is making a determined effort to retell Egypt's story in the way
08:52that he thinks it ought to be told. The fact that the Amarna kings, including Tutankhamun and
09:00Horomeb and I, are missing shouldn't be too surprising. Horomeb had begun the destruction of
09:09Arkhenaten's name, but clearly it was all still too close. There were remnants of those
09:16recollections continuing, so 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. His son, Prince Ramses II,
09:36is declared the next king. And when Ramses II ascends to the throne, he follows in his
09:43forebearer's footsteps as a military man. Very early in his reign, he went on his first military campaign,
09:52a limited affair aimed at quelling a rebellion in Nubia. But his greatest battles were yet to come.
10:00Egypt was controlling much of the Levant, except for northern Syria, which the Hittites had. But the
10:05Hittites wanted to make their move into Egyptian territory up there. And they were starting to make
10:10overtures to some of the Egyptian vassals. One of the big ones was the king of Kadesh.
10:16The earlier Ramesside kings had struggled with Kadesh because Kadesh was kind of caught
10:20between a rock and a hard place, between these major powers in the Near East, between loyalty to
10:25Egypt and loyalty to the Hittites. And so they were kind of a thorn in the side of the Egyptians
10:30for a
10:31while, going back into the 18th dynasty. But in the time of Ramses II, this really became a problem.
10:37The king of Kadesh had been a vassal of Egypt. Now 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 with a force of 20,000 men broken into four
10:55units.
10:56As the forces of Ramses II near Kadesh, they happen upon what they believe to be nomads.
11:03Ramses believes these men are possibly spies, so they capture them and question them.
11:08The shepherds, who are in fact spies, lie to the army.
11:13And they say, oh, the Hittites are miles and miles away. Don't worry, sir, you're perfectly safe here.
11:18And Ramses believes them because they've confessed this after being beaten. But they are good spies.
11:26Ramses takes this as encouragement and 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, ready to ambush his forces.
11:42Luckily, his ahead scouts spot these armies and he manages to avoid the worst of the ambush.
11:48As Ramses and his forces fight to defend their position from the onslaught of the Hittite army,
11:54help finally arrives when the Patar division makes their way into battle.
11:59They're about to be annihilated. The only reason that Ramses was able to survive this attack
12:05is because sometime earlier he had sent out his braves, you know, his elite force, to go scouting
12:10north to see if they could find the Hittites. They didn't find anything. But they happened to be
12:15returning from their mission, just as Ramses was being attacked, march in there, drive away the
12:22chariots and save the day. On the next day, there was an engagement between the Egyptian forces and
12:28the Hittite forces that resulted in a stalemate. Losses 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,
12:47The Battle of Kadesh is interesting to me more for how Ramses used it for PR or branding than it
12:57is for
12:58the actual events themselves. The battle didn't really decide much. Ultimately it wasn't a major
13:05victory. It wasn't really a victory at all for the Egyptians. But despite the fact that really this is a
13:12draw, Ramses takes that and sort of spins the narrative to really portray him as the ultimate
13:22hero, the warrior pharaoh par excellence. He essentially says that his
13:29troops basically failed him and that he was caught unawares by the enemy in the midst of battle and that
13:35he pretty much single-handedly turned the tide of battle. He recorded this on inscriptions in the temples
13:45of the Theban region, including the Temple of Amun-Ra and his own mortuary temple, the Ramesseum,
13:51and he depicts himself fighting off the entire force of assembled Hittites. So some of his forces were
14:00so terrified that they ran away, other forces hadn't arrived yet, and he shows himself single-handedly
14:07sort of fighting off the entire Hittite army.
14:12Just to illustrate the power of propaganda, you know, people go to the temple and they see on the
14:18wall there his recounting of this great battle and how he won it. Well, what does the average Egyptian
14:24think? He was a great victor. He showed our superiority. To the people who see that, it's the truth.
14:33At the southern temple of Abu Simbel, Ramesses II creates a temple that honors his actions at Kadesh.
14:41But who is the audience for this temple, built far away from the Egyptian heartland?
14:48One of the most famous buildings in the world is the Temple of Abu Simbel. It's right on the ancient
14:54border
14:54of Egypt with Nubia, and it was built with a very specific purpose. Of course, it honors the gods and
15:00honors Ramses, but mostly it's telling any Nubian who is trying to come up and maybe trade in Egypt
15:06without paying his taxes that that god up there, those giant gods, you're entering his country.
15:15There are these four enormous statues carved from the bare bedrock,
15:21showing his strength. I mean, the statues themselves, arguably the sculpting isn't brilliant,
15:28but there is a monumentality to them. There is a raw power to them, which presents Ramesses II
15:36as a major global ruler. It's all part of this royal propaganda. By just showing the greatness of your
15:46monuments, you are showing the greatness of the person.
15:53It's all part of this royal propaganda.
15:57Like Akhenaten before him, Ramses II sought to create a new capital for Egypt that reflected his reign.
16:05But this capital would have a very different function than that built by the heretic pharaoh.
16:12Ramses II chose a new capital city for himself, Pi Ramses, and it's in the western delta. And this is
16:19an
16:19area that Ramses' family was probably from. So, you know, it's his home territory. But also, the site was
16:25chosen for a few other reasons. One being, this was a site for industry, especially associated with the
16:32military, the creation of weapons, making of metals and things like that. And by having the capital
16:38so close to the border, it's also projecting power into that region. Like, here's the capital of Egypt.
16:44Here's the center of our military industrial complex. Right here, you know, where you're going to try to
16:50enter into our country. And maybe it was a deterrent as well.
16:55Pa Ramses is basically on the site of Avarus. Now, Avarus, that Hyksos capital, had been where it was
17:03because it was a port. It was a port city where you could send ships off all around the Mediterranean.
17:08So, Pa Ramses is a new, improved version of Avarus.
17:14By moving the capital to somewhere that is not affiliated to a major priesthood or a major cult as such,
17:23it eliminated their power a bit. While Ramses II is best known for his battles,
17:31it is a peace treaty that could be one of his longest lasting legacies.
17:36One thing that often gets ignored with Ramses II is how his personality seems to change. Around year 20
17:45of his reign, he becomes something of a man of peace. Not only does he sign one of the world's
17:51first
17:52peace treaties with the Hittites and his traditional enemies, but he starts to become,
17:58of course, a prolific builder. We think the change in his personality coincides with two great losses.
18:06It's at this time that Ramses, at year 20 of his reign, Ramses loses his great wife,
18:11his great love. And that seems to have really affected him. He also loses his firstborn son.
18:17But I think it's really interesting because it, it humanizes this great historical figure that
18:23actually suffers a great deal of tragedy and loss. He lives a very long time and he sees most of
18:28his
18:28children die. But I think that first death, the loss of his great love, really affects him, really
18:33changes him. And you see that change in his policies. And that, to me, is really fascinating.
18:40The treaty that was made between the Hittites and Ramses at this point is, uh, unique right now,
18:48anyway, because it's the earliest extant treaty we have. And also we have both versions of it,
18:53right? We have the Egyptian version and the Hittite version. I think a lot of people, when I think back
18:57to the Bronze Age, are like, well, you know, in those days, they're probably very simple people.
19:02Their trees were probably like, oh, let's not fight with each other anymore. But they're
19:06sophisticated with provisions in there for both sides. It shows how well developed their political
19:11system was. And they're not the, the primitive brutes that you might think, uh, lived during the
19:16Bronze Age. Ramses II reigns for 66 years, the second longest reign in Egyptian history.
19:24But what is the true legacy of the pharaoh, whom history has dubbed Ramesses the Great?
19:31Ramses was quite a character. He distinguished himself on the battlefield early on, even before
19:37becoming king. But he was an excellent propagandist. He knew how to present himself. We call him
19:43Ramses the Great, mainly because he told everybody he was great and they believed it.
19:49Ramses II not only built prolifically, but he also, shall we say, appropriated several statues and
19:59colossi in ancient Egypt as well. That's why Egyptologists give him the nickname the Great
20:03Carver, because he would carve his name into everyone else's statues. Ramses II was very,
20:08very concerned about his name enduring for eternity. If anything, history has proven that
20:14Ramses II truly did stand the test of time and his name endures. For me, I think that is what
20:21the
20:22ancient record wants us to believe him to be. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a very
20:29objective assessment of his reign. When Ramses II finally dies in 1213 BCE, it is time for his
20:39heirs to take over the seat of the pharaoh. But they would struggle to match the greatness of Ramses.
20:47Following the reign of Ramses II, we enter essentially a period of tremendous disorder.
20:54Part of it has to do with succession. It's a patrilineal society in which ideally kingship passes
21:00from father to son. And if there's no male heir in the royal family, often it becomes a kind of
21:07matrilineal link that provides legitimacy for whoever does come to the throne if that person is a male ruler.
21:15Ramses was not only prolific with his monuments. He was prolific biologically. He had over 50 sons and
21:26over 50 daughters. So many children. In fact, there was a joke in later times when a usurper would try
21:32to
21:32take over the Egyptian throne. He'd say, I'm a son of Ramses. And the response was, who isn't?
21:39Ramses had all those sons. Many of his sons died when they were adults. He survived his 13 oldest sons.
21:50One of his sons, Merempata, is his vizier towards the end. And when Ramses dies, Merempata,
21:57who is 60 years old by this point, he becomes king.
22:01He's already old, so he doesn't actually last very long. But there's a princess by the name of
22:06Tawostret who tries to take over herself as pharaoh. And then others who are against all this try to
22:13appoint a man to be the pharaoh, and they choose a military fellow, Settnacht. And a civil war erupts,
22:20and Settnacht ends up taking power. But who was this new pharaoh, Settnacht?
22:26Settnacht is not of royal blood, but has connections to the royal family through the
22:33female line, and that gives him some form of legitimacy.
22:36What he does quite cleverly is to marry well. And he marries a woman named Tye Merenczes,
22:42who has direct ties to the dynasty. And this means that through marriage,
22:48he forms his own legitimate stake in the office, and that enables him to assume the office.
22:56And Settnacht has another thing that strengthens his claim to the throne of the pharaoh,
23:01an heir ready to lead. His son, Ramses III.
23:08Ramses III probably comes to power as a grown man. He's a general, he's a smart man,
23:14and he's very ambitious. He wants to be just like Ramses II. And he starts building big,
23:21and he builds a very fine tomb in the Valley of the Kings. And he builds a very beautiful temple,
23:26Medinet Habu, which is still there, and which is in very good condition.
23:32Ramses III, from the outset, attempts 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, Ramses 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 that have been traveling the Crescent of the
24:19Mediterranean, of these great civilizations falling to this unknown outside interference,
24:28wiping out absolute villages, cities, and complete territories.
24:37If you're living in these times, it's a period of panic. The Hittites have gone. The Mitanni have gone.
24:44Kadesh, your ancient enemies who managed to fight off several pharaohs, are gone without a trace.
24:52Who are these people taking out these great Bronze Age civilizations? And when will they come for Egypt?
25:00This mysterious army that brought destruction to the kingdoms of the Bronze Age would come to be known
25:06as the Sea Peoples. We don't really know directly who these Sea People were.
25:13They could have been the progenitors of the Phoenicians. They 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. They might have even spoken
25:32different languages, and who were traveling in some cases with women and ox carts and children
25:36and cattle clearly intent on migration, hoping to find a place to settle.
25:43How did the Sea Peoples get their name? Well, in Egyptian inscriptions, they're called
25:47people who come from the lands of the sea as part of this confederacy of some kind.
26:02The exact cause of this is really, really hard to pin down. A lot of it does seem to be
26:09climate changes that are wreaking havoc with people's livelihoods.
26:13Now, from the Sea People's point of view, they're thinking of themselves as like,
26:17we're just people who need somewhere to live where we can survive. We had to leave our homeland
26:22because of a famine, and we need to survive. And desperate people will do desperate things.
26:27If we have to fight to get a piece of land so that my wife and children can live,
26:33you know, I'm going to do that. These 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 we have the arrival of essentially these marauding invaders,
27:07and they came not just from one direction but two. They came from Palestine in the north.
27:12They also came from across the Nile and the delta. And so Ramses, he had to face two fronts.
27:19Not only was this significant as a moment, as a time when he could improve himself as a worthy
27:26military leader, that he could protect his people. Now, the battle fought on land there at the border
27:31of Egypt did not go extremely well for the Egyptians. They did win, but they suffered heavy casualties.
27:37The one that was fought on the Nile River, however, was much different.
27:41Those Sea Peoples were able to make their way into the Nile Delta, and we have another battle there.
27:49Now, these battles were not, you know, ship-to-ship battles. The ships were coming in,
27:54and those warriors leaving the ships and fighting on land. But Ramses III is an excellent warrior.
28:04We have iconography and propaganda that shows us that Ramses III was the greatest war general
28:12of the time. And we see this massive iconography of him. And he's got the long bow pulled back and
28:22aimed
28:22out. And he's huge, many, many times larger than life. And so we know that, yes, he was successful.
28:31With the Sea Peoples' defeat, Ramses III is hailed as a national hero. Egypt has survived, for now.
28:41Just as Ramses II had used the Battle of Kadesh to promote his own royal propaganda,
28:48Ramses III builds a mortuary temple. And inside, he covers it with scenes of his victory over the Sea
28:54Peoples.
28:56Avenida and Habu, the battle scenes of Ramses III really portray violence very viscerally,
29:04not just in terms of the battle, but also what happens to these enemies as captives.
29:09We have a lot of very kind of grotesque, torturous poses that these individuals are bound in.
29:17I think the point is to convey the pain and the humiliation of the enemy. It's not new by any
29:24means,
29:25but it's really on display at Medina and Habu.
29:28After his victory, Ramses III reigns for decades and 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, the cost to the
29:44ancient Bronze Age world has been extremely high. Because the world at this time is a mutually
29:50dependent world of trade, the attacks of the Sea People have left this world in disarray.
29:59The Egyptians no longer have anyone to trade with abroad. Most of the great civilizations have been
30:05sacked. This causes particular problems for Egypt. They have issues in their supply chains. They can't
30:11get certain things anymore without moving out themselves to try and find them. So Ramses III's victory
30:17is something of a hollow victory in the sense that, yeah, he's the last man standing. But Egypt is now
30:24on its own.
30:26The climatic problems that resulted in the Sea Peoples leaving their homeland are also affecting Egypt.
30:33So the food supplies are scarce just in general. So Egypt is now on the brink of possible extermination
30:42if they don't do something. And here's Ramses III, right in this perilous position. It'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 that ensured the pharaoh's
31:10successful post-mortem transformation. Very important job. Also, they knew the location of all the tombs,
31:16which were very well provisioned with all kinds of rich goods. So they needed to be kept happy.
31:21But in the time of Ramses III, they did not receive their wages.
31:26Green itself was currency. This is how you paid labor at the time. Traditionally, the Nile was a reliable
31:36source of nutrients for the soil. The Nile was responsible for ensuring that every year there was
31:43an oversupply of grain produced. But under Ramses III, we have a sustained period of agricultural crisis in
31:53which the Nile has no longer become a reliable source of nutrients. The land was not producing as much grain.
32:00Daryl Medina. Their families are suffering because they don't have food. Do you think they want to keep
32:04working? No. So we have our first ever recorded labor strike in history where the tomb workers,
32:12the 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.
32:24In terms of the strikers now for Ramses III, it's vitally important that they finish his tomb.
32:34Because if they don't, there is no afterlife for Ramses. He has no place of rest, no residence to move
32:44into the afterlife. Now, how do you think the pharaoh's going to handle this situation? Is he going to send
32:50in the troops and, you know, kill a bunch of the workers to show them who's the boss to get
32:55them to
32:55get back to work? Or is he going to settle with them? Well, what Ramses does is he makes a
33:02deal with
33:02the workers. They ultimately win this strike because they get their grain. Now, he has to obtain this
33:08grain from elsewhere, but he does, and he gives the workers the food that they demanded. And then work
33:14continues on the tomb. While Ramses III has defeated the Sea Peoples and made amends with his workers,
33:22another threat is looming, this one in his own home. We need to understand the harem. This is the home
33:30of
33:31his wives, of his concubines, of the slaves, female slaves, his daughters. But more importantly, because
33:37it's part of the domestic space, it's also a political institution. And these wives and concubines
33:44also have access to the pharaoh through their personal relations. And therefore, that makes them
33:51also conduits of power. It's 1157. Ramses III is old. His power is beginning to fade.
34:00And you can imagine that in that kind of setting, many of the women were trying to ensure
34:04that their children, their sons, were in line to inherit the kingship of Egypt. And so there are
34:10many competing rivals trying to get their sons ahead. It's a hotbed of potential insurrection
34:21within the king's home. One of these wives, a secondary wife, has a son by Ramses III,
34:29but he is not an heir to the throne. This wife, T, starts a plot. She hatches a conspiracy. This
34:39conspiracy spreads amongst all of the elites of the court, and she manages to pull in several courtiers.
34:45The conspiracy is to end the life of Ramses III and put her son, Pentoweret, onto the throne.
34:52This is a grab for power through assassination. The plotters also involve elements of Egypt's two
35:00most powerful pillars, the military and religion. But the old pharaoh still has many loyal to him.
35:09So many people were involved. Some of them were members of the innermost sanctum of the court,
35:15wives, concubines, as well as these ministers, people who the pharaoh had trusted and were central
35:22to administration. Unfortunately, any conspiracy of this scale eventually leaks. Someone talks.
35:31Word gets back to Ramses III. He has all of the conspirators arrested and put to trial.
35:39Many of them are sentenced to death for betraying the pharaoh, and the ones who are allowed to live
35:45are permanently mutilated. As a reminder, an example, not to go against the power of the pharaoh.
35:54The question is, how much of the conspiracy succeeded? Because Ramses died the same year
36:01that the trials were going on. And so there's been some question as to whether Ramses was actually
36:07killed in the conspiracy, or whether he survived it and just happened to die shortly thereafter. But,
36:14initially, when Ramsey's mummy was examined, there didn't seem to be any signs of violence done to
36:20him. So, for a long time, Egyptologists said, well, it probably failed, and he just happened to die
36:26shortly thereafter. But more recent investigation of the mummy has revealed that he had bandages
36:34all around his neck. And then when they submitted the mummy to a CT scan, they found there was a
36:40huge
36:41gash in his throat, deep enough to have killed him. So it appears that Ramses actually was
36:50assassinated. And perhaps the conspiracy was a success. As 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 from bodies placed in the sand, which become
37:15naturally desiccated by the heat, to 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.
37:34The fluids are what facilitate decomposition. Shortly after death, gut bacteria break through the gut
37:41and disperse throughout the body and contribute to the decomposition of the body. If you can remove
37:46fluid from the body, then you can limit the degree of decomposition that happens. And this is still the
37:52technique that we use today in mortuary sciences, derived directly from Egyptian practice.
37:57So, using a blade of fine obsidian, this cut was made in the lower left-hand flank,
38:05through which the internal organs are removed, and wrapping with bandages to keep the body together,
38:12and then beginning to pad the bandages in certain ways to give a feeling of life, almost.
38:19We can look at the Ramses' mummifications today and we can pretty much see exactly what they looked like
38:26as people. With Ramses III dead, the social contract that had kept Egypt together for
38:33thousands of years is fraying. After the death of Ramses III, a lot of bad things happen. There are
38:42plagues. There are problems with Libyans coming in from the desert and trying to steal food. They're
38:49probably starving out on their desert. Their savannah is drying up. The Nubians are in revolt. They're not
38:54getting the gold from Nubia. They need that gold in order to pay troops and do things.
39:00Around 1070 BC, one of the high priests, Pianki, starts robbing the actual tombs of the kings.
39:06This is unheard of in the history of Egypt, that 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. There is a decline. We have a
39:26succession of pharaohs that get just weaker and weaker and weaker and less notable. And we get
39:32finally to Ramses XI. You think by naming yourself Ramses, people are going to think better of you. But
39:38this is near the very end now. And he's in a situation where there are other rivals to his authority.
39:47Egypt is in very bad shape. And the generals are taking over. Men like Piank and Harry Hoare. And
39:55they have the title High Priest. So 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. Harry Hoare establishes himself
40:12in Thebes and tries to hold the south of the country together and sometimes puts his name in a cartouche
40:19and calls himself King Harry Hoare. And up in the north, there's poor King Ramses XI, who has really no
40:27power. I don't know if he has any kind of army. He kind of fades away. And we wonder whatever
40:32happened
40:33to Ramses XI. He had a tomb, started in the Valley of the Kings, never occupied. Where 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. The power in
40:53Egypt is now split up once again amongst the governors. We have a divided north and south,
40:59a divided upper and lower Egypt. For a while we have a man called Smedes,
41:05that's what we call him. His name is Nesubar Nebjed. And he becomes king in the north. Maybe he married
41:11the daughter of Ramses XI. He seems to have some connection with the royal family. In the south,
41:18we've got Harry Hoare. But these two groups of soldiers, they marry each other's daughters. They
41:26exchange, my son is going to be your prime minister, your son can come up here. So they have pretty
41:31close ties. They're not fighting. But 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. But it's kind of difficult. You have to make bronze. It's an
42:05alloy. You have to make it. And you need tin in order to do that. And this comes from afar.
42:09But iron,
42:11you can find that everywhere. You just need the technology, the smelting process to be able to
42:16make it. But once you know how to do that, once you can build smelting furnaces, you can produce weapons
42:23and tools in mass quantities. And you can get things done faster. Just with things like carving and
42:31chipping away stone or whatever, iron tools are more efficient. They work more quickly. And on the
42:37battlefield, when an iron sword hits a bronze sword, what do you think is going to happen? What's going to
42:43break first? That bronze sword is gone. This is a revolutionary technology that's going to propel
42:53not only Egypt, but all of its surrounding neighbors into a whole new way of doing things.
43:00This new age saw expanded horizons, as Egypt would encounter new peoples from across the
43:06Mediterranean world and beyond. But for the Egyptians of the early iron age, its oldest foes pose the most
43:14serious threats or the best opportunities for survival. Third intermediate period is very complex.
43:22There's a rule of Egypt is broken up into lots of different regions. Some of the regions are headed
43:29up by Libyans who were originally mercenaries employed by the armies of Ramses II and Ramses III,
43:38who established communities and then gained autonomy. Others were probably people who came in to the
43:45delta and settled in or near these communities of mercenaries. And so they're different rulers,
43:51different leaders. And the interesting thing about them is that they don't really seem to have fought
43:56with each other. Unlike other intermediate periods in which there's political fragmentation,
44:01in the third intermediate period, these Libyans don't seem to have fought over territory much at all.
44:07We now enter what we call the Libyan period, which is when Libyan kings were ruling Egypt. And you can
44:13tell that they're Libyans by their names. They don't sound anything like Egyptian names, you know,
44:18Osorkan, you know, Takalot, and people like that. That does not sound like the Egyptian names you're used to.
44:25Powers outside Egypt are seeing the centralized rule of Pharaoh undermined.
44:32Egypt. This is a time when Egypt is under direct threat from foreign powers and they're getting ready
44:37to strike. To Egypt's south, another of their old foes looked on with hungry eyes. To the rulers of Nubian
44:48Kush, Egypt was ready for conquest. Kush is a Nubian kingdom situated to the south of Egypt in modern day
44:57Sudan. The 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? What seems to have happened
45:10is when Thutmose I invaded Kush many centuries ago in the 16th century BC. He took with him priests of
45:18Amun. These priests of Amun dedicated temples to their gods in Kush. And the Kushites began to worship
45:26those gods. In many ways, the Kushites in the Libyan period would be looking at what was happening to
45:33the north in Egypt and be completely disgusted. They're not worshipping the proper gods. They're
45:39not doing the proper services. They're not maintaining the state in the proper way.
45:44Whether they use this as an excuse or whether they really believe it, this is one of their motivations
45:49for going back north and try to reunify Egypt under their own rule and bring back the old ways.
45:59In 780 BC, the leader of the Kush kingdom, Alara called himself the son of Amun. This is one sign,
46:07one of many indications that the Nubian peoples had adopted Egyptian religion. And what they saw going
46:14on in the kingdom was to their mind a direct threat to their tradition as well, because they saw it
46:19as
46:20their tradition. And Alara passed along this idea to his son that it was the responsibility of the Kush
46:28people. They were the true inheritors of Egyptian culture to restore it. And it was his son, in fact,
46:33Kashta would take on the title that he was the king of upper and lower Egypt. And he would use
46:41his claim
46:42to this throne to go and reunite the two kingdoms of Egypt. Kashta invades upper Egypt and conquers a large
46:51portion of it. And then his successor, Pia, goes further and ventures into lower Egypt. He doesn't
46:59conquer the whole country, but he begins the ball rolling. And now the Nubian dynasty holds the majority
47:05of the country. Pia would rule Egypt for another 12 years. But after his conquest, he never sets foot
47:15in Egypt again, ruling the land from Kush. The Kushite king takes the name Thutmose III. In this sense,
47:23he is not only adopting an Egyptian name, but 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. In Pia's mind,
47:40his mission is complete. But for the Libyan elite that still govern much of Egypt, this is only the
47:48beginning. What we're going to see moving forward is Kushite kings calling themselves the rightful
47:53rulers of Egypt, pushing further into Egypt and battling the Libyans, undermining the Libyan
47:59rule. And then with Shabaka, Egypt is finally united under a single pharaoh. And now we are in the 25th
48:07dynasty. But in the face of the Nubian Kushite control, a Libyan governor makes a deadly mistake.
48:16In 720 BCE, there's a fellow by the name of Bakanrenif in lower Egypt, not Nubian, who proclaims
48:24himself king in lower Egypt. Now, this is the area that Shabaka has just conquered. But this Bakanrenif
48:32says, now he's the king. And he commissions the making of this cup. And on it, it celebrates his
48:38victory and his his ascension to kingship. But also, it shows Nubians in a very unflattering light,
48:45insulting light. And when Shabaka has knowledge of this, he wants to punish Bakanrenif. So he makes war
48:55on him. He invades the north, defeats Bakanrenif's forces, burns Bakanrenif at the stake. And then he
49:04commissions a sacred scarab. And on this inscription, he says, I slew all those who rebelled against him
49:12in upper Egypt and lower Egypt and 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
49:38of the ancient kingdom. But the kingdom that they were drawn to, that they were trying to
49:43replicate, was in fact the old kingdom. And we see this in their monumental architecture,
49:50in their art, that when they're going back in that art to evoke that power, it is the art and
49:56the
49:56traditions and the mechanisms of authority of the old kingdom.
50:02Remember way back when in the old kingdom? The capital was Memphis. Now in the new kingdom,
50:07Thebes, that's where it had been for years. But as part of this trend to want to bring back the
50:13old
50:13kingdom, the Nubian dynasty, they ruled from Memphis. They get the army reorganized, they get the temples
50:20reorganized, they start building things at Karnak again. And that's how you show you're a king,
50:26by building for the gods. The Kushite obsession with the old kingdom will even see the resurgence of
50:33one of the most iconic symbols of Egyptian 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
50:46ground of Kuru. And what do you find there? Pyramids. They're not as big and magnificent as the old kingdom
50:53pyramids, but they are in imitation of that style. While the Nubians try to return Egypt to its former
51:01glory, it is ultimately left weakened after years of foreign rule. Control of the land will be wrestled
51:08away from the Nubians by the Assyrians in the 7th century BCE, and then by the mighty Persian Empire
51:15in the late 6th century BCE. Egyptian traditions fade away under Persian rule. The people yearn for the
51:24glories of the past, the age of the pharaohs. And in 332 BCE, a pharaoh will rise. A pharaoh that
51:34will change
51:35human history forever.
52:07in 332 BCE, a사가 of the rest ofinger tuxent
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