- Yeah, Lex man, that's my early high school.
Oh, oh, sorry, here I am, I'm back.
Now let's talk a little bit of Egyptian history per se.
There's a guy fortunately, he's dead now
'cause he'd be awfully old and his name was Flinders Petrie.
I can't help it, his name was Flinders Petrie
and it's to Flinders Petrie that we owe
the standard periodization in Egyptian history.
He discovered a stella which had a list of all the dynasties
and he took this list of dynasties
and really not arbitrarily
and you'll hear about this before too long,
he was able to discern certain periods in Egyptian history
and so that was fine and for the better part
of a hundred years, there it was.
When I took this class, if I had taken this class,
I didn't take this class, but if I had taken this class
back in the 70s, Petrie's chronology would have been
what was taught to me.
But then this guy which is not me in my high school picture
but this is King catfish which you know,
interesting enough was what they called me in high school,
but that's a different story altogether too or Narmer.
Narmer, him, King catfish is the same guy.
They all have more than one name, believe me.
If we really did an Egyptian history class,
we'd be here all term.
Narmer pops up and so this guy is dynasty zero
because Petrie didn't have him in.
So let's just hope we don't find a guy before Narmer
because if we do, I guess that's going to have
to be dynasty negative one.
As you'd probably guess,
we call this guy before the first dynastic period,
the pre-dynastic period
which is somewhat confusing also because
of course, he's in a dynasty
but this gives us a little bit of insight
into just how difficult ancient history can be.
Everything that I tell you, you have to realize,
it's not as if it's the United States history,
the United States chronology of presidents
where we've got names and dates and birth certificates
in all of this, this is a whole different matter.
We're sure this guy existed, we're sure he's important,
we're sure he's a pharaoh, why?
Because of the hat, the headgear, it's a crown.
This is Horace, this is a god who's sort
of telling him he's cool.
You can see what he's doing,
he's smashing this guy's heads in.
So this is Pharaoh as warrior prince.
If we look at this side
and by the way this is the just the obverse,
this is one side, this is the other side of the same thing.
We can see all sorts of interesting stuff going on here.
Here's a bunch of guys
that he's already smashed her head in.
You can see they've been beheaded
and they're just laying by the side here.
Pharaoh is painted way taller than everybody.
He obviously wasn't that tall but it was you know,
I'm the important guy, make me tall.
This is the visor, this is probably his wife.
These guys are all holding up banners
that honor a particular god or goddess
or sometimes with these god and goddesses,
we're not exactly sure what sex they are and whatever
and it's obviously a royal procession
celebrating a great victory.
Well that sounds very cool, I guess it is,
but honestly that's about all we know about Narmer.
He seems to have existed,
he's from Upper Egypt, we're sure of that.
Does he manage to unite lower and upper Egypt?
Well that were not sure of
and so that's probably why it's best to leave him
in this pre-dynastic period
and move on to the dynastic period.
The dynastic period itself,
well, it's about the Old Kingdom.
So when I say Old Kingdom, you know what we think about,
well maybe you don't,
but we think about pyramids.
As strange as it may seem,
the thing that we most associated with Egypt
is one of the oldest of all things.
If you take a really good look at this image,
you can get the idea
of just how large these pyramids really are.
Look at the size of these people down here.
This was a structure that was built, oh gee,
45, 4,600 years ago and right up until only
about 700 years ago,
it was the tallest structure in the world
and it was certainly the most massive structure in the world
for much longer than that.
This is a tomb.
This particular tomb is
from the Old Kingdom Pharaoh named Khufu.
K-H-U-F-U, Khufu.
Like most everything else in Egyptian history,
it's a little complicated.
You can also call them Cheops, C-H-E-O-P-S, Cheops.
Cheops is his Greek name
so obviously the Egyptians didn't column Khufu.
We're not actually sure
how the Egyptians would have pronounced
what we think is Khufu but we're going to go with that.
Khufu is an Old Kingdom Fourth Dynasty guy.
He and his immediate predecessors
and successors built pyramids
but it is the Great Pyramids of Giza that we remember most.
After Khufu, pyramids get smaller.
This is 130 meters tall,
the next pyramid after him was 67 meters tall.
Big, big difference, not exactly sure why.
For the longest time, we used to say well,
these pyramids were made by slave labor you know,
oh the Pharaohs and slave these guys
and treated them very poorly.
The archeological evidence for today shows
that this is simply not true.
Behind me now we see the lovely Sphinx.
Very interesting thing.
It tells us a little bit about the gods of Egypt.
The god, they says they sometimes are they male
or a they female, you can't always tell, sometimes,
are they part well, what are they part, lion and somethin'?
Well yes, so this is a part lion, part man
The good news for the Egyptians was
that unlike this thing back here,
they didn't have to cart the rocks.
This big stone was just sitting nearby
and so they carved it out of the stone.
The Sphinx is one of those you know riddle of the Sphinx,
mystery of the Sphinx.
Not exactly sure why they did it.
It might have just been a neat thing to do.
The people who were building these things
were pretty well paid, they were given free medical care.
They were paid mostly oddly enough in beer.
You don't think about Egyptian beer that much
as Egypt is now a Muslim country
but the Egyptians pioneered beer making
and if you're wondering what, they just drank?
Well no, I mean they could sell their beer you know,
where could they were paid in coin
but then they could trade it for other things.
The pyramid making mania did not last very long
We're not exactly sure why these massive structures
were abandoned for smaller structures but they were.
We're not exactly sure whether the Egyptians get this idea
from the Mesopotamians or the Mesopotamians get this idea
from the Egyptians.
We think it's a Mesopotamian idea that the Egyptians copy
but to a great extent it doesn't matter,
it's a very short period of time.
It's what we remember the Old Kingdom for.
Remember why Old Kingdom?
because under these five dynasties,
Upper and Lower Egypt were all ruled by the same guy
and that guy generally lived somewhere near Thebes.
Well, all things must pass and so at the Old Kingdom.
What follows is something called
The first Intermediate Period.
We're not exactly sure
what the first Intermediate Period is about
except that we know that there is no unity
between Upper and Lower Egypt.
There are two dynasties, the sixth and the seventh dynasty
but they do not, they rule at the same time,
they are not able to control the whole place.
We're not sure why things fall apart
but we are sure they did
and when we come back, we'll enter into a new period,
really an Egyptian golden age
and I'll talk about that in just a minute.