Egyptian pharaohs stand apart from all other rulers and regents in the sands of time.
From Menes to Cleopatra, pharaohs lived a lavish life and were treated like gods.
They dined on the finest food and bathed in milk and honey.
Thousands of workers were employed to construct their tombs and they executed authority like
no one before them.
Naturally, some of them got carried away a bit too much.
Welcome to Nutty History, and today we are looking at the weird things that were normal
for Egyptian Pharaohs.
Apries had quite big shoes to fill as a pharaoh on his ascension as he was a son of one of
the most influential kings of the twenty-sixth dynasty, Psamtik the second.
Psamtik the second is remembered for his role as a dynamic warrior, military strategist,
and a successful ruler who prolifically built the empire and buildings at the same time.
But the central figure of this story is neither Apries nor Psamtik the second, but a general
in Apries’s army named Amasis.
Apries tried to follow in the footsteps of his father by continuing to build more temples
and intermingling in Palestinian affairs.
This policy led him to face several military conflicts on domestic and foreign fronts.
Endless military operations with not so much success left his troops dissatisfied with
him and a chain of mutinies weakened his empire.
After the crushing defeat of the Egyptian army in attempts to assist Libyans against
the Greek invaders of Cyrene, Egyptian soldiers had had enough with Apries and they revolted
against him.
The King trusted Amasis with the conflict and sent him to hold the talks in hopes of
avoiding the civil war without giving up the throne.
But this was yet another blunder from Apries.
Amasis was nothing if not a greedy and opportunistic politician.
He was also a kleptomaniac but we will talk about that later.
When Amasis arrived at the soldiers’ camp he could tell by a single glance that the
odds were totally in favor of the mutineers.
When the soldiers offered him to join and lead them, he chucked the pharaoh’s terms
of negotiations out of the window.
He turned to Pharaoh’s messenger and flatulated in the general direction of the palace of
Pharaoh and told the messenger “Take that back to the king!”
Despite taking the throne by force, Amasis was able to do a lot of major reforms.
He defeated and slain Apries on the battlefield but gave the former king a proper royal funeral
and married his daughter to legitimize his succession to the throne.
However, he could never forgive himself for betraying his pharaoh and came up with a very
sadistic method for self-guilt tripping.
He would visit oracles all over the country to ask them if he was innocent or guilty.
Naturally, the oracles would proclaim him innocent in order to not anger their ruler.
But doing so would result in Amasis asking for their death and calling them frauds as
he opined if they could really speak to the god, they would know what he did was nothing
short of treason.
Amasis was also a habitual kleptomaniac who would steal his allies’ properties and then
try to convince them that they had never owned them in the first place.
Some people make love to live, some people live to make love and Ramses the second was
definitely the latter.
Maybe being active in bed was also the secret behind his long age as subjects of his empire
actually started believing that his fertility and longevity were signs of him being an actual
god.
In a turbulent time, when pharaohs were dropping dead young due to plots and schemes against
them, Ramses the second managed to live up to the age of 91 years old.
Even when he was old and frail, he stayed active both in the royal court and on his
royal bed.
He built more statues and monuments than any other pharaoh and arguably also sired more
children than any other pharaoh.
At the time of his death, he had nine living wives and at least a hundred known children.
He was the real-life Walder Frey!
And like the senile lord from the game of thrones, he also married pretty much every
pretty girl he laid his eyes upon.
He would refuse to sign peace treaties after successfully invading countries until they
handed over their daughters to him.
He also married at least three of his daughters as well including the first born and at least
a sister which also could have been his daughter.
Ew.
Ew Ew Ew.
One of the greatest commanders in Egyptian History, had the mental capacity of an online
gamer when it comes to celebrating his military conquests.
He would take his warships and army to every land he could reach and stretched his empire
further than any other Pharaoh.
To commemorate his successes, he liked to create monuments on the battlegrounds after
defeating his enemies by erecting pillars.
These pillars would be engraved with the accounts of the battle and his usual boasting about
how he vanquished his rivals and how gods always favored him for he was leading their
mission on the battlefield.
But that’s not all he did, like Yelp he had his rating system for reviewing how his
enemies fought against him.
If the rival army was fearless and resilient on the battlefield, he would engrave a picture
of male genitalia on the pillar and if they were too easy to rout or attempted to flee,
Sesostris would ask the engravers to carve images of female genitals to denote them.
Basically, he acted like the sore losers you meet in League of Legends online.
The use of genital engravings was not a surprise given Egyptians were never prudes about sensuality
and carnal subjects.
Unlike their Greek contemporaries, Egypt was a liberal society that not only treated both
genders equally but also treated the subject of love-making with a very open mind.
Sometimes, to the point that even modern people would find it objectionable.
For example, at Min’s feast every year, the general public and the ruling Pharaoh
would perform a holy rite for ensuring a good harvest and prosperity.
On arriving at the shore, the Pharaoh would offer their blessings to the river.
Not only the pharaoh, but the rest of the men in public would also follow the king and
do the same.
This was a ceremony held every year to recreate the gift given by Atum to nourish the Nile.
Every surviving carving and sculpture from the ancient times depicts mighty pharaohs
of Egypt with a long, narrow, and quite artificial-looking chin beard as if it was part of their official
appearance as the regent of Egypt.
The truth is most Egyptian Pharaohs were not only clean shaved but many of them like to
stay bald as well to prevent lice issues and to keep their heads cool in the scorching
heat of the desserts.
So why were they depicted with beards you may ask?
For the sake of divinity.
Being the ruler of Egypt wasn’t easy, the job came with intense training, rigorous education,
and too many responsibilities.
Pharaohs wore not one but multiple crowns as part of their job, they were not only rulers,
but also the high priest of the country, the supreme judge, the commander in chief of the
army, and also the gods incarnate.
So even though they would not keep a beard they would like to resemble a beard as facial
hair was a feature that would portray them among the gods.
Yes, in ancient Egypt the ability to grow a healthy, fancy-looking beard was a sign
of divinity.
Typically braided tightly, beards were fashioned in a particular style that would resemble
the gods’ facial hair.
Very much like present times, beards were a sign of masculinity during Egyptian civilization
as well.
Facial hair was strongly linked with might, manliness, and male fertility back then.
But such was not the case with the term “Pharaoh.”
This might be confusing as Pharaoh literally translates to the English word “king,”
but for ancient Egyptians, the title was more of a gender-neutral term.
In fact, the word pharaoh is not even Egyptian, it is a Greek or Hebrew pronunciation of the
Egyptian word pero or per-aa which means “great house.”
Pharaoh was originally referred to as the King’s palace and it would not become a
term for the ruler until about 1450 BC.
It is true that among the known hundred and seventy pharaohs, the wide majority were male
but Egypt did have a handful of female rulers who were also called Pharaohs.
One of the few women to rule over Egypt was Hatshepsut who worked endlessly to become
a Pharaoh and then retain the throne during her reign.
Today she is remembered for being responsible for building some of well-known ancient Egypt’s
greatest architectural wonders.
However, during her time, she had to wade through a lot of criticism from people around
her over her claim to the throne only because of her gender.
Probably that is why she got insecure about her femininity and commanded every artist
in Egypt to only draw her with beards.
Today no available carving or sculpture of her shows her without a full beard and strapping
bulky biceps.
She also expected everybody to address her as “Son of Ra” and therefore introduced
herself similarly as well.
Historians believed that it is quite possible that she perhaps wore a fake beard in real
life as well.
Either Hatshepsut was rather quite insecure about her position as a pharaoh or she was
angry she was born a woman.
Either way, it is quite unfortunate that her son was more insecure than her and ended up
nearly erasing her almost completely from history.
Fake beards also had an important part after the death of the pharaoh.
Their after-death portrayal was always in the image of Osiris, the god of death and
the afterlife.
Part of this involved emulating his beard, which had slight curling at the tip.
The false beards were often placed over the coffins of the pharaohs, as the coffins frequently
featured illustrations of their faces.
The reign of Akhenaten is remembered for being the most revolutionary time in the history
of Ancient Egypt.
He changed Egyptian religion by converting into a monotheistic religion of the sun god
Aten, giving up on the polytheistic views of traditional Egyptian religion.
He shook up the social structure as well and his rule put the entire nation through a major
upheaval.
Clearly, such a shake-up required huge labor to achieve as he tried to move his capital
to a completely new city he was building, Amarna.
He not only moved twenty thousand people to this newly unfinished city but also expected
them to work day and night to complete the city, no matter how exhausted they were.
The city barely had any infrastructure to support this many laborers and as a result,
people worked with very little to eat and hardly enough shelter to sleep.
Moreover, Akhenaten put them through this misery by force and they were not allowed
to go back home.
If they disobeyed, broke rank, and attempted to run away or snatch more food than their
allotted ration, they were sentenced to be repeatedly stabbed.
Based on how many bones archaeologists found in the town cemetery, it is believed that
at least two-thirds of the labor crew ended up breaking at least one bone working on the
construction and nearly a third of them ended up with broken backs.
However, despite being an impatient tyrant, Akhenaten died before the city could have
been finished.
Needless to say, people celebrated by destroying everything he attempted to build and had his
name nearly erased from history.
In our past videos about Egypt, we have talked about how much the entire culture was fascinated
with the idea of an afterlife and the mystical nature of death and how they would dedicate
a good portion of their lives to prepare for the journey after death.
But, not everyone in their history of nearly 3000 years was enthusiastic about dying.
Menkaure, the king of Egypt in the 26th century BC was not happy when an oracle told him that
he had only six years to live.
Unlike other Egyptians, who would have begun their preparation for their death, Menkaure
got scared and wanted to live forever.
He figured that if he could stop time from moving, the six years would never pass and
he would stay alive forever.
As back then humans mostly observed the time passing in terms of the change from day to
night and night to day, he came up with a nefarious plan.
Menkaure decided that if he could stop the night from passing, time would cease to progress.
So, every night, he lit up as many lamps as he could and convinced himself it was still
daytime.
He also stopped sleeping, as for him that too was allowing the time to pass.
He would stay up all night, drinking and reveling, and ended up only bringing his death closer.
Tell us in the comments if you can add any other weird facts about Egyptian Pharaohs.
And as always, thanks for watching Nutty History, don’t forget to like and subscribe.