WEBVTT 00:00:00.044 --> 00:00:02.190 - [Narrator] In this video, we are going to give ourselves 00:00:02.190 --> 00:00:04.607 an overview of ancient Egypt, 00:00:06.015 --> 00:00:09.527 which corresponds geographically pretty closely 00:00:09.527 --> 00:00:14.144 to the modern day state of Egypt in northeast Africa. 00:00:14.144 --> 00:00:16.906 Now the central feature in both ancient Egypt 00:00:16.906 --> 00:00:19.833 and in modern Egypt is the Nile River 00:00:19.833 --> 00:00:22.962 that you see in blue right over here. 00:00:22.962 --> 00:00:26.572 And the Nile River is one of the great rivers of the world. 00:00:26.572 --> 00:00:29.539 It rivals the Amazon River as the longest river 00:00:29.539 --> 00:00:32.685 and it sources the tributaries of the Nile Rover 00:00:32.685 --> 00:00:35.421 start even south of this picture 00:00:35.421 --> 00:00:37.742 and the water flows northward 00:00:37.742 --> 00:00:41.442 and eventually its delta reaches the Mediterranean Sea. 00:00:41.442 --> 00:00:46.012 The delta, which is where a river opens into the sea, 00:00:46.012 --> 00:00:49.505 is called a delta because, as you can see, these rivers, 00:00:49.505 --> 00:00:50.451 you can even see it from 00:00:50.451 --> 00:00:51.627 the satellite pictures right over here, 00:00:51.627 --> 00:00:53.593 they start branching up a bunch 00:00:53.593 --> 00:00:56.916 and you have this upside down triangular region, 00:00:56.916 --> 00:00:58.796 which looks a little bit like 00:00:58.796 --> 00:01:01.633 an upside down Greek letter delta, 00:01:01.633 --> 00:01:03.716 so that's why river delta is called that. 00:01:03.716 --> 00:01:05.305 And this one just happens to be upside down. 00:01:05.305 --> 00:01:06.552 If it was flowing the other way, 00:01:06.552 --> 00:01:08.432 it would be a right-side-up delta. 00:01:08.432 --> 00:01:12.126 So the Nile River, it flows from, you could say, 00:01:12.126 --> 00:01:16.126 eastern mid-Africa up into the Mediterranean Sea 00:01:17.328 --> 00:01:19.781 and because it has this northward flow, 00:01:19.781 --> 00:01:22.953 the southern parts of the river are upriver 00:01:22.953 --> 00:01:25.680 and they are actually called the Upper Nile. 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:26.513 So, Upper. 00:01:27.571 --> 00:01:31.406 The Upper Nile is actually south of the Lower Nile, 00:01:31.406 --> 00:01:33.270 of the Lower Nile. 00:01:33.270 --> 00:01:36.456 And once again, that's because the Upper Nile is up river, 00:01:36.456 --> 00:01:39.525 it's also flowing from higher elevations 00:01:39.525 --> 00:01:40.846 to lower elevations. 00:01:40.846 --> 00:01:45.039 So as you go south, you get to higher and higher elevations. 00:01:45.039 --> 00:01:48.683 Now, the reason why the river is so important, 00:01:48.683 --> 00:01:50.315 we studied this multiple times, 00:01:50.315 --> 00:01:52.101 rivers are a source of fresh water, 00:01:52.101 --> 00:01:55.339 when they flood they make the surrounding soil fertile, 00:01:55.339 --> 00:01:57.160 they're suitable for agriculture, 00:01:57.160 --> 00:01:59.381 and the Nile Valley is one of the first places 00:01:59.381 --> 00:02:01.731 that we see agriculture emerging 00:02:01.731 --> 00:02:04.340 during the neolithic period. 00:02:04.340 --> 00:02:06.190 In fact, human settlement we believe 00:02:06.190 --> 00:02:08.911 was along this Nile River Valley 00:02:08.911 --> 00:02:12.161 as far as 6,000 BCE or 8,000 years ago, 00:02:14.321 --> 00:02:18.272 and it might have been there even further back in time. 00:02:18.272 --> 00:02:19.781 And because you have that agriculture, 00:02:19.781 --> 00:02:22.212 it allowed for higher population densities, 00:02:22.212 --> 00:02:24.271 which allowed for more specialization of labor 00:02:24.271 --> 00:02:26.170 and more complex societies. 00:02:26.170 --> 00:02:28.103 It's not a coincidence that some of the first, 00:02:28.103 --> 00:02:32.464 that one of the first great civilizations emerged here. 00:02:32.464 --> 00:02:36.297 Now, the story of the Nile River, or of Egypt, 00:02:37.882 --> 00:02:40.590 and actually they are tied very closely, 00:02:40.590 --> 00:02:43.446 even though Egypt is considered a lot of this region, 00:02:43.446 --> 00:02:47.004 most of the human population, this is true even today, 00:02:47.004 --> 00:02:51.171 is right along the river, around that fertile soil, 00:02:53.107 --> 00:02:56.815 where the agriculture actually occurs. 00:02:56.815 --> 00:02:59.315 In fact, this was so important to the ancient Egyptians 00:02:59.315 --> 00:03:01.307 that their whole calendar, their seasons, 00:03:01.307 --> 00:03:04.042 were based on what the Nile River was doing. 00:03:04.042 --> 00:03:05.746 They had a season called the inundation, 00:03:05.746 --> 00:03:08.365 or the flooding of the river, which makes the soil fertile. 00:03:08.365 --> 00:03:10.138 They had a season of growth, 00:03:10.138 --> 00:03:12.145 which is now talking about the growth of the crops 00:03:12.145 --> 00:03:14.615 and they had a season of harvest. 00:03:14.615 --> 00:03:18.889 And so you had people in this valley for thousands of years, 00:03:18.889 --> 00:03:20.926 but when we talk about ancient Egypt, 00:03:20.926 --> 00:03:23.895 we formally talk about it as a civilization 00:03:23.895 --> 00:03:25.895 around 3,100, 3,150 BCE. 00:03:30.346 --> 00:03:33.205 And this is where we get to our timeline right over here. 00:03:33.205 --> 00:03:36.746 So we're talking about right around there on our timeline 00:03:36.746 --> 00:03:38.029 and the reason why this is considered 00:03:38.029 --> 00:03:41.071 the beginning of the ancient Egyptian civilization 00:03:41.071 --> 00:03:42.658 is this is when we believe 00:03:42.658 --> 00:03:46.954 that upper and lower Egypt were first united 00:03:46.954 --> 00:03:50.126 under the king and there's different names used, 00:03:50.126 --> 00:03:52.293 Narmer sometimes or Menes. 00:03:55.991 --> 00:03:57.433 I'm going to mispronounce things 00:03:57.433 --> 00:04:00.561 every now and then and I'm probably doing it here as well. 00:04:00.561 --> 00:04:04.728 And so he was the king that unified upper and lower Egypt 00:04:05.713 --> 00:04:09.609 into an empire and the empire, as we will see, 00:04:09.609 --> 00:04:11.880 which lasted thousands of years, 00:04:11.880 --> 00:04:15.298 every one of these spaces is a hundred years. 00:04:15.298 --> 00:04:18.070 We're gonna go over huge time span, 00:04:18.070 --> 00:04:22.118 but the ancient Egyptian civilization is roughly divided 00:04:22.118 --> 00:04:23.785 into three kingdoms. 00:04:24.673 --> 00:04:28.719 You have the old kingdom, which went from about, 00:04:28.719 --> 00:04:31.802 right from about the 27th century BCE 00:04:34.331 --> 00:04:37.081 up to about the 17th century BCE. 00:04:39.700 --> 00:04:43.220 You have the middle kingdom and you have the new kingdom. 00:04:43.220 --> 00:04:46.660 And once again, this is spanning right over here 00:04:46.660 --> 00:04:49.410 over a thousand years of history. 00:04:50.339 --> 00:04:53.521 And in between those, you have these intermediate periods 00:04:53.521 --> 00:04:56.090 where the kingdom or the empire 00:04:56.090 --> 00:04:57.827 was a little bit more fragmented. 00:04:57.827 --> 00:05:00.124 You have in some of these intermediate periods, 00:05:00.124 --> 00:05:02.774 you have some foreign rule. 00:05:02.774 --> 00:05:06.191 But just to get a sense of some of what happened 00:05:06.191 --> 00:05:07.550 over this thousands of years, 00:05:07.550 --> 00:05:09.161 and I'm kind of laughing in my head 00:05:09.161 --> 00:05:13.490 because it's hard to cover over two, 3,000 years, 00:05:13.490 --> 00:05:15.489 in the course of just a few minutes, 00:05:15.489 --> 00:05:17.946 but this will give you a sense of what ancient Egyptian 00:05:17.946 --> 00:05:20.437 civilization was all about. 00:05:20.437 --> 00:05:23.587 Now the kings are referred to as pharaohs 00:05:23.587 --> 00:05:26.779 but as we'll see that term pharaoh is not really used 00:05:26.779 --> 00:05:28.390 until we get to the new kingdom. 00:05:28.390 --> 00:05:30.598 But I will refer to the kings as pharaohs 00:05:30.598 --> 00:05:31.569 throughout this video, 00:05:31.569 --> 00:05:33.871 just to say, hey these are the Egyptian kings. 00:05:33.871 --> 00:05:37.871 And the old kingdom is probably most known today 00:05:39.369 --> 00:05:41.838 in our popular culture for what we most associate 00:05:41.838 --> 00:05:45.814 with ancient Egypt and that is the pyramids. 00:05:45.814 --> 00:05:47.962 And here, right over here are the pyramids, 00:05:47.962 --> 00:05:49.733 there's the Great Pyramid of Giza, 00:05:49.733 --> 00:05:52.766 which is near modern-day Cairo today. 00:05:52.766 --> 00:05:56.894 This is the Sphinx and they were built in that old period 00:05:56.894 --> 00:06:01.850 under the Pharaohs Sneferu and Khufu, right over here 00:06:01.850 --> 00:06:03.850 in the 26th century BCE. 00:06:07.249 --> 00:06:09.200 And we are still trying to get a better understanding 00:06:09.200 --> 00:06:10.833 of how this was done. 00:06:10.833 --> 00:06:12.568 We actually now don't believe 00:06:12.568 --> 00:06:14.644 that it was done by slave labor, 00:06:14.644 --> 00:06:17.270 but instead it was done during, you could say, 00:06:17.270 --> 00:06:21.479 the off season by the peasants as a form of taxation. 00:06:21.479 --> 00:06:24.569 Okay, you're done planting or harvesting your crops? 00:06:24.569 --> 00:06:25.971 Well now that you have some time, 00:06:25.971 --> 00:06:27.966 and this shows actually the importance of agriculture 00:06:27.966 --> 00:06:30.041 for freeing people up, so to speak, 00:06:30.041 --> 00:06:33.386 why don't you help the pharaohs built these massive tombs, 00:06:33.386 --> 00:06:35.036 which I've seen various estimates 00:06:35.036 --> 00:06:36.339 that it might have taken some place between 00:06:36.339 --> 00:06:40.877 10 and 100,000 people several decades to build each. 00:06:40.877 --> 00:06:42.701 But these are even today, 00:06:42.701 --> 00:06:45.868 these were built over 4,500 years ago, 00:06:46.707 --> 00:06:49.087 are some of the most iconic symbols 00:06:49.087 --> 00:06:51.670 that humanity has ever created. 00:06:52.548 --> 00:06:56.715 And the reason why we know so much about ancient Egypt 00:06:58.547 --> 00:07:01.368 is that we have been able to decipher their writing. 00:07:01.368 --> 00:07:03.224 It's a symbolic, they have these pictographs, 00:07:03.224 --> 00:07:05.335 these hieroglyphics, I'm sure you've heard 00:07:05.335 --> 00:07:06.414 of the word before, 00:07:06.414 --> 00:07:08.492 and for a while we had no idea what they said. 00:07:08.492 --> 00:07:10.683 We would see these encryptions in these tombs 00:07:10.683 --> 00:07:13.194 and we had a sense that, okay these tombs, 00:07:13.194 --> 00:07:15.103 especially things like the pyramids 00:07:15.103 --> 00:07:16.750 would be for these great kings, 00:07:16.750 --> 00:07:19.522 we could tell that it was a stratified society, 00:07:19.522 --> 00:07:21.407 that nobility had better tombs than others, 00:07:21.407 --> 00:07:23.433 but we didn't really have a good sense of what was going on 00:07:23.433 --> 00:07:27.018 until we discovered this, which is the Rosetta Stone, 00:07:27.018 --> 00:07:29.325 which was discovered in 1799. 00:07:29.325 --> 00:07:32.220 The reason why this is so valuable 00:07:32.220 --> 00:07:33.405 is it has the same text 00:07:33.405 --> 00:07:35.966 written in three different languages. 00:07:35.966 --> 00:07:38.335 It has it written in the hieroglyphs 00:07:38.335 --> 00:07:40.166 of the ancient Egyptians, 00:07:40.166 --> 00:07:43.156 and it has it written in a later script used in Egypt, 00:07:43.156 --> 00:07:45.920 called demotic Egyptian, and most importantly, 00:07:45.920 --> 00:07:49.193 it has it also written in Greek. 00:07:49.193 --> 00:07:52.023 And so historians were able to say, 00:07:52.023 --> 00:07:54.756 okay, we can now start to decipher what these symbols mean 00:07:54.756 --> 00:07:57.166 because we have a translation of them 00:07:57.166 --> 00:07:58.939 and that's why it's one of the first civilizations 00:07:58.939 --> 00:08:02.276 where we're able to put the picture together. 00:08:02.276 --> 00:08:06.275 And hieroglyphics are one of the first forms of writing. 00:08:06.275 --> 00:08:09.437 But let's now go on in our journey 00:08:09.437 --> 00:08:13.778 through thousands of years of ancient Egyptian civilization. 00:08:13.778 --> 00:08:16.881 Between the old kingdom and the middle kingdom, 00:08:16.881 --> 00:08:18.944 you have the first intermediate period 00:08:18.944 --> 00:08:20.461 and then you have the middle kingdom 00:08:20.461 --> 00:08:22.471 and then you have the Hyksos, 00:08:22.471 --> 00:08:23.626 which are Semitic people, 00:08:23.626 --> 00:08:25.368 Semitic referring to their language 00:08:25.368 --> 00:08:29.417 being of the same family as Semitic languages like Arabic, 00:08:29.417 --> 00:08:31.598 or Hebrew, or Aramaic. 00:08:31.598 --> 00:08:33.288 But then you have the new kingdom, 00:08:33.288 --> 00:08:36.455 and the new kingdom is considered to be the peak 00:08:36.455 --> 00:08:38.366 of ancient Egypt. 00:08:38.366 --> 00:08:40.666 It's really the height of their technology, 00:08:40.666 --> 00:08:43.903 it's the height of their military capability. 00:08:43.903 --> 00:08:46.972 And there are several pharaohs that are worthy of note 00:08:46.972 --> 00:08:48.431 in the new kingdom. 00:08:48.431 --> 00:08:51.348 The first is, he was born Amenhotep 00:08:53.002 --> 00:08:55.794 or he was originally known as Amenhotep the Fourth 00:08:55.794 --> 00:08:58.793 and then he eventually names himself Akhenaton 00:08:58.793 --> 00:09:01.751 and Akhenaton means effective for Aton, 00:09:01.751 --> 00:09:04.918 Aton being a significant Egyptian god. 00:09:05.969 --> 00:09:10.468 And the reason why he changed his name is he decides 00:09:10.468 --> 00:09:13.244 that, okay we have, the Egyptians have this huge 00:09:13.244 --> 00:09:15.402 pantheon of gods. 00:09:15.402 --> 00:09:17.905 Here is just the sum of them right over here, 00:09:17.905 --> 00:09:21.855 this is the god Osiris, often associated with the afterlife 00:09:21.855 --> 00:09:25.355 or transition, regeneration, resurrection. 00:09:26.876 --> 00:09:30.883 You have the god Amun here and his first name Amenhotep, 00:09:30.883 --> 00:09:33.133 it means Amun is satisfied. 00:09:34.548 --> 00:09:36.872 What is considered kind of the equivalent of Zeus, 00:09:36.872 --> 00:09:39.060 you have the god here Horace, 00:09:39.060 --> 00:09:41.074 once again a very significant god 00:09:41.074 --> 00:09:42.830 at different times in Egypt, 00:09:42.830 --> 00:09:45.932 but what was interesting about Amenhotep the Fourth 00:09:45.932 --> 00:09:47.793 or Akhenaton, whichever name you want to use, 00:09:47.793 --> 00:09:51.021 is he decided, no, no, no, I don't like this pantheon, 00:09:51.021 --> 00:09:54.354 this polytheistic religion that we have, 00:09:55.839 --> 00:09:57.509 I wanna worship one god, 00:09:57.509 --> 00:09:59.366 and the god that he decides to worship 00:09:59.366 --> 00:10:02.755 is really the, you could consider it the sun god, 00:10:02.755 --> 00:10:06.347 or the sun disc, and its representation looks 00:10:06.347 --> 00:10:11.134 something like this and it was referred to as Aten 00:10:11.134 --> 00:10:14.343 and so he changes his name to Akhenaton 00:10:14.343 --> 00:10:17.011 and he actually starts to try to get rid of evidence 00:10:17.011 --> 00:10:21.485 of these other gods or to make them a lot less important. 00:10:21.485 --> 00:10:23.115 And so the reason why that's notable 00:10:23.115 --> 00:10:25.399 is this is viewed as perhaps 00:10:25.399 --> 00:10:27.584 one of the first attempts at monotheism, 00:10:27.584 --> 00:10:32.569 at least within this ancient Egyptian civilization. 00:10:32.569 --> 00:10:37.008 He's also noted for giving a lot of power to his wife, 00:10:37.008 --> 00:10:38.889 to the queen, Nefertiti, 00:10:38.889 --> 00:10:41.886 who some people say was second in command, 00:10:41.886 --> 00:10:45.238 or even co-ruled alongside him. 00:10:45.238 --> 00:10:47.978 Now he was also famous because after his death, 00:10:47.978 --> 00:10:52.145 eventually, his son, King Tut, Tutankhamen, comes to power. 00:10:54.113 --> 00:10:57.179 And the reason why King Tut, as he's often known, 00:10:57.179 --> 00:11:00.106 although it's Tutankhamen, is known is because 00:11:00.106 --> 00:11:04.273 we were able to find his tombs in relatively good order 00:11:05.474 --> 00:11:09.641 and so he's become a popular part of the imagination. 00:11:12.064 --> 00:11:13.726 And he's known as a child pharaoh. 00:11:13.726 --> 00:11:15.413 He comes to power when he's very young, 00:11:15.413 --> 00:11:19.561 he dies at 18 and so it's kind of an interesting story. 00:11:19.561 --> 00:11:23.018 Now, most prominent amongst all of the pharaohs 00:11:23.018 --> 00:11:24.994 across Egyptian history, 00:11:24.994 --> 00:11:26.680 and this is also in the new kingdom, 00:11:26.680 --> 00:11:29.109 comes a little bit after Tutankhamen, 00:11:29.109 --> 00:11:30.859 is Ramses the Second. 00:11:31.703 --> 00:11:35.870 And Ramses the Second, who emerges here in the 13th century, 00:11:36.955 --> 00:11:40.626 and he rules for most of the 13th century BCE, 00:11:40.626 --> 00:11:44.720 he represents really the peak of Egypt, ancient Egypt, 00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:46.549 as a military power. 00:11:46.549 --> 00:11:50.068 He's famous for the Battle at Kaddish, 00:11:50.068 --> 00:11:52.665 which is the earliest battle where we actually know 00:11:52.665 --> 00:11:55.183 what the tactics and the formations were 00:11:55.183 --> 00:11:59.145 and it was with the also significant Hittite Empire 00:11:59.145 --> 00:12:03.312 in 1274 BCE, this is an image drawn much, much later, 00:12:04.546 --> 00:12:05.903 of the Battle of Kaddish. 00:12:05.903 --> 00:12:06.927 The battle, we now believe, 00:12:06.927 --> 00:12:08.434 might have been a bit of a stalemate, 00:12:08.434 --> 00:12:10.861 Ramses the Second wasn't able to capture Kaddish, 00:12:10.861 --> 00:12:13.835 but has told us a lot about military tactics 00:12:13.835 --> 00:12:15.925 and strategy and formation of that time. 00:12:15.925 --> 00:12:18.334 Historians today think it might have been the largest 00:12:18.334 --> 00:12:21.264 chariot battle maybe ever. 00:12:21.264 --> 00:12:24.154 So this was a significant thing that happened. 00:12:24.154 --> 00:12:28.022 Now, eventually the new kingdom does collapse, 00:12:28.022 --> 00:12:30.777 as we get to the end of the second millennium, 00:12:30.777 --> 00:12:33.202 and then over the next several hundreds of years, 00:12:33.202 --> 00:12:35.154 we're talking about a very long period of time, 00:12:35.154 --> 00:12:38.188 it gets fragmented, you have several rulers, 00:12:38.188 --> 00:12:41.794 you have the Kushites rule from the Upper Nile, 00:12:41.794 --> 00:12:45.725 the Kushites were in this area right over here. 00:12:45.725 --> 00:12:47.625 They rule for a brief period. 00:12:47.625 --> 00:12:50.784 The Assyrians, that's a Mesopotamian civilization, 00:12:50.784 --> 00:12:53.895 they rule for a small period of time, 00:12:53.895 --> 00:12:56.241 and then eventually and we talk about this in some detail 00:12:56.241 --> 00:12:59.543 in other videos, you have the Persians take over, 00:12:59.543 --> 00:13:02.902 you have Cambyses, Osiris the Great's son, 00:13:02.902 --> 00:13:06.342 he's able to rule over, he's able to conquer Egypt 00:13:06.342 --> 00:13:09.251 and Egypt becomes part of the Achaemenid Empire for a while 00:13:09.251 --> 00:13:12.611 until the conquering of Alexander the Great. 00:13:12.611 --> 00:13:14.353 And after Alexander the Great dies, 00:13:14.353 --> 00:13:16.994 one of his generals and his dynasty takes over, 00:13:16.994 --> 00:13:20.034 Ptolemaic Egypt and now it's being ruled by foreigners, 00:13:20.034 --> 00:13:22.094 well it's been ruled by foreigners for a while now, 00:13:22.094 --> 00:13:24.138 but now it's by the Greeks 00:13:24.138 --> 00:13:25.719 and the famous Cleopatra, 00:13:25.719 --> 00:13:27.749 who's considered a pharaoh of Egypt, 00:13:27.749 --> 00:13:29.612 she's actually Greek by blood, 00:13:29.612 --> 00:13:33.068 she's actually the one that seduced you could say 00:13:33.068 --> 00:13:35.906 Julius Cesar and Marc Antony 00:13:35.906 --> 00:13:38.422 and after Cleopatra's death, more and more, 00:13:38.422 --> 00:13:42.269 actually eventually it becomes part of Rome. 00:13:42.269 --> 00:13:44.985 So as you can see we covered this enormous large 00:13:44.985 --> 00:13:46.902 time period in history, 00:13:47.815 --> 00:13:50.876 one of the most significant civilizations in all of history, 00:13:50.876 --> 00:13:53.450 one of the most famous poems about civilizations 00:13:53.450 --> 00:13:56.275 and rulers, about Ramses the Second, the poem Ozymandias 00:13:56.275 --> 00:13:57.792 was named after him. 00:13:57.792 --> 00:14:00.366 You have some of the great cities of the ancient world, 00:14:00.366 --> 00:14:01.917 Thebes, which was the capital 00:14:01.917 --> 00:14:05.462 during parts of the new kingdom and the middle kingdom, 00:14:05.462 --> 00:14:07.640 you have Memphis, which was one of the, 00:14:07.640 --> 00:14:09.653 some people say founded by Menes 00:14:09.653 --> 00:14:11.909 and the capital of the old kingdom. 00:14:11.909 --> 00:14:14.862 These were all happening in ancient Egypt.