Camp Gagnon - Ancient Egypt Expert Tells The UNTOLD Story of Egypt's New Kingdom

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Who was Ramses II, and why does his reign still fascinate historians today? In this deep dive, we explore the world of ancient Egypt during Ramses’ time — from the topography of his empire to the cultural, political, and technological shifts of the Mediterranean. We’ll uncover the role of the Phoenicians, the collapse of the Bronze Age, the winners and losers of this turbulent period, the great temples and carvings of Ramses II, the perception of pyramids in his era, and whether biblical accounts align with history. We’ll also examine Egypt’s economic systems, ancient technology, and the everyday lives of its people — from letters and myths to famine, cannibalism, and climate change.WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsors: Odoo, Morgan & Morgan, and BluechewTry Odoo with a 14-day free trial at: http://Odoo.com/CAMP👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: http://camp-rd.com🏕️ Get Today In History Email Here (Free): https://camp.beehiiv.com/🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.comMake Sure To Follow @History-Camp 🏕️🎩TIMESTAMPS0:00 Intro0:42 Egyptian Topography During Ramses Reign8:26 The Phoenicians12:26 Collapse of The Bronze Age17:03 Struggles During The Collapse23:46 Winners & Losers of The Mediterranean25:02 The Temple of Ramses II + The Carvings of Ancient Structures28:56 First Coins Depicting Rulers31:21 Ancient Egypt’s Perception of Pyramids34:20 Importance of Ramses II37:53 Ramses In Bible + Did Jews Build The Pyramids?41:17 The Tomb of Ramses II43:14 Egyptian God Set + Egypt’s Lack of Advancement48:04 Using Items For Currency + Barter Society52:59 Ancient Technological Decline55:17 Antikythera Mechanism59:08 Egyptian Vases1:01:22 Biases of Egyptology1:05:33 Daily Ancient Egyptian Life + Heqanakht Letters1:10:10 Famine In Egypt + The Myth of The Cat & Mice1:15:01 No Nile Flood Lead To Cannibalism1:23:01 List of Egyptian Kings1:27:38 Factors of Climate Change#RamsesII #AncientEgypt #BronzeAgeCollapse #EgyptHistory #Phoenicians #EgyptianGods #Pyramids #AncientCivilizations #HistoryDocumentary #MediterraneanHistory #Archaeology #Egyptology #AntikytheraMechanism #AncientTechnology #BiblicalHistory

This is Dr. Joseph Manning, a Yale historian and Egyptologist, and today we're going to be discussing one of the most powerful pharaohs Egypt has ever seen, Ramsey's the Great. He ran for over 60 years, built colossal temples, and claimed victory in epic battles. And today we're breaking down who Ramsey's really was, how he actually claimed power and how he kept it for so long. This is not just the propaganda, but the man behind the monuments. We're talking war, politics, divine kingships, and why his legacy still towers. over history like the statues he built. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Dr. Manning, how are you?

I'm well. Thank you so much for being in the same outfit immediately after recording our first episode. It's actually a different shirt. It looks the same. Oh, really? Yeah. That's your whole closet.

It's just blue buttoned out. I'm one of those guys that has a closet full of blue shirts. Exactly. And cargo pants. Yes. Steve Jobs-esque. Yes, I like this. We spoke briefly, and by briefly, I mean, like,

over an hour about King Tut. Yeah, we did. But there is another Egyptian ruler, a king, a pharaoh, if you will, an emperor perhaps, named Ramsey's the second. And this is an interesting guy. Yeah. Because in contrast to King Tut, you know, who had a pretty inconsequential reign, boy king, you know, an undiscovered tomb that gets found of the 20th century.

Ramsey's has a monumental reign. And some would say deeply impacts the fabric of, you know, Egypt in this new kingdom. Mm-hmm. So take me to the context of Ramsey's reign. How does he get into power? What is the sort of layout of Egypt at the time? And ultimately, what does he do in his reign? Let's start with the context.

So we talked the last hour about the New Kingdom and Dynasty 18, the age of kind of the formation of this great empire, complete with horses and chariots. and conqueror kings. Dynasty's 19 and 20, the other two ruling families in the new kingdom continue on the military conquests and campaigning, but in some different ways. And they're from a different part of Egypt. So Dynasty 18 is a Theban-based dynasty.

They're from southern Egypt, basically. Ramsey's his family, he's not, he's Ramsey's the second, Ramsey's the first, comes first, they are a family from the eastern delta, which is really interesting. And that sounds like, oh, it's a different place in Egypt, but so what? But it is from Dynasty 19 all the way, effectively through the Ptolemies and the Romans, there's a major shift geographically that the center of Egypt now is very much, the Delta and the Mediterranean, whereas in Dynasty 18 and earlier Egypt, in a sense, it's more southern, southern looking. But now the emphasis is on the Delta. It's on lots more interaction

with the Near East. We saw that in Dynasty 18 too a bit, but this is really now going to be important for the rest of Egyptian history. It's going to be the Delta and the Mediterranean. Can we get a map of Egypt, actually? That would be helpful. And I imagine with the technological innovations that happen as time progresses, you're going to have more trade. And because of, you know, shipping and things like that, access to water is going to become very important. Yes. Yeah.

Indeed. And Egypt, so there is Thieves here south of what's called the Kenabend there. So a lot of Egyptian history. And, of course, the monuments that's so well survived, the temples are the stuff of history, which may be giving us a false picture because we're prejudiced for such things. Temples in southern Egypt because they're well preserved. The Delta is much less well preserved archaeologically for obvious reasons. It's a river delta.

Right. So a lot of stuff is underneath a lot of feet of mud. It's harder to do. Some papyrus scrolls in a marsh, they're going to get damage pretty quickly. That's why we have almost no papyrus records from the Delta. Right. Ever. Interesting.

It's wet. And does it feel humid, like if you're in the Delta area versus other areas? No, it doesn't. It's actually these days because there's no longer any annual flood of the river, so because of the high dam at Oswan. So, but it would. It'd be marsher and wetter in antiquity. So the eastern delta, I don't know if Tonus in places like that are on the map there. But, you know, Tonus is famous for Raiders of the Lost Ark fame.

But this is in the region where the Ramacid family is from. what's also interesting about that is they're real they were worshippers of this god seth um this dog like um god or seti and the royal names are actually setti's common in this ruling family some of them keep them others kind of mask their ethnic identity their background by taking on ramesis because ramesis ray is the god who bore him is what the name means son god ray So we're legit. We're just like the Theban family. We're kind of, you know, but actually their background is quite different, even ethnically, at least culturally.

Interesting. Remember the Hixos we talked about who ruled Egypt from the Delta. In the intermediary period. In the secondary immediate period, they bring in the horse and the sherry with them. It might be, there is some speculation that the early Ramosids are actually ethnically Hixos. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so a continuation. They're from the same area of the eastern Delta at a minimum.

So how much is masked in terms of culture and ethnicity? Good question, because the evidence we have is now Egyptian pharaohs. Even they're switching names and they're good Egyptian kings. Behind the scene, the reality is really interesting. And how does this Ramaz's family come into power? It's well, it's a military-based rule. There's a succession problem that happens and then they come in. Yeah, and the Dynasty 18 sort of peters out because the last couple of kings are actually,

they're technically kings, but they're military guys with royal titles. So that continues. But it's a different family. It's a break in a sense from the Theban family. And so it is, I wouldn't say it's a coup, but it's essentially these are, you know, There's very strong rulers with armies behind them that are establishing political control over the whole of Egypt and claiming kingship and so on. That is fascinating. So the raw of Ramazis comes from the sun god.

Yeah. That is fascinating. Yeah, it's Ray or Ra, the sun god. It's, hey, you know, a good old God, we're legit. Right. And, you know, names like Moses. I mean, that's an abbreviation of Rha messes. No way.

Yeah. So, you know, there's a whole story in another episode, but the whole story of the Jews in Egypt, well, this is around the time. People used to think Ramsey's the second was the period of the Exodus. It's probably a little bit later, but there's always discussion about it. But it's just kind of a nickname for the current king, this family, the Ramisid family, the Ramisis. So Messas is just an abbreviation of raw messes. Fascinating.

And Moses was adopted by an Egyptian family. Yeah, it's an old story. So the Moses name is potentially given to him? Common name at the time. Wow. It's like think of a current king or something, and you know, you name your kid Charles because King Charles is on the throne or something. Wow.

It's this kind of thing. It would have been a common thing. That is fascinating. So this is the Ramesit period. This is the Egyptian Delta. And the reason that's so interesting in this period, let alone the Hixos background, which, you know, we can speculate about. But that's interesting. They're from the same general region.

And it's a different region ethnically because all these Near Eastern connections and Mediterranean connections. That's going to be the dominant economic, what's the word, trend. And we're talking about around, I mean, Ramsey's the second comes to the throne in 1279, I think. Okay. And he's going to rule for most of the 1200s, with his really long reign. But this is coming up near the end of the Bronze Age, a so-called Bronze Age collapse. There's a lot of movement. There's a lot of migrations.

There's massive drought we know in certain parts of the Mediterranean, which is driving some of the movement. And there's also new ways of doing business, which is embodied in the Phoenicians, who are expanding a little bit later, but they're probably already around in these great. near Eastern trading or commercial centers like Biblos and Tyre. Mm. So vilified in the Old Testament, these wealthy merchant cities and so on. They're a real thing and they're really important and they're going to be the driver of the whole next phase in the history of the metal training, which is the first millennium, BC, starting, really, I think, around 1,200, around the time of Ramses the second. Now we're in a kind of a new world, a more commercial world.

the Phoenicians are going all the way out to Spain. They have different ship technology. They are doing business by written contract. They are entrepreneurs literally taking near eastern textiles and they're exchanging it for the raw materials like silver from the Spanish silver mines that they're opening up and connecting the entire Mediterranean. It is a new or it's a continuation of a commercial world

that we talked about before, but it's being reinforced. It's now bigger. And it's operating quite differently. Interesting. And the Bronze Age and the world of big palace economies like Mycenae or Egypt, with Pharaoh being the boss of everything. Right. At least that's how they think they're operating.

And now we have Phoenician merchants going around doing a very different kind of business. Right. Like totally commercial, written contracts, agreements all across the Mediterranean. And they're also founding cities like Carthage along the way. Do they travel with armies? Yeah. So these merchants have protection. They do, as they always did, as they did in the old kingdom.

When the pharaohs are going to the Sudan in the time of the pyramids, they're military expeditions. That's how they're couched. I think the Phoenicians, my analog are, they're like the Vikings, around 1,000 AD in Europe. They're not just raiders. They are merchants. but they're also military because they go together.

Right. As you'd expect, they need protection. They need enforcement. And so commercial expansion, trading, and military power in some sense are going hand and glove, always. And so the Phoenicians are these great sailors like the Vikings were, and they're the merchants par excellence. In the world that we're going to call the Iron Age, we don't have time to talk too much

about the Bronze Age collapse. I don't think it's a collapse. because what I think happens is some cities go away, the Mycenaean palaces go away, the Hittite Empire definitely goes away. There's massive movements of people all over the Eastern Mediterranean. They're called the peoples of the sea

or the sea peoples in Egyptian tax. Ramsey's the second encounters them. Ramsey III famously really encounters them and claims he beats them back. But what happens is these guys are increasingly integrated and settled into the Western Delta. They're part of the Egyptian army. at a certain point.

So it's a wild world of movements of people, high mobility, which is partly Phoenicians being mobile, but other people too. So we're in a new world that Egypt's increasingly,

what's the word? They're kind of outmoded. They're kind of old-fashioned, you know, being the king at the center of the world. We talked about Akhtan trying to redo that

in a world that's increasingly about trade and long-distance trade and merchants being the really important people. Yes, we have priesthoods and rituals and kings, this concept, but the real world underlying all this is a different commercial world entirely. And I think this is what Ramsey II is sort of now facing. Interesting. And the Bronze Age world more broadly. On that topic of the Bronze Age collapse, you're describing more a slow almost like commercial integration that occurs.

So you don't have these societies collapsing because of some type of, you know, like, what would be the traditional explanation for the Bronze Age collapse of these cities? Drought and migration and these big states get overrun and you can't control. Ancient states can't control. I mean, there isn't passport control or, you know, borders that are defended. And a certain point, they get overwhelmed. In Egypt under Ramsey's second, but later Ramsey's the third in the 11th century BC, beats these guys back, he claims. He writes about this in his funerary temple.

I see. But not, you know, it's military defeat. I conquered all these foreigners running around. And they're depicted as guys with pointy sticks, kind of military, but women and children, too. So is this military invasion? Are these people fleeing from large-scale drought? It is partly drought-related. That's well documented now in some parts of the East of Mediterranean for 200 years.

It probably does the hit tights in. But it's more complicated than that. So this idea of collapse is things were great, and then we wake up and now everything's gone and all these cities are destroyed when that's not really what happens. It's a process over a couple hundred years as you intimate. And a lot of the destruction is probably post people leaving because it's hard to date a site. Like that was destroyed on that day in 1150 BC. Well, that's hard to pinpoint.

Right. I wonder if you could say it's like Detroit having like an automotive collapse. It's like it's not like you woke up one day in Detroit and there's no more automotive industry, right? It's like slowly these things offshore and then the people there don't have jobs and then they have to move and then people migrate. and then these things happen progressively over, you know, periods of time. Yeah, exactly. And in Detroit, in the 60s, you might, you know, compared to the late 40s or 50s, you might visit Detroit back then and say, oh, shit, it's a collapse because nobody here anymore.

Right. Well, people moved. Right. Now, is that a kind of collapse? Well, it's a different, I think the entire economies get transformed. Egypt's very late in transforming. The Phoenicians are leading the game. And then the Greeks in the North Mediterranean, in the Aegean, the same deal.

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This is a paid advertisement. Now let's get back to the show. So how does a king deal with this where you have this antiquated empire that's getting overpowered by wealthy merchants? Well, it's really tough to do. I mean, what happens, I think in the end is Ramsey III, as we talk about, gets bumped off. He's a bit long in the tooth anyway. but there's a lot going on. And for whatever reason, it's a rival to the throne.

It's people who think this person should be on the throne now is a stronger, younger, more vigorous ruler. It's a time when the Nile is failing to flood quite a lot. It's a time of the first labor strike we have in history that Ramsey's the third. At the end of the dynasty 20, the last great king of the new kingdom, there's several small kings afterwards. the Egyptian text tell us after Ramsey the 3rd, 70 kings rule in 70 days.

Oh, wow. Which is really kind of shorthand in Egyptian for no one knows what the hell's going on. Just chaos. It's chaos. It's like everybody and their brother was king. That's the Egyptian shorthand for we don't. There's no. There's just we don't know.

So it's hard to hold on to it. We know and reasons why the Nile's failing a lot. a labor strike because you can't they, Ramses can't pay for the tomb builders of the royal tomb in Thebes. They go on a strike because they're not getting paid, which is amazing. And we have, we text to document this. These guys just down tools, these highly specialized workers

who are building these huge tombs of the Valley of Kings. In a village we know a lot about, very well documented village, they down tools and go out in front of the temple where they know there's bread and food stored in these temples and they like doing this. No way. We are not working until we're getting paid. And we know there's food in there. How does that go?

I imagine like any type of contractor that watches a strike is like, I wish I just kill all these people. But you can't do that. Well, it turns out that the men building the royal tombs were really important. Really important. So it's a kind of a crisis. And all this happens within five years. We still got non-Egyptians who are probably always in Egypt.

But this is sort of it's couched as this big problem. We're getting invaded. All of these foreigners are overrunning us. The text say that? Yeah. Really? I mean, Rans to the third's text, sorry, thanks, is sort of claiming this. It's all stylized.

You know, this is one of these things about the sources we have. We have to take with a grain of salt because it's suiting the image of the king and his ability to be this successful defender of the turf. Yeah, his bull. I protect the people and it's a lot going on. They're getting overrun. It's just hilarious that they're talking about immigration. You know what I mean?

Well, yeah. It's a problem for states. Look at now. It's really hard. And we have borders and passport control and so on. But with things like climate, it turns out when there's drought that's kind of sustained, people move. Sure. You know, there isn't collapse where people just sort of sit down and die.

Right. People move. Normal response to things like drought. It happened in Middle America. in the 1930s. They moved to California, and they get treated really badly as like stay out you foreigners, essentially.

There were signs that were put up in the California border saying, we don't want oki's and arkeys. Keep out of California. The sheriff of L.A. has a huge campaign to keep these people out of L.A. Incredible. These are Americans, let alone at borders.

So this is a problem for ancient states, and you get population growth that happens, you can't control that either. And then, oh, we can't feed everybody. So some guys, usually young males, got to go. Got to go found a new colony or join the army. Don't become a mercenary. And that happens later in ancient history a lot.

So population movements are just really, you can't see them, but they can be destabilizing, no doubt. Then how do you integrate them in the society? which is what they try to do. So that's happening for sure. This is this Bronze Age collapse. It's destabilizing for states, but also there's this underlying economic change. And economic change, which is technological, is really hard.

And this is a shift from bronze to iron. Again, metal sources. Bronze is highly specialized. Copper plus tin coming from somewhere. Iron is called the Democratic metal because it's more easily accessible to more people. But it changes a lot of things. And I think it's a case of economic transformation

over a few centuries. That's how I would view it, not as collapse. And it's a disaster. And everything goes away for two centuries. Oh, my God, it's horrible. I mean, people died. There were places destroyed. The Hittite Empire is hit with famine.

We know the great enemy of the Egyptian state. Egyptian kings send grain. to Hittite capital. Oh, wow. Which is amazing. I mean, a nation that they battled with. Totally. Yeah, like the bitter enemies.

They're sending grain. And there's also a disease that the Hittite kingdom is facing of whatever kind. We just hear references to some kind of plague, whatever it does. Hopefully we'll identify it. So there's a lot going on that's hard to understand, hard to manage with different kinds of change. So I think it's just we're looking at historical change that's significant. And to say its collapse is really a little bit lazy to say, no, we're looking at major technologically driven transformations of societies, new ways of trading, and new kinds of states

that are going to happen in the Iron Age. We know states are bigger. Population doubles after 400 BC, and it's worldwide. It's also in China. So population is exploding. In many places of the world, states are bigger. Cities are bigger. There's new kinds of institutions.

We have law codes that are exploding as an idea. We have coinage after 650 BC. There's a lot of economic things going on. It's really interesting in this Iron Age. So we're at the precipice of all these changes. And it's kind of the dark ages because we used to not know much, you know, between 1,000 and 1,000. It's just, oh, it's all kind of messy and a lot of destroyed sites.

And it must be those sea peoples. They just overrun everybody and destroy everything. it's more interesting, complicated than that. It also just echoes so many modern parallels, right? It kind of does. Technology precipitates economic change that then creates booms and busts, and then the people from the towns that were affected by it, they immigrate, and then there's an immigration problem,

and then they have to assimilate into the culture, then there's riots. This is a story we've seen all through the 1900s and even now. You know, indeed, I would think that's a really good way to think about it. In fact, it's these sort of changes and there are winners and there are losers. And you can sort of list them up. The Hittites lose. The Mycenaean palaces lose. Egypt, in a sense, loses, although it doesn't know it. Quite yet. It sort of continues through the end of the new kingdom. And 1069 is the final

endpoint. Ramsey III's assassinated earlier than that. So it sort of drags on for a long time with all these short-lived kings. And then Egypt's ruled by outside groups. Right. With a couple of exceptions in the 4th century BC and then all the way to Nasser in the Egyptian Revolution.

No way. Pretty much technically outsiders running Egypt. So this is a major thing. It's interesting. To Ramsey's,

he is coming into a very sort of difficult political and economic time. He's facing all this. But arguably successfully, He's very long lived. He's very successful in military campaign because that's what you do. If you're looking for success, military conquest, military power.

Still got that. Still got a really badass cavalry. We get signal to the world not to mess with us. Yes. And we can signal to our citizens that we're the best. We're really strong. We build really big monuments like Ramsey's the Second's temple at Abu Symbol, this amazing, highly engineered temple.

Can we get a picture of that? Ramsey is the second his temple yeah it's well it's one of his temples it's a it's a it's not his mortuary temple it's a temple at the border between nubia and egypt which is part of the new kingdom empire mostly but there's a lot of mobile populations down there and this temple looks like it's in the middle of nowhere and they had it rebuilt it with the high dam flooding the valley so they reconstructed this temple which is amazing there it is. Ramsey's the second and three gods next to them.

Then they all look like Ramsey's the second. Right. And it's engineered. So at a certain day, the sun is shining right into the inner sanctuary of the temple. Love that. And it's also, has these great military scenes.

It's one of the first battle narratives we have in history, complete with the artistic depictions of the battles against the Hittites. It's incredible. place, beautiful place to visit. But this looks like it's in middle of nowhere. I mean, I think it's meant to convey to populations in the south, this is Egypt. Like, stay away because this is a really badass king and he will hurt you.

And this is right on the border of Sudan or Nubia. Pretty much. Yeah, it's at the frontier of Egypt. And it's sort of sending a signal. If you're coming in here. Big dude built this. Yeah. You know, it's how effective it was.

I don't know. But, you know, sort of the same issue. It is about trying to control populations with a lot of smoke and mirrors and building really big stuff because you can do that. You can go on military campaigns and kick some tail. And that's kind of a way to reinforce. But in the end, it's a losing battle. But Ramies' second argument is quite successful at it. And he's a great builder or a great usurper of earlier buildings.

Because if you look at his name is described in a lot of buildings that weren't built. by him. Right. But carved really deeply into the stone always. It's typical Rams' second inscription that's really deeply carved into the stone. Oh, really? Yeah. It's quite distinctive. Why? Because it's harder to erase. Interesting. So some other king might come by and kind of scrub this out. I have it a lot. Right. Yeah. And they know this. Yes. And they said, no, no, no, no. Carved really deeply because we're claiming this building as mine. Oh, that's so interesting. He was good at that. I wonder if that's the case through all antiquity. Anytime you have a large population, you have to try to control, you need big, big established pieces of art to indicate to everyone who's running the show.

Yeah. Like, I've always heard said that, like, if the president or the ruler of your country has images everywhere, like, you're not in a good place. Yeah. Like, I've heard people say, like, like, Saddam, like, in Iraq, like, right. Like, these giant monuments and pictures of him, and all across Baghdad, you have images of Saddam. And it's like, I've heard, you know, like, oh yeah, you're under a dictatorship. Like, if they have to reinforce the people constantly, like, hey, don't fuck with me. Yeah. It's like, yeah, you're under some type of autocrat.

Well, yeah, we would say cult of personality. Right. But that's what this is. Right. That is what this is precisely. Interesting. That's how this world works. And because you have so many people, you don't have media, you don't have newspapers.

Like, I mean, you might have some version of, like, you know, things people can read, but most people are illiterate. So, like, you just need to have giant statues that go, I'm the fucking man. Yeah. And later we have coinage and we start after Alexander the Great, when these kings take over, like the Ptolemies, we have for the first time depictions of the living rulers on the coins, not gods, but rulers. Because this is my money.

Yeah. And it circulates is the thing. These are like ancient, it's ancient Twitter. You can circulate messages with coin because it's really transportable pretty far and wide. In what way? Well, it's coins circulate. Sure. But like what kind of a mess?

Like, I'm looking at a quarter. Like, what's the messenger? Yeah. Well, this is the current king is sending some message about. I see. I see. Oh. benevolent ruler.

I heard about this guy. He pays soldiers really well. It's a really nice looking coin. I see. Probably a good place to do business. You know, I mean, it's subtle, but it's a way to circulate some image of who these rulers were. This is my space. We're going to control any coin that circulates in this space is going to be our coinage.

That's a nice one. Ptolemy. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's Ptolemy one with a nice eagle of Zeus on the back. I can see. So let's say there's some type of. regime change or a new ruler and you're in Carthage or something and you get a coin and someone says, oh yeah, here's our new coin. They go, oh, this, because you might not have heard the news. Right, exactly. This might be the first time. Oh, this guy's king. Yeah, no, with a new regime,

there's a new coin. So how effective, again, it was, I don't know, but it's a way of conveying a message that matters, I think. In Bronze Age, Bronze Age world, there's less of that. Sure. It really is building really big stuff, which the Ptolemy's later also copy. It is an age after Alexander the Great and those great campaigns of building really big stuff, building really big lighthouses, building colossus of roads, building a ship with 40 banks of ores that is so big, it can't move out of the harbor of Alexandria. But we can build a really big ship. It's conveying a message of strength. And I think earlier Egyptians like Ramsey's knew that, that building lots of stuff means strength,

building a pyramid. Right. I mean, they're seeing the pyramids every day. And they're like, oh, yeah, these old guys that build this, we still talk about them. Yeah, you can look at that. Mm-hmm. Top that.

Yeah. And did they know at that time, like, what was their perception of the pyramids in this new kingdom? Like, do we know what they thought? Did they think, like, oh, this one was built for this guy, this was built for this person. I don't know if they knew, because there's no inscriptions, at least preserved

and the Old Kingdom pyramids themselves, I think. But they would know stories. They surely would know stories of key ops, I think. The architect, the famous architect of the step pyramid, the first kind of pyramid in the third dynasty preceding the age of the proper pyramids, became a god, M. Hotep. He was an architect, but he gets deified.

He's deified under the Ptolemies also even. So what, 2,200 years after? He's still considered like this was a really important guy. Wow. So there are those traditions. We hear about one of the sons, I think, of Ramsey II was a famous magician but also a scholar. And there's stories about him that circulate later

under the Ptolemies again where he's going around cemeteries studying the ancient text, studying monuments. So he was kind of the first Egyptologist. Oh, interesting. Again, kind of looking at the Egyptian tradition in some way. So, yeah, there's some of this. It must have been quite a lot of this. Certainly, priesthoods and temples

were the main people concerned with that. And that probably happened quite a bit. They knew the tradition. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick, because you own a small business. Or maybe you work for a small business, and I am about to make your life so much easier. Let's say,

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all in one place, save time, make more money. Now let's get back. the show. So why is Ramsey's the second so important? Was it just the length of his reign? Or did he instill anything that was very important? Well, good question. I mean, in terms of, he's one of the great builders, but if you believe, and I think it's the case that a lot of the building was usurped building still, his name is everywhere. I mean, growing up as a kid, I date myself as usual, but Ewell Brenner in the Ten Commandments, Ten Commandments, that is, Ramsey's the second for me. really nice portrayal of this guy, this ego. Yeah.

I think he, of course, around the time of the Exodus, so he's famous in kind of biblical history in sort of a negative way. I mean, if he's not necessarily the king of the time of the Exodus, it's presumable that there were Jews in Egypt under his reign. Yeah.

Yeah. It'd be no surprise. There's lots of other ethnic groups as well. So particularly in the Delta from time immemorial. So, you know, probably accepted as opposed to being treated as vilified like the Hixos, who are probably always in Egypt in the Delta. Right. But at a certain point, no, this is Egypt for Egyptians.

We have to redefine our space in a certain way. Does the Old Testament of Torah, do they reference any of these Egyptian kings? specifically by name? Yeah. They're in there, around Ramsey's time. This is an important moment. It's an international age, in a sense, Egypt is very much part of since the 18th Dynasty,

this was. So 19th Dynasty in particular was a bit more militaristic. Even the society was a bit reorganized around the cavalry in particular as the high status soldier. So it even gets more intensified more about military conquest or maintaining this empire. Yeah.

What else is he, Ramsey is the second famous for in terms of legacy? I think fundamentally long reign, one of the longer rains. It's what, like 50, 60 years? No, you can check me. Yeah, here we go. It's 1279 to the 1220s, maybe. Let's see. Yatsi?

12.09 to 1213. 1213 even, okay. So... Even longer. Long rain. Yeah. Really long rain. So...

You try to take off some years on it. Come on. You're a hater. You're a Ramsey's hater, dude. You're like, yeah, it was like 20 years. I'm underestimating. Yeah. 66 years.

So, yeah. And of course, Pepey the second, arguably the longest reigning in Pharaoh at the end of the old kingdom. Maybe a few years longer. I think he has 66. years of rain, we think. Anyway, one of the longer ones, and that, in both cases, creates succession problems because Ramsey's the second outlived a lot of his errors.

Interesting, right. And then you get a free-for-all afterwards on who's what. So if Rams is a third not, is he a direct descendant? Not direct, I don't think, not direct. Interesting. But it's the next dynasty. It's the next ruling group, but certainly makes the country.

claim, including the name, that he's related to Ramsey's the second. Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah. I wonder, do you know the exact name that the Jews reference in the Torah of the Exodus? I want, could you Google that? I'd be so curious to know what, like, I'm always interested in like, because I, again, growing up religious, like, I'm always curious to see, like, historical verification of, like,

biblical text. So if there's things in Exodus that are like, oh, this king and this guy did this to us, which I imagine, you know, if you're, That's a Joseph story in Genesis would be the main one, and I cannot remember, honestly, if Ramsey is named by name there. The name of Ramsey's is not used for Pharaohs, but rather the title Pharaoh or King of Egypt is used. The name Ramzes appears in Torah as the name of a place.

Oh, Pararamesis, yeah, the capital. The house of Ramsey's in the Delta. That's where they're, that's their capital. Oh, specifically a place to the area that's lived. Interesting. Okay. That's also interesting that the Pharaoh's not. not name by name.

Yeah, I wonder if that's done intentionally. Like, if they're keeping story of this, I wonder, because I imagine a lot of this is oral tradition. I don't know exactly when they would actually start scribing it, but I wonder. Yeah, later for sure. And I wonder if either gets lost to time or if they intentionally don't mention the name. It's a great question. Because I wonder if they're like, yeah, I mean, if we put his name down, we're going to get

murdered. I think the former, I think probably the loss of the gap in time, because even though this is going back to the end of the Bronze Age, the. the early parts of the Old Testament, it's not written down to much later, much, much later. So I think they probably lost the details. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

And I guess if you're referencing Pere Ramsey's in the Bible, there's some verification that some, one of the Ramses was around. Well, that's their capital. Yeah, that's the whole Ramisid capital in the Eastern Delta, very close to where the Hittites are coming from. And they're capital of Avaris, but it's in the same vicinity.

So, yeah, the house of Ramsey's is what Per Ramsey's means, but that's, I mean, that is their imperial center. Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. So many of my Jewish friends are like, you know, we're the ones that built the pyramids. I'm like, well, I don't know, dude. Especially if we're talking about the Exodus at this time, then that would mean there was, like, Jewish slaves at the, going back 2,000 years. Yeah.

Which I guess is potentially possible. I don't, yeah, I don't think there's evidence for, we have, we know a lot about tomb builders. Not everything, but I don't think, you know, Judaism has an interesting history when classical Judaism emerges later, really in the Hellenistic period, when it's defined in particular ways. There were these different ethnic groups who had certain religions, but it wasn't a single centralized sort of idea of what Judaism was. I think there's lots of different views of how you practice it until it gets formalized. Right. And to my understanding, even in the Torah, like, they would just reference themselves as, like, Israelites. You know, or, like, the children of Abraham. Like, I feel like they would, I don't know how often in the Torah they would reference themselves, like, as Jews, you know? Because, like, I wonder if the philosophy and sort of the religious context around their belief system was not as nailed down. It was more of, like, an ethnic delineation. Yeah. We're Israelites. Yeah. Interesting. I think so. I think it was quite diverse in terms of practice until later. It got formalized in the Hellenistic period. Yeah, kind of. Yeah.

That makes sense. Oh, okay, interesting. So Ramsey's second. Do we know about his tomb? We do, yeah. It's magnificent. Can we get a picture of that? And we have a tomb of his, the tomb of his sons are also found in the Valor Kings famously not so long ago, which is quite rifled through and destroyed. But that's, you know, the entire 20th dynasty, I mean, it's sort of related one or another. I mean, he had a lot of wives and a lot of children. How many? How many are talking about?

Something like 100. Whoa. Children. Damn. Yeah. This guy was getting after it. He was. He was a busy man.

Yeah. For real. Yeah. I feel like I remember hearing like stories about Ramsey's being like a being a child bearer. Like I remember like hearing this like as a kid like yeah, Ramsey's had like a bunch of kids. And if you got 100 kids, you got to have very many wives, I imagine. Yeah. I mean, how do you remember all the names?

I couldn't imagine. You know? Yeah. I mean, anniversary. Five, first five I would get. But then. It would be a nightmare. Yeah, dude.

I mean, yeah, you don't even know your kid's names. No. It's insane. No, no, no. You guys like Nick Cannon. He's got like 16 kids, respect. I wonder how many people are related to Ramsey's. Yeah, a lot.

You got to think. One dude has 100 kids. Yeah. There's probably people walking around today with like Ramsey's DNA. Maybe. Well, yeah, the DNA is probably still around, yeah. Right? I mean, 100 kids.

That's pretty good. So that's his tomb. Yeah, nice modern light. Beautiful upline. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. it's magnificent. So yeah, successful rain because it's a long rain and you can do a lot of things and consolidate

a lot of power, which doesn't last very long because all of this is personality. It's what he is doing and then it's not automatic. It shrinks back almost instantly unless you're going out there and continue it, which happens to some extent, but not the way Ramsey's doing. And really the long rain is the thing. And that's seti there, the doghead? Yeah. On the left there, Christos.

Yeah, that, yeah, that one. Well, that's Anubis, actually. That's anubis, actually. That's a Nubis, a funeral of God. Ah, I see. The king, yeah. I see. Settius somewhere.

And was this, was SETI an accepted God of the people? Yeah, yeah, but, I mean, there's a whole myth between, you know, set is portrayed in Egyptian text as, this evil god, you know, the murder of his brother or a legitimate king. So SETI has this sort of nebulous reputation. Double valence of, you know, yeah, he's part of the pantheon, but an evil doer. Interesting. Yeah. So the fact that the, uh, that the Ramses boys were so fond of him, does that indicate anything? Does that, is that like a cultural shift? Like, the fact that they would take on the sort of deification of a guy that killed his brother seems ominous.

Yeah, because, you know, there's different myths in Egypt. There was not one myth that everyone believed. Each temple had their own cycle of stories. So in part, it's local, you know, they're homeboys from the eastern Delta. So they're going to be really their goddess Seth or Setti, not Amin or Ray. I mean, they're loyal to. Now, whether that's also an ethnic. indicator is where the debate is.

I see it. But it's certainly that part of the Eastern Delta, even these, so Egyptology is interesting. Field in a lot of ways, the way we do history in it is we're kind of led by the nose, by the text we have preserved, which tends to be telling good stories of kings. So we have to be a little bit skeptical. A little scrutinizing. Yeah, there's sort of, well, what don't we know? What don't we have?

And sometimes we can speculate. Sometimes we're at the mercy of what we have. But the Delta is one of these places where it's not really, it's not Egypt. Egypt's not Egypt anymore after 1,000 BC. It's run by foreigners, by outside groups, even though they call themselves pharaohs. It's not good Egyptian kings running the show. There's also this bias against Delta in some ways because of a lack of historical sources. Right.

You know, there's a lot we don't know. It is Egypt going to give a paper, a lecture in October. sort of on this. I mean, Egypt is, by a lot of classical scholars, sort of written out of history, because it's not Mediterranean. It's sort of southward looking. It's African, it's, you know, which is true, but it's not really part of the Mediterranean ever. But in fact, it was, starting with the Ramesid family, this is Mediterranean. They're interacting with Phoenicians and others. The Delta is an extremely active, really important part of Egypt, probably always. But it's an unwritten history because we don't have the records.

Right. And the area closest to the Mediterranean also is the worst preserved. Exactly, exactly. But this is where all the Near Eastern influence is coming. Since before there was a civilization in Egypt, there was this interaction. This is where agriculture comes from. It comes from the Near East via the Sinai into Egypt. The ideas of agriculture comes in late. From the Nile. From the Euphrates and Tigris River. Agriculture and the The Middle East is 9,000 BC or so. In Egypt, it's between 5 and 4,000 BC. Oh, interesting.

Egypt's late to the game. Egypt's also late to the Iron Age. They don't get the message that we're now in the Iron Age. Is that hubris? No, it's lack of metal. Oh, because they don't have iron. They don't have iron sources. So they're still kind of in the Bronze Age technologically.

Meanwhile, the Phoenicians and the Greeks, they're booming. 900, 800, 700. Egypt's still, well, we need a pharaoh. We're running things this way, pharaoh-centric state. But iron isn't documented. I could be wrong. Again, I'm partially guessing. It's something like 7th century BC when we get iron.

So Egypt's late to the game. It isn't necessarily their fault. They don't have local iron sources or the technology, the furnaces you need to smelt iron, which is high temperature. Mm-hmm. And that is coming out of other places like the Hittite kingdom in the Near East have these different kinds of ovens that can smelt iron. So Egypt is, in a sense, it falls behind in this economic world. You know, it's like Silicon Valley's booming, but some places are still kind of what's pre-Silicon Valley.

Right. I don't know, some kind of analog world. How do they do the, psychologically? How do they do the minting for their coins once they get to the later parts of the New Kingdom? Yeah. Well, there's no coins until anywhere until 650 BC. Oh, okay, so that's after New Kingdom. Yeah, yeah, far after.

They're doing bartering. There's metal. There is money. There's a strong conception of money. It can be metal, could be grain. And you have fixed values against which you exchanged. You know, I want those sandals. I can trade you these nice textiles here.

and we think, you know, my textiles are worth three pots of grain and a bit of gold metal strip, and we can exchange some amount of sandals or something. So it's barter against fixed values. So that is money. But coin money is a weird form of money is 650 BC. It's invented in Turkey, Western Turkey, and then spreads. Wow. It's a good idea.

and everyone gets it. I wonder if that has anything to do with Haggle culture. You know what I mean? Barter versus... Yeah. Like, if you had a long history, like generations of barter...

I mean, I have Egyptian friends. You just met one of them recently. Yeah. They love to Haggle. You know what I mean? Like, you go over to Egypt. I'm sure everything... Like, I forget, I was just talking this one recently

and I don't remember if it was Egypt, but that, like, you could go to a restaurant. And even at the restaurant, you could kind of be like, I don't know if we got this exactly right. is there anybody get a little discount? And they'd be like, yeah, we'll take a little. And like there's like a little, like the barter culture still exists in certain

extent. Oh, yeah. And I wonder if that's a remnant of generations of, of bartering pre, like having commerce pre currency. Yeah. Well, to some extent maybe. It's also, it's kind of a nice feature of society. So it's not impersonal.

I mean, there are some famous economists, Carl Polani, this famous economist thought that money, coin money and so on, markets were evil because it destroys social relationships. If you have a market that's impersonal and I'm just giving you $5 bill for that and I'm going on my way. We never have to talk to each other. We're not talking. We're not meeting. But if we're face to face, go, come on, I know your brother.

You know, we have a history and how about two bucks? And next time, you know, there's a relationship. You come to my place and I'll get you a thing. And you can argue that that is actually not backward. That's actually more sophisticated because it reinforces society. Right. Social bonds. Social bonds and obligations and gift giving and all that stuff. And character, right?

Yeah, arguably. And sometimes you might need a friend who's got your back. Right. And so all of that is how the world goes around. That's actually, it's deep in human beings and it ain't all bad. Right. As opposed to these impersonal exchanges at a grocery store or something. somewhere else, which is fixed and it's coins.

Face down. Yeah, face down. You're like, you know, are buried in our cell phones walking down the street, sort of, you know, that's kind of world, kind of world are we living in. Yeah, it's bizarre. It's pretty... Back to the Bronze Age. It's unhuman.

You know what I mean? Yeah, I agree. If you think about the span of human history, like, it's mostly haggling and trying to, you know, and work at a deal. Yeah. Yeah. And that has a social function. Yeah.

As well. It's not just trying to screw the merchant out of an extra sandal. Yeah, of course. It is actually like repeat business, then, you know, there's things that come with that. Well, even when I was- Putting trust. When I was in Marrakech, like, it was, people kind of told us like, hey, it's a little rude if you don't haggle. Like, they can kind of feel like a way about it.

Like, if they say a price and you accept it. Like, they might renegotiate on the price if you just are too eager to do it. Yeah. They'll kind of be like, oh, well, actually, it's more. I didn't realize which one this was, da-da-da. Like, they almost take it as a personal affront that you're not engaging with them in the social sort of dance. Yeah, it's insulting. I mean, very often in the souk, in the markets in Cairo or somewhere else, you know, you could be there for an hour.

You could be, come into the shop, sit down. Let's have a, let's have some tea. Let's have some tea. And let's have a conversation. Where are you from? Oh, you're from Chicago. My brother went to school in Chicago. And all of this sort of exchange.

If you don't do that, yeah, that culture would look at an American who's just in and out with a. Cash is really... Sort of alien. Yeah. Yeah, alien. Not trustworthy. Yeah, cold. A little bit arrogant.

Maybe a lot arrogant. All sorts of bad things, actually, that we're impatient for. But if you slow down in this world and have a cup of tea and have a human, some human interaction, it actually is sort of a nice thing. Yeah. Now, I... Anyway, how do we guys talking about bartering here? Who knows?

Welcome to camp, dude. That's what happens. I heard someone say recently. This might be apocryphal that the evolution of technology throughout the old kingdom, middle kingdom into the new kingdom is not linear. That it's not like, oh, technology just progressively gets better. I'd heard that like it kind of got worse and they sort of forgot how to do something. It's a little bit of plague and they lose this technology and they kind of rediscover it. And then they lose it.

I've even heard someone say that it just goes down, that it slowly gets less sophisticated technologically. Can you speak to that? And what are your thoughts? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is what collapse really means is a loss of transmission of information. In a society that's stable transmission culture, really within families, of course, but then there's this sort of high technology ways of doing things.

How do you make a pot? How do you, what kind of clay do you use? How do you make a chariot? Whatever. That's transmitted from generation to generation. father or son or in a profession. And if society goes through some bad times, some instability, some major famine or plague

or other things like that, it can upset the transmission of knowledge. That happens all the time. And we've lost a lot from the ancient world. No doubt about it. So I think that happens continually in the world post-industrial revolution with patent offices and so on

and the diffusion of information in various places, libraries or patent offices or whatever, there's less of a chance except if we digitize everything and then now we're vulnerable. Yeah. Because if something happens, some kind of solar flare, like, yeah, oops, no hard copies. Yeah.

You know, this is why I like books, by the way. I like books are the most efficient store of information that's ever been invented. Yeah. And, you know, it has a function also. If we digitize everything and we don't have books anymore, wow, is that vulnerability. So, yeah, there's, and wars, you know, we lose a lot.

And you hope there's enough to fuse to continue, but often not in the tech world. I think we can make modern Egyptian chariots now. We can recreate it because we have these ancient ones, but it's not easy. But could we have recreated them in 1500? Yeah. Could we've recreated them in the 1700s? You know, this is my famous example when I'm teaching is the anti-Qaeda. Kithra mechanism.

Yes, let's get an image of this. I'm so glad you brought this up. Really? Are you a fan? Oh, I mean, it's fascinating. Extraordinary. This, it's basically like some people think it's a calculator. People think it's like an Atlas.

It's like this highly sophisticated, mechanized gear system that was discovered in the bottom of the ocean. Yeah. Just by happenstance. Yeah. It's, yeah, Chris, pull this up. This is a fascinating device. Discovered in 1900 by divers.

This is the recreation of it. It's just being, it's still being worked out. It was found. That's how it was found. It's crushed together in the bottom of Mediterranean in a Roman pirate ship. I mean, it's a bunch of loot coming from the eastern Mediterranean, probably back to Rome somewhere. Something like 100 BC, I think, is a normal date. It's extraordinary.

The manufacturer is extraordinary. The knowledge of differential gearing is extraordinary. It's a calculator for calendars figuring out religious festival. So it's kind of an old-fashioned. ancient purpose. But the ability to manufacture this thing, the knowledge of astronomy is extraordinary, probably incorporating Babylonian astronomical observations as well as Greek ones. So this is the Eastern Mediterranean world of cultures interacting.

It is, I mean, we can recreate this now. In fact, Ublo, the Swiss watch company, recreated this as a watch for $350,000. Oh, worth it. Which, yeah, how about that? So I think, you know, you can, maybe you can still buy one. I don't think they made many of them. So we can do it now, but let's say it's 100 BC, just for argument's sake. I think that's generally accepted date from the inscriptions which are still being worked out.

It's inscribed. So the different calendar system, the different astronomical observations is making these sophisticated calculations. It's really impressive. There's nothing like this anywhere until about 1,500, maybe a little bit after that. So that's more than 1,500 years, let's say, of a gap. And we only have one of these. It's hard to believe there's only one of them. Right.

But there's only one that exists so far. Some kind of display piece. Some guy had it trying to impress his friends. It was meant in a temple context to calculate when the festivals are happening in the world of lunar calendars and civil calendars and so on. But it is, it's amazing. I think this is, for me, kind of the image of the ancient world. We think, oh, you think we understand everything. How about this?

Which we're still working on. There's a great historian of science at NYU, who's one of the experts on this. So they still have meetings about this, really fine-tuning what this thing was. It's extraordinary. And it says this world, even 100 BC, this is an extraordinary world and we've lost all this, really.

And what else have we lost? Yeah. You know, a lot. I mean, like the non-linearity of technology I find so interesting. But you can have something like this in, you know, 100 BC, and maybe they first have, built them in 300 BC.

Like, who knows when the first one was made or even the understanding of differential gears, like, when that was discovered? And then it just goes away. Mm-hmm. And we live for another 1,500 years without it. Like, that's just remarkable to me that that can occur. Yeah. And what don't we have now that maybe we had in, you know, 580, right?

Like, and I think that there's a real modern arrogance to be like, oh, well, there's, that's not, it didn't happen again. Like, well, maybe. I mean, maybe it did happen. Right? Like, I mean, obviously people point to the pyramids and they go like, oh, how was it done? Yada yada, yada. But like, there are features of the pyramids that are so precise and so perfect that I don't know if we were able to redo them or to make them up until, you know, 1800, right? Yeah. No, there's a lot of guesswork. What were the vases? Are you familiar with these vases, these Egyptian vases that are made out of granite?

Would you mind Googling? Oh, yeah. Even the Old Kingdom ones. They're really small ones. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. These are so fascinating. Yeah. They had really small drills. It took a long time to be. manufacturer. And they're so thin. They're like as thin as like an eggshell with some of them, like some of the most precise ones. Yeah, going back to Tut, again, that ability, that fine craftsmanship is really impressive. Thousands of them. It's really impressive. Underneath the pyramid, there's 40,000 potentially. Like this, like a whole like, how long did it take to make one, you know?

Yeah, no, a lot. I mean, some of this stuff is not granted. It's diorite, which is almost as hard as the diamond. And so to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, shape these things with little drills, like what material over what length of time? Good Lord. It's really amazing and underestimated. I totally agree with you, Mark. I mean, I'm just so fascinated and blown away by this. What's up, guys?

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Now, another question about Egyptology, broadly speaking. Okay. We mentioned Ramsey's tomb. Yeah. We also check out the tomb of his sons. I've heard a criticism that Egyptologists will just, anytime they don't know something, they go, funerary, tomb, burial. Yeah. That's what it is.

Uh-huh. What do you think of that criticism? Yeah. Well, the broad criticism, that's true in anthropology, kind of broadly speaking, if we don't want what it is, it's ritual. Right. You know, well, really? No, I think it's kind of, it's a short-hand for it. We don't know.

Right. We don't understand the culture as well as we think we might. Right. Actually. I think that's the better answer is there's a lot we don't understand. There's a lot we don't know. And we have two choices to fill in the gaps and create stories. Or to say, you know what?

We don't know. It's mysterious. It's amazing. The pyramids were built, not by aliens, by humans. We're really smart and really clever and really. The Egyptians were really good. The legacy of this whole culture, one of them is working in stone. Yeah.

Because there's a lot of stone in Egypt. It's a natural resource, unlike in the Near East, it's kind of more mud brick. I like Egypt for that reason. Sorry, Near Eastern. It's also probably great for preserving, right? We have all of these pyramids. We have these statues and these monuments because they're in stone. Yeah.

Yeah, it survives. It's a curse also because then, okay, we're just going to, We're just writing, we're just PR men for the pharaohs. Right. We're just retelling their stories. All right, caution, because maybe there's another story. And sometimes we're at their mercy. We should think about it anyway.

And a lot of Egyptologists, I don't think, think hard enough beyond what's in front of them. Because there's lots of bias. Right. They're telling us stuff that they want us to know and none of the bad stuff. Sometimes we know. like Ramsey's a third's body, even though some texts survived that talk about the conspiracy,

now we know he actually was murdered. Yeah. But sometimes we don't know. And then it's one of the hard things about doing Egyptology, because we want to know more. One of the amazing civilization, want to know more, how do we fill in the gaps? Yeah. Do we fill in the gaps?

Or do we say, it's a gap? Yeah. Wish we knew. Maybe someday we'll have more information, but we don't, and the tendency is to fill in the gaps, with a lot of stuff that's, and it gets out there in the world. And, you know, and it's sort of, well, Egypt's mysterious

and, you know, a lot of things about Egyptian culture that's in our popular culture, the curse of the tombs, and it's exotic and so on. Well, I mean, I think it's a better story. These are actual humans who are solving problems, which humans do. They're solving them in some cases really well. sometimes they can't solve the problem

and maybe that society goes away or it changes radically because other people are solving the problem very differently. That is just historical change. That's where the lessons, I think, are with all of the stuff, is, well, how do you explain change? And there's winners and losers and the new kingdom for Tut and for Ramses

is a 500-year period of reasonable political stability. Now, go match that anywhere in the world. world at any point. Right. A 500 years is a pretty good run. Yeah, Pax Romana, maybe. Yeah, that's a couple hundred years technically. But, you know, we're talking anything over three generations, four generations.

They're doing things that are probably on the right track anyway. And so, again, this idea of collapse I don't like because 500 years is a long, that's a long run. And things are going to change in 500. years, even in the ancient world. Right. And you're going to face new problems, and you're going to come up to the point where we can't solve that problem. We just can't.

So somebody else, somebody else take over. On the topic of the new kingdom, hypothetically, if I was like, you know, maybe like a merchant or like, you know, someone that lived in, like, the more urban areas of Memphis or Thebes, if you will, what would my life look like? Like, what kind of job could I have? How many kids would I likely have had? Like, how much do we know about just the average person? Daily life, that's a great question.

You know, I mean, actual farmers living in a village or in a large city, we know almost nothing about. Some villages, we get lucky sometimes. My favorite, I think I probably told you this before. Last time I was here, the Heckenacta letters in the Met Museum. Yes. Yeah. They're extraordinary, undervalued. I mean, he's a mid-level priest in the out-of-the-way town,

but he's a priest, and he's either literate or dictating letters back home. But we have a sense of what that family was like. They were facing famine around the corner. Right. It looks like now failure. This is in Dynasty 12, so something like 1900 BC. And there's some real insights there about how do you, it's a large household. The total household is like 18 or 19 people, including household.

slaves, servants. A wife, a new young wife, thank you. Beautiful. These are, it's beautiful looking text. But these are letters home with some urgency saying, look, famine is imminent. We hear people are being eaten here, which is extraordinary, whether that's actually true or just like, you know, pay attention because, you know, this is the extreme could happen.

But he lays out a whole household budget and a strategy economically. Go farm land there and put a crop of whatever grain over there. And you can lease land here. And here's the budget of food for the household that you have to sort of keep to, et cetera. It really lays out a rational household strategy for running things in 1900 BC, middle Bronze Age. We have nothing like this until the Ptolemaic period. So about 250 BC, we started getting it. text again that might be something like this, but...

But ostensibly they were doing this, we just don't have it. Yeah, he's not the only one that would have been doing this. It can't be unique. These are unique texts, but they're important because we have... It's like a curtain being drawn onto an actual household in the center of Egypt in 1900 BC. And then the curtain closes until like 250 BC. And it surprises the economists because notice this thing is economic rationality until much later. Oh, yeah, what's this?

Right. This is a rational household budget planned out to the last bit of grain. Everyone gets X, Y, Z. And it would have been pretty similar, I imagine, into the 20th honesty. Yeah, it would have been the same. Yeah, the basic household structure probably didn't change very much. Same life expectancy, same problems in a world where, you know, what are you doing? If you're not a farmer, you're doing what your dad did.

There's very little social mobility. The only way to do social mobility if you're ambitious, Mark, like you would have been, is to join the Army. Then you might, if you're successful, you're going to move up and rank. And, you know, this was happening under Ramsey's time. I see.

You could join the Army. You become a general. Yeah, you could move up. Maybe your kid could become a general. Then you're in. And then if you're a general and there's a succession problem, then maybe you can become royalty. It happens.

It happens. So military power is always the thing. That's the most important in, a place like Egypt. Right. Yeah. So otherwise you're a farmer and now you're at the mercy of the Nau River and they don't, the Egyptians didn't understand.

They knew the flood varied, but in a world where you can store food for a couple years, you can store grain for a couple years probably, that is your margin. And there's no whole foods down the corner. Yeah. So you're dependent on the river and hopefully the tax man's not coming and taking all the surplus, but the Nile might not flood one year. And then you're thinking, well, is that going to happen again? Because the last time it happened for a couple years, there was actual famine. Yeah.

And disease. And a quarter of the population died. And a lot of animals died. And that happened repeatedly in Egypt. Yeah. We think about once a century, a real famine, as opposed to a food crisis. So Egypt's doing pretty well. There's a lot of buffer and resiliency and storage. And grain and royal granaries in the temples and in a world where there was social solidarity kind of reinforced by religious festivals, which are really interesting also. And I think underestimate, I have a colleague also in New York who's written this great book on famine in ancient Egypt, Ellen Morris, extraordinary scholar, who retells these stories of the myths the Egyptians had of cat and mice, which is a recurring myth in a lot

of societies, by the way, even in medieval Europe, there's cat and mice. and it's social reversal at the at the new year festival when the now's at its lowest there's this festival it's sort of like role reversal marty graw the wealthy dressed like peasants and the peasants dressed like wealthy and there's kind of a lot of drinking and it's reenacted in this myth of the cat and the mice where there was once a warrior class of mice who conquer the cats and the mice become the kings and they're worshipped by the cats. And they're depicted. There's a great, actually, in the Brooklyn Museum, there's a wonderful depiction of one of these scenes

of a mouse on a throne being worshipped by a cat. It's really cool. So go to the Brooklyn Museum and Park Slope and check this out. What year is this? This is Egyptian? So these are Ramesid period texts.

Yeah, they're Egyptian Ramesid period. But this was a festival of the Egyptians celebrated yearly at the low ebb of the river, which is really sending a signal to the wealthy, hey, if the now doesn't flood this year, up to you guys to open up your grain stores to help us. Because there's more of us mice than there are you cats. It's really a subtle message of how the society worked. And would the wealthy participate in these?

Yes. And so they were kind of cool with it. Like they were kind of acknowledging like, yeah, we got you. Yeah. Because they had no choice. And we have stories also in this period. It's published as the tale of woe where this really wealthy person lost everything and he becomes a vagrant wandering the Egyptian countryside because he had lost all of his wealth. This probably happened.

But this festival was a really clever way to reinforce the social solidarity of the community. Yes, they're so wealthy and you have nice houses and grain stores and so on. But when time comes, comes, you've got to help the community. And of course, they did that in their tomb biographies, of which we have lots, and this idea of, they all say the same thing, I clothe the naked, I fed the hungry, this is the morality of a wealthy person in Egypt that goes into biblical

literature as well. This is what you do. Right. I mean, that's the, you take care of the community. And furthermore, like, the meek shall inherit the earth. Yeah, well, yeah. The, The mice will be worshipped. Yeah. You know, like in the end of times, like all you poor people, you will have your day where you are the ones that are running the show. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. So that's a cool feature of Egypt. Oh, excellent. Good job. Wow. This is the one in the Brooklyn Museum. And that is a mouse on the throne depicted. He's sniffing a lotus, I think, which is a funerary, the standard funerary scene.

But the cat is sort of the servant here. This is a pretty popular story, and we have a lot of images of the story in this sort of like vignettes, like comic book sort of things. This was an active kind of way of reinforcing this idea that we're of social solidarity. Again, societies matter. This sort of contract, the Egyptians figured out a long time ago that we need this because there's going to come a time when, if we're going to survive as a society, we have to. have this, you know, whatever the word is, this kind of social contract. Social contract. Yeah. And also the underlying threat of violence

is also interesting. There's a veil threat. We will revolt if this shit doesn't work out. Yeah. Yes. Wow. Yes. Which is kind of nice, I'll be honest. I mean, given like the modern day where we exist as far as like wealth inequality, you know, like, it would be kind of nice to be to have a festival every year where we're like, hey, Bezos, Elon, if we got some starving people here, we're going to need some help. Well, not to get too political, but, you know, we take away USAID and so on. You know, I mean, there's international components to this and moral components, but also the nature of the society.

That this wealth, the inequality is dangerous. The Egyptians knew that. Right. I mean, I'm sure they've had their fair share of revolutions. Oh, they have. And they have had a lot of issues, of course, like every society does. but this kind of idea underlying the entire society probably all the time is we're dependent on the river. That is our lifeblood.

And it's a weird river. It's beautiful for 70% of the time. We know that now. But there's that 30% when, and also it's dangerous if you're a king, which maybe Ramsey's a third's problem that we've talked about. It may have happened other periods, too, where the kings make these claims that they control the entire environment. That I create prosperity. I create the now river flooding of year and all the agriculture. Right. If you're a god, if you're, you know, what is it, Ramsey is born of the one before me or whatever.

Yeah. Like, yeah, this is your fault, motherfucker. Like, figure it out. Totally. Totally. I mean, that's the downside of this, of that claim. And it's not a bad bet because it's, we know from the nylometer, the medieval Cairo record of the now flood for 1300 years, we have these records. So we know about 70% of the years are good, good enough floods. So it's not a bad bet. Like, okay, I got 70% chance that this is going to be okay this year. But, man, there are times when it now fails to flood for four or five years in a row, which happens, and we have descriptions of that in a medieval source, which is the most extraordinary text I've ever read of a visiting guy from Baghdad, a physician seems pretty reliable in 1,200 AD, who talks about no flood. Actually, in the Nylamma, confirms it's six years of low flood in these years of low flood.

in these years around 1,200. You can walk across the Nile. It's just like, it's just dirt, basically. It's really dry. It's green and stinky and really low, which suggests it's white Nile maybe for particular reasons, but it's really low. And it gets so bad.

And people migrate all over, they leave Egypt, but there's cannibalism all over the place. And the description of cannibalism by this author, which has just come out in the English translation, is the most extraordinary passages, lengthy of cannibalism. ever read. What is the name of this text?

It's extraordinary. It's a long name. Or who was the guy? Like, if we wanted to... El Baghdadi. It's a physician along the Nile. Search that. Al-Baghdadi, cannibalism text.

I mean, that's why. It's extraordinary. And this is 1,200 AD. Yeah. So speaking of cannibalism, and all the way back in Heckenachda's letters, people always said, well, he's exaggerating. He's trying to motivate his family.

Maybe not. But, you know, at a minimum, it's a sign of extreme misery. That's as miserable as society can get. And there it is. And this guy's a physician, and he's, you know, he's in detail. I mean, body parts and young children being boiled in pots in old Cairo. And it goes on and on for pages like this. Wow.

It's just unbelievable. Really bad. I mean, that's wild. So you can imagine, especially in that time, 1,200, you have, like, a little bit more mobility. It seems like, you know, they've invented a little bit of math. You got some algebra. You know what I mean? Like, things are.

kind of moving. Well, imagine if this happens in the old kingdom, right? Yeah, less people. So, you know. That's fair. That's a good point. Probably. Maybe.

Maybe. But, I mean, the same sort of phenomenon is there were times when it did get really bad. And Heckenach is one of the first examples of, oh, well, this, the references to cannibalism, not only in Egypt, which are a lot, but also. other societies, whenever there's famine, you hear candleism being described. And historians have always

discounted it as exaggeration. Wow. So this is the letter here translated into English from plague anthology. Go down one more paragraph here. And so the end of this paragraph it says, I mean, whoa, hold on, let me let me read some of this.

This was because when the sun entered the sign of Capricorm, the air became infected in plague and moral disease began to spread. The poor, assails. by ever-increasing famine, ate carrion, corpses, dogs, extrament, and animal droppings. They went further so far as to eat little children. It was not unusual to catch people

with little children that had been boiled or roasted. The captain of the guard of the town had those who come into this crime or shared in such dishes burned alive. I myself saw a child roasted in a basket who was brought before the provost together with a man and woman who were said to be father and mother of a child.

He condemned them to be burned alive. Whoa. I mean, that is crazy. It goes on like that. I mean, it gets even more grotesque. I mean, I'll spare the audience from the unsafety details here. But I mean, wow. No, it's extraordinary, really.

And he seems reliable. Again, it's discounted. And if you look at the text edition, you know, there's not even, there's no note. It's just in passing. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, is it real? Is it not?

You know, the fact that he's a physician and maybe he's an. anti-Egypt and he's creating stories. But it is at a minimum, this idea of Nile Flood Failure, which happens regularly and misery that follows, that is real. And corroborating evidence that there was a drought in the time that he wrote this. Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, the Nylometer record is clear.

And there's a huge volcanic eruption of stuff I work on now that perturbs the monsoon in East Africa, which drives the flood. So there may be a reason why there's this. substantial flood failure. But this is the dynamic of Egyptian history. Until we get the high dam built completed in 1970. At Oswan. This is a reason why you're trying to control the river that goes back all the way to the

old kingdom. It is not like a yellow river, which is really violent and impossible to control. And China has its own history of dealing with this very violent river. The Niles gentle. It floods reliably for a good part of the time. But when you're relying on it and it doesn't flood, I got in trouble. And there must have been a memory of this.

If it's once every century where there's a real famine in Egypt like this, that might be already in the memory. That's in the back of every single person's mind from the lowest farmer to the king. That this, then what do we do? Because you can't control it and you can't keep it at bay for too long. So this is Egyptian history in a nutshell, which makes, things like King Tuts Mask or Ramsey's, some of the high civilization, the glorious art that we've been talking about,

even more extraordinary. Because on top of this agrarian society that has that river to deal with, and usually pretty well, and generating all this high culture, which is in itself, it's extraordinary. Yes, it's cult of personality and kings. We think, okay, that's bad. Yeah. But they're dealing with this environment that they don't fully understand.

but they're and they're trying to adjust and you know figure out a society that that sort of is an equilibrium as much as they can be yeah i mean it's easy to look back on old history and be like yeah you know this had this weird dichotomy but i wonder if that's all civilization right like you look at america and you're like look at what we built and look at these cities and look at the art that we've made and i mean it's remarkable but then also like look at all the terrible things or like rome or any any any nation that has this developed robust, beautiful civilization and contributions to art or science or math or whatever.

But then also at the same time with the same people and the same governments can also just, you know, commit these atrocities and, you know, eat people alive and do terrible things. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is the value of history. In a nutshell, hopefully it sends a message, can we do better?

What do we value? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Chrysos, did you have a question? Some just dumb, and I don't get the timeline of the most infamous pharaohs. Okay. I guess, yeah, he's curious, like, specifically the New Kingdom, like the time we're talking about. Sorry, we're kind of rambling.

We're all over the place. No, we're having fun, did. Okay. So, to recap, should we just get to recap? I mean, the focus of the conversation is the Egyptian New Kingdom, the age of empire. Could you pull it maybe a list of the pharaohs just to kind of like visual. Oh, that'd be great of a chronology of the rulers. Yeah, that would be helpful.

I wonder if the, yeah, Wikipedia scroll down and I wonder if there sometimes is a good list on here. Yeah. Oh, keep on. No, I'll get down to the notes. What about Jipit? Chatsy-B-T. Do you use chat chad-t? Do you use AI for any of your work?

I like Claude. Oh, yeah. Yeah, cloud is great. Yeah, I think it's solid. It's a little bit better on the, not learning on your stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It says, I think it's better for writing. Yeah.

Not to use for writing, but it's good as an editor in some ways. Mm-hmm. So. And will you, like, just like quick reference stuff? You're like trying to remember something. Yeah, sometimes that is this true? Is that, is that date correct? Or what was the name of so-and-so?

That's useful. Chatsy, but not used in a while. Right. I mean, oh, we've got all sorts of. Okay, so I'll scroll up really quick. Want to scroll up? Yeah, just go to the top real quick. What is this?

Oh, this is 18th Dynasty. So this is still a new kingdom. So we got hat-hat-ship, Hatshepshit. Hatshepsut. And that was the female king. The boss lady that was wrecking people. Yep. And then I'm in Hotep the second.

That sounds important. Yeah, Amun Hote is one of the great military pharaohs, along with Tudmosis, the third, who's called the Nepal. Napoleon of ancient Egypt. Tudmos the third. Yeah. Okay. And now we're into Ramses the first.

Yeah, then, yeah. Pretty short reign, only two years. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. And then SETI the first. This is what you're talking about. Sometimes they introduce.

Yeah, that's probably the family name. Mm-hmm. And Ramsey is sort of a little bit made up, probably. Right. Connected to Raw. Then Ramsey's the second, as we've talked about, also known as Ramsey's the Great. Hold on go back up real quick.

Mm-hmm. signed the first known peace treaty with the Hittites as you were mentioning before. Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating. Okay. And then. Oh, she's in 40 BC. Yeah, yeah.

She's the last ruler, the last ruler of the typical Greek. Christos is like, yeah, where did Cleopat? Enough, all right? You had your day in the sun, all right? What did you got to do? You banged kids. Okay. Yes.

No, no, no, no. Look up all these Greek philosophers, Christos. You're not fooling. me, all right? What do they call them? Canidos? That was the term. Anyway. And then all the way down to the bottom. It's Ramsey's the 10th. Yeah. Lots of short-lived kings after Ramsey's the third, who's the last, effectively the last long reigning ruler of the new kingdom. And so this is what they talk about in the 70 kings and 70 days thing. Well, no, actually after, I think, yeah, I think it's the end of the whole Dynasty 20.

when it gets really messy and lots of short-rain kings. I mean, this is... And even down past this, there's a lot of rulers who... Seeing this, it's just, like, so funny, because it just... You could just put U.S. presidents in here. You know what I mean? It would just be like, yeah, a little known as...

Little is known about his brief rain. It's like, all right, that would be the guy that got pneumonia when he's giving a speech or whatever, you know? Yeah. And then, like, faced economic decline in administrative challenges, all of them. You know, like, that would be, like, I don't know, Nixon or something. Like, you just have all...

Like, it just... There's so many parallels with ancient Egypt, which maybe that's the story, right? Like there's so many parallels with all of, you know, world history. Yeah. It's useful to think about, again, you know, what matters and what are we looking at

when we look at kings versus society, at least the kings, you know, we have their names at a minimum and the chronology is relatively well worked out now. So I guess that's something. Right. But it's not real Egypt in a sense. It's not the bulk of the population most of the time who are anonymous.

Yeah, the people like you and I. Yeah. The priests. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would be no doubt anonymous. Well, Dr. Manning, I could talk to you all day, truly. Likewise, I enjoy, man.

I enjoy these conversations so much. I do too. When you come back, what are we going to talk about? No, what's left? I think we've done Egyptian history. We should talk about climate and why that matters. Yeah. I mean, the historical perspective on climate, I think, is really interesting.

Yeah, it's important. And I think it also paints a, for me, at least, a better picture. Sometimes, like, you know, I remember listening to Al Gore back in the day. And I was like, oh, this maybe is true. But I wonder if there was, like, a counter argument or, like, he's reverencing data from the last, like, 40 years. That doesn't seem like that, you know, relevant. Like, you know, it seems like a very small sample set. But if you tell me, you know, hey, we got climate data from the last, you know, 10,000 years now, I'm like, oh, okay.

Yeah. I'm listening. Yeah, no, there's a lot going on. And there's still, it's controversial. It's not easy. It's not, we have a different angle on societies now, the now river. is one which we think our project now understands pretty well, why it's variable and how much so, and we're still working on it,

but that's a big driver of history. It's not the only thing. It's never just climate alone. It's not just, oh, my God, climate change apocalypse. It's many things that we have to look at, including the politics, and how are we going to respond to the pressures we're going to face, which is one pressure, climate, disease, economics, change of technology, immigration, societies have a lot of pressures on them.

Climate change is just one. And it's never the only one. We should be looking at society, not just climate. And it is changing. It is mostly us. And maybe just as a teaser for the book that you're going to publish fairly soon. Coming out soon. Which when that's out, I would love for you to come back on.

Oh, yeah. At the latest, I mean, if not earlier. But you mentioned something that was just so interesting, just as like a little tidbit. Like I had always seen climate change and humans affect on climate change. And I'm like, okay, yeah, like post, you know, industrialization, right? Like 1800s onward. Like I can conceive of this idea of like having these, you know, giant smokestacks of burning coal is probably going to affect at least local climate, undoubtedly. And then probably global climate to some extent depending on how far ranging it is.

But then you said something that the massacre of the Native Americans from Christopher Columbus directly affected climate. And I just, I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh, wow, that makes, it's interesting. It didn't occur to me that, like, pre-industrialization we could be affecting climate, but it makes sense the way you explained it. It makes sense. Massacre may be a bit strong, but pathogens introduced into the new world, North and South America destroyed these societies with the estimate is 90% of the population

of the Americas die from these new pathogens that Europeans were used to because there's a long history in the old world of humans and animals working together. Get a little cholera. And you're immune to cholera. Smallpox. And there's all sorts of things that are related to human animal interaction,

which is brand new once Columbus hits the new world. And that changes landscapes. We've been altering landscapes for a long time and moving around. But significant loss of population like that does things to land use, which alters the chemistry.

Right. alter CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which is kind of a thermometer, warm, cold, or warmer, colder. And so I think we can see those effects. So humans have been affecting things for quite a while, altering landscapes for quite a while. And it does have an impact, not as dramatic as now, but it's sort of there. It's nice to, well, not nice. It's important to understand that climate scientists call this coupled natural human system dynamic. which is a fancy phrase for saying humans,

we are animals living in environments and we're connected. It both ways. Humans and environments, environments, and human societies. We're interacting always since urban humans. And we can talk about the effects in 10,000 BC versus now and the impacts and all that.

It varies and it's a complex story. But, and that shouldn't be news, but, you know, we are, we're not, isolated from the environment. And this is, by the way, a pretty good environment we're living in, this Holocene since the last Ice Age. It's Earth's gift, Earth's gift to humanity, I call it. This is a fairly stable climate. It's great for agriculture.

Not a sudden meteor. Great for expansions. So far, so pretty good. Right. You know, but it is, compared to the rest of Earth's climate history, it's a really weird period. And so that's important to keep in mind that we're living in this kind of, it's kind of heaven, I think. It's my form of heaven. This is a beautiful planet, the only one we know.

And I think it's important, even if you don't believe in climate change, by the way, even you think it's not human-induced and the climate's not even changing, it's always been variable. Even if you believe that, the lesson is taken, I think, from the Native American populations. we should be treading lightly on Earth. It is kind of our mother. And even just uncertainty, we should be treading lightly on the earth. Yeah. As opposed to saying, oh, it's all uncertain. Screw it.

Let's just light the planet on fire. Yeah, who's pro pollution? You know what I mean? Like other than like, you know, like shipping magnates. Well, yeah, there are certain people that are. But, you know, just, again, as we talked about, there's kind of a moral component here too. Even if you don't believe in climate science or the climate is changing or that humans are changing it,

an attitude toward your environment, we should be thinking about taking care of it. I mean, undoubtedly. You know, anyway. For another conversation. And I look forward to it. Mark, fantastic, as always, man. Thank you so much, brother.

Talk soon. Yep. If you've made it to the end of this episode, you are clearly someone who understands that beneath every historical event lies a deeper truth waiting to be uncovered. You're the type of person who knows that real history is more fascinating than any fiction.

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