The Ancients - The First Pharaohs

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

Unveiling the Enigmatic Story of Egypt's First Pharaohs, roughly 5,000 years ago. Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Aidan Dodson to discuss the renowned Scorpion King and early dynasties, the unifying figure of Narmer, as well as the evolution of early Egyptian tombs and traditions, providing a fascinating insight into the dawn of Egypt's earliest civilisations.MOREOrigins of the Egyptian GodsThe Great Pyramid of GizaPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan and the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, I hope you're doing well. I am much better you'll be delighted to hear since my last intro. I've recovered from my illness and I'm currently on my way back from work after a day at history hit towers, doing more ancients prep and also wrapping up this interview being released to you now. It's all about the first pharaoh. So some 5,000 years ago. What I love about this is that these figures, they're very different to the likes of Tutankhamun or Ramesses or Cleopatra, famous names of ancient Egyptian pharaohs today. I really do hope you enjoy. Our guest is Professor Aidan Dodson from the University of Bristol. He's written about these earliest pharaohs. He was the man to get on the show for this topic and he delivered the goods. Enjoy.

Few ancient cultures endured as long as Egypt. Over thousands of years, some 30 dynasties ruled over this prestigious land. The famous Cleopatra, the last pharaoh, lived closer to us today than the first kings of a unified Egypt, the so-called first dynasty that emerged in around 3,000 BC. It's their enigmatic story that we're delving into today, a tale of looted tomb, of scorpion kings and astonishing archaeological fights. Who exactly were these earliest pharaohs? What did ancient Egypt look like at the time?

And just how much information do we have surviving about these rulers who lived 5,000 years ago before the pyramids? This is the story of the first pharaohs, with our guest, Professor Aidan Dodson. Aden, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Nice to invite me. Now, we've all heard the name pharaohs. We all know about the ancient Egyptian pharaohs,

but it feels, Aidan, going this far back in time with the first pharaohs. This feels a lesser known, dare I say, a bit more edigmatic a period in ancient Egyptian, history just simply because of how far back in time we're going. Yeah, and the amount of data we have from that period is pretty small, although actually ironically, that we've got better data from the earliest part of it than the bits which follow on from that. But yeah, in comparison with the data we've got for most later periods of Egyptian history, it is extremely difficult to sort of get one's hands around properly.

And indeed, it was the last part of ancient Egyptian history, which was sort of rediscovered by modern scholars. By the late 19th century, we'd sort of got our history back through to the pyramids, reasonably well. Okay, there's huge amounts of gaps to fill in, but basically we've got the broad picture. But prior to that was a complete blank, apart from a few sort of legendary accounts. Then, amazingly, during the 1890s, everything changed by the discovery of a couple of sites. And from that point onwards, we've been able to integrate that in. But still, there's not a lot of questions. still to be answered during that era.

How do you, as archaeologists, managed to push back the knowledge of the time period if we know when it comes to ancient Egypt? Is it revisiting certain sites and literally just digging a little deeper to find those earlier layers? Or is it just coming across brand new sites that we didn't know about but has evidence from very early on? I think those, that the 1890s when we were rediscovering that stuff, it was really looking at bits of sites that never been touched before, particularly at a Bidos. The site was well known and had been dug really since the early days of Egyptology.

However, the bit further into the desert hadn't really been touched until the 1890s when a guy called a Melenur discovered the site, which turned out to be the cemetery of the kings of the first dynasty and a couple of the second dynasty, with the made bit of some of a pig's ear of the whole process. So then the Flinders Peatry, who's often regarded as being the father of scientific Archaeology in Egypt, then took over the site, and by the time he'd finished working in the very beginning of the 20th century, we'd been able to, because we had the complete sequence of tombs of the first dynasty kings, we'd got the history of the first dynasty.

But then we just got some floaters after that, and still the second and third dynasties represent problems. Part of it, and it seems quite clear that even the ancient Egyptians had problems with the second and third dynasties, which are in big handfuls from about 2,800-2,600-ish BC, because the king lists which survived, which had been written over a thousand years after that particular date, don't agree as to who ruled during the second and third dynasties, either the number of kings, their order, and what their names are and all those kinds of things. So it's quite clear that our archaeological problems, we're trying to sort them out, were even there for the ancient Egyptians, because clearly there were holes in the records which they were using when they were writing up these king lists in about 1,300 BC, so it would have well over 1,000 years after the events. Is there a feeling that with these earliest pharaohs before that archaeology comes to light, that even maybe therefore in ancient Egypt and much, much later thousands of years after they're existing?

Do they almost become slightly mythological figures, there's less confirmation as to whether they actually existed or not? Yeah, well, in fact, Petrie and a couple of others who were writing in the 1890s just before the discoveries as a Bidos are actually saying that the existence of these first two or three dynasties is purely on a literary basis and is therefore no more solid than the ancient kings of Ireland, legendary kings of England and all those kinds of things. All they, the names are recorded in a, in writings for Greek, writing historian from the third century BC. But that's about it. By then, well, then they also then start finding them in some of these East Egyptian king lists. But again, there's the inconsistencies, and there's nothing solid to actually sort of, there's no material naming any of these people. and then suddenly, the Bidos, you've then suddenly got them all appearing. Although there's still issues, because the names which the later historians, both ancient Egypt and the Greek era,

the names they're using are not necessarily the ones which were the principal ones being used in the earliest times, because Egyptian pharaohs have the five names. And for most of Egyptian history, the two which have written in cartoons, These ovals are the ones which they're known by posterity. So the king lists have these cartouche names. They don't invent cartouches until the third dynasty. So therefore, these earliest pharaohs on their own monuments are known by different names of their titularies.

And it looks as though when they come to writing these king lists later on, they're almost making up cartouch names for them because they need them from the format of the list. Some of them we can actually trace back to names, not written in cartouches, but for more obscure parts of the titularly some of these earlier people. So we know where some of them come from. But there's some where we have actually no real idea as to why they're called what they're called in the king list.

So all of this really caused lots of doubts. But then gradually, once these Ria Bidos tombs have been found, it could start working out what order they were in. and then start to try and make the connections. But there's still a few issues. I mean, the city of Obidos feels like a place that surely will be coming back to as this chat goes on. And just briefly as well, Aidan, before we delve more into the background, you mentioned those ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian historian who are writing these kings list

thousands of years after the first pharaoh, first dynasties existed. Is this a figure like a menaitho? Well, mena is the key one, yeah. Because from the loss of the knowledge of Egyptian language in 4th century AD and its re-decipherment in the 19th century, Mnitho and also to some degree Herodotus and some of these others were the only, the only game in town. So actually the whole idea of dynasties comes from Mnitho. Well, another problem with Mnitho is we don't actually have original Mnitho. His original, the full, as far as we can make out, full narrative history of Egypt, was lost somewhere in the,

the late antiquity probably. So all we've actually got of Manitho are quotations by later historians from him. And even they don't actually agree that the versions we've got because clearly people were writing excerpts from it, people were miscopying some of these things, and therefore what we have for the first three dynasties,

which is the ones we're talking about really today, they differ between the individual versions of Monith. People at the exorcist's of Monitho, just in the same way that the ancient Egyptian kinglists also differ. So there's clearly a sort of, almost a Chinese whispers kind of thing going on here, and trying to work about what the originals of half of these things were is quite problematic.

And sometimes there's a scholarly debate over whether or not these differences are simply due to incompetent copying or there is something more deep and meaningful about it as far as traditions are concerned. You know, like whether or not some of the ancient Egyptian king lists, the differences are due to a northern tradition versus southern tradition or miscopying, confused copyists.

Because actually there's a couple of kings on the king lists who actually we now realise actually are notations. for data missing. Wow. So there's a cartouche for a king called Hu Jepha. We now realize that who Jephyr,

never really was ever called Hu Jephyr, it means King, gap in the records. Which looks as though somebody had done this, but of course in the various transmissions, when somebody, it's then

sort of, it hasn't realized this is an annotation of there's something missing here. They've then, oh, this is a king. Put him a nice cartouche, put him in the king list. Wow. Okay. Well, there you go. It's funny. Yeah, there's actually, some early books have got who jeff at the first and who jeff at the second.

But it actually is two data missing entries in a much earlier compilation. There you go, Farrow Data Missing the First and Farrow Data Missing the Second. I love that. Well, as you've highlighted earlier, we are going to focus the line share on this chat on those earliest dynasties. You said three there. So we'll see if we can get to the third one in our chat today as well. But to also kind of help us set the scene, Aidan, let us go then back 5,000 years to before the time of the first dynasty in Egypt. Can you paint us a picture of what Egypt looks like before the first pharaoh, this pre-pharonic stage? Because this also feels very enigmatic and very interesting. Yeah.

What we've got prior to, in big handfuls 3,000 BC, seems to be an Egypt which is made up of lots and lots of small. villages and towns. People had settled along the Nile, probably about a thousand years or so prior to that, when the desiccation of North Africa had meant that the deserts where they previously, what is now desert, which had previously been savannah and places where you could live, had become uninhabitable. So therefore, over probably a thousand years or two thousand years, it would gradually come down to the edge of the Nile. Then, what you get is, so therefore they're settling in various locations. And there's a certain sort of cultural homogeneity in the south and the north.

In fact, actually, it seems a kind of cultural homogeneity going down into Nubia as well, which is the very southern part of modern Egypt, northern part of modern Sudan, and then a rather different kind of culture in the north, in the delta, leading up to the Mediterranean. And that actually, that distinction of cultures between the north and the south really continues throughout Egyptian history. You can always find, as I say, certain sort of stylistic things tend to differ. And then, insofar as we can, our assumptions anyway,

are these various villages and towns start grouping together. And gradually, by the time we're in the late centuries of the fourth millennium, that we've probably got a reasonably coherent southern kingdom, whether there ever was a northern kingdom is unclear. because the Nile Delta is poorly known archaeologically simply because it's too soggy. One of the great things about Egypt and the southern Egypt is because most of it is desert, you've actually got good preservation of material. That's not the case in the north.

And there is later sort of a fiction of a northern kingdom, where it really ever existed out of the minds of later chroniclers is a big question. But then, so late 4th millennium, you've got a southern kingdom, And then what seems to happen is that that expands probably mixture of peaceful and partly military expansion until around 3,000 BC when we have the formal unification. And the fact that we even think there is such a thing is that there is a thing called the Nama palette, which is a stone pallet. One side it shows Nama, a king of the south, smiting a northerner. and on the back it shows him wearing the crown of the north. So therefore, as it was discovered in the late 1890s,

again, the late 1890 is the key period for when we start understanding these earlier times. It's been interpreted as being a commemorative item for the unification. And although there's been all sorts of discussions around that is a true concept, it seems to be that because with Nama is where we start getting the succession of kings, So all of that would tend to suggest that there is a genuine event which was contemporaneously commemorated by the Lion Arbor Park. It's clearly a piece of work from around 3,000. It's not sort of a later mock-up of something to commemorate something which should have happened but may not have done. So I think we're reasonably happy that happens.

And then we get a couple of centuries of the first dynasty where you seem to have a united country. and this is where a lot of the sort of basics of Egyptian civilization come together, art starts to evolve, we start finding the beginnings of coherent writing, because we do actually have a few hieroglyphic signs from prehistoric times, but the first time we actually find attempts to actually write something is then. So the first dynasty is very much the point which lays all the ground rules for what ancient Egypt is later going to be. From the archaeology, do we get a sense that the southern part of Egypt and the northern parts, do they keep their regional distinctiveness almost, even if they're unified? Like, for instance, do we see more examples of rock art from southern Egypt compared to further north, or do we see a distinctive style of pottery in the north compared to the south and so on? It's the mainly pottery thing, because, again, because the nature of the delta,

you simply haven't got the kinds of locations of rock art and things, which you would get in the south. But there is enough to suggest that they are distinctive with probably the North having more cultural links into the Levant, whereas the South has the links bore back into Africa. But again, tracing all of this is problematic because of the lack of the archaeological material from the North. What we have is very limited, and as far as quantity and quality is concerned, there's not a similar amount from both sides. You can actually make a reasonable comparison. and the southern material overwhelms the northern. I'm sorry to bring you back a little bit before the First Dynasty again, but this was also something I found really interesting from your answer, Aidan.

So if you get the sense that, you know, the cities were coming together, it feels like before this unification, but you almost get these bigger polities at this time. But we don't have pharaohs, but it seems like we have kings or rulers and maybe militaristic figures. Well, calling these people pharaohs is an anachronism. Oh, okay. Because the first Egyptian kings to be.

called Pharaoh didn't rule until 1,500 years later. Right. Okay, so you don't see from the evidence of the first dynasty, they're calling themselves Pharaoh straight away? Not at all. Now, the first time we find a king calling himself a Pharaoh is probably about 1,300 or so BC. So we're talking, and we're talking to 3,000. The thing is, though, that the word Pharaoh, as a word for an Egyptian king, is really sort of, has actually become into the English language from the Bible. Although, say, people, Some people get a bit sniffy about saying, well, they didn't call themselves pharaohs until much later. Writing in English saying Pharaoh is a short hand for King of Egypt.

It's one word rather than three words. It's also quite useful in the Nsets when you've sometimes got female rulers as well. You can use them, use that. So it's just worth on saying that when we're talking about pharaohs during this podcast, we are talking about a general term, which has become an English word, for Egyptian king. At the time, we think they probably were probably calling themselves Nesuti, which is the ancient Egyptian word for king, and some of the documents they do have that in. So I'm just saying we're using Pharaoh's a nice shorthand word here. And in fact, when I was writing my book, I put in the introduction, you know, basically colleagues who think I'm being anachronistic, I know I am, please go away and get real.

Aidan, you throw in a spanner in the works there, but it's an important spanner of the works, first of all. But I'm going to ask actually about a particular... Carry on. It's just as I thought, actually, I'd also throw that in because there be some listener who is going, but they didn't call themselves that. I know that. Well, can I ask, because this name is so interesting, and having watched the mummy when I was very, very young, was it the mummy or one of the others?

You know what I'm going to ask about. It's this so-called Scorpion King that you have in the surviving records. Can you tell us about this figure or these figures? because they sound extraordinary. It's possibly two, King's Scorpion. And the reason what we call them that is simply because their name is written with a philagra of a scorpion.

We're assuming that is probably Selk, which is the ancient Egyptian word for Scorpion, but as we don't know for certain, that's how they were calling Scorpions. That's recently called the Torp King. The one we know definitely exists is just before the unification. There is a mace head which was found at a site

which is also where the Nama Pallet was found in the south of Egypt and on it it has this king wearing the crown of Upper Egypt, Southern Egypt and he is cutting the first sod from an irrigation canal and he is the first royal individual to be depicted in what you might call a traditional Egyptian style. So he is right on the very boundary between prehistory and history. Now there is a tomb at a Bidos where some of the potshirts have got a scorpion written on them.

So it's possible that that is his tomb, and it lies very close to the First Dynasty tombs. There has been some debate over the precise dating of this tomb, however. So if it is how some of us would date it, it is the same scorpion. However, if some people want to date this tomb about 100 years earlier, it can't be the same scorpion as on the mace head. But that's really all we know about him. All we know is he is a king, presumably of southern Egypt,

just before the unification, whether he's one generation before or a generation or two. But still, at that point between the two, between pre-unifications and unification Egypt. Do we get a sense that it was led by events like climate change or a military event? I mean, do we have any idea what was the catalyst behind the unification? Not really, because the only data we have is the fact that it exists. It happens. We know later on there is climate change. the another, about 500 years or so later. However, there seems to be no indication from my understanding of the paleo-climatic studies of anything happening there. My own view is it's

really sort of, it's probably the result of, it's almost a logical extension. As you're getting a larger and larger state, it makes sense for more of it to come together. And also, once you've got to a certain point, you can start doing things, for example, as far as irrigation and all those sorts of things. So therefore, there's a logic that once you've got some kind of reasonably sized polity, which is doing stuff, that polity to extend its power over the next bit, either willingly or unwillingly. So I think there's a degree I think of almost economic determinism, it makes sense to get something larger. And if you look at the history of Europe and so on, again, you get to a point where little city-states don't really work,

where you need something bit bigger. But also, you can't, I don't think you can rule out the idea of some particular person's personal ambition. You know, again, you know, there's, back in the 1960s,

there was a very much a tendency to do with the social process and the economic process. But actually, I think we've now moved back at the point that occasionally things are kicked along by a personal idea. You know, if we think in terms of Alexander Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin,

for better or worse, there are virtually points in time where things get kicked ahead. And also, when those things happen, perhaps are driven by personal ambition, but then survive or not, that may then indicate more about the underlying sort of social and economic side of things.

So I suspect it may be a bit of both, that all the logic, to perhaps like using the American manifest destiny kind of idea, was all possibly there in the south and possibly amongst people in the north as well. But then possibly that it was a particular king, Nama, by looks of things, who actually said, right, I'm going to do something about this rather than let it go on for another few generations.

But again, we don't know, because we've got, all we have are a few individual things. And if without the Nama palette, we would still be sort of in bit, all we know is that all these traditions said that there was a unification, but luckily here we've actually got something contemporary which seems to commemorate that unification rather it being something which, as I said earlier on, some early historians thought the whole thing may have simply been a sort of creation myth put together by later Egyptians to justify their existence.

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This earliest, in inverted commas, Pharaoh now, the man that you've mentioned, Aidan, and I've already mentioned in this conversation, Nama. Can you tell us what we know about this figure? And you've also mentioned the Nama Pallet, but because it feels such an integral archaeological discovery, perhaps the most recognizable name from this early period, it'd be great to also delve into the details of what we know about it and why it's so significant. So take it away. Okay. Let's kick off with actually, okay, the Nama Pallet itself. It was found at a site Gahara Coropolis in southern Egypt, which is probably about 50 miles or so south of modern Luxor, found by a team led by James Quibel, one of the outstanding archaeologists of the earlier years of

late in the days years of the 19th century through into the 20th century. In fact, Quabell is a quite important archaeological figure for the study of the early dynasties, because having worked at Horiconpolis, he later worked at Sakara and discovered tombs covering the whole period, which we're talking about today. And it was found in a pit in the temple site, along with another very ancient things. So it looks as though it had been in the temple originally, you know, with some kind of commemorative thing. And then when the temple was rebuilt a few centuries later, it and various other ancient items, which couldn't be disposed of, because they were clearly recognized as being quite a book, were then buried in a pit underneath the temple so that they were still there. And

even if they were no longer sort of... And that idea of burying surplus temple material is quite common in Egyptian history. Karnak, much later on, there are tens of thousands of statues were buried in a clear-up in Greek or Roman time. So that's what that is. And say, on one side, it depicts the king,

smiting a northern enemy, and on the back, wearing the crown of the north. Apart from that, we have very little information on him. We know that during his time there was a trade going out into the east. A few graffiti have been found in Sinai, which indicates there's trade routes into Palestine. Like Gaza at that time, there's archaeology that Gaza was prominent even back then. Yes, absolutely, because it's basically Gaza and sort of the rest of southern Palestine,

it's very much the trade route going through north and also to the east as well. Gaza's important, because given everything else is sort of heavily basically desert beyond, It's the way through into Egypt for the long Mediterranean coast, across the top of the Sinai and into the Nile Delta. So we've got some stuff there. Otherwise, we've got his tomb at Abidos. It's one of the last really small ones. His successors start going much larger as far as their tombs are concerned. But that's really about it as far as contemporary material is concerned.

And his name, Nama, seems to be then forgotten. However, in later legends and also in the king lists, there's a king called Menez who appears, and he appears both in the Egyptian king lists, in Mitho, in Herodotus, I think Diodorus also talks about him. So he's clearly the Unifier king. And one of the debates in Egyptology has been whether or not Nama is really Menez, and if so, whether or not the name Menez appears in anything contemporary. or whether Menet is actually his success or a king called Hoa. My view is that he's most probably, it's indeed Nama,

because if you try and line up the various cartouches, if you like, in the king lists, versus what we know is the list of kings from the First Dynasty, Menez really has to be Nama. It doesn't really quite work. The trouble is that also the king lists, one of them has a different number of kings from another one. There's a whole long debate which have been going on since the 1890s about it, which still hasn't been fully resolved. But I think Nama and Menez are probably the same individual, and they are, this is the great unifier of Egypt.

And do we then get a sense that, as we see time and time again, where there is this step change, you know, there's this ruler who creates a big change in the region, for instance, with Nama or Menez and unifying Egypt? Do we get the sense that it's actually with their successes, the following rulers, who are the ones who kind of cement this new regime, this new administration and Nama's just the beginning? I mean, what do we know about what follows and how they solidify their control? Pretty well all the data we've got really is from the Royal Tomb as the Bidos. But what we can see in that is that things like the Royal Titulary start to evolve towards what we then, we later know as being the Royalty Dichlery. When we start looking at bits of artistic production from them, we start seeing things evolving. Because it's interesting actually that the art we see on the Nama palette, there are icons on that

and the basic approach, which is still to be found in Roman times. Like there's a smiting scene of Nama on the palette. It's pretty well identical to one of Nero being shown, smiting. So you can see more tech to start to grow. Clearly, although hieroglyphs exist at the beginning of the First Dynasty, they're not writing full sentences. They're They're not a literary language yet. That probably takes a possibly another century before you start getting proper joined up things. But all of those are there.

Things like the Jubilee Festival, which we see going way into the future, is there by the middle of the dynasty. So it looks so fairly rapidly, the pharyonic state as it comes to exist is there, perhaps within the first sort of a few decades after the unification. And then sort of becomes more,

becomes sort of codified, if you like, as time goes by. But all we've got are these robbed tombs and a few odd bits and pieces from elsewhere. So I think we can say that we see the big picture, but trying to understand the detail and exact sequencing of all this is a bit more problematic. The one was rather interesting thing we see, however, is that soon after unification,

we have large-scale human sacrifice at the Royal Tour. which crescendo is probably a century after the unification, then rapidly drops off again. So whether that's saying something about the power of the monarchy to be able to command people to compile people's deaths to accompany the dead king in the next world. But what's interesting about that is that a few centuries later, as the city of Err becomes a big thing in Mesopotamia, that they have the death pits, they have this same kind of thing. my mind, I was literally about to ask about that connection. It's not contemporary. It's a few centuries later, but it does look as though there is

something about when a state forms, there's initially sort of taking it to beyond its logical limits and then scaling back once you've got beyond that. So that's possibly part of the whole setting up of the idea of an infallible or powerful monarch. what we know, the Faro, in the sense of how that institution is to be seen for the next 3,000 years. What started the civil war? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere?

And did the Vikings ever reach America? I'm Don Wildman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership. Find American History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American HistoryHit, a podcast from HistoryHill. Do you think from the start, although they're not using the word, you know, Pharaoh, yes, that there is that idea growing from very early on that yes, they are the king, but they they also may well have a divine aspect to them too?

I think so, yes. So we don't actually sort of get made explicit until a bit later on where you actually start getting like son of the sun god and things like that. But I think there's an implication there of a divine king, but exactly what that means has to be sort of interpreted back

from material centuries over a millennia later on. One of the dangers in working with this era is that we're seeing it through the lens of the ancient Egypt that we recognise from the new kingdom, middle kingdom, old kingdom. And there's always a temptation to say, oh, that therefore is something which validates what we think. We always have to be quite careful of, and one needs to try and avoid being too enthusiastic about being able to interpreting by what does all this mean, without prefix or whatever. Well, if they're thinking in the same way that people a thousand years later did, then maybe that the idea of the divine king is already there fully fledged, fully formed,

or whether it's something more subtle, we honestly can't tell in the state of the data. And then the problem is that also from what we can understand about what they are able to express in writing, it's unlikely that the kind of concept we find set out in detail later on could have been written down at that time. So the likelihood of finding a papyrus or something else for the First Dynasty, which says the sort of stuff about kingship, which stuff from 1,000, 2,000 years later does, is very highly unlikely. So I don't think we're ever going to get over that hurdle.

I think we're, and most importantly, I think we just need to make sure that we are very clear in our own minds how little we know and don't rush to try and interpret stuff too much in light of how things have evolved over the next millennium or more. This also feels, as I'm guessing, is a question where we have some archaeology, but maybe we don't have everything. And it's in regards to the place that you've highlighted, which seems to be at the centre of these earliest pharaohs and learning about them, which is Abidos. Aidan, I do realise that I actually haven't asked whereabouts we're talking along the Nile with Abidos. And can you also give us a sense of how prominent a city do we think Abidos was for

these earliest pharaohs? Abidos is... I can mean how many kilometers. It's a bit north of Luxor anyway. It takes about nowadays you can drive it about two, two and a half hours, give an idea. And that's on the motorway. It used to be about four hours if you were going along the Nile. So that gives me a vague idea. In American terms, let's say two hours from Luxor. Later on, certainly, it becomes the cult center of the dog or the dead Osiris, and is therefore one of the most holy cities in Egypt. Going back to the time when we're talking here, it's certainly been a burial place going back into prehistory. And as we move into later prehistory, we get larger tombs, including the one potential one of Scorp, you know, talking about earlier on.

And then after the unification, it then becomes the place to be seen dead in, if you're a pharaoh. And that runs on to the end of the first dynasty as that. And after that, it continues to be an important cemetery going right the way. through Egyptian history into Roman times and at various points in time it becomes a royal cemetery again. It's never, again, seems to be a full dynastic cemetery in the sense of

every king of a line is buried there. But it's an very important location. There are important festivals of Osiris there which seems to be almost like the medieval passion plays. And it ties in actually with the royal tombs of the first dynasty

however in that, well, over a thousand years later in the 13th dynasty, one of the tombs of one of the kings of the first dynasty, which had long since been robbed and in various civil wars, should have been in between, was identified actually as the tomb of Osiris for to be used as part of the passion play, and a great big recumbent figure of Osiris carved in stone was placed in the burial chamber of that tomb, which actually belonged to a king called Jir, who actually was also the king who had the largest number of subsidiary burials, these human sacrifices I was talking about. It's also probably in the most

prominent location. The whole site is lumpy and bumpy, but it's got quite on the highest point as well. So anyway, so it was identified as the tomb of Osiris, and we know that Pilgrims used to go there. We've got evidence for pilgrims as later about 1,000 BC or even later than that. So it becomes that. Probably the reason why it became the place of Osiris, which may well have been, because Osiris was, according to myth, an early king. It was recognised that the earliest kings of Egypt were all buried at Abidos. Ergo... Two plus two equals Osiris is buried there, right?

And therefore, presumably they sent us a team of priests to go and find the tomb of Osiris, which they probably found the one which was in best condition, and then that was then tarted up to become the pilgrimage spot. And there's some good parallels in Mediades. medieval Europe where there is these burial places of saints and so on are miraculously discovered, which often are actually some early monarch or duke or others' cemetery. So there's a good parallels. So therefore that becomes a magnet hub for that. Now just to say a bit about the topography of it, what you've got is deep in the desert, you've got the actual cemetery,

which is known today as Umel Gharb, Mother of Potts, which is an Arabic name. It was covered with pot shirts, some of which were from the robbery of the original tombs, but also there was lots of votives and water pots and so on brought by the pilgrims, which all covered the sites. It's always all mulgab, the whole area, anyway. So you've got that deep in the desert. But then on the edge of the cultivated land, because basically Egypt, what you've got is the Nile, a fairly narrow strip of cultivated land, and then the desert.

which is called the cultivation. And on the edge of the desert, overlooking that, the kings of the first dynasty built great rectangular enclosures of brick. And those seem to have been the public part of the tombs up to a Melgarb. There's about a kilometre or so of desert between the two of them. So it looks like these great rectangular enclosures. This is where the funeral took place, where serenaries were carried on for a while. while he then being carried on up to O'Mel Gub. Those enclosures then fall out of use. And what's left of the cult of the individual king is up at the tomb.

Because outside the tomb, you've got two steely with stone slabs with the king's name written on them, which mark out the offering place for the king's tomb, which is basically a brick-lined cutting in the desert gravel. At this stage, we're not talking about. rock-cut passageways or anything, particularly at Achimel-Gab, the geology isn't good enough for that. So you just dig a great big hole,

line it with mud brick, then subdivide it to make the various chambers. What went over the top has been a matter of debate because the superstructures were lost thousands of years ago. And there have been all sorts of suggestions, but the moment the one which seems to fit the archaeology best is almost a tumulus of gravel. So they were sort of low mounds,

But on the side facing the Nile was these two steely. And that was where the cult of the kings was carried out. And quite a few of those steely survive, split between the Grand Egyptian Museum, the old Egyptian Museum in Cairo. And there's a couple which were then, went to a British Museum and into over to the States as part of division of finds. So actually we've got remarkably, we've actually got the offering places for these tombs. as well, which is stuff we haven't actually got for the subject.

So, as I say, the first dynasty is interesting because we've actually got a really quite good archaeological package, if you like, for their tombs. And also talking about tombs, in addition to the ones that abide us for the kings, with the unification, the necropolis of Sakara, just outside Cairo comes into use. And you start getting large tombs being built there for the high officials. Because after the unification, although the king's continue to be buried in the far south. A new capital city called Memphis

is built up in the north at the point where the Nile Valley and the Nile Delta come together. It's actually roughly opposite Cairo. On the other side of the river from Cairo. And in the desert, beyond that, is the Cropolis of Sakara is set up, which is one of the longest serving ones.

And the earliest tombs there are all of officials, and possibly even members of the royal family of the fair of those who are buried down at Abidos. Back in the 1950s, when they've discovered, there was a bit of confusion because it was thought that these, one, the Sakara tombs might actually be the real tombs of the kings, where the ones that Abidos were Senataphs. We now know that's not the case, and that these are tombs of officials and members of the royal family. But it's interesting there that we find this again in Egyptian history later on

that you carry on being buried in your hometown as a king, even though the centre of political gravity has shifted up to the north. So clearly, abide us, going back to the original question about significance of it, the fact that although the king was probably living and ruling

hundreds of kilometres away in the north, his body was still being brought back for burial in the south. There you go. And it's also so interesting, I'm glad we're kind of wrapping up this chat, but also talking about Sakara because of course you have the oldest

step pyramids don't you the step pyramid of Josah but the fact that that's 2,500 BCs so after this but it shows doesn't it this kind of gives you more context to understand that Sakara is important for hundreds of years before that

hence why you then get the big monumental constructions there and also it's worthwhile pointing out that some of the kings the second dynasty are actually buried at Sakara so it's really only the first dynasty who stick like glue to Abidos it's when you've got a change of dynasty

that we then have the burial centre of gravity shifts to the north where with an exception at the end of the second history I'm sure we'll be talking about a bit later on that's where the kings are buried

right the way through until the end of the old kingdom until about 2200 BC Well Aidan I mean you mentioned talking later on we haven't got time to this time however because we've just kind of almost packaged

the first dynasty today one that lets people learn more from your book which covers more than just the first dynasty and two, it paves the way that we can do a sequel in time about the second and third dynasties as well, which I know you've done a lot of work about, and the archaeology. I'm presuming from those dynasties is equally interesting yet enigmatic. It would say more enigmatic.

So that's the thing. We've got a pretty good idea about the first dynasty, and then begin the second dynasty, and then it all goes to rats right the way through until, even with the step pyramid, that's sort of an island of stability in a whole load of political uncertainty. And it's not then until we get Drain of Snafru, at the beginning of the fourth dynasty, that it all sort of starts coming together. So, yeah, the second and third dynasties are a horrible mess, which actually makes them very, very interesting. Makes a great podcast. It's far more fun to work on stuff where you don't have the data or having to sort of deal with a whole load of contradictory stuff rather than periods where you're just dealing with tiny details where the big picture is, is, is, is, it's.

it's clear. Okay, well, I'm sure we'll return to cover that interesting, extraordinary story in due time. Aidan, this has been fantastic. Last but certainly not least, you have written a book which covers the story of the emergence of these first pharaohs, it is called. Yes, the first pharaohs of Egypt, their lives and afterlives, published by the American University in Cairo Press a couple of years ago. But available through all online booksellers. All good bookshops. Yes, in good bookshops. Aidan, it just goes to me to say Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Very happy to be with you. Cheers. Well, there you go. There was Professor Aidan Dodson giving you an introduction to the story of the first pharaohs who lived some 5,000 years ago, the first dynasty of ancient Egypt.

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