Speaker 1: I want you to picture for just a second the sheer,
Speaker 1: unrelenting scale of ancient Egypt's geography, Like just close your
Speaker 1: eyes and really try to imagine it.
Speaker 2: It is a stunning visual, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It really is. So to the west you have these endless,
Speaker 1: scorching sands of Libya, just total desert, right, And then
Speaker 1: to the east you've got the really rugged terrains of
Speaker 1: Palestine and Arabia.
Speaker 2: Which were incredibly difficult to cross in the ancient world exactly.
Speaker 1: And to the north there's the vast expanse of the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean Sea. So you have all these natural barriers, right,
Speaker 1: But slicing straight through the center of all this intense
Speaker 1: isolation is this, well, this thousand kilometers of desert cut
Speaker 1: perfectly in half by this brilliant, life giving ribbon of blue,
Speaker 1: the mighty River Nile.
Speaker 2: It's just an incredibly unique landscape. It acted as this
Speaker 2: geographic fortress basically. Yeah. But simultaneously, because of the massive
Speaker 2: agricultural wealth that the river produced, it was also the
Speaker 2: most glittering prize the entire ancient world, right.
Speaker 1: And because it was this glittering prize, it had a
Speaker 1: massive target on its back for millennia. We're talking about
Speaker 1: a civilization with temples and tombs that were just overflowing
Speaker 1: with fabled.
Speaker 2: Gold, oh absolutely, and an agricultural system that could feed
Speaker 2: entire armies.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So naturally, as these Jella's foreign rulers looked at
Speaker 1: a you know, a sometimes weakened Egypt over the centuries,
Speaker 1: they all basically had the exact same thought. They looked
Speaker 1: at it. And when I want that.
Speaker 2: Of course they did. I mean who wouldn't exactly.
Speaker 1: But today we are taking a deep dive into this
Speaker 1: really fascinating stack of archaeological field reports, some fresh translations
Speaker 1: of ancient Greek histories, and some really cutting edge modern
Speaker 1: historical analysis, and we want to explore this central paradox.
Speaker 2: Right because by all normal historical logic, when a culture
Speaker 2: faces wave after wave of foreign invaders, it gets wiped out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: gets crushed, he gets assimilated, right, Yes, language disappears, it's
Speaker 2: odds are completely forgotten, and it just gets ground into
Speaker 2: the dust of history.
Speaker 1: But that is not what happened here. And that's our
Speaker 1: mission for this deep dive for you listening today. We're
Speaker 1: going to figure out how ancient Egypt managed to survive
Speaker 1: chaos and famine and brutal war. And they didn't do
Speaker 1: it by having a superior military, No, not at all.
Speaker 1: They did it by possessing a culture that was so
Speaker 1: deeply rooted, so powerful that it actually seduced and absorbed
Speaker 1: absolutely everyone who tried to conquer it.
Speaker 2: And that is the overarching theme of the history we
Speaker 2: are looking at today. The conquerors of Egypt inevitably became
Speaker 2: the conquered.
Speaker 1: I love that framing.
Speaker 2: It's so true, though. The true power of Egypt wasn't
Speaker 2: in its swords or you know, even just in the
Speaker 2: massive stone blocks of its pyramids. Its ultimate defense mechanism
Speaker 2: was its unshakable, overwhelming identity. It was a cultural black hole,
Speaker 2: really in the best possible way.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. We are going to go on
Speaker 1: well a time traveling exploration today, and we're starting a
Speaker 1: full thousand years before Cleopatra even enters the picture way back.
Speaker 1: I want to start around nine hundred and forty five PC.
Speaker 2: Right, So we are in an era that historians call
Speaker 2: the third Intermediate Period.
Speaker 1: Which what exactly does intermediate mean in this context, because
Speaker 1: it sounds kind of mild.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's not mild. Intermediate is essentially a polite historian's
Speaker 2: term for everything is falling apart.
Speaker 1: Ah, okay, the polite way of saying disaster.
Speaker 2: Exactly, you have the glorious new kingdom, right, which is
Speaker 2: the era of the great powerful pharaohs we all know,
Speaker 2: like Ramsey's the Great, and that has completely crumbled.
Speaker 1: So central power is just gone.
Speaker 2: Centralized power has collapsed. Yeah, But what is truly devastating
Speaker 2: here isn't just a political breakdown. It is a profound
Speaker 2: crisis of faith.
Speaker 1: And I was actually reading about this in the archaeological
Speaker 1: notes we have, and it completely shocked me because the
Speaker 1: entire Egyptian worldview was built on this concept of maat right,
Speaker 1: divine order.
Speaker 2: Yes, mat the absolute guarantee of order and the afterlife right.
Speaker 1: And the royal tombs in the Valley of the King
Speaker 1: those were the physical proof of that guarantee. But as
Speaker 1: things fell apart, the people looting these sacred tombs weren't
Speaker 1: like foreign grave robbers. It was the priest's.
Speaker 2: Precisely, it was the very people whose sole job was
Speaker 2: to protect the spiritual integrity of the nation.
Speaker 1: It's like finding out the bank manager is the one
Speaker 1: tunneling into the vault. I mean, why would they do that?
Speaker 2: Well, it was an economic desperation that shattered a theological
Speaker 2: absolute Wow. Yeah, when the state could no longer pay
Speaker 2: its workers or secure its borders, the priests looked at
Speaker 2: the mountains of buried gold in those tombs and they
Speaker 2: made a very cynical calculation.
Speaker 1: They needed the cash.
Speaker 2: They needed the resources. But by systematically dismantling and looting
Speaker 2: these tombs, they weren't just stealing gold. They were dismantling
Speaker 2: the unshakable belief in the afterlife.
Speaker 1: Because if the Pharaohs aren't safe in eternity, who is exactly?
Speaker 2: And when you lose that foundational faith, a society becomes
Speaker 2: psychologically hollowed out. It creates a massive vacuum.
Speaker 1: And into that vacuum stepped the Libyans. Now, how exactly
Speaker 1: did the Libyans get into a position to take over?
Speaker 1: Because I always thought there were Egypt's traditional enemies out
Speaker 1: in that western desert we talked about.
Speaker 2: They were historically, yes, but over generations the dynamic really shifted.
Speaker 2: The Egyptians had started using Libyan prisoners of war as mercenaries.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so they brought them in right, and.
Speaker 2: Over time those mercenaries became integrated, they rose through the
Speaker 2: military ranks, they became generals, and they gradually infiltrated the
Speaker 2: entire Egyptian power structure.
Speaker 1: So it was an inside job kind of essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So as the country fragments with the corrupt priests
Speaker 2: basically running the south, these Libyan generals just swoop in
Speaker 2: seize control of the north and they declare themselves the
Speaker 2: twenty second Dynasty.
Speaker 1: But they knew they had a pr problem, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you can't just occupy a country with a two thousand
Speaker 1: year old, continuous culture and expect people to just bow
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: You have to look the part. And this brings us
Speaker 1: to an incredible artifact. We have notes on the bracelets
Speaker 1: of Prince.
Speaker 2: Nimlat Ah, Yes, Prince Nimlot. He was the son of
Speaker 2: King Sheshank who was the first king of this Libyan
Speaker 2: twenty second dynasty, and these braiseless are just a perfect
Speaker 2: case study in political maneuvering through art.
Speaker 1: The imagery on these things is stunning. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: a description of them right now, and they feature this
Speaker 1: tiny figure of the god Horus and he's shown as
Speaker 1: a young child emerging from a lotus.
Speaker 2: Blossom, a very traditional motif.
Speaker 1: Right, and on either side of him he is being
Speaker 1: protected by rearing cobras. The notes call this the royal euraus.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what that is for the listener?
Speaker 2: Sure? So, the royal euraeus is the stylized upright form
Speaker 2: of an Egyptian cobra.
Speaker 1: The ones you see on the crowns right exactly.
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate symbol of sovereignty, royalty, and divine
Speaker 2: authority in ancient Egypt. By wearing it, you are stating
Speaker 2: unequivocally that the gods recognize you as the legitimate ruler
Speaker 2: of the Nile.
Speaker 1: So it's exactly what you would expect a native Egyptian royaltymyware.
Speaker 1: But reading through all this I couldn't help but think
Speaker 1: of a modern analogy. Oh yeah, it feels like a
Speaker 1: ruthless corporate raider who buys out a beloved century old
Speaker 1: legacy brand, fires half the staff, but then walks around
Speaker 1: the office wearing the vintage company merch just to look
Speaker 1: like he belongs.
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, were the Libyans genuinely trying to assimilate and
Speaker 1: be Egyptian or Was this just a completely cynical pr move?
Speaker 2: Oh, it was entirely a cynical pr move. The historical
Speaker 2: record shows this was pure window dressing.
Speaker 1: Wow, just faking it.
Speaker 2: Complete lip service to ancient traditions. See, the Libyans were
Speaker 2: transfixed by the wealth, by the gold, by the sheer
Speaker 2: bling of.
Speaker 1: Ancient Egypt, the aesthetics of power.
Speaker 2: Exactly, they wanted the esthetic. But while they dressed up
Speaker 2: as pharaohs and commissioned this beautiful traditional jewelry, they were
Speaker 2: simultaneously continuing the state sponsored plundering of Egypt's royal tombs.
Speaker 1: To fund their own squabbles.
Speaker 2: Right. Yes, so they're wearing the horse bracelets while secretly
Speaker 2: pawning the inherited silver.
Speaker 1: That is wild.
Speaker 2: And because of that hypocrisy, they were never Egyptians at heart.
Speaker 2: In ancient Egypt, simply wearing the clothes wasn't enough. You
Speaker 2: had to maintain mot that cosmic order we talked.
Speaker 1: About, and toom robbing is the opposite of cosmic order.
Speaker 2: Exactly, because they were essentially just looters in pharaoh's clothing,
Speaker 2: they completely failed to unite the country. The north was
Speaker 2: full of these squabbling Libyan warlords. The south was controlled
Speaker 2: by that self serving priesthood, and Egypt remained dangerously fragmented.
Speaker 1: So a fragmented Egypt is just easy pickings. The Libyans
Speaker 1: proved that a superficial adoption of the culture doesn't actually work.
Speaker 1: But the next invaders they came with a profound reverence
Speaker 1: that basically put the Libyans to shame.
Speaker 2: Right the Kushites.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we are moving forward a couple of centuries
Speaker 1: now to seven hundred and forty seven BC, the arrival
Speaker 1: of the Kushites from Nubia down to the south, and
Speaker 1: they proved that you could conquer Egypt by totally admitting
Speaker 1: to its gods.
Speaker 2: The Kushites are a phenomenal historical case study. Nubia had
Speaker 2: been repeatedly conquered and colonized by Egypt in the past.
Speaker 1: During the New Kingdom, so they were very familiar with
Speaker 1: Egyptian culture.
Speaker 2: Extremely familiar. Because of that prolonged exposure, the Kushites had
Speaker 2: been hugely influenced by Egyptian beliefs. So by the eighth
Speaker 2: century BC, the power dynamic flips. Egypt is weak and
Speaker 2: the Kushites have the military upper hand. But when King
Speaker 2: Pie leads the Kushite invasion of Egypt, establishing the twenty
Speaker 2: fifth dynasty. He doesn't come as a destroyer.
Speaker 1: He comes as a restorer.
Speaker 2: A zealous restorer.
Speaker 1: They were the ultimate fanboys. I mean reading this, they
Speaker 1: were more Egyptian than the Egyptians at that point.
Speaker 2: They really were, and.
Speaker 1: Their entire faith was centered around this incredible location in
Speaker 1: their homeland called Jebel Barkol. I was reading the geographical
Speaker 1: notes on this, and it's this massive, isolated sandstone mountain
Speaker 1: in Nubia.
Speaker 2: It's a striking geological feature.
Speaker 1: But to the Kushites, this wasn't just a mountain. They
Speaker 1: believed it was the mythical mound of Creation, the actual
Speaker 1: birthplace of the great creator God a moon. Why did
Speaker 1: they think this specific mountain was the center of the universe.
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how the physical geography dictated their theology.
Speaker 2: To the Kushites, living at the southern limit of the
Speaker 2: known Egyptian world, this area was where the Nile River
Speaker 2: seemed to flow from.
Speaker 1: Ah, the source of the water exactly.
Speaker 2: Since the Nile brought the water that created life and
Speaker 2: fertility in the desert, they logically reasoned that this southern
Speaker 2: point must be where all creation began.
Speaker 1: That makes total sense, right.
Speaker 2: It was conceived of as a primeval version of Karnak,
Speaker 2: which is the great temple complex up in Egypt. When
Speaker 2: the Egyptian pharaohs had originally conquered Nubius centuries prior, they
Speaker 2: actually built a temple at Jibel Barkal.
Speaker 1: Oh, so the infrastructure was already there, yes, And when
Speaker 1: the Egyptians eventually retreated the Kushites didn't abandon the temple.
Speaker 2: They adopted it and made it the spiritual heart of
Speaker 2: their own empire.
Speaker 1: And they didn't just copy it, right, they fused it
Speaker 1: with their own identity. There is a specific artifact that
Speaker 1: illustrates this perfectly. Archaeologists found a statue of the Egyptian
Speaker 1: goddess mut at Jebel Barkal, but she has a distinct
Speaker 1: Nubian makeover. It's such a brilliant artifact. Yeah. Carved right
Speaker 1: into the face of this traditional Egyptian deity are three
Speaker 1: distinct tribal scar lines.
Speaker 2: That is a profoundly intimate detail. It's a physical demonstration
Speaker 2: of cultural fusion. The local Nubians were literally physically marking
Speaker 2: the traditional deities of Egypt to.
Speaker 1: Claim them they stamped the goddess as a Nubian precisely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it shows that they weren't just passively receiving a
Speaker 2: foreign religion. They were actively internalizing it, blending it with
Speaker 2: their own African roots and claiming ownership of it.
Speaker 1: And the devotion just escalates from there. King Pi's son,
Speaker 1: King Taharka, takes this to a level of engineering that
Speaker 1: is almost hard to comprehend. The excavation reports detailed the
Speaker 1: restoration work he did at the shrine at Jebel Barkal,
Speaker 1: and the art inside uses this raise relief technique. Now
Speaker 1: I know that's incredibly difficult to do, right.
Speaker 2: Yes. Raised relief is an old school, highly demanding carving technique.
Speaker 2: Instead of carving the image into the stone, which is
Speaker 2: much easier, you carve away all the background stone.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So you're removing the entire wall surface basically exactly.
Speaker 2: Leaving just the figures raised above the surface. It takes
Speaker 2: immense skill. In time, Taharka was deliberately reviving the most
Speaker 2: difficult classic artistic standards of Egypt's Golden Age.
Speaker 1: And the colors they used were so vivid. The reports
Speaker 1: described this bright sky blue representing the heavens and brilliant
Speaker 1: sun god gold. And in these carvings, Taharka is shown
Speaker 1: wearing the rams horns of a moon, which is.
Speaker 2: A massive political statement. Those specific rams horns were famously
Speaker 2: worn by Amenhotep the third way back in the glorious
Speaker 2: eighteenth dynasty.
Speaker 1: Oh, so he's explicitly connecting himself to the greatest hits
Speaker 1: of Egyptian history.
Speaker 2: Exactly by wearing them, Taharka is stating that he is
Speaker 2: the true legitimate son of Egypt's God of gods. He
Speaker 2: is deliberately bypassing the recent chaos of the Libyans and
Speaker 2: connecting his kingship directly to the greatest pharaohs of the past.
Speaker 1: But the thing that really blew my mind reading the
Speaker 1: sources was the pinnacle at Jebel bar Call. The reports
Speaker 1: say there is a spire of rock there that is
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty meters tall, completely sheer and basically inaccessible.
Speaker 2: It looks like a natural obelisk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but to Haartka decides that's the perfect place to
Speaker 1: leave a message. So he leaves a golden billboard, literally
Speaker 1: an inscription covered in gold that acts like a mirror
Speaker 1: for the Sun's rays. How on Earth did an ancient
Speaker 1: civilization get a solid gold billboard one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: meters up a sheer cliff face. Nobody on the ground
Speaker 1: could even read it.
Speaker 2: The engineering is staggering. They had to construct a massive
Speaker 2: crane arm and a terrifying network of wooden scaffolding wedged
Speaker 2: into the tiny crevices of the rock face, going straight
Speaker 2: up this precipice that is terrified. It would have required
Speaker 2: a small army of specialized engineers and laborers literally risking
Speaker 2: their lives. And you're right, nobody on the ground could
Speaker 2: read it because it wasn't meant for mortal eyes.
Speaker 1: It was for the gods.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It was meant to be seen by the gods.
Speaker 2: It harked back to the ancient practice of placing gilded
Speaker 2: capstones on the tops of pyramids to harness the power
Speaker 2: of the sun.
Speaker 1: And speaking of pyramids, Tarka and the Kushites are responsible
Speaker 1: for resurrecting them. They are for over a thousand years,
Speaker 1: nobody had built pyramid in Egypt, but at the Acropolis
Speaker 1: of Nuri, the Kushites start building them again. And they
Speaker 1: didn't just stack some rocks. They achieved an environmental alignment
Speaker 1: that is just unbelievable. I read that Toharka's pyramid is
Speaker 1: positioned so perfectly that on the exact day the Nile
Speaker 1: flood begins to recede. If you are standing at the
Speaker 1: top of his pyramid, the sun sets directly behind that
Speaker 1: golden pinnacle at Jebel Barkall's breathtaking. How did they calculate that?
Speaker 1: Without modern instruments.
Speaker 2: It requires decades of patient, meticulous observation. Ancient astronomers and
Speaker 2: priests would attracted the movement of the sun along the
Speaker 2: horizon day by day, year after year, cross referencing it
Speaker 2: with the cyclical rising and falling of the Nile waters.
Speaker 1: That's just wild.
Speaker 2: They essentially map the mechanics of the heavens onto the
Speaker 2: physical landscape. It is a stunning marriage of architecture, astronomy,
Speaker 2: and theology.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. But I have to push back a little here.
Speaker 1: When you look at the native Egyptians during this period,
Speaker 1: doesn't this entire situation feel a little bit humiliating like
Speaker 1: their country is in such a sad, fractured state that
Speaker 1: a foreign invading army has to come in conquer them
Speaker 1: and then basically remind them how to be Egyptian.
Speaker 2: Well, you could certainly view it as humiliating from a
Speaker 2: purely military standpoint, right, But if we connect this to
Speaker 2: the bigger picture, the historical perspective is quite different. How So,
Speaker 2: it's framed as Egypt essentially taunting its invaders. The culture
Speaker 2: itself is saying, you may possess the swords to dominate
Speaker 2: us physically, but our esthetics, our gods, our concept of eternity,
Speaker 2: they will ultimately dominate your mind. Wow. Okay, to Harka
Speaker 2: conquered Egypt militarily, but Egypt completely conquered to Harka culturally.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Kushites ended up building more pyramids in
Speaker 2: their Nubian homeland than the Egyptians had built in Egypt.
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate cultural victory. They forced their conquerors to
Speaker 1: submit to the culture in order to rule the land exactly.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately for the Kushites, their beautiful century of renewal
Speaker 1: was about to be violently interrupted. Because what happens when
Speaker 1: an invader arrives who absolutely does not care about your gods,
Speaker 1: your pyramids, or your culture.
Speaker 2: It is a totally different ballgame.
Speaker 1: Right In six seventy four BC, that exact nightmare scenario happens.
Speaker 2: Yes, we are talking about the Assyrian war machine. The
Speaker 2: Assyrians were ruthless expansionists from Mesopotamia and they were terrifying
Speaker 2: beyond terrifying. Their entire state apparatus was built for war,
Speaker 2: and their method of expansion was pure, unadulterated terror. They
Speaker 2: had zero interest in assimilating, wearing traditional crowns, or seeking
Speaker 2: the blessing of a moon.
Speaker 1: They just wanted to crush everything.
Speaker 2: When they marched into Egypt, they graphically demonstrated their contempt
Speaker 2: by doing the unthinkable. They sacked the sacred ancient city
Speaker 2: of Thebes.
Speaker 1: And there's a specific artifact found in the ruins of
Speaker 1: Thebes that perfectly captures the shock of this event. Archaeologists
Speaker 1: uncovered an Assyrian bronze helmet. The very grim discovery right
Speaker 1: because the notes point out that the Egyptians didn't even
Speaker 1: wear helmets. They just relied on their thick, tightly braided
Speaker 1: hair in battle. So if you are an Egyptian priest
Speaker 1: and you find this heavy bronze, sophisticated piece of foreign
Speaker 1: armor sitting in the ruins of your sacred temple, it
Speaker 1: must have looked like an artifact from an alien planet.
Speaker 2: It was a profound psychological trauma. Think about the most sacred,
Speaker 2: untouchable place in your own culture. Imagine a foreign army
Speaker 2: rolling in and just aggressively violating it.
Speaker 1: Unimaginable.
Speaker 2: Thebes had never been attacked like this in Egyptian history.
Speaker 2: The Assyrians weren't just killing soldiers. They were trying to
Speaker 2: rip out Egypt's religious.
Speaker 1: Heart by damaging the temples.
Speaker 2: Damaging temples, and crucially, they mashed sacred statues. For the
Speaker 2: ancient Egyptians, a physical statue isn't just a representation, It
Speaker 2: is a literal vessel that houses the spirit of the divine.
Speaker 1: Oh so breaking a statue is tantamount to assassinating a
Speaker 1: god exactly.
Speaker 2: It was a calculated move meant to break the Egyptian
Speaker 2: spirit completely.
Speaker 1: But the Assyrians didn't stick around to rule, did they.
Speaker 1: After about twenty years, they had rebellions back in their
Speaker 1: own empires, so they packed up and left.
Speaker 2: They had bigger fish to fry.
Speaker 1: Back home, right, and they left behind some local vassal
Speaker 1: kings in the delta city of Ceys to collect taxes,
Speaker 1: and as soon as the Assyrian army was over the horizon,
Speaker 1: these Sitea kings flipped the script. They declared independence and
Speaker 1: triggered what historians call the cet Renaissance. But this renaissance
Speaker 1: took a very very strange turn, didn't it.
Speaker 2: It did. The Sat Kings realized they needed to aggressively
Speaker 2: declare their Egyptian identity after the humiliation of the Assyrian occupation.
Speaker 2: They needed a massive cultural megaphone to say we are
Speaker 2: Egypt and we are back.
Speaker 1: And how did they do that?
Speaker 2: Well? To do that, they turned to the one thing
Speaker 2: no other culture in the ancient world could do, mummification.
Speaker 2: Oh right, But they didn't just return to mummifying pharaohs.
Speaker 2: They scaled it up in a way that is almost unimaginable.
Speaker 1: It was an absolute explosion of animal mummification. We are
Speaker 1: talking about dogs, cats, crocodiles, ibises, even tiny little.
Speaker 2: Shrews, anything that walk, crawled, or flew.
Speaker 1: I was reading the descriptions of the necropolis at Saquara
Speaker 1: during this time, and it shatters my mental image of
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt. We always picture these quiet plias, priests wafting
Speaker 1: incense and dark, silent temples. But during the Secarite period,
Speaker 1: death became an industrialized big business how did the economics
Speaker 1: of this actually work.
Speaker 2: It was essentially the mass monetization of devotion. The state
Speaker 2: and the temples created massive breeding farms for these specific.
Speaker 1: Animals, breeding farms just for mummies exactly.
Speaker 2: You have to imagine Saquara not as a quiet graveyard,
Speaker 2: but as a bustling, loud, commercial hub packed with.
Speaker 1: Pilgrims like a market.
Speaker 2: Yes, a peasant or a merchant would travel to Saquara
Speaker 2: purchase a primummified animal or k to have one mummified
Speaker 2: and presented to the priest to bury in massive underground
Speaker 2: catacombs as a prayer to the gods.
Speaker 1: So it was like lighting a candle in a church,
Speaker 1: but with a mummified cat.
Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy. It generated an enormous wealth for
Speaker 2: the temples and unified the populace in a shared, highly
Speaker 2: visible religious practice. You literally had priests trundling massive carts
Speaker 2: full of animal mummies across the landscape.
Speaker 1: It's wild. But the absolute pinnacle of this devotion wasn't
Speaker 1: a tiny shrew. It was the cult of the Apist
Speaker 1: bol Oh.
Speaker 2: The Apist bowl is fascinating.
Speaker 1: Deep beneath Sakwar there is a subterranean tomb complex called
Speaker 1: the Serapium. Down there, archaeologists found giant, flawless granite sarcopha
Speaker 1: guy and inside these immense stone boxes they buried mummified bulls.
Speaker 2: Because they believe this pacific bowl and all the vital
Speaker 2: qualities of kingship and fertility. When a sacred APIs bull
Speaker 2: died naturally, it was believed to merge with Osiris, the
Speaker 2: god of the afterlife, creating a hybrid deity called Serapis.
Speaker 1: So they would mummify this massive animal, which is an
Speaker 1: incredible technical feet in itself, bury it with the pomp
Speaker 1: of a human pharaoh, and then immediately begin worshiping a
Speaker 1: new live bull. Right wait, hold on, So they mummified
Speaker 1: a bull buried in a massive granite box and then
Speaker 1: immediately just went out and picked a new bowl to worship.
Speaker 1: Didn't people catch on to the fact that it was
Speaker 1: just a regular animal. How did they justify that transition?
Speaker 2: Well, they didn't just pick any bull. The priests had
Speaker 2: an incredibly strict set of criteria. The new bowl had
Speaker 2: to have very specific markings, a white triangle on its forehead,
Speaker 2: a mark shaped like a scare beetle under its tongue,
Speaker 2: and hair on its tail that grew in a certain way.
Speaker 1: Oh so it was like finding the Dali Lama exactly
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: They would scour the countryside until they found a calf
Speaker 2: that matched the divine signs. Once found, it was brought
Speaker 2: to the temp and treated literally as a living god
Speaker 2: on earth. It was this constant, physical, breathing presence.
Speaker 1: Of the divine and you can see why that physical
Speaker 1: presence would be incredibly comforting during times of foreign occupation
Speaker 1: or instability. If the human pharaoh was weak, or if
Speaker 1: you were worried about another Assyrian invasion, the APIs bull
Speaker 1: was right there.
Speaker 2: It was a tangible god.
Speaker 1: You could see it with your own eyes. It was
Speaker 1: the soul of Egypt made flesh. But concentrating all of
Speaker 1: that national identity and divine power into a single living
Speaker 1: animal created a massive vulnerability.
Speaker 2: It put a giant target on the culture because in
Speaker 2: five point twenty five BC, the Persians.
Speaker 1: Invade another invasion, right, and the.
Speaker 2: Persian king Cambises is every bit as ruthless as the Assyrians.
Speaker 2: He destroyed the same dynasty. He takes the mummy of
Speaker 2: the previous native pharaoh and burns.
Speaker 1: It, which, in the Egyptian mind literally destroys that pharaoh's
Speaker 1: existence in the.
Speaker 2: Afterlife, utterly destroys it. And then he does the unthinkable.
Speaker 2: He draws his sword and he stabs the living apist bull.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't just kill it cleanly, right, he lets
Speaker 1: it slowly bleed to death. It is hard to overstate
Speaker 1: how devastating that must have been for the people witnessing it.
Speaker 2: It was horrific.
Speaker 1: By harming the most sacred creature in the land, Canvass
Speaker 1: was sending a terrifyingly clear message, your gods are dead,
Speaker 1: your traditions are meaningless, and I am the only power
Speaker 1: that matters now.
Speaker 2: It was the ultimate insult, and it ushered in two
Speaker 2: hundred years of misery. We were talking about two centuries
Speaker 2: of heavy Persian taxes, extreme military retaliation against any local rebellions,
Speaker 2: and total subjugation.
Speaker 1: The Egyptian culture was suffocating.
Speaker 2: They were desperate for a savior, and eventually the geopolitical
Speaker 2: wind shifted and they got one. A Macedonian superhero.
Speaker 1: Enter Alexander the Great.
Speaker 2: Yes, three hundred and thirty two BC.
Speaker 1: So it's three thirty two BC. Alexander has already defeated
Speaker 1: the Persian king in battle elsewhere and he marches his
Speaker 1: army into Egypt completely unopposed. He isn't seen as an invader,
Speaker 1: He's welcomed as a liberator.
Speaker 2: And Alexander was, without a doubt, a brilliant military commander.
Speaker 2: But what really shines through in this era is his
Speaker 2: absolute genius for political pr.
Speaker 1: He knew exactly how to play the crowd.
Speaker 2: He really did. He doesn't march in, establish a military
Speaker 2: garrison and demand everyone speak Greek. Instead, he goes straight
Speaker 2: to the ancient capital of Memphis. He actively plays into
Speaker 2: the swirling local rumors that he's secretly the son of
Speaker 2: the last native Egyptian pharaoh.
Speaker 1: Wow, just adopting their own misology right, and he.
Speaker 2: Allows himself to be crowned in the completely traditional Eegivian
Speaker 2: manner by the native priesthood.
Speaker 1: He understood exactly what the Libyans and the Kushites had
Speaker 1: learned before him. If you want to rule Egypt, you
Speaker 1: must appear to be Egyptian exactly. There is a fascinating
Speaker 1: piece of physical evidence for this in Luxor Temple. Tucked
Speaker 1: away in the complex is a modest little shrine, and
Speaker 1: carved onto the walls is a pharaoh offering incense to
Speaker 1: a moon.
Speaker 2: It looks like a standard carving.
Speaker 1: Right. He's wearing the traditional red and white jeweled crown.
Speaker 1: He has a traditional kilt croak. He looks exactly like
Speaker 1: every other pharaoh for the last two thousand years.
Speaker 2: But it's Alexander. And the only way you would ever
Speaker 2: know it's in as if you could read the hieroglyphs,
Speaker 2: because inside the royal cartouge, that little oval nameplate that
Speaker 2: denotes royalty, his Greek name is written out phonetically in
Speaker 2: Egyptian characters Alexandras.
Speaker 1: He seamlessly visually inserted himself into a three thousand year
Speaker 1: old continuous narrative.
Speaker 2: He did, but simply acting the part in Memphis wasn't
Speaker 2: enough for Alexander. He needed divine validation and this leads
Speaker 2: to one of the most pivotal moments in his life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the desert trip.
Speaker 2: He undertakes this incredibly perilous, grueling journey deep across the
Speaker 2: harsh Libyan desert to the remote sea.
Speaker 1: Wo oasis, which raises the question why would a conquering
Speaker 1: king risk his life in the desert just to visit
Speaker 1: an oasis?
Speaker 2: Because the Seawa Oasis was home to the oracle of
Speaker 2: a moon, one of the most respective prophetic voices in
Speaker 2: the ancient Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: And the journey itself was brutal, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. Historian's note. His caravan ran out of water
Speaker 2: and was nearly buried in a sandstorm. Surviving that journey
Speaker 2: alone probably felt like a divine miracle. He went there
Speaker 2: to commune with the oracle in secret, just him and
Speaker 2: the oracle, right, and whatever was said in that inner sanctum,
Speaker 2: it changed him forever. The legend, which Alexander actively encouraged,
Speaker 2: is that the oracle told him directly that he was
Speaker 2: not the son of Philip of Macedon, but the literal
Speaker 2: sun of the Goda Ammun.
Speaker 1: It was a massive psychological break. From that moment on,
Speaker 1: something fundamentally shifts in Alexander's mind. He leaves the desert
Speaker 1: believing with absolute certainty that he is divine.
Speaker 2: He has the full explicit blessing of the King of
Speaker 2: the Gods, and he uses that absolute, fanatical conviction to
Speaker 2: leave Egypt and conquer the rest of the known world.
Speaker 1: But before he leaves Egypt, and it's incredible to think
Speaker 1: he was only in the country for about six months,
Speaker 1: he leaves them a parting gift that would change history.
Speaker 1: He founds a new city on the Mediterranean coast, Alexandria.
Speaker 2: A monumental legacy.
Speaker 1: And there's this great anecdote I found in the historical
Speaker 1: accounts about how it started. Alexander is out there on
Speaker 1: the coastline trying to lay out the general plan for
Speaker 1: the city, but his architects don't have any chalk to
Speaker 1: mark the ground. So in a pinch, Alexander uses grain
Speaker 1: from the soldier's rations to mark the lines in the dirt.
Speaker 2: A very pragmatic solution, but one that immediately ran into
Speaker 2: a natural problem. A massive flock of coastal birds swooped
Speaker 2: down and ate all the grain, erasing the blueprint.
Speaker 1: Which for a man who had just been told by
Speaker 1: an oracle that he was a living god, Alexander took
Speaker 1: this as a terrible rejecting omen. He thought the gods
Speaker 1: were refusing his city.
Speaker 2: But he had a very smart, quick thinking religious adviser
Speaker 2: standing nearby who pulled off the ultimate pr spin.
Speaker 1: What did she say?
Speaker 2: The advisor looks at the birds eating the grain and says, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: my king, this isn't a bad omen. This is a prophecy.
Speaker 2: This means your new city will be so prosperous, it
Speaker 2: will generate so much wealth that it will one day
Speaker 2: feed the whole world.
Speaker 1: That is just brilliant, and it.
Speaker 2: Was a remarkably accurate piece of flattery. Alexandria would grow
Speaker 2: to become the greatest, most cosmopolitan city on.
Speaker 1: Earth, but Alexander himself would never see a single building completed.
Speaker 1: He left Egypt in three thirty one BC, marched his
Speaker 1: army all the way to India, and died of a
Speaker 1: sudden fever in Babylon at the age of just thirty two.
Speaker 2: He was undefeated, the ruler of a two million square
Speaker 2: mile empire, and technically still the pharaoh of Egypt, which kicks.
Speaker 1: Off one of the greatest, most cinematic heists in ancient history,
Speaker 1: because when Alexander dies, his top generals immediately start fighting
Speaker 1: over his vast empire, but more importantly, they start fighting
Speaker 1: over his mummified body. Why was the physical corpse so important?
Speaker 2: Well, in the ancient Macedonian tradition, a king's successor solidified
Speaker 2: his legitimacy by burying his predecessor. Furthermore, whoever possessed the physical,
Speaker 2: preserved body of the divine Alexander the Great held the
Speaker 2: ultimate talisman of power.
Speaker 1: It was physical proof of legitimacy, exactly.
Speaker 2: Physical proof of legitimacy over his empire, especially over the
Speaker 2: incredibly wealthy province of Egypt.
Speaker 1: And this is where his general Ptolemy makes his move.
Speaker 1: How do you hijack a massive.
Speaker 2: Royal funeral with incredible audacity in military precision. Alexander's massive
Speaker 2: ornate funeral, Cortege, which was essentially a rolling temple covered
Speaker 2: in gold, was slowly making its way from Babylon back.
Speaker 1: Toward Greece, just trundling along right.
Speaker 2: Ptolemy, who was already positioned in Egypt, intercepts it with
Speaker 2: his own army in Syria. He literally hijacks the corpse.
Speaker 1: It just steals it.
Speaker 2: He steals it. He diverts the entire procession and brings
Speaker 2: Alexander's mummy back to Egypt, eventually burying him in a
Speaker 2: magnificent tomb in Alexandria. To legitimize his own.
Speaker 1: Rule by physically planting Alexander's body in Egyptian soil, Ptolemy
Speaker 1: is basically planting a flag and saying, I am the
Speaker 1: legitimate successor. I rule Egypt now and that bold heist
Speaker 1: kicks off the final The most fabulous and easily the
Speaker 1: most flamboyant era of ancient Egypt, the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Speaker 2: The ttolamac dynasty rule for three centuries. You have fifteen
Speaker 2: male kings, all conveniently named Ptolemy, and their female co rulers,
Speaker 2: several of whom were named Cleopatra.
Speaker 1: They really stuck to the family names they did.
Speaker 2: They were Macedonian Greek by descent, but their governing strategy
Speaker 2: was a masterclass in cultural duality. On one hand, they
Speaker 2: brought Greek culture, Greek administration, and unimaginable wealth into Egypt,
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, they completely and utterly immersed
Speaker 2: themselves in native Egyptian religion.
Speaker 1: They took everything to the next level. Let's look at
Speaker 1: Alexandria under the Ptolemys. It wasn't just a city, it
Speaker 1: was an ancient metropolis on steroids.
Speaker 2: It really was the center of the world.
Speaker 1: The architectural records described these colonnaded marble streets that were
Speaker 1: over ten meters wide. They built the Pharaoh's Lighthouse, which
Speaker 1: was one hundred and thirty five meters tall. One of
Speaker 1: the wonders of the ancient world. You could see its
Speaker 1: fire burning from miles out at sea, guiding massive cargo
Speaker 1: ships into the busiest port on Earth, and.
Speaker 2: Through that port flowed a staggering amount of international trade.
Speaker 2: They were importing Greek olives, which the Egyptians quickly started
Speaker 2: cultivating themselves. They were bringing an Indian black pepper, which
Speaker 2: the Greek elite went absolutely crazy for. Oh. They had
Speaker 2: raw incense from Arabia, exotic silks from the East, all
Speaker 2: mixing in the markets with native Egyptian papyrus, grain and dates.
Speaker 2: If you were standing in the markets of Alexandria back then,
Speaker 2: your senses would be completely overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: The smells and the noise must have been incredible.
Speaker 2: It wasn't inward looking like the older Egyptian capital of Memphis.
Speaker 2: Alexandria was a global hub, open to the world.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just physical trade. It was a sanctuary
Speaker 1: for the mind. The Ptolemys wanted to compete with the
Speaker 1: legendary philosophical schools of Athens, so they built the Great.
Speaker 2: Library, the Famous Library.
Speaker 1: They created this intellectual hot house, aggressively gathering up to
Speaker 1: half a million papyrus scrolls. They had the plays of Eschylus,
Speaker 1: the philosophy of Aristotle. They even commissioned the first Greek
Speaker 1: translation of the Old Testament scriptures. They brought together biology, astronomy, geometry,
Speaker 1: and history all under one roof.
Speaker 2: It created an unprecedented air of cosmopolitan tolerance within the city.
Speaker 2: But we shouldn't romance decize it too much, because outside
Speaker 2: of Alexandria, the mingling of Greek and Egyptian cultures caused
Speaker 2: some serious culture shock.
Speaker 1: Oh definitely. The Great Library actually housed the works of
Speaker 1: the Greek historian Herodotus, who had traveled through Egypt earlier,
Speaker 1: and his accounts perfectly captured the bewilderment that a traditional
Speaker 1: Greek man felt when confronted with Egyptian society.
Speaker 2: Charatis was absolutely scandalized.
Speaker 1: He really was. He wrote that the Egyptians had completely
Speaker 1: reversed the common practices of mankind. He was shocked that
Speaker 1: women were out in the market's trading, managing property, and
Speaker 1: conducting business while the men sat at home operating the
Speaker 1: weaving looms.
Speaker 2: The level of equality and economic agency that Egyptian women
Speaker 2: possessed completely short circuited his strict patriarchal Greek mindset, and.
Speaker 1: He was particularly taken aback by their religious festivals. He
Speaker 1: describes witnessing pilgrims traveling by boat down the Nile to
Speaker 1: the Delta city of Bubastis for a festival.
Speaker 2: Ah Yes, the boat parties.
Speaker 1: He describes this wild scene, women making noise, with clappers
Speaker 1: playing obos, everyone's singing and clapping as they passed towns.
Speaker 1: The women on the boats, which shout mockery at the
Speaker 1: women on the shore. They would dance wildly, and some
Speaker 1: would even stand up and flash the people on the
Speaker 1: river banks.
Speaker 2: It was a full on party.
Speaker 1: It was loud, it was body, it was joyful. It
Speaker 1: was so far removed from the stoic quiet reverence the
Speaker 1: Greeks expected of religious devotion.
Speaker 2: But the Ptolemies, to their immense credit, didn't try to
Speaker 2: shut those native traditions down. In fact, they heavily funded them. Really, yes,
Speaker 2: there is a very common misconception among modern tourists who
Speaker 2: visit Egypt today when they stand in awe before the
Speaker 2: incredibly preserved towering temples at esna Edfu, Dandero or Kamombo,
Speaker 2: they assume they are looking at structures built by the pharaohs.
Speaker 1: Of the New Kingdom, right because they look so classically Egyptian.
Speaker 2: But they aren't. Many of the most famous iconic ancient
Speaker 2: Egyptian temples were actually built from scratch or heavily restored
Speaker 2: by these Greek ptolemies.
Speaker 1: They were throwing massive amounts of money into native temple
Speaker 1: building to keep the priests happy. The records highlight the
Speaker 1: Temple of Pelae way down in upper Egypt near Us One.
Speaker 1: It's this incredibly spiritual island complex dedicated to the goddess Isis,
Speaker 1: and it was heavily built up by Ptolemy the second
Speaker 1: and his sister, who, in traditional Egyptian royal fashion, was
Speaker 1: also his wife, Arsino.
Speaker 2: Arsenou is a fascinating figure. She was a powerful female
Speaker 2: pharaoh in her own right, and Ptolemy the second actually
Speaker 2: passed a law demanding that a statue of her be
Speaker 2: erected in every single native temple in Egypt.
Speaker 1: Wow, talk about an ego.
Speaker 2: Well, she became the resident goddess closely associated with Isis,
Speaker 2: and it's this exact blueprint the powerful female ruler embodying
Speaker 2: the mother goddess Isis that the famous Cleopatra would successfully
Speaker 2: adopt two centuries later to command the loyalty of the
Speaker 2: native population, so.
Speaker 1: They are building these beautiful traditional temples. But here's where
Speaker 1: it gets really interesting. In Alexandria and the surrounding areas,
Speaker 1: this blending of Greek and Egyptian cultures some times resulted
Speaker 1: in art and architecture that.
Speaker 2: Was just bizarre or truly bizarre.
Speaker 1: I was looking at the notes on one specific family
Speaker 1: tomb that perfectly illustrates how weird the hybrid culture became.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is a remarkable archaeological find. It's a subterranean
Speaker 2: tomb for a wealthy Alexandrian family and they essentially through
Speaker 2: every single religious and cultural insurance policy they add at
Speaker 2: the walls, hoping something would successfully get them into the afterlife.
Speaker 1: It's an absolute visual mashup. You walk up and the
Speaker 1: entrance is guarded by classical Greek dorrit columns. Now, for
Speaker 1: the listener, when we say dorrit columns, think of the
Speaker 1: austere fluted pillars you would see on the Parthenon in Athens,
Speaker 1: very greed. But right next to those classical Greek columns
Speaker 1: are statues of traditional Egyptian gods, and protecting the doorway
Speaker 1: is a carved Egyptian cobra. But the cobra has no eyelashes.
Speaker 2: Why because in Egyptian magical tradition, an eyelashless cobra can
Speaker 2: never blink, meaning its eyes are forever open, allowing it
Speaker 2: to stay awake twenty four hours a day to fierce
Speaker 2: protect the tomb from evil spirits. It's a very specific
Speaker 2: native magical detail.
Speaker 1: But then you look at the statues of the two
Speaker 1: owners themselves, and the cultural whiplash is intense. From the
Speaker 1: neck down, their bodies, their rigid posture, the kilts they
Speaker 1: are wearing. It is one hundred percent rigid ancient Egyptian
Speaker 1: art style.
Speaker 2: But from the neck up they have completely European Hellenistic
Speaker 2: style heads and faces with curly hair and Greek features.
Speaker 2: It looks like someone glued to Greek marble bust onto
Speaker 2: an Egyptian action figure.
Speaker 1: And the paintings inside are even crazier you have thought,
Speaker 1: presenting sacred oils and Nubis mummifying the dead, the goddess
Speaker 1: Mott weighing the heart against the feather of justice, all
Speaker 1: the standard serious Egyptian requirements for navigating the.
Speaker 2: Underworld, the necessary rituals.
Speaker 1: But right underneath them they painted Dionysus, the Greek god
Speaker 1: of wine, theater and festivity.
Speaker 2: Because the owners of the tomb one of the absolute
Speaker 2: guarantee of the ancient Egyptian afterlife, the immortality of the soul.
Speaker 2: But they didn't want to give up the lavish lifestyle
Speaker 2: of the Aca Alexandrian and elite.
Speaker 1: They wanted to party in eternity.
Speaker 2: They wanted to ensure that the opulent wine parties they
Speaker 2: enjoyed in the Greek capital would continue eternally in the
Speaker 2: Egyptian underworld. They were hedging their beds across two different pantheons.
Speaker 1: It's cartoonish, it's this incredibly desperate attempt to cover all
Speaker 1: the bases. But as funny as that tomb is, it
Speaker 1: points to a darker reality because that cartoonish blend was
Speaker 1: ultimately just a veneer. The real threat to Egypt wasn't
Speaker 1: another foreign army marching over the horizon. The real threat
Speaker 1: was coming from inside the palace.
Speaker 2: Exactly the famous Ptolemaic love of luxury and excess became
Speaker 2: their undoing. We have an ancient commentator who described the
Speaker 2: royal court at Alexandria by saying, everything in Egypt is
Speaker 2: simply play acting in painted scenery.
Speaker 1: Ouch that is a devastating critique.
Speaker 2: It cuts right to the heart of a melodramatic monarchy
Speaker 2: where image was absolutely everything and substance was slowly draining away.
Speaker 1: They were living it up in Alexandria, acting out their
Speaker 1: grand Greek Egyptian hybrid fantasy while the rest of the
Speaker 1: country was footing the bill. The taxes were crushing, the
Speaker 1: Greek speaking elite were completely detached from the struggles of
Speaker 1: the native Egyptian peasant farmers, and eventually the bill comes
Speaker 1: due right the system breaks Upper Egypt, the southern part
Speaker 1: of the country finally snaps. They begin to rebel and
Speaker 1: the country is plunged into a brutal civil.
Speaker 2: War, which leads us to one of the most famous
Speaker 2: archaeological artifacts in human history, an object that most people
Speaker 2: completely misunderstand, the Rosetta Stone.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows the Rosetta Stone. It's the black slab of
Speaker 1: rock that the French scholar Champoleon used in eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: two to finally decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. I always thought of
Speaker 1: it as just a linguistic tool because it has the
Speaker 1: same text written in three scripts formal Greek, everyday Egyptian,
Speaker 1: demotic and sacred hieroglyphics.
Speaker 2: Just to clarify for the listener, demotic was the cursive
Speaker 2: everyday script used by regular Egyptians for business in daily life,
Speaker 2: as opposed to the complex hieroglyphs used by priests. But
Speaker 2: this raises an important question, why was that stone created
Speaker 2: in the first place?
Speaker 1: Right, It wasn't made for archaeologists.
Speaker 2: It certainly wasn't designed to be a handy dictionary for
Speaker 2: future European scholars. It was, in reality a desperate political
Speaker 2: news bulletin issued by the boy king tole me Vi.
Speaker 1: Wait. It was a bribe. I read the translation in
Speaker 1: the notes. The country is tearing itself apart in civil war,
Speaker 1: and Ptolemy V desperately needs the powerful native Egyptian priesthood
Speaker 1: on his side to keep control of the population. So
Speaker 1: he issues this massive decree written in three scripts so
Speaker 1: absolutely every class of citizen can read it, bragging about
Speaker 1: his incredibly generous financial patronage to the temples.
Speaker 2: Precisely, he is publicly documenting how much silver and grain
Speaker 2: he is giving the priests, and how much honor he
Speaker 2: is showing to the sacred animals like our old friend
Speaker 2: the Avis bull oh.
Speaker 1: Tying it back to the Bull.
Speaker 2: He is using the exact same playbook as Alexander, the
Speaker 2: Saites and the Kushites. He is signaling to the native population,
Speaker 2: I am respecting your traditions, I am paying for your temples,
Speaker 2: I am doing things the Egyptian way. Please please support
Speaker 2: my regime against the rebels.
Speaker 1: But the philanthropy was just too expensive, trying to buy
Speaker 1: peace drain the treasury. The second half of the Ptolemaic
Speaker 1: dynasty is just a sad, downward spiral of crippling debt,
Speaker 1: deep corruption, and vicious, endless civil wars between brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: It was a mess, and all of this internal chaos
Speaker 1: leaves them completely vulnerable to a new terrifyingly efficient power
Speaker 1: expanding rapidly across the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2: The Romans were bearing down on a deeply divided, bankrupt Egypt,
Speaker 2: and the only thing standing between Rome and the total
Speaker 2: annexation of Egypt was the last Ptolemaic ruler, the brilliant
Speaker 2: and tragic Cleopatra.
Speaker 1: She fought so hard she was totally in the mold
Speaker 1: of her ancestor, Alexander the Great. She genuinely believed she
Speaker 1: was divine. She aggressively associated herself with the goddess Isis,
Speaker 1: and through sheer political genius, charm, and strategic alliances with
Speaker 1: Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, she managed to hold the
Speaker 1: Roman war Mashine at bay for over twenty years.
Speaker 2: She was a formidable politician.
Speaker 1: But eventually the geopolitical reality was just too overwhelming. Following
Speaker 1: her naval defeat by Octavian at Actium, Cleopatra realized that
Speaker 1: the century's long game was finally over. She could not
Speaker 1: prevent the inevitable annexation, and so in August of thirty BC,
Speaker 1: to avoid being paraded through Roman chains, Cleopatra commits suicides.
Speaker 2: And with her death, the three thousand year epic story
Speaker 2: of ancient Egypt as an independent, culturally dominant force essentially
Speaker 2: comes to an end in a matter of days. By
Speaker 2: August thirty first, Room formerly annexed.
Speaker 1: Egypt, it wasn't an independent kingdom anymore. It was just
Speaker 1: a province, the personal, heavily taxed bread basket of the
Speaker 1: Roman emperor.
Speaker 2: That was the point of no return. It wasn't an
Speaker 2: overnight disappearance of the culture, but rather a slow, painful fade.
Speaker 2: The crushing Roman taxation drained the wealth out of the temples,
Speaker 2: meaning the priests could no longer maintain the old rights.
Speaker 1: They just ran out of money.
Speaker 2: And then a few centuries later, with the eventual arrival
Speaker 2: and spread of Christianity, the old gods were finally permanently dethroned.
Speaker 2: The great temples at Karnak, at luxor at Phile were abandoned,
Speaker 2: their stones repurposed or actively destroyed.
Speaker 1: By zelots, and the desert reclaimed. At all the sand
Speaker 1: literally blew in over those ten meters wide marble streets
Speaker 1: in Alexandria. The Great Pyramids stood silently as the knowledge
Speaker 1: of how to read hieroglyphs vanished from the earth entirely.
Speaker 2: A total erasure.
Speaker 1: The glorious zenith of rebirth, the fabled Golden Treasures, the
Speaker 1: unshakable beliefs in the afterlife, they all slowly faded from
Speaker 1: living memory and were buried under a thousand years of sand.
Speaker 2: But if we zoom out and look at the entire
Speaker 2: three thousand year arc we've discussed today, it is an
Speaker 2: unparalleled human achievement. They survived chaos, famine, and internal collapse
Speaker 2: over and over again.
Speaker 1: It's an incredible run.
Speaker 2: And when the invaders came, the Libyans wanting the gold,
Speaker 2: the Kushites wanting the spiritual origin, the Assyrians bringing violence,
Speaker 2: the Persians bringing subjugation, the Greeks bringing a new world order.
Speaker 2: Egypt assimilated almost all of them. The true power of
Speaker 2: Egypt was always its deep environmental roots and its completely
Speaker 2: compelling magnetic worldview.
Speaker 1: And the most beautiful part of this story is that
Speaker 1: the slow fade into the sand wasn't the final chapter.
Speaker 1: Starting in the nineteenth century, pioneering archaeologists began digging, They
Speaker 1: brushed away the sand, They found the Rosetta Stone, they
Speaker 1: deciphered the hieroglyphs, and they began a two hundred year
Speaker 1: process of rediscoverer.
Speaker 2: Ancient Egypt experienced one final, magnificent rebirth. But this time
Speaker 2: it didn't just conquer the Nile Valley.
Speaker 1: It went global exactly. I mean, you can walk along
Speaker 1: the embankment in modern day London and suddenly look up
Speaker 1: and see Cleopatra's Needle, a genuine ancient Egyptian obelisk, just
Speaker 1: sitting there in the drizzling rain. The artifacts, the art,
Speaker 1: the mythology, It's in museums in Paris, New York, Tokyo.
Speaker 2: Which leaves us with a fascinating final thought to consider.
Speaker 2: We usually measure the historical strength of a civilization by
Speaker 2: its military we might, or by how much territory it
Speaker 2: managed to conquer and hold with the sword right.
Speaker 1: The traditional metrics of power.
Speaker 2: But the story of Egypt suggests a completely different metric.
Speaker 2: True immortality doesn't come from the strength of your walls.
Speaker 2: It comes from having a culture so compelling, so esthetically
Speaker 2: and spiritually magnetic, that even your enemies want to wear
Speaker 2: your clothes, speak your name, and worship your gods.
Speaker 1: In a way, the ancient Egyptians achieve their ultimate religious goal.
Speaker 1: They secured eternal life in the minds of the entire world.
Speaker 1: And it makes you wonder about our own era. We
Speaker 1: don't have massive empires invading with chariots anymore, but we
Speaker 1: do have massive, overwhelming cultural forces.
Speaker 2: Exactly. If you want to think about a modern equivalent
Speaker 2: to the cultural black hole of ancient Egypt, look at
Speaker 2: the digital world. Look at the Internet.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's an interesting comparison.
Speaker 2: Think about it. Every subculture, every local tradition, every analog
Speaker 2: business model that tries to interact with the digital landscape
Speaker 2: eventually gets absor or buy it. The internet forces you
Speaker 2: to adopt its language, memes, algorithms, viral trends, just to
Speaker 2: survive within it.
Speaker 1: That is so true.
Speaker 2: You might think you are logging on to conquer an
Speaker 2: audience or build a brand, but ultimately the digital culture
Speaker 2: shapes your behavior, changes how you communicate, and completely assimilates
Speaker 2: you into its framework.
Speaker 1: So in the twenty first century, the Internet is the
Speaker 1: new ancient Egypt. It's this massive, inescapable environment that quietly
Speaker 1: conquers everyone who tries to use it. That is a
Speaker 1: wild thought to leave on. As always, thank you for
Speaker 1: joining us on this deep dive. Keep questioning the history
Speaker 1: you think you know, and we'll catch you on the
Speaker 1: next one.