Ancient Egypt: Crash Course World History #4 Video Lecture | A Complete Guide to World History : 1 - World Knowledge

Hi there, my name’s John Green and this is Crash Course: World History, and today we’re going to talk about Egypt.
No, not that Egypt.
Older.
Older.
Older.
Less fictional.
Yes, that one.
Ancient Egypt is probably the most influential
of the river valley civilizations.
Like you might not recognize any Assyrian Kings or Assyrian language, but you probably do know King Tut.
And you may recognize that the Eye of Horus
is right now staring at me and judging me.
I can feel, I can feel your judgement.
[Theme Music]
When we think of Ancient Civilizations, we
think of Egypt.
There are a few reasons for this, like the fact that the pyramids are the last man standing among the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World.
But more importantly, Ancient Egyptian civilization lasted from 3000 BCE to 332 BCE.
That’s a period that historians call a long-ass time.
And I will remind you it is not cursing
if I'm talking about donkeys.
So there are many approaches to the study
of history. You could view history as a millennial
long conversation about philosophy or as clashes
between great men or you can see history through
the lens of traditionally neglected populations,
like women or indigenous peoples or slaves.
And we’re going to try to take many approaches
to our study of history during Crash Course.
Mr. Green, Mr. Green, which approach is right?
I mean, for the test.
Oh me-from-the-past. Remember how you spent
all of third year French writing notes back
and forth to that girl and she eventually
agreed to go out with you and you did make
it to second base but now you can hardly parle
un mot de francais?
Historical lenses are like that, my friend: With every
choice, something is gained and something is lost.
Right, so in discussing agriculture and early
civilizations, we’ve been approaching history
through the lens of resource distribution
and geography.
And just as the violent and capricious Tigris
and Euphrates rivers shaped the worldview
of early Mesopotamians, the Nile shaped the world
view of the Egyptians. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
The Nile was regular, navigable, and benign,
making for one of the safest and richest agricultural
areas in the world. Each summer the river
flooded the fields at precisely the right
time, leaving behind nutrient-rich silt for
planting season.
Planting was so easy that Egyptians just tossed
seeds around the silty earth and then let
their cattle or pigs walk on it to press the
seeds into the ground, and then boom, grain
and figs and wheat and pomegranates and melons
and joy.
Unlike most river valley civilizations, Egyptian
communities existed ONLY along the Nile, which
was navigable enough to get valuable resources
downstream from timber to gold, which the Egyptians
considered the divine metal, thereby introducing
an idea that would eventually culminate in Mr. T.
The Nile is also easily tamed. While other
river valley civilizations needed complicated
and labor-intensive hydraulic engineering
projects to irrigate crops, the Nile was so
chill that Egyptians could use a simple form
of water management called basin irrigation,
in which farmers used floodwaters to fill
earthen basins and canals for irrigation.
In short, the awesomeness of the Nile meant
Egyptians could create big food surpluses
with relatively little work, allowing time
and energy for some pretty impressive projects.
Also, the Nile may help explain the ancient
Egypt’s general optimism:
While ancient Sumerian religion, for instance,
saw the afterlife as this gloomy, dark place,
Egyptians were often buried with things that
were useful and pleasurable to them in life,
because the Afterlife was seen as a continuation
of this life, which, at least if you lived
along the Nile, wasn’t half-bad.
Thanks, Thought Bubble.
And now, my dear pupils, I shall terrorize
you with the oppression of dates. No. Dates.
Yes. Thank you.
Historians have divided Egyptian history into
three broad categories. Each with their own
numbered dynasties. But only hardcore Egyptologists
know the dynasties, and we’re not trying
to become hardcore Egyptologists.
The Old Kingdom lasted from 2649 to 2152;
The middle kingdom from 2040 to 1640;
And the New Kingdom, so called because it
is only 3,000 years old, lasted from 1550-1070 BCE.
In between you have a couple so-called Intermediate
periods. Okay, OLD KINGDOM.
This was really the glory age of ancient Egypt,
when we get all the stuff that will later
make Indiana Jones possible, like the pyramids at Giza, and the sun king Ra, and the idea of divine kingship.
The king, or Pharoh, was either a god or very close to a god.
which seems like a good gig, except that it
meant that he wasn’t expected to act like
a person, he was expected to act like a god,
which in ancient Egypt means acting like the
Nile: calm, cool, benevolent...
There’s no fun it that.
And then of course there are the pyramids,
which aside from remaining impressive to behold
represent a remarkable degree of political
and social control over the population, because
it is not easy to convince people to devote
their lives to building a sarcophagus for someone else.
The most famous pyramids were built between
2575 and 2465 BCE.
The one with the Sphinx was for Khephren;
the largest, the Great Pyramid, was built
for the Pharaoh Khufu.
These pyramids were built partly by peasants
who were required by Egyptian law to work
for the government a certain number of months
per year,
and partly by slaves, but not by Moses and
the Jews, who showed up on the scene long
before pyramids were ever even a twinkle in
Khufu’s eye.
This leads to an overwhelming question: Why?
Why in the sweet name of Ra would anyone ever
build such a thing?
Well, let’s start with Ra. So, Ra started
out as a regional god, reigning over Heliopolis,
but he eventually became really central to
the entire pantheon of gods of ancient Egypt.
He was the god of the sun, but also the god
of creation.
And the thinking was that if humans did their
jobs then the pantheon of gods would maintain
cosmic order, and since the pharaohs became
gods upon their death, it made sense to please
them even unto pyramids.
Egyptian popular religion also embraced the
belief in amulets and magic and divination
and the belief that certain animals--
especially cats—had divine power.
And yes, I did bring that up just so I could
lolcat.
Old Kingdom Egypt was also remarkably literate:
They had two forms of writing, hieroglyphics
for sacred writing and then demotic script
for recording contracts and agreements and
other boring stuff.
The last thing I want to say about Old Kingdom
Egypt; it was ridiculously rich.
But then around 2250 BCE there were a series
of droughts and Pharaohs started fighting
over who should have power and we had an intermediate
period.
[classic intermission music]
Which was followed by the Middle Earth...
No, what? The middle kingdom? Ohh. Really?
That’s a bummer, Stan. I want it to be the
Middle Earth. How awesome would that be? Like
right in the middle of Egyptian history, there
were Hobbits....
So the Middle Kingdom, which apparently had
no Hobbits, restored Pharaonic rule in 2040
BCE but with some distinct changes:
First, the rulers were outsiders, from downriver
in Nubia. Second, they fostered a new pantheon
of gods, the star of which was Ammun, which
means hidden.
So here’s a little lesson from history: Hidden
gods tend to do well because they’re omnipresent.
So Ammun eventually merged with Ra to form
the god Ammun-Ra, who was like the best god ever
and all the Middle Kingdom pharaohs made temples
for him and devoted all of their surplus to his glory.
The Middle Kingdom also developed an interest
in conquering, specifically the new homeland
of Nubia, and they developed a side interest
in getting conquered, specifically by Semitic
peoples from the Levant.
They were able to conquer much of Egypt using
superior military technology like bronze weapons
and compound bows, and chariots of fire. What?
They were just regular chariots? STAN WHY
ARE YOU ALWATS KILLING MY DREAMS?
One group, the Hyksos, were able to conquer
all of Egypt, but rather than like destroying
the Egyptian culture, they just relaxed like
the Nile and assimilated into the Egyptians.
And the Egyptians adopted their military technology.
And then the Egyptians destroyed the Hyksos
and expelled them from Egypt.
And then by 1550 BCE there was again an Egyptian
pharaoh, Ahmosis...
...whose name only sounds like an STD.
Anyway, after all this conquering and being
conquered, Egypt eventually emerged from its
geographically imposed isolationism and, can
you cue the New Kingdom Graphic please?
There it is!
New Kingdom Egypt continued this military
expansion but it looked more like an Empire,
particularly when they headed south and took
over land in an attempt to find gold and slaves.
Probably the most expansive of the New Kingdom
pharaohs was Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled
Egypt for about 22 years.
And who expanded Egypt not through military
might, but through trade.
But most new kingdom pharaohs being dudes,
focused on military expansion, which brought
Egypt into conflicts with the Assyrians who
you’ll remember from last week,
And then the Persians, and then Alexander
the Great and finally, the Romans.
On the whole, Egypt probably would’ve been
better off enjoying its geographical isolation
and not trying to conquer new territory, but
all of Egypt’s friends had jumped off a bridge, so…
One last thing about the New Kingdom. There
was this crazy New Kingdom Pharaoh named Akehenaten,
who tried to invent a new god for Egypt, Aten.
Akehenaten was kind of the Kim Jong Il of
Ancient Egypt, like he had this feared police
force and this big cult of personality. And
also he was a nut job.
Anyway, after his death he was replaced by
his wife, and then a daughter and than a son,
Tutankaten, who turned his back on the weird
god Aten and changed his name to Tutankhamen.
And that is about all King Tut did before
he died...
...probably around the age of 17. Honestly,
the only reason King Tut is famous is that
most Pharaohs had their graves robbed by ancient
people; and King Tut had his grave robbed
by 20th century British people.
Which brings us to the Open Letter.
An Open Letter to King Tut:
Oh, but first we gotta find out what Stan
left for me in the Secret Compartment. It’s a pen.
AAHHHH!! It’s a shock
pen! Stan?%@#
That’s a terrible, terrible gift for the
secret compartment.
Dear King Tut, I know that as Pharaohs lives go, yours
was pretty poor. First, you had to marry your
sister, which hopefully you weren’t that
psyched about, plus you had a cleft palette
and probably scoliosis.
Plus you died before really reaching adulthood.
But dude, you have had the best afterlife ever.
Since your body was discovered in 1922, you’ve
become probably the most famous ancient person.
There have been lots of books about you, scholars
have devoted their lives to you.
Dude, we’re so obsessed with you that we
used this fancy new technology to scan your
body and establish that you probably died
of an infected broken leg and/or malaria,
So you’ve inspired such seminal works of
art as the Discovery Kids series Tutenstein,
which my son forces me to watch.
Your relics have been to six continents! So
it all works out in the end, man.
Well, I mean, you’re still dead. So that’s
kinda sucks.
Best wishes,
John Green
King Tut leads us nicely to the really crucial
thing about Egyptian culture.
Because King Tut lived right around the same
time as the pyramids right? Wrong.
Remember the pyramids were built around 2500
BCE during the Old Kingdom. King Tut died
in 1322 BCE, 1200 years later!
That’s five and a half Americas. But because
Egypt was so similar for so long, it all tends
to blend together when we imagine it.
Ancient Egypt lasted 1000 years longer than
Christianity has been around, and about 800
years longer than that other super-long lived
civilization, China.
So there was an entire culture that lasted
longer than Western Civilization has existed
and it had run its course before “the West”
was even born.
Next week, we’ll look at the Persians and
the Greeks. I’ll see you then.
Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan
Muller; The show is written by Raoul Meyer
my high school history teacher and myself;
our script supervisor is Danica Johnson and
our graphics team is Thought Bubble.
Last week’s phrase of the week was “Male
Models.” You can take your guess at this
week’s phrase of the week in Comments and
also suggest future phrases of the week.
And if you have any questions about today’s
video, leave them in Comments and our team
of semi-professional quasi-historians will
endeavor to answer them as best we can.
Thanks for watching and as we say in my hometown:
Don’t forget to be awesome.