OCT 26, 2024

History, Bronze Age

<aside> 📒 Summary of “Fall of Civilizations” podcast on Egypt

</aside>

• It’s easy to navigate on a boat Nile: you can sail upstream, as winds are usually blowing south – and just let the waters carry you north
• The “up” was south - upstream of the Nile. Words for east and west correspond with right and left
  • The name for the land was “the River”
• Crocodiles were kept at temples, with earrings put in
  • They were also hunted for food
  • Hippopotamus is also present
• The Delta of the Nile is important.
  • Seasonal flooding
• Early Egyptians were influenced by Sumer, initially mirroring their architecture and art – but developed their own style eventually
  • Hieroglyphs appear all at once – in contrast to the gradual development of cuneiform. Probably the system was devised, inspired by it
• Mummification as a death ritual
  • :my-quill: Idea: preserving the body is important for “speak with dead” magic, as it allows taping into the knowledge of the deceased
• Only the most stable kings would rule long enough to see their pyramids done (takes about 30 years)
  • Builders were either professional artisans or hired peasants (fieldwork was seasonal, so they went to build pyramids or dig canals in between)
    • They were buried within the royal complex
  • The mania for huge pyramids was born and then died down during Fourth Dynasty (2613 to 2494). The pyramids were built after that – but not to the same scale
  • “Old king problem”: succession, heirs are old themselves
• Cats were kept to deter rats in the big granaries (they also have fast reflex to kill a snake)
• Women tended to the garden (instead of fields?) and were prominent in brewing
  • Women could hold power, some kings were female
• Eruption of a mega volcano in Greece (4.2-kiloyear event)
  • Enormous wave
  • Volcanic winter
• Bronze Age collapse
  • Egypt managed to repel Sea People, but neighbors fell and trading seized
• The Nubian kingdom of Kush (conquered and held prior) became more Egyptian than the fractured empire
  • 730 BC Nubian Empire took lower Egypt (prior it took upper via influence when Kushite princess was declared wife of Amun and added Thebes to her fathers empire)
    • Upper Egypt was ruled by priesthood by now
  • a millennium after Egyptians stopped building pyramids, they built some
  • 25th Egypt dynasty of kings was Nubian
  • King Taharqa ran night-time drills for his soldiers
    • Egypt grew as big, as it was in New Kingdom
    • He managed to repel Assyrians. But in three years they returned and took Memphis (capital)
• After Assyrians, Egypt was captured by Persians and then Alexander the Great
  • His general founded Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled for 300 years
• 30 BC Cleopatra committed suicide and Romans seized Egypt