The First Pharaohs

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. MORE Origins of the Egyptian Gods https://open.spotify.com/episode/421u5gVkgippbgpPttjE3O The Great Pyramid of Giza https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ZV9Zf8yVJuMVJZJo018h0 Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The 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: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

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• 1:11Tristan Hughes?

  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 Ramses 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.

• 2:11Tristan Hughes?

  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 B.C. It's their enigmatic story that we're delving into today. A tale of looted tombs, 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

• 2:53Tristan Hughes?

  who lived 5,000 years ago before the pyramids? This is the story of the first pharaohs with our guest, Professor Aidan Dodson.

• 3:22Tristan Hughes?

  Aidan, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  Nice of you to invite me.

• 3:27Tristan Hughes?

  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 enigmatic a period in ancient Egyptian history, just simply because of how far back in time we're going.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  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 will follow on from that. But yeah, in comparison with the sort of data we've got from 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.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  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 a lot of questions still to be answered during that era.

• 4:42Tristan Hughes?

  How do you as archaeologists manage to push back the knowledge of the time period of 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?

• 4:58Speaker 03

  I think those that the 1890s, when we were rediscovering that stuff, it was really looking at bits of sites that had never been touched before. Particularly at Abydos, 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 Amelino discovered the site, which turned out to be the cemetery of the kings of the first dynasty. And a couple of the second dynasty, maybe made some of a pig's ear of the whole process. So then Flinders Petrie, who's often regarded as being the sort of father of scientific archaeology in Egypt, then took over the site.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  And by the time he'd finished working in the very beginning of the 20th century.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  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.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  But then we just got some floaters after that. And still the second and third dynasties represent problems. Part of it, I guess even in, 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 B.C. Because the king lists which survive, 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, you know, what their names are and all those

• 6:35Speaker 03

  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 thirteen hundred B.C. So it would have well over a thousand years after the events.

• 6:53Tristan Hughes?

  Is there a feeling that with these earliest pharaohs, before that archaeology comes to light, that even maybe therefore in ancient Egypt, in 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?

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, in fact, Petrie and a couple of others who are writing in the eighteen nineties, just before the discoveries of Abydos, 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, you know, 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 of a Greek writing historian from the third century B.C.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  But that's about it. By then, then, well, then they also then start finding them in some of these ancient Egyptian king lists. But again, there's the inconsistencies and there's nothing solid to actually sort of, um, there's no material naming any of these people. And then suddenly, Abydos, you've then suddenly got them all appearing. Although there's still issues because the names which the later historians, both ancient Egypt and sort of 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

• 8:23Speaker 03

  have the five names. And for most of Egyptian history, the two which have been cartouches, these ovals. Are the ones which they're known by 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 titulars. And it looks as though when they come to writing these king lists later on, they're almost making up cartouche 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

• 9:05Speaker 03

  more obscure parts of the titular, some of these earlier people. So we know where some of them come from. But there's some where we have absolutely no real idea as to why they're called what they're called in the in the king list. So all of this really caused lots of doubts. But then gradually, once the Abydos tombs have been found, it could start working out what order they were in, and then start to try and make the make the connections. But there's still a few issues.

• 9:34Tristan Hughes?

  The city of Abydos feels like a place that surely we'll be coming back to as this chat goes on. And just briefly as well, Aiden, before we delve more into the background, you mentioned those ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian historians who are writing these kings lists thousands of years after the first pharaoh, first dynasties existed. Is this, I've got my notes, is this a figure like Menetho?

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Well, Menetho is the key one, yeah. Because from the loss of the knowledge of Egyptian language in what the 4th century AD, and its re decipherment in the 19th century, Menetho, and also to some degree Herodotus, or some of these others, were the only only game in town. So actually, the whole idea of dynasties comes from Menetho. Well, another problem with Menetho is we don't actually have original Menetho. His originals, the full, as far as we can make out, full narrative history of Egypt was lost somewhere in the late antiquity, probably. So all we've actually got of Menetho are quotations by later historians from him.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  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 Manetho, people who, the exhorters of Manetho, just in the same way that the ancient Egyptian king lists also differ. So there's clearly a sort of Chinese whispers kind of thing going on here. And trying to work out what the originals of half of these things were is quite problematic.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  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, well, the ancient Egyptian king lists, the differences are due to a northern tradition versus a southern tradition.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  Or, you know, 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.

• 11:51Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  So there's a cartoon of a king called Hu Jefah. We now realise that Hu Jefah, never really was ever called Hu Jefah, it means king gap in the records.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  Which looks as though somebody had done this, but of course, in the various transmissions. When somebody, it sends of, has, who hasn't realised this is an allegation of, there's a, there's a miss, there's something missing here. They've, they've, oh, this is a king, put him in a nice cartoon, put him in the king list.

• 12:20Tristan Hughes?

  Wow. Okay. Well, there you go. He's funny.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  And there's actually, we've actually, actually, some early books have got Hu Jefah the first and Hu Jefah the second. But it actually is two data missing entries in a much earlier compilation.

• 12:32Tristan Hughes?

  There you go. Thero data missing the first and Thero data missing the second. 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. Aiden, 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 looked like before the first pharaohs? This pre-Phoenic stage, because this also feels very enigmatic and very interesting.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, what we've got prior to, in big handfuls, 3,000 B.C., seems to be an Egypt which is made up of lots and lots of small villages and towns.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  People had settled along the Nile, probably about 1,000 years or so prior to that, when the desiccation of the, of North Africa had meant that the deserts where they previously, what is now desert, which had previously been savanna and sort of places where you could live, had become uninhabitable. So therefore, over probably 1,000 years or 2,000 years, it would gradually come down to the, 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, it's 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.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  And then a rather different kind of culture in the, 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.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  And gradually, by the time we're in the late centuries of the fourth millennium, that we've probably got a rhythmically 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 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. So, and there is later a sort of a fiction of a northern kingdom. Whether it really ever existed out of the minds of later chroniclers is a, is a, is a, is a big, is a big question. But then so late fourth millennium, you've got a southern kingdom.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  And then what seems to happen is that that expands probably mixture of peaceful and partly military expansion until around three thousand B C. 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 a stone palette. One side it shows Nama, the king of the south, smiting a northerner. And on the back, it shows him wearing the crown of the north. So therefore, evidence was discovered in the late eighteen nineties. Again, the late eighteen nineties is the key period for when we start understanding these earlier times. It's been interpreted as being a commemorative item for the unification.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  And although there's been all sorts of discussions around whether 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 that there is a genuine event which was contemporaneously commemorated by the Nama palette. Clearly, a piece of work from around three thousand. 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.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  And this is where a lot of the sort of basics of Egyptian civilisation 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 sort of the point which lays all the ground rules for what ancient Egypt is later going to be.

• 17:09Tristan Hughes?

  And 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?

• 17:28Speaker 03

  It's mainly pottery thing, because again, because of the nature of the delta, you simply haven't got the kinds of locations of rock art and things which you would get, you 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 brought back into Africa. But again, tracing all of this is problematic because of the lack of 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. There's just so the the southern material overwhelms the the northern.

• 18:09Tristan Hughes?

  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 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.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  Well, calling these people pharaohs is an anachronism.

• 18:32Tristan Hughes?

  Ah, okay.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  Because the first Egyptian kings to be called pharaoh didn't rule until 1500 years later.

• 18:39Tristan Hughes?

  Right, okay, so you don't see from the evidence of the first dynasty, they're calling themselves pharaohs straight away?

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Not at all. Now, the first time we find a king calling himself a pharaoh is probably about 1300 or so B.C. So we're talking, we're talking 3000. The thing is, though, that the word pharaoh as a word for an Egyptian king is really sort of has actually come into the English language from the Bible. Although 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 shorthand for king of Egypt. It's one word rather than three words. It's also quite useful in sets where you've sometimes got female rulers as well, you can use that. So it's just worthwhile saying that when we're talking about pharaohs during this podcast,

• 19:27Speaker 03

  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 Nessut, Nessuti, 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 as 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.

• 20:02Tristan Hughes?

  Aiden, you're throwing a spanner in the works there, but it's an important spanner of the works, first of all. But I can ask, I'm going to ask actually about a particular.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, carry, carry on. I just thought, actually, I'd also throw that in because there'd be some listener who is going, but they did call themselves that. I know that.

• 20:17Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  It's possibly two kings, scorpion. And reason why we call them that is simply because their name is written with the filigree 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 we used to call them scorpion. The one we know definitely exists is just before the unification, there is a mace head which was found at a site which was also where the Nama palette 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

• 21:13Speaker 03

  an irrigation canal. And he is the first royal individual to be depicted in what you might call the traditional Egyptian style. So he is right on the very boundary between prehistory and history. Now, there is a tomb at Abydos, 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 A hundred years earlier, it can't be the same scorpion as on the mace head. But that's all we know about him.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  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-unification and unification Egypt.

• 22:11Tristan Hughes?

  And do we get a sense that it was led by events like climate change or a military event? I mean, do you have any idea what was the catalyst behind unification?

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Not really, because we've got so, the only data we have is the fact it exists, it happens. We know later on there is climate change, certainly another about five hundred years or so later. However, there seems to be no indication, from what I understand 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.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  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 particularly, where you need something a 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 nineteen sixties, there was a very much a tendency to everything to do with down to social process and the economic process.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  But actually, I think we've now moved back to 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 virtue 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, you know, to perhaps like using the American manifest destiny kind of idea was all possibly there in the South and possibly amongst people in the

• 24:31Speaker 03

  North as well. But then possibly that 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, 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 sort of have a, we'd still be sort of in bit, you know, all we know is that all a tradition said that there was a unification. But luckily, here we've actually got something contemporary, which seems to commemorate that unification, rather than it being something which, as I said earlier on, some early historians thought the whole thing may have simply have been a sort of creation myth, put together by later Egyptians, to justify their existence.

• 25:25Speaker 01

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• 26:52Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's explore this earliest in inverted commas pharaoh now, the man that you've mentioned, Aidan, and have already mentioned in this conversation, Nama. Can you tell us what we know about this figure? And you've also mentioned the Nama Palette, but because it feels such an integral archaeological discovery, perhaps the most recognisable 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.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Okay, okay. Let's kick off with actually, okay, the Nama Palette itself. It was found at a site, Giharikonpolis, in southern Egypt, which is probably about 50 miles or so south of modern Luxor, found by a team led by James Quibbe, one of the outstanding archaeologists of the earlier years of late days, years of 19th century through into 20th century. In fact, Quibbe is a quite important archaeological figure for the study of the early dynasties, because having worked at Giharikonpolis, he later worked at Saqqara 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

• 27:59Speaker 03

  thing. 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 recognised as being quite, were then buried in a pit underneath the temple.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  So that they were still there, even if they were no longer sort of around. 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 times. So that's what that is. And so 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 trade going out into the east. A few graffiti have been found in Sinai, which indicates there's, that there's a trade routes into Palestine.

• 29:01Tristan Hughes?

  Like Gaza at that time, there's archaeology that Gaza was prominent even back then.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely, because it's basically Gaza and 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 is because, given everything else is heavily basically desert beyond, it's the way through into Egypt, along the 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 Bydos. 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 actual contemporary material is concerned. And his name, Nama, seems to be then forgotten. However, in later

• 29:48Speaker 03

  legends and also in the king lists, there's a king called Menes who appears. And he appears both in the Egyptian king lists, in Monetho, in Herodotus. I think Diodorus also talks about him. So he's clearly the unifier king. And while a debate in Egyptology has been whether or not Nama is really Menes, and if so, whether or not the name Menes appears in anything contemporary, or whether Menes is actually his successor, a king called Hor Ahah.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  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, Menes really has to be Nama. It doesn't really quite work. The trouble is also that the king lists, while them has to start as a different number of kings from another one. There's a whole long debate which has been going on since the 1890s about, which still hasn't been fully resolved. But I think Nama and Menes are probably the same individual and they are the sort of great unifier of Egypt.

• 30:57Tristan Hughes?

  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 Menes and unifying Egypt. Do we get the sense that it's actually with their successors, 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?

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Pretty well all the data we've got really is from the royal tumors of 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 royal tituary. 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

• 32:00Speaker 03

  shown, smiting, you know. So certainly you can see more text starting to grow. Clearly, although hieroglyphs exist at the beginning of the first dynasty, they're not writing full sentences, they're not a literary language yet. That probably takes possibly another century before you start getting proper, you know, 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 few decades after the unification.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  And then sort of becomes more, becomes a sort of codified, if you like, as time goes by. But always about, say, all we've got are these robbed tombs and a few odd bits and pieces from elsewhere. So I think we can say that it's the big picture, but trying to understand the detail and exact sequencing of all this is a bit more problematic. The one much rather interesting thing we see, however, is that soon after the unification, we have large scale human sacrifice at the royal tombs, which crescendo is probably a century after the unification, then rapidly drops off again. So whether that's saying

• 33:21Speaker 03

  something about the power of the monarchy to be able to command people to, you know, call people's deaths to accompany the dead king in the next world. But what's interesting about that is that a few centuries later, Ur, as the city of Ur becomes a big thing in Mesopotamia, that they have the death pits, they have this same kind of thing.

• 33:42Tristan Hughes?

  You read my mind. I was literally about to ask about that connection.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, 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, all powerful monarch. What do we know? The pharaoh in its, in the sense of how that institution is to be seen for the next 3,000 years.

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• 35:58Tristan Hughes?

  Do you think from the start, although they're not using the word pharaoh yet, that there is that idea growing from very early on, that yes, they are the king, but they also may well have a divine aspect to them too?

• 36:10Speaker 03

  I think so, yes. Although, so we don't actually sort of get made explicit until a bit later on, where you actually start getting titles 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 or even 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, "Ooh, that therefore is something which validates what we think." We always have to be quite careful of, and one needs to try

• 36:54Speaker 03

  and avoid being too enthusiastic about being able to sort of interpreting, like what does all this mean, without prefixing what's up. 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're able to express in writing, it's unlikely that the kind of concepts we find set out in detail later on. Could have been written down at that time. So the likelihood of finding a papyrus

• 37:35Speaker 03

  or something else of the first dynasty, which says the same sort of stuff about kingship, which stuff from a thousand, two thousand years later does, is very highly unlikely. So I don't think we're ever going to get over that hurdle. I think with, and more, I think say 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, you know, interpret stuff too much in light of how things have evolved over the next millennium or more.

• 38:08Tristan Hughes?

  This also feels, 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 Abydos. Aiden, I do realise that I actually haven't asked whereabouts we're talking along the Nile with Abydos. And can you also give us a sense of how prominent a city do we think Abydos was for these earliest pharaohs?

• 38:30Speaker 03

  Abydos is, I can't remember how many kilometres, 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, that's on the motorway. It used to be about four hours if you were going along the Nile. So that gives people a vague idea. Like in American terms, let's say two hours from Luxor. Later on, certainly, it becomes the cult centre of the dog of 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, been a burial place going back into prehistory. And as we move into later prehistory, we get much, we get larger tombs, including

• 39:11Speaker 03

  the one potentially of Scorpion I talked 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 so it's a very important location. There are important festivals of Osiris there, which seems to be almost like, like the medieval passion plays. And it ties in actually with the royal tombs of the first dynasty, however, in that

• 39:55Speaker 03

  well, over a thousand years later, in the thirteenth 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 had been in between, was identified actually as the tomb of Osiris, um, 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 Jer, 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 locates, it, it, looking at the whole, the site is lumpy and bumpy, but it's got quite,

• 40:37Speaker 03

  it's 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 late as about a thousand B.C. or even later than that. So it's, it becomes that. Probably the reason why it became the place of Osiris was 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 Abydos. Ergo-

• 41:08Tristan Hughes?

  Two plus two equals Osiris is buried there, right?

• 41:12Speaker 03

  And therefore presumably they sent 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 as again, you could say, there's some good, some good parallels in medieval, you know, 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 those are 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 as, named today as Umm El Ghab, Mother of Pots, which is an Arabic name. It was

• 41:57Speaker 03

  covered with potshirts, 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, by the pilgrims. Which will cover the site. So it's always Umm El Ghab, 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 narrow, fairly narrow strip of cultivated land, and then the desert, which was called the cultivation. And on the edge of the desert overlooking that, the kings of the first dynasty built great rectangular enclosures of brick.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  And those seem to have been the public part of the tombs up to Umm El Ghab. There's about a kilometre or so of desert between the two of them. So that it looks like these great rectangular enclosures, this is where the funeral took place, where ceremonies were carried on for a while. Body then being carried on up to Umm El Ghab. 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 stele with stone slabs with the king's name written on them, which mark out the offering place for the king's tomb, which is a

• 43:22Speaker 03

  basically a brick-lined cutting in the desert gravel. At this stage, we're not talking about rock-cut passageways or anything. Simply at actually Umm El Ghab, 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've been all sorts of suggestions, but the moment which seems to fit the archaeology best is a sort of almost a tumulus of gravel.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  So there was sort of low mounds, but on the side facing the Nile was these two stele. And that was where the cult of the kings was carried out. And quite a few of those stele survive, split between the Grand Egyptian Museum, the Old Egyptian Museum in Cairo. And there's a couple which were then went to 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 subjects. 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.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  And also talking about tombs, in addition to the ones at the Bydos of the kings, with the unification, necropolis of Saqqara, 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 kings 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, which is effectively roughly opposite Cairo, on the other side of the river from Cairo. And in the desert beyond that is the necropolis of Saqqara is set up, which is one of the longest-serving ones. And the earliest tombs

• 45:22Speaker 03

  there are all of officials and possibly even members of the royal family of the pharaohs who are buried down at Bydos. Now, back in the 1950s, when these were discovered, there was a bit of confusion because it was thought that these, well, the Saqqara tombs might actually be the real tombs of the kings, where the ones at Bydos were with senataths. 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, Bydos, going

• 46:04Speaker 03

  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.

• 46:16Tristan Hughes?

  There you go.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  At his death.

• 46:18Tristan Hughes?

  And it's also so interesting, I'm glad we're kind of wrapping up this chat by also talking about Saqqara, because of course you have the oldest step pyramids, don't you? The step pyramid of the Joser, but the fact that that's 2500 BC, so after this. But it shows, doesn't it, this kind of gives you more context to understand that Saqqara is important for hundreds of years before that, hence why you then get the big monumental constructions there.

• 46:39Speaker 03

  And also it's worthwhile pointing out that some of the kings of the second dynasty are actually buried at Saqqara. So it's really, it's only the first dynasty who stick like glue to Bydos. It's when you've a change of dynasty that we then have the sort of the burial centre of gravity shifts to the north, where with an exception at the end of the second dynasty, 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.

• 47:08Tristan Hughes?

  Well, Aidan, I mean, you mentioned talking later on. We haven't got time to it 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.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  Say more enigmatic. That's the, so that's the thing. We, we, we've got a pretty good idea about the first dynasty, then, but beginning 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 to reign of Snefru, 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.

• 48:01Tristan Hughes?

  Makes a great podcast.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  It's far, it's far, it's far more fun to work on stuff where you don't have the data, or having to sort of, you know, 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, is clear.

• 48:21Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  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.

• 48:45Tristan Hughes?

  All good bookshops.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  Yes, in good bookshops.

• 48:48Tristan Hughes?

  Aidan, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  Very happy to be with you. Cheers.

• 48:58Tristan Hughes?

  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. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow The Ancient Song Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 49:33Tristan Hughes?

  That's enough from me. I'll see you in the next episode.