The History of Ancient Egypt

I can give you an example, a personal example, about three years ago now, I had the schedule from hell. I was teaching five different courses at three different campuses and it was just crazy. Sometimes I literally didn't know where I was going, I was in the car now, which course am I teaching now, where am I going? And to keep my sanity, in the afternoons when I would get back to my office, I would go to my office and for a half hour I would just draw hieroglyphs. I would draw a line of birds, or a line of snakes, or a line of feet. And it was a great escape, and it helped. So there's a kind of psychological reason, I think, why people study Egypt. I mean, I find that in my students at the university, I'll often ask a kid who's an accounting major, I'll say, why are you taking Egyptology? And very often the kid will say, you know, I take loads of accounting courses, loads of economics, this has absolutely no relevance to my life, to my career, and I love it. So there's a kind of psychological reason for doing it. So I think you'll enjoy it for that reason. But there are better reasons, and let me tell you about some of those. Ancient Egypt was the most advanced civilization in the ancient world. Now there are some people who would disagree with that. The people who study Samaria, for example, Samuel Noah Cramer was a great scholar on Samaria, and he wrote a book called History Begins at Sumer, and where he outlined all the things that begin in Samaria. He was wrong. History does not begin in Samaria. It really starts in Egypt. But that's a bit of my prejudice, but let me explain why Egypt is so special among the cultures of the ancient world. There are so many firsts in Egypt that we all know about that makes Egypt unique. For example, the Sumerians did not build the pyramids of Egypt. The Sumerians did not build the incredible temples we see. The Sumerians did not do medical science the way the Egyptians did. There are loads of firsts in ancient Egypt. That's why Egypt's important. For example, religion. Most people are shocked to learn that monotheism, the belief in one God, is first presented by an Egyptian pharaoh. Monotheism starts in Egypt. Or for example, mummification. It's the Egyptians who perfected the science of mummification. Or Egyptian mythology. Nothing, no mythology is as rich as Egyptian mythology. I mean, Egypt is incredible. For example, the Greeks, the famous Greeks, the ancient civilization, the Greeks revered ancient Egypt. If you read Greek historians, they all say the same thing. We got our civilization from Egypt. They wanted to trace their lineage back to the Egyptians because the Greeks were sort of Johnny-come-latelys on the scene compared to the Egyptians. You know, you're talking about the Iliad, the Odyssey, maybe being composed around 900 B.C. Pyramids were built, you know, a couple of thousand years earlier. So the Greeks always wanted to trace their, it's like, you know what it's like? It's like when people want to trace their heritage back to the Mayflower, my ancestors came over on the Mayflower. That's what the Greeks did with Egypt. I mean, there's even a wonderful story. When the Greeks were holding the Olympiad, they wanted to figure out how to make it fair because there were foreigners who wanted to participate in the Olympiad, in the Olympic Games. And they figured, well, you have Greek officials, you know, Greek, Greek officials. How would we make it fair? They might be biased towards the Greeks. So they sent a committee to Egypt because the Egyptians were wise in philosophy. And they asked the Egyptians, how do we make it fair? Right? So the Greeks really wanted to trace everything back to Egypt. So I mean, there's nothing like Egypt. Let me say another thing. If you asked the ancient Greeks, where did you learn to build your temples? They all said the same thing. We learned to build in stone from the Egyptians. The first building in stone in the history of the world is an Egyptian building. But we'll talk about that later. So there's plenty of reasons for studying Egypt. Another reason is I think that Egypt is somewhat mysterious. People look at the hieroglyphs, you know, and they look indecipherable. They're not. They're not. One of the things I'm going to do with you, I hope, in these 48 lectures is demystify Egypt. But I don't think it'll take any of the wonder away from it, any of the grandeur of Egypt. But I'm going to show you what those birds and snakes and ducks really mean. But there is this mysterious aspect about Egypt that, I mean, this is why I think every person who thinks he's reincarnated thinks he was an ancient Egyptian, right? They were never a shoemaker in Brooklyn, right? They were always an ancient Egyptian. So I think that there's this mysterious aspect about Egypt that also draws us to it.