Episode 15. The Labyrinth of Luxury and Conflict in Egypt's Golden Era

Embark on an extraordinary voyage back to Ancient Egypt's glorious days with us, where we promise to unveil the splendors of Amenhotep III's rule and the dramatic shifts in society and economy that followed. As we regale you with tales of Nubian conquests and diplomatic marriages during Egypt's ascendance, we'll also reflect upon the reverberations of Akhenaten's religious reforms. The monumental battles under Ramesses II's reign and the transformation of trade and currency weave a mesmerizing tapestry of an empire at the peak of its power.

Imagine the suspense and strategy involved in the Battle of Kadesh, a tale of war and peace that shaped the ancient world. Our journey through time reveals the birth of credit systems, the rise of silver as a currency, and the integral roles that women and merchants played in the economic machine of Egypt. Discover the nuances of an ancient economy where trade was not only a means of survival but a source of immense influence and societal power.

As we navigate the myths and stark realities of a civilization in flux, we'll explore the earliest recorded labor strike, delve into the intrigues of royal assassinations, and examine the shifting values of precious metals through times of prosperity and challenge. Join us for an episode rich with historical insights, where we piece together the complex puzzle of Ancient Egypt's legacy and its lasting impact on the world as we know it.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome Podcast Listener. I am Mike D and this is the History of Money, banking and Trade Podcast. This will be the fifth episode of our Ancient Egyptian Series. When we last left off, we were in the Middle Kingdom, which many would refer to as Egypt's Golden Years. Everything was going smoothly, trade had expanded quite a bit, the economy was growing and new forms of wealth were flowing into the Kingdom. We also see that the economy was fully transformed to a mixed economy by this point, whereas it was partially a government redistributed economy with a mix of private enterprise.

Speaker 1: 0:46

However, all of this can come crashing down with one bad pharaoh. Egypt needed a great ruler, or they would be looking at yet another dark age. Amunhotep III took the throne around 1390 BCE and he was so well regarded that he would be known as Amunhotep the Magnificent or Amunhotep the Great, who ultimately became a very wealthy ruler who was the ninth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty. His reign was known for his unprecedented prosperity and success, when Egypt had basically reached its peak of international power and, as such, is considered one of ancient Egypt's greatest pharaohs. He ruled for about 38 or maybe even 39 years, and one clue to his prosperity was the fact that, when they reached his burial chamber, they noticed that there was an abundant amount of gold, so that would clearly indicate that gold was flowing into the empire during this time period. In reality, the reason why Egypt may have become so prosperous during this time period was the fact that Amunhotep III had led a major military campaign down south, into Nubia or the Kushites or whatever you want to call it. They're kind of known as both, but he went down there and he basically squashed a rebellion that was being taken place. So ultimately, when he put down this rebellion, he was able to extract large amounts of gold from the region, because Nubia or the Kushites, however you want to call them, at this particular time had large amounts of gold reserves right in their earth. So anybody that controlled the region would ultimately control gold, and the kings of the other empires during this time period well, they clearly understood this, because once Amunhotep III had basically conquered the region and rose Egypt once again to be a preeminent power, the other kings knew that he had access to let it go.

Speaker 1: 3:02

So what happened was, during this time period, egyptologists were able to recover numerous letters that were being written between the Pharaoh and the other kings of the region in places like Assyria and the Mitanni and Babylon and the Hittites and other states around the Near East, and within these letters the kings typically requested certain amounts of gold or other gifts from Amunhotep because they knew that he was super wealthy compared to all the other kings. In one such letter, the king of Babylon, enlil I, asked to marry one of the Pharaoh's daughters. But the Pharaoh did not like that idea and he flatly rejected that idea. But on the flip side, amunhotep married several foreign princesses. So I think it was kind of a letter that was going between the kings and there was probably like almost a quid pro quo type of thing where if you marry my daughter, I'll marry your daughter and then we can form an alliance and we can make our region stronger and actually safer hopefully. But that didn't happen with Enlil I.

Speaker 1: 4:12

So while gold and wealth was flowing into the region, egypt still had to kind of fix its problem. That had occurred prior, when Akhenaten had basically tried to realign the Egyptians religious beliefs and basically abandoned the old gods in favor of the new gods. But there was still really hard feelings about that and in fact a few years after the death of Akhenaten the Pharaoh's sarcophagus was completely destroyed and the city that he had founded to worship these new gods or actually I should say worship the new god, because it was more of a monotheistic religion. Well, that city had been completely abandoned and in all reality, it sounds like Akhenaten was hated just as much in death as he was when he was alive. But either way, the Egyptians had essentially reverted back to the old ways and anything that Akhenaten had done was basically reversed and forgotten. By this point and, as such, things appear to be just humming along for the next hundred years or so.

Speaker 1: 5:25

And to give you an understanding of the timeframe that we're talking about, it was during these few hundred years that we saw the reign of King Tut, just so you can kind of get a frame of reference as to where we are in the Egyptian story. So around 1290 BCE, which would have been nearly a hundred years to the date of Amun Hothet III taking control of Egypt, pharaoh Hormeb was on the throne, but he appointed Ramesses I, who was a former civilian military officer during his reign, to be his successor. Now, this would have meant that Ramesses would have founded a new dynasty, which would have been the 19th dynasty, which might be Egypt's most successful of all the dynasties they ever had. Now, ramesses I didn't live that long, so his reign was brief, but he appointed his son, seti, to be his successor. But it wasn't Seti that would be known. It would be his son, ramesses II, that will probably be known as one of, if not Egypt's greatest, pharaohs in their long history.

Speaker 1: 6:36

Now Ramesses II well, he came to the throne with an extensive amount of experience on the battlefield due to his involvement in his father's many military campaigns. It's important to note that Ramesses II was born a civilian, so he wasn't born into royalty. He only fell into royal succession when his grandfather, who was also a civilian, was appointed to succeed the pharaoh due to his military capabilities. So there was almost like a sort of meritocracy. So you can kind of see well, geez, these guys were appointed to be the pharaoh because they deserved to be the pharaoh or they had shown their ability to lead.

Speaker 1: 7:19

And it doesn't really surprise me, and it probably won't surprise you, that people that were appointed due to their ability to lead in battle and lead many people, instead of just being born into it, well, it shouldn't shock you that this would end up becoming a very successful dynasty. Either way, the fact remains that he was a very capable military leader and this was probably one of the most important attributes that he would have possessed, because he essentially came in around basically the right time in history, because, if you recall from my episodes about Mesopotamia, it was around 1300 to 1200 that the sea peoples were invading basically everywhere in the Near East and in Egypt, and this was causing so much havoc that kingdoms were essentially just wiped off the map. During this time period, the Egyptians described the sea peoples as basically pirates who may have been from Ionia, but they really weren't sure either. No one was really sure where they're from. Now, the sea peoples came on the pharaoh's radar because he kept on receiving these various reports that these pirates were terrorizing people and plundering villages in the Levant. The pharaoh ordered a retaliation by setting a trap to basically lure the sea peoples into an ambush and luckily for the pharaoh in the Egyptians for that matter the sea peoples actually fell for the trap and were subsequently surrounded by a fleet of Egyptian warships. Those who survived the ambush were brought to the capital and were forced to serve the pharaoh as his personal bodyguards until they had died.

Speaker 1: 9:05

Ramesses II, well, his most remarkable military achievement was none other than the battle of the Hittites, which was known as the Battle of Kadesh, and this was one of the more famous conflicts that would have taken place around 1274 BCE, near the very important trade city in Syria called Kadesh. So whoever controlled the city would have ultimately been able to control the trade routes coming into the Levant, and that was obviously very important for all parties involved, whether it was the people of Anatolia or the people of Levant, of course, or the people of Egypt and the people of Mesopotamia. So whoever controlled that would have ultimately controlled the trade that would have been coming into the region and would have obviously had access to great amount of wealth. And to give you an idea of how important the trades were, you start to see during this time that silver is making a bigger and bigger impact on the local economies. So, for example, a tax was recovered from this time period. That indicates that fishermen were being paid in silver and they also paid their taxes in silver as well. So therefore, we can conclude that the metals were now being used as a medium of exchange and were therefore in prominent circulation. In addition, we start to see instances of credit being used, and this credit was also able to increase the output of certain crafts, such as in the textile industry. In addition, you also see small scale credit networks that were kind of propping up here and there where neighbors would basically lend to other neighbors, and this probably makes sense because the neighbors would have had a high amount of trust amongst each other and they would have assumed that they were going to get paid back or outstir be some serious social consequences. Those social consequences probably ultimately lowered credit risk because your reputation was probably the most important thing you had for you and, most importantly, your family.

Speaker 1: 11:25

And getting back to Kadesh, ramesses the second, father set to the first. He had successfully captured Kadesh, but he couldn't hold it and it sounds like tensions were continually to escalate between the Egyptians and the Hittites when Ramesses the second launched his campaign into Canaan and captured the region. The issue was the Canaanites were a vassal to the Hittites, so he's essentially going to war with the Hittites. So upon hearing of this capture, the Hittite king decided to confront the Egyptian Pharaoh in battle Ramesses the second, while he really wanted to expand his territory because this area, especially around Kadesh, was booming to its lucrative trade routes and as such, the Pharaoh gathered about 20,000 infantrymen and as many as 2,000 chariots in preparation for the upcoming battle with the Hittites. Now, before the war began, the Egyptians had a little trick up their sleeve because they were able to capture Hittite spies. The Egyptians were able to use the old fashioned trick of hey, let's torture them until we get some answers, which ultimately led to the spies giving up the location of the Hittite king and his troops. The Egyptians were able to attack Kadesh, but the battle was a stalemate and there really wasn't a winner that was achieved during this battle.

Speaker 1: 12:53

Soon after the battle, the Hittites had another problem, as the Assyrians were going to get stronger and stronger to their southeast. Therefore, the Hittite king had to halt any planned attacks against the Egyptians because he had to deal with the problem of the Assyrians. So, about 15 years after the great battle of Kadesh, a peace treaty was signed between Ramesses II and the king known as Hatta-Lusilli III. And, if anything, this was more or less signed because the Hittites needed to relieve pressure from the pressure they're getting in the south from the Assyrians. So in the end, the Egyptian Hittite peace treaty, which was also known as the Treaty of Kadesh, might be one of the earliest surviving peace treaties ever signed and recorded. You can see it in the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul if you ever were in Istanbul and actually wanted to see it. So it's a great piece of history that I would love to see one day personally.

Speaker 1: 13:59

During the reign of Ramesses II, we start to see some changes in the monetary system of Egypt as well. It could be an isolated instance, but we see fishermen starting to collect silver for their fish and in turn they also start to pay their taxes in silver as well. So this is kind of a transformation that we see happening. That may be isolated, it might be more widespread I'm not really sure but it probably would have been something that would have been imported. That idea would have been imported from Mesopotamia. And the fact is this could be an isolated instance because the fishermen were not dealing with the larger commodity products that were being bought and sold in Egypt, which was wheat and other grains. So they probably didn't have access to the grains like a farmer would. So it's quite possible that the Crown figured since they didn't have grains and they had silver, silver could still be useful, especially in the debt industry, so maybe that's why they collected it. So it wasn't that they were saying, hey, we're going to collect taxes in silver, like we see in Mesopotamia and eventually see in China. We'll just take what you have and we can find a useful means for it anyway, and plus, also too, it would have been helpful in dealing with people in Mesopotamia and trade and things like that, so there definitely would have been some utility to collecting silver, as well as the fact that they were still getting plenty of grain from the farmers that would have been farming off the Nile anyway.

Speaker 1: 15:37

In addition, we also start to see the use of credit being used more widely by the Egyptians. Credit was typically used in the textile industry at this time, so it's pretty isolated because in certain instances the production of textiles was facilitated through certain traders that use credit. Also, what we start to see is neighbors start offering loans to other neighbors, which would have created a small network of personal bonds, which would essentially do two things in the local marketplace. First, it would indicate that a certain individual would be in the position of preeminence over the other and second, and probably most importantly, this would allow that person to accumulate wealth through providing debt. So in the end, you can kind of see that Egypt is changing slightly during the 19th dynasty, under Ramesses II in particular.

Speaker 1: 16:40

So Egypt was changing ever so slightly and, if you recall from my previous episode, I did discuss the fact that women had more freedoms and were able to do a lot more things in the Egyptian society compared to the other societies of the Near East. Now, this is great now, but the fact remains if you wanted to become big, if you wanted to be a big institutional trader with a great wealth sort of like what the temples were doing already in Egypt as well as in Mesopotamia you would generally need to be a man to do this. So even though things were changing and women had more rights and freedoms, they still couldn't be the big boss, as it were. And on top of that, what we also see is Egypt seemed to really kind of separate itself between a trader and a merchant. So if you wanted to be an institutional trader, for example, you would often be tasked with exchanging surplus items that had been accumulated by, say, the temple or even a rich family, and you would exchange it for goods such as metal and timber or whatever right, whatever the market kind of commands. So often these traders would have traded for the institutions, but they would have also traded it on the side for a profit right. So this is kind of what we see in Mesopotamia when we see the royal merchants. They'll trade for the temple or even the palace and they'll kind of have like a little side hustle on the side where they're collecting a little bit of profits for themselves. So this is kind of similar what we see in Egypt as well, and in reality the reason why we know this is because we're able to see that oftentimes these trade ventures would have been written in the ship's logs and kept by the captain of the ship. So that's kind of a goldmine for information where we can see what's happening as far as the traders versus the merchants.

Speaker 1: 18:46

During this time period Now, ramesses II also had conducted successful campaigns to the south, in Tnubia, as well as into the west, into Libya. Ramesses II enriched Egypt quite a bit through these campaigns and the tributes that would have been received from other local kingdoms. He reigned for maybe 66 years or so and he may have lived into his 90s, but we're not on harm's unsure. But either way we do know that he lived to be a pretty old man. Therefore he had actually outlived many of his wives and his children. So in the end, you can say that Ramesses II had a very long and very successful reign as barrel of Egypt and if you ever get a chance, you can actually take a look at Ramesses II mummified pictures. It almost looks like he is smiling. If you can say that, it's quite amazing to actually look at. To be honest with you, merneptah, while he succeeded his father, ramesses II, around 1213 BCE, he came to the throne in part because his father lived so long that all those older children had died out, and it sounds like he may have had 13 other brothers. In fact, he was most likely an elderly man by the time he took the throne, as he was probably around the age of 70 or so at that particular time. Now he's probably most known for the fact that he was able to lead an Egyptian army to fend off a Libyan and see people combined force. So ultimately, despite his age, he was able to keep the Egyptian empire alive, because it was quite easily could have been the fact that the Libyans and the sea peoples could have overrun the Egyptian empire because it was just so powerful at the time.

Speaker 1: 20:46

The first potential hiccup in the 90 dynasty may have come from the fact that Setti II, who reigned from 1203 to 1197 BCE Well, he was attended as the crown prince. However, he may have been on the throne for a short period of time before he was usurped by his brother, who went by the name of Amman Manisa. Setti II's reign was so short that they never finished his tomb in time, and his tomb may have been desecrated by his brother in an attempt to erase his history. So around this time, a scroll was recovered that would have told the story of a tale of two brothers in which they basically formed a union to farm the land and raise cattle. However, the older brother's wife attempts to seduce the young brother. The younger brother rejects her advances, and then she turns around and tells her husband, the older brother, that his brother tried to seduce her. She tells her brother that when she rejected his advances, he proceeded to beat her for it. The older brother? Well, he's so upset that he decided that he must kill his younger brother because of this. But the younger brother flees before his older brother could kill him.

Speaker 1: 22:15

The older brother finds the younger brother, but they are separated by a crocodile infested lake. The younger brother convinces the older brother of what really happened and in doing so he cuts off his own genitals. To prove that he is innocent, he throws genitalia into the lake, where catfish proceeded to eat it. The younger brother then says that he's going to go to the valley of the cedars where he'll place his heart on top of his cedars tree so that, if it gets cut down, the older brother would be able to find the heart and the younger brother will be able to come back to life. The older brother. Now he goes back home and he kills his wife.

Speaker 1: 22:57

Meanwhile, the younger brother is establishing a new life in the valley of the cedars. So while the younger brother is living in the valley of the cedars, he's able to come across an Egyptian deity who basically takes pity on him and the god creates a wife for the younger brother. The pharaoh hears about his wife that was created by god and therefore wants her to live with him. The wife then asks the pharaoh if he could take down the tree that the younger brother put his heart in. The pharaoh while he cuts it down and the younger brother dies. The older brother, who is heartbroken and missing his younger brother while he goes out searching for him for seven years when he finally sees his younger brother's heart, and when he does is he puts it in cold water and the younger brother is resurrected and he takes the form of a bull, like a male cow, and what he does is he goes out and he is looking for his wife and the pharaoh. The wife knows that the former husband has taken the appearance of a bull and asked the pharaoh if she can eat his liver. So the bull is sacrificed and the blood grows into two trees. So now the younger brother is in the form of a tree, his wife seeing these beautiful trees out in front. Well, she asks him to cut down the trees so that they can be used to make furniture. While they're cutting the trees down, a splinter basically splints out from the tree and ends up in the wife's mouth, which ends up impregnating her, and she gives birth to a son who the pharaoh ultimately makes the crown prince. When the pharaoh dies, the young brother becomes the new king and he appoints his older brother as the crown prince, and that's how it ends, with both brothers being in control of Egypt.

Speaker 1: 25:03

Now I bring this up. It's a weird tale, but that story, right there, is supposed to be an allegory of the lives of Setti II and Ammanese. So ultimately, egypt had several pharaohs who took the throne for short periods of time, and that is kind of expected. When you have a pharaoh in remaces II who would have lived into his 90s, that's almost always going to happen. When you have a long reign of a king, there's always going to be some kind of instability. That happens afterward because you're going to have quick successions of kings, most likely right. So if a king is taking control and he's in the 70s and he dies off in a couple of years and maybe a younger brother is on the throne afterward and that brother is on the throne when he's in his late 60s or maybe even 70s, well, you're going to have a period of instability. So that kind of really happened here in a kind of way.

Speaker 1: 26:00

So what happened was Ramses III? Well, he came to the throne around 1186 BCE. He would have been the second king of the 20th dynasty. So now we're into a new dynasty. He once again had to reestablish Egypt's political and economic power because of the previous instability. He was often described as a warrior pharaoh, in part due to the fact that Egypt had once again had to fend off from the sea peoples. Egypt was able to fend them off while other kingdoms were just collapsing all around them, but the damage from the invasions really took us to on Egypt and it wouldn't have been as bad as in other places, but it was still pretty bad nonetheless. In fact, to give you an idea how bad this was, this was known as the late Bronze Age collapse. Now it is believed that Ramses III had actually settled the conquered sea peoples into southern Canaan. But in the end, all these campaigns caused massive turmoil and disruption into Egypt and the Egyptian economy and therefore Egypt was kind of in turmoil by this time. But, like I said, it wasn't as bad as other places.

Speaker 1: 27:18

Another issue was grain prices. Typically, the price of grain varied throughout the year. The price was obviously low when the harvest was brought to the market and this was obviously due to the supply. So you have more supply, prices go low, and vice versa. Prior to the grain being brought to the market, the prices typically would have been higher, because lower supply typically means higher prices, simple supply and demand curves. However, under Ramesses III, we start to see prolonged periods of high prices of grain. Now this could be due to a few different factors. For one. The Nile could have been low for a few years straight, so it's possible that there was less rain in the mountains and therefore lower inundation to the north. But another issue is it's possible that the government just didn't reinvest into the grain infrastructure enough, so they couldn't really scale up operations and harvest like they could in the past.

Speaker 1: 28:20

On a micro level, one person's shortage could be alleviated through personal loan, just like they could have done in Mesopotamia. So, for example, you owe taxes in grains but you didn't have enough. So what you could do is you could borrow grains which have been loaned from a neighbor and or other entity for that matter, and they would have taken their excess amount that they loaned to you and you could use it as your tax payment to the king. But now you're in debt. So that would have happened in Mesopotamia, and now it appears that the same thing was kind of happening in Egypt as well. But the biggest difference is in Mesopotamia the interest rate was typically capped around 30% a year, which you know is still high, you know in modern terms, you know it's hired in credit cards, but in comparison to Egypt these interest rates were much lower. So in Egypt interest rates and grains could be considerably higher. We're talking in excess of 100%. So let us not forget, egyptians typically more self-sufficient than other societies, so having a bad harvest could end up being extremely expensive, and you better hope that there's an excess amount of grain or goods somewhere else, or else you can literally starve to death.

Speaker 1: 29:49

Now, these high grain prices may have led to what is believed as the first ever known labor strike, which would have happened around 1155 BCE, when food rations were not provided properly to the tomb builders and artisans. So basically, here's what happened the tomb builders noticed that their food supplies weren't being delivered in a timely or proper manner. When it happened again, a month later, they just walked off the site and went to the temple to protest, and this protest would have been about their salary. And, don't let's not forget, the salary that they were receiving were basically their rations that they were supposed to get, so they weren't being paid properly, which means that they were not getting their adequate amount of food rations. And what happened is they said okay, fine, you don't want to pay us our proper wages, which is food. You know, we're gonna continue to strike for a few more weeks. Finally, the Pharaoh gave in and yielded to the strikers. The priest had noted that the Pharaoh's power was waning and they would have taken advantage of it. So in the end, the workers kind of came together and utilize their basically strength in numbers and they were able to strike to get what that was owed to them their proper pay.

Speaker 1: 31:13

Now, at the same time, there was a lot of disruptions that were going on in Egypt and elsewhere. Like I said, we had the attack of the sea peoples, you know, not too long ago, and the denial was running low. So there were a lot of problems. Now it's interesting kind of looking back at it, because archaeologists and and other scientists can kind of look and say, oh, I think we've pinpointed the problem. And the problem wasn't what was going on in Egypt.

Speaker 1: 31:45

It may be the fact that there was a catastrophic volcano eruption that would have prevented sunlight from reaching the ground, and this would have happened everywhere. This would not have been a local North African problem or West Asian problem. No, this would have been a global problem and because of it, weather patterns throughout the world would have been disrupted and this disruption would have resulted in lower crop yields, not just in North Africa, not in just West Asia. You know the Near East, we're talking everywhere and when you have these kind of major international or global catastrophes, what's going to happen is it's going to really put a lot of pressure on local governments and because of it, you're going to see, whenever you have major events happening weather events or or volcanic explosions it leads to a lot of other problems and you know, you see it in the rain of Justinian, where it appears that there was a major volcano eruption and then that ended up leading to the plague.

Speaker 1: 32:55

That would have happened and in reality, looking back on it, the plague during the Justinian period may have been a catalyst for the rise of this little, tiny, little tribal people in the middle of the Arabian desert that was untouched by the plague and that little tribe would grow and grow and grow to become basically the caliphates of the Islamic Empire. So you can kind of see, you know, if there wasn't this volcanic eruption, would the rise of the Islamic people of the desert region, could they have risen to the heights they reached? Possibly, it's definitely possible. But that volcanic eruption that would have caused the, the plague in the Justinian time period, that would have affected the Byzantines and the Persians and all the people that lived in cities. Well, the people in the desert they were, so I said they weren't touched by it.

Speaker 1: 33:53

And that's kind of what I'm getting at with this is that when you have a major event such as a volcanic eruption that affects everybody globally, it's going to put serious pressures on local populations and in fact, it appears that that had kind of happened in this particular case. So you factor in the volcano factor in the sea peoples and and all this other stuff and it's gonna it's gonna cause a lot of chaos and disruption in Egypt. So in the end, you have a lack of proper sunlight, which would have caused a major decrease in grain production, which would have added up because that would have caused a severe inflation of grain prices. Right, supply and demand. You lower supply, you may have maintained the same demand. Prices are going to naturally rise by quite a bit, and vice versa can happen. Right, you can have an excessive amount of supply, your demand remains the same and prices will drop. Simple economics, simple supply and demand curve.

Speaker 1: 34:56

And maybe it's because we're looking at it from a modern lens, but I find it really interesting the fact that Egyptologists have not noted any reliefs or monuments that would have pointed to this, no one really says, hey, sunlight was down this year and we had low crop yields and prices are soaring. It's quite interesting that that wouldn't have been basically written everywhere, but they really haven't found anything. So, because of all this instability and the inflation, this may have caused the Pharaoh to get assassinated, but it's quite possible that it wasn't all that deep. Maybe it wasn't economic, but the assassination could have been caused because one of his wives was upset that her son wasn't appointed as the Crown Prince, so she and others basically conspired to kill the Pharaoh. What is interesting is this assassination conspiracy ended up going to trial. In fact, there are still surviving documents from this trial that Egyptologists can read to this day. All in all, 38 people were sentenced to death for this conspiracy, and some would have basically chose suicide by drinking poison, while others were physically put to death. Another interesting thing about this case was the fact that some of the women that were involved in the conspiracy tried to seduce the jurors in order to get out of the sentencing, and in other cases it was just the old same story of let's just pay off the jurors, and hopefully this will get us off the guilty conviction or, at the very least, maybe we won't be sentenced to death.

Speaker 1: 36:44

Now, in the end, it kind of appears that the assassination conspiracy may have actually been what really happened. In other words, the people who didn't rise up to kill the Pharaoh because they were upset with high inflation and economic chaos. Instead, it was just more along the lines of one of his wives was upset that her son was not a named, the Crown Prince. And the reason why it makes more sense that that particular case had happened was the fact that a team of doctors and Egyptologists were able to look at the excessive bandages in the neck area, and they also did a CT scan that was done at Cairo University that revealed a deep knife wound across his neck. In addition, his left big toe was severed by an ax or something like that. So that also indicates that there were probably multiple assailants that were taken part of this assassination plot. So, in the end, ramesses IV. Well, he was designated as the King's successor and assumed the throne upon the King's death. Now, initially, what they were trying to do? The conspirators were trying to get Penal Words. Who was basically intended to be the successor? But instead Ramesses IV was ultimately chosen to be the next Pharaoh. So what we really see is by this time period we really start to see the cracks in the Egyptian Empire that are really starting to become more prominent.

Speaker 1: 38:27

And I wanted to take a step back and kind of really get into the inflation subject matter again Now. I had brought up the fact that grain prices were experiencing rapid inflation and that was all due to the supply and demand curve. So we went over that and prior to this period the silver to copper prices was relatively stable and for much of the new kingdom one unit of silver would have got you 100 units of copper. However, it is during the late 20th dynasty, when inflation starts to become a problem, that one unit of silver would only get you 60 units of copper. In addition, there was a two to one ratio of gold to silver, as one unit of gold would have equal two units of silver.

Speaker 1: 39:17

Now this was a bit of a change, because before this period so we're talking the middle kingdom period, which would have run around 2055 BCE to 1650 BCE it was assumed that during the middle kingdom that silver was actually more valuable than gold. And a big reason why we think this is because whenever earlier texts were written, and they mentioned both silver and gold. Silver was almost always mentioned first and, typically speaking, the more valuable or desired metal will usually be first in line when you're mentioning it, right? So whatever you prioritize, as in whatever you want more, you usually gonna start out that with that first, and silver was typically mentioned first, and that means that it was most likely more prized than gold at the time. In addition, something else was happening because in the Levant and in Mesopotamia, silver was a lot more widely accepted and desired as a means of exchange and because of that, the amount of silver in Egypt really kind of surged as more and more was flowing in from the other regions like the Levant and Anatolia. This would make a lot of sense because it was during the new kingdom, which would have started from around 1550 BCE to 1069 BC, that Egypt was able to successfully campaign into the Levant and control this region.

Speaker 1: 40:48

So if you're going into a region that desires silver and you're conquering it, guess what's gonna happen? You're gonna have less silver and then, when the silver comes back to Egypt, you're gonna flood the market and you're gonna have a flip flop. Now you don't have as much gold, you have way more silver. Silver becomes less valuable, gold becomes more valuable. Once again we're going back to simple economics, the simple supply and demand curve. We see a sharp supply of silver. Gold remained relatively the same. Therefore, you're gonna see gold and silver kind of really flip flop as far as which one is more valuable, and in this particular case, gold becomes more valuable than silver simply because silver there's a lot more of it.

Speaker 1: 41:32

But it's also interesting to note one little weird caveat Egypt did not really have any natural deposits of silver. All the silver came in from other places, typically West Asia or the Levant or Mesopotamia, whatever you want to call it. That particular reason that the silver was flowing in but Egypt didn't have any natural deposits. They did, however, have natural deposits of gold in the South, or it was more actually in Nubia, but there was natural deposits of gold on or near the Nile River. So whether the gold was in Upper Egypt or in Nubia, the fact remains is it was basically on the Nile and you could get access to it relatively easy. But the fact remains is, even though they had access to that gold, there was still much more silver that was coming into the region than there was actually gold deposits to the South. So that's where we are in the story. We start to see the change in gold and silver, and Egypt is weakening by the year.

Speaker 1: 42:37

The next set of pharaohs all took the name of Ramesses. So, with the exception of one pharaoh, all the pharaohs had the name of Ramesses in them. So it was Ramesses I, through Ramesses XI. Ramesses XI would be the last pharaoh of the 20th dynasty and, as such, was the last king of the New Kingdom period. Now a text was recovered that was written around the time of Ramesses XI, and this text is a story about a priest of Amun at Karnak who was sent to the Phoenician city of Biblos to purchase timber, which was most likely cedar wood, since there was an abundance of that timber in the Levant. The purpose of the trip was to ultimately acquire the wood necessary to build large ships so that they can transport goods that were related to Amun.

Speaker 1: 43:37

While in the port of the city of Dorr, the priest was robbed by one of his own people, and what made it even worse was when he reached the Biblos city, he was treated rudely and hostile. Under numerous attempts, he was able to reach the Golgo king, who had refused to reimburse him of the goods because he was not a citizen and being Egyptian didn't mean much to him. They asked him to stay a few days while they look into the matter and try to find the thief, but to no avail. To make matters worse, the king wanted to be paid for. Now. This was really telling because this would have really showed where the people viewed the Egyptians and the social economic strata of the time period. Just a few hundred years prior to this, an Egyptian priest that goes into a foreign land would have been treated a lot better, because they would have been afraid of the repercussions if they did not treat the Egyptian priests properly. So now an Egyptian priest is going into the Phoenician city states and is not treated with a lot of respect. Therefore one could conclude that they're not really respecting the Egyptian empire as much as they used to anyway. So that's kind of a correlation there. So ultimately it was pretty clear that the Egyptians no longer were in a major position of authority and therefore you could see Egyptian power waning just in these letters. Now if the Egyptians were at the height of their power, or if this was, say, an Assyrian merchant, the local king might have reimbursed the merchant out of fear that the foreign king could send a little small army up to them and take care of the problem himself. But that didn't happen in this case because he was obviously not afraid of what the Egyptians were going to do to him.

Speaker 1: 45:37

Now, this was a relatively short story. It ends kind of abruptly, in my opinion. But the point of the story is to show you where the Egyptians are at this time period, how other foreign merchants, how they felt about them, how other foreign kings felt about them. It was pretty obvious from reading this that other countries, other kings of these small auto city states had no fear whatsoever of what the Egyptians would do to them. But the really interesting thing is, for the longest time people thought this was a real story that would have taken place around Ramesses XI's reign. But unfortunately they did a lot of looking into this and analysis that was done in the 80s seemed to conclude that this was not a real story. In fact it was a fictional story. In addition, there were some debates as to whether this story would have actually taken place during Ramesses XI, and some people tended to think that this would have actually taken closer to around 950 BCE, which would have been a couple hundred years after when they originally thought this had taken place. But either way, the report of Wenham, although it was fictional, it still represents an accurate description of how people felt about Egypt during Ramesses XI's reign and just Egyptian power in general. And the reason why this story is so important is because, although it's fictional, it's not real.

Speaker 1: 47:22

It's important to note that during this time period, the theft of goods was a serious loss to the organizer of the expedition, who was essentially an international businessman of the day. Just like business people of today, they don't actually carry the goods with them from point A to point B. Instead, it's an actual merchant who would carry the goods, typically on a ship or a donkey or both. So what I'm saying is, if the goods were being transported to another place, it wasn't the captain of the ship that was responsible. It would have been the money person who was sponsoring it. So if the merchant was robbed, his first recourse would typically be to appeal to the local authorities for justice. In order to get justice, the thief would have to be identified as a citizen of that particular jurisdiction of which it happened. Now, if that thief got away, the king was under no obligation to compensate the merchants. So usually what happened was a merchant would return to the person or a group of people that were sponsoring the expedition and explain the situation. If the story was accepted, the robbed merchant would not be held at fault. If the account seemed like a lie or a possible inside job, charges would usually be brought up against the person that carried the goods.

Speaker 1: 48:52

It's important to note that the person carrying the goods for a person or a group of people would want to guard against theft as much as possible, even though they would be held blameless, and this is kind of common sense, right? You are transporting goods for people and this is your livelihood and you're making a pretty decent income by doing this. The last thing you want to do is have a reputation as a person that can't deliver goods from point A to point B. You don't want to be that person that loses goods on their behalf. So in the end, you are going to do all you can to protect the goods, even if you're not going to be held liable in the end, because in the end you know if you have a bad reputation, you're not going to get hired anymore and you're going to have to find a new career, because no one, let alone a syndicate of wealthy people, are going to hire you to carry your goods from point A to point B, and obviously one way to mitigate this risk would be you would use the money that you're being paid to hire armed guards for the expeditions, especially if it's not a government sponsored trade.

Speaker 1: 49:59

But it's also important to note that the one interesting thing about Egypt is, even during their down times or their intermediate periods, when they are weakened and they're not as powerful as they once were, they always seem to have a flourishing trade, despite their own political problems at home. And the fact remains is Egypt will always be viewed as a wealthy country and will be the bread basket for the Near East and even the Roman Empire. So therefore there is always some kind of demand for Egyptian goods and crops, whether they are a dominant military power or they're being controlled by an outsider. So what I'm saying is, even during their intermediate periods, which sometimes could have been referred to as a dark age, it really wouldn't give you an idea of what was really going on in Egypt, and one could incorrectly assume that just because it's a dark age or an intermediate period that Egypt's economy would have been completely collapsed. That wasn't really the case. Just because they weren't a dominant military power, that doesn't mean that Egypt was still not producing goods and exporting them throughout the rest of the known world at the time All those dark ages or intermediate periods.

Speaker 1: 51:22

Really, what that meant was Egypt was just weakened politically and militarily and in a lot of cases what happened was Egypt would have been split into two or more parts the northern and southern part, along with other local regions. Because what I said prior and what I tend to view Egypt is, egypt would naturally have two separate parts the northern and southern part of Egypt, the southern part of Egypt being Upper Egypt and the northern part being Lower Egypt. They would have had really kind of different accesses to the Nile and the Nile would have affected them differently and because of it, I always feel like that Egypt should naturally be divided into two countries in a weird kind of way. But even when Egypt was divided up and when it was fragmented into individual governors or local warlords, egypt still would have played a crucial part in international trade, but they still would have been hindered a bit, because the fact is, without a strong central authority, you wouldn't be able to provide protection to run goods into foreign countries and you would have had a loss of kind of economies of scale when the country is being overrun by different local governors or warlords or just you just don't have their strong central authority anymore. So that would ultimately it would affect the trade. But they were still very much getting goods off into other parts of the world during this time period Because in the end, the way I view it and I could be totally wrong here is, despite the fact that they didn't have a strong central government, which usually would have helped them achieve some sort of economies of scale, the local governors or warlords, or however you want to look at them, still wanted the sea trade flourished, because if you have an increasing amount of trade from your particular region, it would have been. You could have collected more taxes and you could have grown your power break, so that there was clearly an incentive to keep trade alive and flourishing, even though maybe it would have been hindered slightly. It was still very much a global power in getting goods outside into other parts of the Near East and even up into the Ionian states and places like that.

Speaker 1: 53:46

So a little bit after the time of the Wenaman was written. The Greek city of Nakhredis was established in Egypt, which would have been the most important trade center in the country, and even one of the biggest and most important trade centers in the Mediterranean, for that matter. In fact, nakhredis would remain one of the most important trade centers for the next few centuries until it was overshadowed by Alexandria. So what we see is the Greek city states and Egypt and other nations of the Levant, including the Phoenician city states and Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Well, they're all trading with each other, and what they're also doing at this time is they're sharing not only goods, but they're sharing cultural beliefs through cities like Nakhredis. So you set up this major trade center. All these different, various peoples come to trade their goods, and now we're exchanging ideas, we're exchanging cultural beliefs, and this is where you start to see different religious beliefs start to seep into different cultures.

Speaker 1: 54:54

Now, from a personal standpoint, this is when, when I'm talking about Egypt, it gets to be a little bit hard. Like does this belong in an Egyptian podcast or should this belong in a Greek podcast? Like, when should I talk about that? I tend to lean towards this is more Egyptian, but when you get into the Ptolemy's, for example, is that a Greek episode or is that an Egyptian episode? I'm going to put it in the Egyptian side, but I'll obviously I'll reference it quite a bit when I get to the Greeks. But that's the thing is.

Speaker 1: 55:30

When you start to see all these different cultures intermixing and setting up these various trade places, it gets to be a little bit of a problem. Should it be here? Should it be there? And the same thing happened with Assyria, right? So when they set up their Kinesh colonies in Anatolia, is that Assyrian? Do I talk about that in Assyria or do I talk about that in Anatolia? I mean, I'll talk about them in both.

Speaker 1: 55:53

But you can see certain instances where it gets a little confusing. I'm not talking about Egypt but I keep on referring to Greeks. Or I'm talking about the Assyrians but I keep on referring to the people of Anatolia, or vice versa. So we start to see a glimpse of that right here. It becomes way more prominent when we get to the Ptolemy's. But either way, since we have this big trade center that's being centered in northern Egypt, which wouldn't be all that far from where Alexandria would be, we do see that because trade is flowing in.

Speaker 1: 56:27

We start to see that silver had also increased in a lot of abundance because you're doing a foreign trade. Foreign trade means more silver. So so much silver is actually flowing through the kingdom that in Egypt the word that closely resembles the word for money was the word for silver. I say closely resemble because Egypt still didn't have a source of money, because even in this era the word was used for payment to happen. But the payment didn't necessarily happen in silver. It could have happened in other goods.

Speaker 1: 57:03

Of course this kind of makes sense because if you remember from the Mesopotamian episodes, they had a similar situation in which silver would be the underlying measurement of a particular good, but that didn't necessarily mean that silver was used in the transaction. So you would want to get, say, item A and item A is worth 10 grams of silver, but I would buy item B with the equivalent of 10 grams of silver with some kind of grain or something. So item B is worth 10 grams of silver in exchange. So you get a good idea how it works. So just because we measured something in a particular commodity doesn't necessarily mean that that commodity was being exchanged for a purchase. But in reality, unlike Mesopotamia, in Egypt goods could still be measured or expressed in any sort of commodity, whereas in Mesopotamia it was a little bit more established that the goods would be measured in silver. That wasn't necessarily the case in Egypt, but it was starting to take root. So you could see something quoted in grain quantities or quoted in copper or silver. So if you're going to purchase a good or an animal or even slaves for that matter, these prices could have been quoted in numerous types of commodities.

Speaker 1: 58:29

Now, during this time period, in Mesopotamia silver was absolutely taking over as unit of measurement. So in Mesopotamia things would have been quoted in silver, but that didn't necessarily mean, like I said, that the transaction would have happened in silver. So that's kind of a big difference between Mesopotamian Egypt, as I mentioned. So ultimately up through this time period it had been suggested that the temples had more or less acted as the default treasuries and would have acted as local guarantors of any kind of transaction or credit.

Speaker 1: 59:02

However, it's worth noting that there really is no such thing as Egyptian coins or other forms of silver objects that were really being used on a regular basis in Egypt. So I just want to make that clear. It's not like Mesopotamia during this time period. It's still evolving, and I keep on going to the fact that Egypt is a lot more self-sufficient than the other local regions or local economy. So it's way more self-sufficient than places like Mesopotamia, for example, and we're still hundreds of years before coins start to appear on the scene. Also, you can help this show a ton by leaving a five-star review. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon.