Empires: Egypt's Golden Empire (2001) s01e03 Episode Script

For over 3000 years, Egypt was ruled by pharaohs.
But in that vast sweep of time, one pharaoh stands out.
He would reign for 67 years, command the largest empire on earth and capture the imagination of the world.
His name was Ramesses.
Ramesses built a reputation that has resounded through history.
It was a reputation deliberately crafted by the pharaoh himself.
Ramesses was in fact a master of propaganda, projecting his power beyond the battlefield across the ancient world.
This is the story of how one man created his own legend The legend of Ramesses the Great And how, in the end, not even a legendary pharaoh could save Egypt's golden empire from destruction.
In 1327 BC, a tragic event brought Egypt to the verge of crisis.
The pharaoh Tutankhamun had died.
His death marked the end of Egypt's most powerful dynasty And the beginning of a period of great uncertainty.
A great deal was at stake.
In just two centuries, Egypt's royal family had built a massive empire stretching far beyond the Nile.
From Syria in the north to the goldfields of Nubia, modern-day Sudan, in the south.
A succession of powerful pharaohs had made Egypt the richest and most powerful nation in the world.
When Tutankhamun died, the big problem was there was no heir to the throne.
So obviously Egypt must have been in a bad state.
There was nobody there to take oven and things were in a state of flux.
But now, with the end of the great dynasty, a new enemy had emerged to challenge Egypt's might.
The Hittites.
The Hittites, living in what is now Turkey, were a more technologically advanced power than Egypt.
And they were pushing against the northern border of Egypt's empire.
In 1279 BC, the fate of the threatened empire became the responsibility of a young boy, the new Pharaoh of Egypt.
He was crowned Ramesses, meaning "offspring of the Sun God Re".
Ramesses comes to the throne fairly young, probably about the age of 15, and has an enormous task ahead of him.
He looks back over the history of his country.
A hundred years or so earlier, there were kings who were the epitome of wealth, power and good taste.
That's an enormous legacy to have to live up to.
Ramesses had not come from a royal background.
In fact, the boy king had been born a commoner.
Ramesses' family was a military family who were fairly new on the throne.
They were not from the royal line.
They were near the royal line, they lived and worked for the kings of Egypt, but they did not belong to the royal family.
It was military prowess that had won Ramesses' family its place on the throne.
And it would be through military action that the young Ramesses would have to prove himself.
To the north of Egypt, the Hittites were preparing for war.
They intended to take advantage of the young and inexperienced boy king.
Ramesses was about to face the biggest challenge of his life.
You have two superpowers, each one trying to grab bits from the other.
And eventually they're going to clash.
By the fifth year of Ramesses' reign, the massive Hittite army moved into Egypt's territories, advancing towards the town of Kadesh.
As the crossroads for trade with the Near East, Kadesh was of extreme strategic importance.
Ramesses II realises that the battle for the area of Kadesh, for this border, is the battle that will eventually decide which of these two empires will be the leaders of the world in the entire century, in the entire 13th century.
Here was the opportunity Ramesses had been waiting for.
It was a chance to prove his power and might to the world.
There was only one problem.
Egypt was not ready for war.
Ramesses needed an army quickly.
He mobilised not just Egyptian soldiers but other subjects of his empire, including Nubians and Libyans.
The primitive bronze weapons of the Egyptian forces were soon to be pitted against the Hittites' iron armoury.
The odds didn't look good.
I can't imagine what it must have been like to be a soldier in Pharaoh 's army.
Firstly, you don't want to be there.
You've been conscripted.
Secondly, you're rather poorly fed, you're rather poorly clothed.
You have a spear on if you're lucky, a bow and arrow, and that's it.
You are expected to give your all.
Soon Ramesses' army was ready.
The pharaoh's scribes also came along to record what the pharaoh was confident would be a glorious victory.
He had all the self-confidence that can go with being young.
He thought that everything was do-able, he thought that problems would not exist, he probably thought that compromises wouldn't need to be made.
You could go out and do it and get it.
Finally, the 20-year-old king set off with his army, leading an advance guard out of the lush Nile Delta into the scorching heat of the Sinai Desert.
The figure he cut at the helm of his army was impressive.
I can imagine that he had a great deal of power and authority.
He was very strong and muscular.
He was himself about 5'8", 5'9".
That's about not much, 4" or so taller than an average Egyptian man.
But taller, nevertheless.
He had red hair, which was a very unusual feature in Ancient Egypt, and it set him apart.
The Egyptian army surged across the desert through Israel and Lebanon.
A few miles from Kadesh, Ramesses and his advance guard made camp and waited for the rest of the army to catch up.
KENT WEEKS: When Ramesses established this camp, he obviously was not thinking that there'd be a battle any time soon.
It was time to stop, have a picnic, talk about life in general, and await maybe a week, two weeks, three weeks later, some kind of battle, which the Egyptians knew they'd win.
But it wasn't going to be so easy.
We know from scribal accounts that the inexperienced pharaoh was about to be the victim of a dangerous trap.
There were two Bedouins in the desert who were brought in by Ramesses' soldiers and interrogated.
Ramesses or whoever said "Where's the King of the Hittites?" They said "Don 't worry about him, he's far away.
" What Ramesses didn't realise was that his informers were Hittite spies sent to mislead him.
They released them and said "Great, let's set up camp and relax.
"There's plenty of time before the battle begins.
" The pharaoh had fallen for a simple trick.
Ramesses goofed, seriously and badly.
To have taken those two Bedouins at their word, to have avoided sending out scouts to check the veracity of what they said, I think was a terrible military mistake.
Ramesses' soldiers captured two more spies.
This time Ramesses had them beaten and interrogated.
He got a very different story.
The Hittites were not miles away.
They were across the river, ready to attack.
In panic, the pharaoh sent word back for reinforcements.
Suddenly the Hittites attacked.
Ramesses' scribes left an eyewitness account of the battle.
"The Hittite wretch, with his army, forded the river south of Kadesh, "smashing into His Majesty's army when it least expected an attack.
" The dust, the choking dust, the blood pouring onto the desert sands, these soldiers who looked death in the face at every moment of these battles.
It must have been absolute hell.
Ramesses' troops fell before the Hittites' iron weapons.
The Egyptian army stood on the brink of defeat.
Then, at the last minute, Ramesses' reinforcements arrived.
They took the Hittites by surprise.
Ramesses has been unbelievably lucky.
He ends up at the end of the day holding the battlefield.
Actually, it was something of a goalless draw, snatched from defeat at the last moment by the arrival of the Egyptian equivalent of the US cavalry.
Ramesses had failed in his mission.
The Hittites would be back and Egypt's trade routes and empire were still vulnerable.
The battle of Kadesh did not go to plan.
At the most, it was a way for the Egyptians to prevent the Hittites from moving further south, but it was certainly not the flamboyant victory Ramesses wanted.
Ramesses, however, was determined to have his victory.
Back in Egypt, he would tell a far different story of the battle of Kadesh.
What Ramesses does is say "I'm going to rewrite history.
" So it's going to be the big gesture.
It's going to be the vainglorious boast.
It's going to be the huge publicity machine.
It's going to be the hieroglyphic equivalent of spin-doctoring.
Ramesses now masterminded an extraordinary propaganda campaign.
He sent out legions of artisans to carve epic depictions of the battle of Kadesh on temple walls around the empire.
The story he told begins truthfully but then veers off into fantasy.
The young king claimed he had won a clear victory at Kadesh and it was not the Egyptian reinforcements but he himself who, all alone, had saved the day.
In Ramesses' version, he transformed himself from a gullible, inexperienced commander into a god-like warrior.
Every temple wall carried the same story.
"His Majesty leapt up, raging against them.
"He grabbed his weapons, and set off at a gallop, completely alone.
"His Majesty was an unstoppable fighting force.
"Everything near him was ablaze with fire.
"All the foreign lands were blasted by his scorching breath.
" He claims that single-handediy, after his troops had deserted him, he went into the Held of battle slashing, swaying his sword back and forth, decimating the enemies of Egypt.
"He charged straight into the Hittite troops.
"The infantry and chariotry fell on their faces.
"His Majesty struck them down and killed them where they stood.
" The claims of Ramesses II that his army totally abandoned him, that he was left alone on a Held of battle and single-handediy defeated the Hittites, of course is an utter load of rubbish.
Despite his boasting, Ramesses knew his army could not defeat the Hittites.
He had to cut a deal.
Secretly, Ramesses began to negotiate with the Hittites.
After lengthy debate, Ramesses signed a treaty with the Hittite king.
Ramesses the spin doctor was now Ramesses the statesman.
A copy of the treaty is still preserved in the holiest of temples at Karnak, chiselled onto a wall.
"l, the great Hittite ruler, "am at peace with Ramesses, the great King of Egypt, "and enjoy his brotherhood.
"All the people of Egypt and all the Hittite people "will be at peace like us forever.
" Covering issues of royal succession, extradition and amnesty for refugees, the treaty remains a model that is still followed today.
Here you have the two superpowers of the day sitting around a table saying "What we need to do is to build up a lasting peace, "to build up an alliance which will mutually benefit both our sides.
" To seal the treaty, Ramesses married one of the Hittite king's daughters.
The Hittite princess was part of the terms of the peace treaty.
She was, if you like, the cement in the treaty.
She's brought into the presence of Ramesses and therefore, by extension, into the Egyptian empire.
The Hittite princess was brought to Egypt's new capital, located in the Nile Delta in northern Egypt.
It was called Per Ramesses, meaning the House of Ramesses.
Far from the old aristocracy's centre of power in Thebes, Per Ramesses was carefully situated in the north to keep an eye on the Hittites.
It was to be a new capital for a new regime.
of Ancient Egypt.
This was the new capital.
This was something that would be the beginning of a new regeneration of the country.
He's saying "I am a new man, this is a new Egypt, "and the traditional aristocracy had better come to terms with this.
" On the banks of the Nile, Ramesses adorned his capital with all the treasures the empire had to offer.
Eyewitnesses tell of a lushness and opulence unsurpassed in Egypt.
"I have reached Per Ramesses.
It seems like an amazing place, "a beautiful area unlike any other.
"Its pools are alive with fish and its lakes are covered in ducks.
"Its gardens are lush with vegetation.
"From the riverbanks come fruit as sweet as honey.
"Everyone who lives there is happy, and none has any regrets.
"Even the lowliest person there lives in style.
" Not content with glorifying himself in this world, Ramesses turned his attention to the afterlife.
Far from Per Ramesses, deep in the south of Egypt, was a place dedicated to securing Ramesses' immortality.
Hidden behind the mountain looming over the Valley of the Kings was the carefully guarded village of Deir el Medineh.
They lived in a self-contained community that was tightly policed as they had secrets which were not meant to be divulged to the public.
They can be watched in their journey from the village to their work.
So the workmen can't be accosted, they can't be asked for information.
This security was vital because these villagers were the pharaohs' tomb builders.
They held the key to the greatest secret of the empire The location of the royal tombs.
Buried in the hills around them lay the treasures of the richest and most powerful kings in history.
The mountain the tomb builders climbed over to work was literally a mountain of gold.
These men not only dug the pharaohs' tombs out of the mountain, they also were designers, artists, painters.
They produced exquisite scenes and hieroglyphic texts on tomb walls, spells and rituals that were essential for guiding the pharaoh to the afterlife.
What could be more important? You were, after all, ensuring that the pharaohs could travel from this life to the next.
One mistake in those hieroglyphic texts, one error in those scenes, and there'd be a detour, so the king wouldn't make it to the next life.
Ramesses did not intend to spend the afterlife alone.
The greatest work of the villagers at Deir el Medineh was not in Ramesses' own tomb but in the tomb for the most important woman in Ramesses' life.
In 1312, Ramesses married an Egyptian noblewoman, Nefertari, and made her his chief wife.
For Ramesses, the building of her tomb was to be the ultimate tribute to his greatest love.
NICOLE DOUEK: It is really the very best, possibly the last of the marvellous tombs of Ancient Egypt.
The reliefs, the fineness of the drawings, the ways the colours were applied It almost indicates a love affair between the man who did it and the figure of the queen.
"My love is unique.
"No one can rival hen for she is the most beautiful woman alive.
"Slender-necked and milky-breasted she is, "her hair the colour of pure lapis.
"Gold is nothing compared to her arms "and her fingers are like lotus flowers.
"Her buttocks are full but her waist is narrow.
"Just by passing, she has stolen away my heart.
" The tomb is decorated in the most exquisite taste of the time.
And some snippets of the life of then have appeared now.
They discovered a thumb imprint of an ancient workmen who must have held his hand to the ceiling while he was painting, took his fingers away and forgot to repaint and retouch that part.
So the fingerprint of one of the ancient workmen is still there.
The villagers who once walked these streets have left a detailed picture of daily life during the reign of Ramesses.
On stone flakes and pottery shards littering the remains of the village, archaeologists found the tomb builders' notes and correspondence.
Laundry lists, recipes, news, poems and love letters.
It is an archaeological goldmine, a cultural goldmine.
The people of Deir el Medineh were inveterate record keepers.
They kept tabs on everything.
And they left it behind on 'ostraka', the ancient Egyptian equivalent of a Post-it note, I suppose.
Records about who was ill on which day, who was going on holiday, when did the in-laws visit, whose son went out carousing, got drunk and did unspeakable things to the girl next door.
All this kind of thing is there, and in glorious, wonderful detail.
"Why are you treating me so badly? "I'm no better than a donkey in your eyes.
" "If I was the type who couldn't hold their drink, "you'd be right not to invite me.
"But I'm just someone who's a bit short of been " "At feedtime you fetch an ox, but you never invite me for a beer.
"You only ask me when there's work to be done.
" When they weren't working on royal tombs, the villagers used their unique skills on their own tombs.
Instead of the religious scenes of the royal tombs, their tombs portrayed the afterlife the tomb builders hoped for Idealised versions of everyday life.
In their spare time, they'd make their tomb, add decorations.
Probably at dinner parties the question was "How's the tomb getting on, then?" From the paintings and writings left by Ramesses' villagers, we know who lived in each house and even the intimate details of their relationships.
Nowhere else in the ancient world can we listen to ordinary people and eavesdrop on their scandals and gossip.
There was a foreman called Paneb and we know a lot about him.
We have a series of complaints about him.
He did various things.
He stole equipment from the Valley of the Kings.
He embezzled the salary of some of his colleagues.
He went around seducing the wives of villagers, presumably when the villagers were out at work.
Even Paneb's own son denounced him for his behaviour.
"My father slept with Tia while she was married to Kenna "and with Hunro when she was with Pendua.
"And after he had slept with Hunro, he even slept with her daughter.
" These people at Deir el Medineh quite clearly are human beings.
To read what they are writing, to see what they are doing, what they have in their homes, what kinds of drawings they have made, is to realise that we and they are truly kindred spirits.
"He argues with my mother and threatens to throw her out.
'She never does anything for you' he said.
" "I didn't tell you to check on your wife, 'just to tum a blind eye to it.
"I'm not going to make you face her whoring around.
" "You told me to give lb a job, so I did.
"But he takes ages to bring a jug of water" "You're no man, you can't even get your wife pregnant.
"And another thing, you're the biggest miser around" By the time Ramesses was in his forties, his tomb had been finished for several years.
With the average Egyptian life expectancy at around 35 years, Ramesses must have known that he was already living on borrowed time.
He focused his attention on securing his legacy, siring children to succeed him on the golden throne.
As well as his chief wife Nefertari, Ramesses had a number of minor wives in his harem.
He even married three of his own daughters.
In his inscriptions, he boasts of something like 80 sons and something like 60 daughters, although their number is vaguer than the number of sons.
But he boasts of a huge offspring and he's like one of those modem dictators known as father of their country, in many cases, literally.
Confident that he had produced an heir, Ramesses turned with renewed vigour to his building program.
Soon the Nile Valley began to overflow with monuments dedicated to Egypt's greatest king.
When Ramesses builds, he builds big.
It is enormous.
It's on a scale that has never really been seen in Egypt.
Everywhere, Ramesses' title could be seen carved into rock Hieroglyphs that read "Ruler of Rulers".
Practically every town in Egypt gets its temple either rebuilt or refounded or revamped.
Ramesses isn't modest.
If he sees a rather nice monument, say an obelisk put up by a previous king, he puts his own names all over the obelisk as well.
Where great temples already existed, such as here at Luxor, Ramesses simply erected a new entrance, with four statues of himself, to claim the temple as his own.
At Karnak, Egypt's holiest temple, all the pharaohs of the New Kingdom had built monuments.
But Ramesses soon outdid them all.
In the Great Hypostyle Hall begun by his grandfather, Ramesses ordered a work of awesome proportions.
An army of artisans carved a field of 134 columns in the shape of papyrus.
Each column stood 69 feet tall, 6 feet wide, and weighed over 100 tons.
The Greeks, the Romans, even Napoleon would one day attempt to emulate its grandeur.
It doesn't seem to be the work of human beings, it is on such a scale.
It's looks as though it's part of the personality of the man to have to prove a point.
He's always scoring points over everybody y else.
Through propaganda, diplomacy and a building program that humbled his rivals, Ramesses had finally become the legend he had set out to create.
The boy king, born a commoner, was truly Ramesses the Great.
But at the height of Ramesses' reign, just when his empire seemed stronger than ever, tragedy struck.
Ramesses' chief wife, Nefertari, died.
Ramesses had her body sealed in her exquisite tomb.
After Nefertari died, Ramesses completed the ultimate tribute to his wife.
In an audacious act, Ramesses turned two entire mountains into temples.
Side by side, one dedicated to himself and one to his wife, Nefertari.
Abu Simbel was not intended simply as a memorial to Nefertari.
Ramesses had chosen the location of the temples carefully.
The two temples at Abu Simbel are another piece of the propaganda exercise of Ramesses.
They are situated at the southernmost border of Egypt to indicate the power of Egypt to people living further south.
It shows to everybody you can't really mess around with the Egyptian kings.
Here, overlooking the Nile, 3000 years later, Ramesses still stands beside the woman he once called "the one for whom the sun shines".
Nefertari left Ramesses an important legacy Sons, to rule Egypt after his death.
But the long life that had been the pharaoh's greatest blessing was now fast becoming his curse.
While he lived on, his children began to die.
One by one, he groomed twelve of his heirs for power, named each as Crown Prince, only to watch them die.
While bereavements wore down the old king, Ramesses made sure the world still only heard of his successes.
Tales of Ramesses' greatness were manufactured at a new temple the pharaoh had built for himself The Ramesseum.
Behind the temple sanctuary was the intellectual heart of the empire, the House of Life.
The scribes who worked here were responsible for carefully crafting the image Ramesses projected to the world.
They composed the texts glorifying the pharaoh.
They managed his campaign funds and they were the designers of his buildings and monuments.
The House of Life was Ramesses' Ministry of Propaganda.
Its task to create and exploit the larger-than-life image of their king.
They were masterminding the royal presentation of Pharaoh as this superhuman hero.
They were image makers, spin doctors, we'd say in modem terminology, that would use traditional knowledge and apply it to the promotion of a particular individual, in this case, of King Ramesses II.
All of this knowledge was written on rolls of papyrus and stored in the House of Life.
The temple library might have contained 10,000 papyrus works, some of them copied from books that were already 2000 years old when Ramesses was on the throne of Egypt.
It would have been a storehouse of intellectual wisdom.
This library of knowledge would not have been possible without the invention of papyrus.
The papyrus plant that grew along the Nile provided a medium to record Egypt's knowledge.
The papyrus scrolls that filled the House of Life gave Egypt a recorded history.
Ramesses' scribes continued to build the image of the pharaoh as a strong and vibrant warrior king.
The reality, however, was that by 1213 BC, the 93-year-old king was ailing.
At the end of his life, he was in rather frail condition.
He had lost his teeth, he had dental abscesses, he had curvature of the spine, he had scoliosis, numerous problems.
He must have been in great pain.
A terrible thing for a man who, in younger days, was strong and virile and very muscular and very enthusiastic.
At the end of that year, preparations were under way to celebrate Ramesses' 67th year in power.
The ordinary people of Egypt could be forgiven for thinking he'd live forever, yet they were wrong.
Just before the celebrations began, news broke Ramesses the Great was dead.
Ramesses' death must have been so traumatic.
Most of the people of Egypt had never known another king.
Probably not more than a few dozen people could remember what happened before Ramesses had ascended the throne.
This could be the end of the universe.
The sun may not rise or the moon wax and wane, the Nile won't rise.
It must have been panic time.
This is truly an important event, and nobody knows quite what to do.
The frail body of Ramesses that rests in the Cairo Museum today bears little resemblance to the heroic figure carved on nearly every temple facade along the Nile.
A small, shrivelled corpse with tufts of red hair.
This was the man who cast his shadow over Egyptian history.
Every pharaoh who followed would strive to recreate his greatness.
The legacy of Ramesses the Great is that everybody tried to be like him.
It is the name of Ramesses that they take on, so from Ramesses II, the one we know, the great one, we go on a whole series of Ramesses until Ramesses XI.
But they're all Ramesses of a minor scale.
Nothing that can be compared to Ramesses II.
Through sheer determination and the power of his personality, Ramesses had maintained the empire for over half a century.
He had assumed that his legacy would last forever.
But the world was changing and within a generation Ramesses' legacy was in peril.
At the edges of the empire, city after city began to fall under pressure from invading hordes.
Well armed, aggressive and dangerous, these foreigners arrived by ship and decimated everyone in their sight.
Ancient texts refer to them only as the Sea People.
Eventually these Sea People even destroyed the powerful Hittite empire.
With its greatest ally gone, Egypt itself was now vulnerable.
"No country could withstand their onslaught.
"The Hittite land was the first to fall.
"Then they came onwards, on towards Egypt itself " The fading reliefs on the walls of this Egyptian temple are the only record that remains of the Sea People.
Yet they were changing the whole political structure of the ancient world.
The Sea People were attacking the edges of the empire.
Allies were lost and trade routes blocked.
Egypt's once-vibrant economy began to falter and now problems within Egypt began to mount.
Ramesses' successors expected the same standards of craftsmanship from their builders as during the reign of the great king.
But they no longer had the means to finance these great works.
The Egyptian state was living as if it was still the time of Ramesses II.
But what is important here is that it was not the time of Ramesses II.
It was not the time of Ramesses II internationally but it was also not the time internally.
Egypt had begun to crumble.
The government couldn't even pay its elite craftsmen at Deir el Medineh.
There came to be a frustration with the Egyptian administration.
Promises are made and then broken.
Promises are made and then forgotten.
And, as usual, it is the little man who suffers.
The tomb workers faced starvation.
Putting down their tools, the villagers went on strike, the first recorded industrial strike in history.
"We have no clothes, no oil, no fish, no vegetables.
"Send a message to our good lord, the Pharaoh, asking for them, "and another message to our boss "telling him to provide us with emergency rations.
" The little people wouldn't take it any more.
They did go on strike.
They did protest at not being paid.
It didn't do them much good.
For a couple of months they made several protests but, additionally, they went off in search of treasure to try and pay their bills, if you will.
In desperate circumstances, the tomb builders did the unthinkable.
They knew the secret location of the royal tombs and now they betrayed the pharaohs of the New Kingdom and violated their sacred burial chambers.
Even the tomb of Ramesses the Great did not escape desecration.
The confessions beaten out of the few that were caught allow us a glimpse of the magnificent treasures they found.
"We fetched our copper picks and tunnelled into this royal tomb.
"We discovered the king's mummy lying at the back of the tomb.
"It was covered with gold from head to toe.
"The mummy cases were also lined with silver and gold, inside and out, "and were studded with all sorts of precious stones.
"We tore off the gold, took the amulets and jewellery.
"We split the gold we'd found into equal shares "and then we sailed back across the river to Thebes.
" By 1080 BC, most of the treasures buried with the pharaohs had been plundered.
The mountain of gold had been stripped bare.
The same people who had built the royal tombs had desecrated them.
The very men who had assisted the pharaohs in their quest for immortality had taken it away.
As order broke down within Egypt, the empire finally collapsed.
States in the Near East were no longer loyal to the Egyptian pharaoh.
Even Nubia seized their chance for independence, cutting Egypt's last lifeline its access to gold.
The loss of Nubia meant the loss of gold.
The loss of gold means you do not have any clout on the international political scene.
So other people are going to become the dominant ones and Egypt becomes a little bit of a backwater.
In a final, humiliating act, the priests of Karnak were forced to perform a sorry duty.
They gathered together 40 royal mummies from the desecrated tombs and carried them to secret locations where they might finally find peace.
Ahmose, founder of the New Kingdom.
Tuthmosis III, warrior and empire builder.
Even Ramesses, the last Great Pharaoh.
Once they had been treated like gods.
Now their bodies were piled up in caves in a mountainside where they would rest for 3000 years.
It seemed that Ramesses' struggle for immortality had been in vain.
Less than 200 years after the end of his reign, the empire had fallen.
And with the death of Ramesses XI, the Ramesside dynasty became extinct.
The New Kingdom was over.
During the New Kingdom, Egypt became this mixture of reality and Nation that has always represented the most fascinating aspect of this civilisation.
The reality of a very powerful and successful empire, but also the Nation of a display of power that goes well beyond the reality.
All the other empires of the ancient world tried to emulate Egypt.
From the Assyrians to the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans, you always look back to the greatest empire of all which is the empire of Egypt.
Everybody wants to be like the Egyptian pharaohs.
Today, millions still come to pay tribute to the pharaohs.
3000 years later, Egypt's Golden Empire is still conquering the imagination of the world.