I loved when he said you Egyptians left no record of how the Sphinx looked... They did. It's the freaking Sphinx, what grander record could they have kept???^^
"There is something about this super popular thing that almost everyone is fascinated by that fascinates me" "There is something about ice-cream that I really like" See how dumb that is? In multiple ways too. Firstly, saying something like that is completely superfluous. It's the same as going into an ice-cream shop that's full of people, walk to the middle of the shop and loudly say "Something about ice-cream is really good". Secondly, for some reason you decided to make yourself look like even more of an idiot that can't understand something that even children have no problems with (why you are fascinated, interested etc. in something). Lastly, why say just that? The only valid reason other than pure idiocy is for cheap likes. It's pretty impressive to somehow cram so much stupidity into a single sentence comment though.
You shouldn't think to hard about it. Logic isn't exactly my forte.. I am excellent in creating things though. Hit me up if you have a cool concept. Pun intended.
Other misconception which should be addressed is simply terminology: Ancient Egypt does not denote Egypt during the Ptolemaic or later Roman era, that was actually the end of it. Ancient egypt is for the most part the bit between 3100 BC to about 330 BC (which was when the "Late Period" ended).
You can’t call Herodotus “History Daddy” without mentioning your perfect hair on both head and chest. I just realized you might be one of my history daddies
I remember being told in school that they liquified the brain and drained it out of the nose because they thought it was just "head filler" instead of an important organ
Yeah, but that "murder mystery" could well have been started by a priesthood very unhappy with Akenaten- meaning, literally "child or son of the god Aten"- that appears to have been a faction within the Egyptian Hierarchy wanting to "dispense" with the role and strangle hold the priesthood and their literacy gave them over much of society. And it would suit a manipulative priesthood to take credit for a "murder" to "inform" any later wannabe miscreants about "what could happen to them". FR
While not a misconception, I think one of the most mind blowing facts about Ancient Egypt I’ve read is how by the time cleopatra was ruler, the pyramids of Giza were ancient ruins, having been built 2500 years prior
Misconception: the Sphinx isn’t a single stone statue. A large part of the Sphinx is cut from limestone bedrock, but the paws and tail are almost entirely made from bricks, and it seems that throughout history whenever cracks formed in the Sphinx they use some form of concrete to bind the failing bits together.
It's actually thought that farmers, during a three-month (?) period when there wasn't any farming to do - I _think_ it was either during the dry season on the run up to the Nile flood, or during the flood itself - went to join a permanent team so they could earn money for their families. Did you know they went on strike, not for better conditions but for more make up!
That's what I heard too. The Nile valley is stupendously fertile but only for a few months out of the year. The rest of the time? They were engaged in public works like helping to build palaces and temples and pyramids and such. What he calls "civic duty" was probably much stronger than that, more like religious duty, since the Pharaohs were kind of divine, and the pyramids were supposed to be their "forever homes"
My comments above are related to this- the clays with cartoushes were thought to be Pharoah's "markers", given to workers who came and did their share and could present the marker to Pharaoh's grainery for assistance if the Nile flood didn't materialize- which did occur about every seven to ten years. Also the fact that at the 3100 bc end, their were about 12 dialects of Egyptian thought spoken from the Nile delta to the head waters- by 2500 or so, the languages of Egypt appear to have become much more common- the thought that Pharoah required everybody to speak "Pharoah's language" would make sense. FR
@@keenanweind1780 Some of the graffiti I've seen pics of from the chamber above the King's Tomb in Khafre doesn't much fit the idea of "nose to the grind stone slaves" either. FR
Too bad the Egyptologists are so stuck in their own beliefs that new evidence is rarely taken seriously. So basically if you look into a lot of the drama surrounding Egyptology then it can make you start to doubt they really know much at all... It’s still really awesome to speculate though 😊
I love how they love to act like they have any clue of what really happened 5 freaking thousand years ago. A strong sense of civic duty? Work yourself to death, in the hot desert sun. Working off debts, but not slavery. I mean we have documents that show they used slaves to build roads, but, just roads. They wouldn't use them for other things like building stuff.
Our mistake. We do use US units (however silly they may be) b/c ~70% of our audience is US-based, but we absolutely intend to show metric equivalents. We'll be more careful moving forward!
I think a lot of people were told that in school, but i think the fact it was kept in a canopic jar says the opposite. I think their methods of removal changed over the years, but if it was waste they would not have kept it in the same way as the heart
I don't think that the emojis != Hyroglyphs debate is done. Anyone can read "☠️💩L" and still understand despite it not being "the last shit". (Thank God for Deadpool or I would have had to use an aubergine and a peach and those two just invite RU-vid-trolls)
The biggest misconception of all is that these structures were built in the desert and not thousands of years earlier prior to the desertification of Northern Africa !
Never heard of the Napoleon story before. WTF? lol In French there's a joke in Astérix & Cléopâtre where Obélix makes the nose fall after Panoramix quotes Napoléon. But that's it.
Tut had a lot physical problems...because he was inbred, he suffered many maladies...Tut had a cleft palate and a curved spine, and was probably weakened by inflammation and problems with his immune system...he was unhealthy throughout his life...
funny. just saw another misconception videos where you clearly pointed out the diffrence between an hypothes and a theory. and now you, yourself use the word theory for example "the ramp rope-and-pulley system". thats clearly only an hypothes. else i would love too see some more regarding this bullshit technic ^^
So your story is these cats straight out of the stone age, shit out the technology to build the most complicated structure ever then forgot how. Meanwhile ever other part of society advanced. Who's going to fix your misconceptions
Wasn't there also findings about the Sphinx being older than previously believed? That it showed water damage at a level that could have only been possible when Egypt was last under water?
That damage is there and high water could also have been caused by the large canal we have found traces of running from the East side of the Nile to near where Sphinx stands- and the Sphinx may well have been the "formal entry" for the workers, material and later celebrants coming to the Plateau. Lots of guesses, but Sphinx is definitely built of stone from right on sight- and part of it may be a natural geological feature, it is not entirely carved from "living rock" some of it is made from stones removed from the same acre or so that Sphinx sits on. If the canal were open during the known flood season, Sphinx would have been flooded many times- had it remained so throughout the Giza Building periods, Sphinx, built of sand stone, would be unrecognizable today. FR
I read somewhere early in the "mummy" popularity times (the discovery of them- not making them), people were grinding mummies up and mixing in liquuds to drink. For health? 🤔 Any truth to this?
The biggest misconception is that each brick of the pyramids was quarried and transported to the pyramids before being pulled or hoisted into place. It's more likely that the Egyptians mixed together the sand in the area and the flooded Nile river (during the rainy season) to make a type of concrete that was then poured into a mold for each brick. Thus working their way up each year and not needing an entire army of men to push/pull each brick.
Best way to build anything in human history seems to have been faith. Though I sometimes stay up at night wondering how much further ahead we'd be as a species if we'd invested such efforts into science, technology, and improving the human condition (human rights, end slavery, equal rights, basic needs met by all, etc) instead. Now that's an achievement to brag about!
The pyramids are much older than mainstream archeologists want to admit. Like the megalithic ruins found in Machu Piccu in Peru, the pyramids were built thousands of years before the time they are officially given credit to, the people of the time, did exactly like Mexico City and cities in Peru have done- found the megalithic ruins of past forgotten cultures and built on top of them, it's very obvious when you look at the engineering of the megalithic structures compared to the much shoddier work that is stacked on top of the Megalithic structures. This brings up the questions from people like me, how did the people in different areas of the world all use the same engineering patterns when constructing the megalithic ruins that can be found in places like Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, Peru, South America and North America, Mexico. and islands in the middle of the pacific ocean (like Easter Island.)
I's is hard for me to deal with Mental Floss. These kids do a halfway job at research and are often just wrong. I would say that about 10% of MF content is questionable at best.
I think the modern Western concept of forced labor can't be applied to Ancient Egypt at all. In many of the earliest civilizations, there was no coinage and the standard of payment was usually grain.
I wasn't the biggest fan at fist, but I feel he has been slowly improving... and since that process has been going on for some time now, he's gotten really good!
Despite what Zawi Hawass and his insistence on ignoring actual evidence says, the interior blocks show every sign of being cast, including heavier sediment and tiny fossils settling at the bottom of each block tested.
A theory not well supported by visible facts; cast or melted stones would be very homogeneous, very much the same throughout- a condition not found in any stones on the Plateau. Quite a few geologists and college geology departments have made this comment. The exact nature of a few of the techniques for carving and manipulating the stones are "works in progress" but the mechanics of cutting and shaping the stones has been deduced- the discoveries at the "City of the Builders" was revelatory to much of that. FR
I mean...the Egyptians definitely did use slave labor though. Maybe not on the pyramids during that period, and maybe not within their own people, but they absolutely did have various classes of slaves or indentures. A couple Egyptologists like to deny it, but they're definitely not in the the majority.
@@ANTSEMUT1 Begin here, my friend. Sources on the bottom. It's not a completely scholarly source, but it's a great place to start. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Egypt#:~:text=There%20were%20three%20types%20of,based%20on%20evidence%20and%20research.
Another misconception is that there is actually no Millenium Items in a Ancient Egypt, and Slifer was not actualy an executive producer. There was a real Pot of Greed but we don't know what it does.
So why do all Egyptians depictions within the Egyptian dynasties portray them as such? Most importantly why do greeks and Roman's only claim them to be such?
Among many errors, when this guy said “hollowed ground” instead of “hallowed ground”...it was enough for me to lose credibility for the video and the writers.
The biggest misconception is the legend of Isrealites being enslaved in Egypt and then being led by Moses. Even if you take the most secular view and remove all the supernatural things, there simply isn't enough evidence for this (except Exodus, which is the claim, not evidence). I wish all the Yahweh worshipping religions would crumble, as they should
While you are right that there is no evidence of the Israelites Slaves leaving Egypt. But that doesn’t mean the story has no no symbolic or allegorical value. Also, and most importantly, just because you are not religious or ascribed to one of the abrahamic religions does not mean those religions should not exist.
@@andrewbedwell8186 I agree, if every religious person thought about their faith's stories as symbolic, the world would be a better place, imagine if NOT ONE person literally believed in holy land, the amount of wars that would stop...
@@PilsnerGrip I’m pretty sure people would find some other excuse to fight wars over. The Holly Land concept is an excuse and (at least as far as I am aware in the Christian Bible) is never mentioned in the either testament. The concept of the Holy Land (at least in terms of the crusades which I believe was where the term came from) was primarily used as an excuse by a bunch of medieval monarchs who wanted a reason to attack and raid the Middle East. You seam to be under this mistaken belief that religions are the problem and not the people who use them as an excuse.
As I recall reading or was it a documentary the ancient Egyptians never had a problem with foreigners or immigrants within their borders practising their faiths as long as it was done in private and you didnt push your beliefs onto local Egyptians.
She wasn't exactly. She was an Egyptian of Greek descent. Fun fact, she was the only Ptolemaic pharaoh to speak Egyptian. There were Egyptians in her lineage and was described as having darker skin than your average Greek. Mediterranean people generally have olive skin (brown, not green!). So whereas she wasn't a pure Egyptian (Arabic in today's terms), she was darker than your average Greek noblewomen. There are records of this, btw. Don't ask me to remember which ones - it's been a long time since university and it's gone midnight.
@@y_fam_goeglyd Scholars generally identify Cleopatra as essentially of Greek ancestry with some Persian ancestry. This is based on the fact that her Macedonian Greek family - the Ptolemaic dynasty - had intermarried with the Seleucid dynasty that ruled over much of West Asia. This notably included the first Cleopatra, Queen Cleopatra I Syra, wife of Ptolemy V Epiphanes. Cleopatra I of Syria was a descendant of the Seleucid Queen Apama, the Sogdian Iranian wife of Seleucus I Nicator, a Macedonian Greek companion of Alexander the Great.
"And that fancy bell that MEANS SUBSCRIBED"????! That's not the subscription button. Don't lie to get more people set up for notifications. EDIT: Speaking of people being subscribed, you guys lost another one.
The Bell appears only when you ARE subscribed. Clicking ON that bell activates Notifications. I see your point and I agree it's bad to bait clicks in any way. But: Technically, HE's right! YOU'RE wrong The Bell means you are subscribed That's a true statement
