He’s talking about millions of people who lived hundreds of miles and thousands of years apart. No police hunt could possibly hope to catch all those people. Did you really expect him to say, “Ancient Egyptians were Black males in their early 30s, about five foot eight, of average build”? Or “Caucasian females in late 20s, five foot four to five foot six, slightly overweight”?
@@groznybaranek I just expect at least an educated opinion based on what we do know. If there was only a job like that, somebody that's really educated in one field.. hmm. I don't know, maybe we can invent something like that and give it name. Oracle? no doesn't fit... um, master? naw....ex-something maybe... Anyway, it's something to think about.
@@groznybaranek The question is about common attributes that define a group of people. That is how we compare and contrast to understand. If we believe it was a melting pot then that can be stated. An overgeneralized answer isn't really an answer. We don't need experts for answers like that.
@@groznybaranek No, but it would have been nice if he'd had the courage to say they very much resembled modern Egyptians, and would have been of dark Mediterranean/Middle Eastern appearance. Which is what the iconography suggests, what the remains from mummies appear to be and what DNA and blood group studies point to. This would no doubt have upset modern day people trying to claim ancient Egyptian culture, but hey - they could always watch a Netflix 'documentary'.
He literally starts by saying that iconography tells us how they wanted to be seen, not what they looked like. He answers the question with complete honesty. He’s not a geneticist, what does he know about DNA? I suspect that you don’t want him to answer the question, “what did the ancient Egyptians look like?” but an altogether different one. Talk about intellectual dishonesty
@@groznybaranek bro, are you seriously going under every comment calling out how this guy is terrified to say the ethnicity of Ancient Egyptians? Seethe and cope.
@groznybaranek 100% wrong. We'd all rather him at least say brown, black, white, Asian, middle eastern, African, whichever.. instead he bypasses all that because he's too scared to be deemed a racist for wrong think and being fired. True facts. You're part of the problem for his dishonesty.
i think it's important to note when he's saying "we don't know" he doesn't mean it's a mystery; he means there's a number of theories which can very well account for how they accomplished the thing in question, but it can't be said for certain which ones were used: it could be mixtures, it could be that certain methods and techniques were used at some points and others at others (which, given its over 3000-year history, seems almost impossible to not be the case), etc. other egyptologists will state with more confidence that we _do_ know because they don't want the uncertainty regarding the aforementioned to be taken as "we don't know" and this taken as "it's a mystery" because the ancient alien people will then take this as a concession. in most areas of history this kind of epistemic modesty is refreshing, especially with regards to more modern history, but i fear that in this context it really is playing into the hands of ancient alien apologists :/
Yeah as a social scientist I felt for him at several points in the video because some of these questions are either very broader or debated. It is incredibly difficult to summarize different POVs on a topic/issue period let alone the spot in a way going to be accessible to most people. Also, I agree that is refreshing to see willing to acknowledge the limitations of science/academia; far too many people are unwilling to be transparent about this and in my opinion leads to break down between how the general public thinks research works and the reality of it.
Yes, and some egyptologists or archeologists do say that this or that was done so and so because they have their own theories they want to be accepted as the final conclusion. But of course they know it is impossible to know for certain (unless they found instructions or such). But most likely they used the Nile as a transport device for big stones (and on satellite imaging we can see that the Nile moved around a lot during the centuries). We know they used big, hard stones to mine sandstone or such because we see those tools around abondoned quarry sites. But we don't know how they used them... We also discovered builder villages around some big piramids and so we know it was not slaves but citizens who built them (based on objects excavated). We know lots of details but no whole picture...
Yup, for example, we have documents of blocks being delivered to Great Pyramid's building site, and some artwork showing them being transported using sleds and water, there's also a general understanding that stone was cut with bronze tools using sand as abrasive, you know, kind of like glass cutter works nowadays just instead of sand particles glued to the blade, it was poured and water was using for cooling... but that's a general idea and obviously different stones and works during different time must have used various techniques and tools, i.e. copper earlier or iron later, remember that ANCIENT Egypt is like 3000 years, and Cleopatra lived closer to us than to building of pyramids by a good few centuries.
@@dylanbaker7090 And not a single one had anything usefull to say or was anything except being totally moronic... That's quite an achievement, even the most stupid m*r*n usually says something worth saying sometimes.
Saar we wuz egyptians,blonde nordics with blue eys saar,as u can see in this vid stamp 10:19 ,3:21,5:53,10:26,18:29,18:34,18:37,18:43,18:51,19:18,19:34,saar as u can see very pale white skin cacusian ppl who walking with barely clothing on them on the hot desert,with hairstyle and hair texture like us white cacusian and meditrean saar,i hope u relax now saar
Much better, this video is terrible. He is terrible in explaining anything. Not even speaking about the things "we don't really know", which we actually do know.
It seems like when an expert says, “We don’t exactly know how they did xyz”, it’s assumed that it is a near impossible feat. It’s not. They’re just saying that it isn’t known *exactly* what method they used, that there could have been many methods, and that stating any particular process may have inaccuracies. It’s important to understand that a culture’s relationship with time can be very different from another’s, and that generally our modern relationship with time is very different from that of Ancient Egypt and so it’s hard for us to understand why so much time and energy would be devoted to building the pyramids. While I’m sure opinions varied, at the cultural level it was viewed as a worthy effort.
Thank you for the comment. I wish his response had been more in line with what you mentioned. Certainly, as an Egyptologist, he could offer several educated guesses about how the Pyramids were constructed.
@@MatroX67 Agreed. Some "educated guesses" would be nice to qualm those alternative speculations about aliens and lost high tech civilisations. He dives a little deeper into it at the end of the video defying the outdated "slave-theory", he could've done the same here.
People seem to forget Europeans built massive cathedrals that took centuries to finish in some cases. It is not just time but also the available technology, as well as motivation. The Catholics equally bought into the story but instead of a state, it was the Vatican. This happened pretty much everywhere in the world where a large enough population was ruled by a single ruler or had one major religion with a lot of power. People will start to worship and build shrines, which get ever larger because life is a pissing contest.
@@Spielkalb-von-Sparta There is quite a lot of evidence they weren't slaves, so he could actually elaborate. The remains of a large town that the expert mentions had a large "cafeteria" (for the lack of a better word). They excavated down to the original ground level and found tons and tons of fishbones and small animal bones. There were bakeries and many houses. Way too fancy for slaves. The remains of one person in the cemetery had an amputated arm, just below the elbow. It was done by surgery and the person survived for so long, the remaining bone of the forearm curved inwards. The person had been using the stump to do work. This is way too much effort for a slave. The pyramid was a prestigious project so it had to be done well. Using slave labour is not going to give you the level of quality needed. Only skilled labourers could do this, and they were housed and fed well. All the other things he doesn't elaborate on is because even an educated guess will become an absolute fact on the internet. Better to just say it has been lost to time rather than speculate. Everyone claiming to know has to provide evidence that holds up, instead of the other way around.
"Why were the Egyptians obsessed with cats?" Meanwhile the internet is 70% cat videos/memes. 28:09 and getting paid to do work was a sure sight better than sitting at home bored and not getting paid. They worked in the off-seasons, farm for four months, pyramid work for four months, rinse and repeat. You said "subsistence farming" here, but Egypt was producing a massive surplus of grain from a very early era: to the extent that not only could they feed themselves during the off-seasons but they were also providing disaster relief to everyone else . When people say "subsistence farming" that's not usually what they mean.
I've read workers were paid in beer and hops, though in antiquity beers ranged from porridgy soft drinks you drink with a straw to a light lager (still unfiltered).
@@KasumiRINA They wre paid a certain amount of barley for beer-brewing and a certain amount of wheat for bread. No one was insane enough to drink water in populated areas, water borne disease and polution isn't a modern "invention".
To be fair it was a long time ago and the arabs basically destroyed everything. (Demolishing religions and cultures that are not islam and replacing them is kind of their kink. First thing they did upon founding their religion, actually). Following the greeks leaving, It wasnt until the british and french came around in the 1800s and said "Hey there is a bunch of cool shit lying around in the sand" that anyone started to care and look into it.
when he says “we don’t know” he means we can’t be sure. He doesn’t mean we have no idea. It means there’s a number of very plausible and likely theories but there isn’t one definitive piece of evidence that says this is absolutely how it was done.
There's thousands of ancient civilizations to which we know far less than the egyptians. The reason why egypt is so fascinating, is that it's by far the best kept ancient civilization, with them having also made the longest lasting impressive wonders.
The Egyptians used eye liner due to the sun glare, putting dark lining under your eyes will A: help prevent long term blindness. B: Saves the skin of sun wrinkling. C: Beauty was a huge thing for them and makeup is for beauty.
There is a theory that in the image around the 3 min mark a worker is pouring liquid past the statue. So in theory - they moved some heavy objects via a liquid friction system along with the ropes to ease it up and down Egypt for projects.
Yes there has been a lot of speculation of them using mud as a lubricant. There is a famous story from the 1950s of an archeologist moving a 1 ton stone through a town single handed using a mud concoction
I know the idea to a degree is to a more casual answer from experts. However, as an anthropologist when you going to ask about topics as broad and/or debated as many of these questions were it would be a courteous to give them before hand. A decent a amount of the people in the comments are frustrated by him saying "I/We don't know" to what seem like relatively basic questions, which is unfortunate because as academic it usually means there isn't consensus on an issue /topic not that we literally do not know. Doing so would give the experts time to come up an answer includes different POVs on topics.
Yes, he is very knowledgeable about most of these topics so for him, the difficulty comes from not being able to dumb and condense down all the ongoing theories shortly enough. So... Short answer: we don't know. But long answer would be 3-10 theories based on some objects excavated or methods of similar cultures... But for sure he knows a lot. Okay maybe not about eyeliners but about pyramids for sure (he worked at 2 excavations of pyramids for example)
The cat sculpture at 5:26 is brilliant! It's like a grumpy old git of a cat. "Now get thee down t'ut co-erp an buy us some't whiskers! Ma food berl's empteh"
Video content/subject matter: 10/10. Delivery of said subject matter 3/10. I’ve never been more bored trying to watch a video about something I’m genuinely fascinated by. Sorry, Doc.
I’ll give you a clue: the concept of race wouldn’t exist for 2,000 years after the end of ancient Egypt. Egyptians weren’t black or white, those ideas didn’t yet exist. They looked pretty much like Egyptians today: some we would call black, some we would say look like Europeans, most are somewhere in between. Some, but not most ancient Egyptians did look black, even some of their kings did (the so-called “Black Pharaohs” of the 25th dynasty)
Saar we wuz egyptians,blonde nordics with blue eys saar,as u can see in this vid stamp 10:19 ,3:21,5:53,10:26,18:29,18:34,18:37,18:43,18:51,19:18,19:34,saar as u can see very pale white skin cacusian ppl who walking with barely clothing on them on the hot desert,with hairstyle and hair texture like us white cacusian and meditrean saar,i hope u relax now saar😁
Thank you Dr. Chris Naunton. I have enjoyed many of your RU-vid lectures and read your book Searching for the Lost Tombs. As a history professor for 40 years, I congratulate your explanations and spreading of this information to the general public. Finally making my first ever Viking Cruise to Egypt in September.
Then you are old and knowledgebale enough to know that what he said about cats plainly is not true! Grainstorage and so forth... And the fact that thousands of mummified cats were brought to Britain and ground up is maybe something someone at some point decided did not need to be known since he seems to not be aware of it...?
Keep in mind that those answers were meant for a wide array of people so simpler is better, also he most likely didn't want to speculate to much and only gived information he knew are facts
@@athrackframe the question to answer a better question? The cat question he could go on to tell the importance of cats keeping rodents out of gain stores?
It'd be interesting to hear a presentation on the development of the afterlife "story" over time in Ancient Egypt. It seems like the Book of the Dead didn't exist during the old kingdom.
Scientists Against Myths have demonstrated how they could've cut and drilled various rock. And mechanical advantage seems like an obvious method of moving large stones.
What answer do you expect? That they were thinner than most Americans today? That some were taller than others and some darker-skinned than others? There were millions of ancient Egyptians who lived hundreds of miles and thousands of years apart. Some had big breasts, others crooked teeth. Some had very dark skin, most did not. Perhaps he could talk about what they did not look like: almost certainly no one looked like Marilyn Monroe or Kim Jong Un, there were no Scandinavian or Chinese-looking people. Other than that? The question is: what did Egyptians look like? What did millions of people of all ages, sexes, professions and social standing look like over a period of 3,000 years?
As much as I love learning about ancient civilizations and History Hit in general, I gotta admit that I wasn't crazy about this expert. He didn't really seem to want to be here and share his knowledge, but seemed more annoyed at questions the general population had about this field. "When did the Egyptians live?" could have been brushed off with "well, ANCIENT Egypt took place between these years...." but his answers just came across as curt and like "ha, how could you be so dumb?" Maybe I'm being too picky 😅 but I've liked so many of their other experts so much more
Interesting, how impressions can be so different. To me it seemed he took the questions quite seriously, to the letter. But I think he was concerned of saying something wrong so he was holding back on his knowledge. It might be better if they'd given him the questions in advance to give him the opportunity to prepare proper answers.
@WilliamMarshalofPembroke These are the "most googled" questions. Isn't that the very definition of people attempting to do the "tiniest bit of research"?
I think the problem here is HistoryHit's approach, having their experts answer questions candidly. An outgoing person might do well with this approach, but answering a candid question with precision while being recorded is not something everyone's going to perform well with. Especially when you're aware your answer will be scrutinized.
Hi, I’m once again begging for more series on the HistoryHit app (with video) with Kate Lister. I love her so much and will literally watch anything with her in it at this point but I suck at paying attention to podcasts so I’m struggling through Betwixt the Sheets bc I keep zoning out and having to go back 😅 Give us more Kate in video, I beg.
re - How long did they live? When correcting for infant mortality skewing the mean, the median life expectancy would have been around the 50s, not "40 at most." Even so, the median has confounding variables, just as the mean, since "armies" were normally press-ganged from the local populace and almost exclusively made up of men aged 20-30. Since many of them would never come home again, it's reasonable to conclude that: If you survived childhood and the various military expeditions, then you could reasonably expect to live to around 60 years of age. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. Seeing a Pharaoh live into his 90s would have seemed like incontrovertible evidence that he was indeed a "Man-God."
This is why "Life Expectancy at Birth" is an _utterly idiotic_ way to measure typical life-span, since all it really tells you is how bad infant mortality was. "Life Expectancy" is _always measured from a specific age._ Usually when someone just says, "Life Expectancy", they mean "at birth." But a far better metric is "Life Expectancy at Age 15." Because if you reach Puberty, you're probably gonna make it through what is a typical _adult_ lifespan for that place and time.
Yes people always forget that we have vaccines, antibiotics and know about bacteria... so we get to live through childhood with relative ease. Which was not so throughout most of human history... But also, the poor lived much shorter lives than the highborn (so an Egyptian farmer would probably not live past 40 very often whil, for example, a priest with some medical knowledge could easily go until 55-60)
I love these educational videos! I would love to see more Egypt content that isn't sensationalized or that demeans their advanced culture by claiming aliens did everything. So many interesting things to share like their laws, cultural traditions, family structures, etc. More than just the mummies and death!
I’ve never heard the Arab conquest in the 7th century chosen as “end” of ancient Egypt civilisation. Specially when described as the civilisation of pharaohs, gods with animal heads,… most of the time it’s 1st century with the Roman or a bit later with Christian and closing of temples. Interesting point of view, I wish I could hear more.
Among all the bs he told here, that's actually one of the more reasonable ones. Nevertheless 30 BC is the actual date when Egypt finally became a part of another empire. The civilization remained, but the empire, the kingdom, the true independence was gone for good.
I think some of the answers were too simplistic and ignoring the context of the publication a bit - like talking as if this was a conversation between egyptologists, not general audience. E.g. "We don't know how they built the pyramids" means we weren't there, there are no photos of it and the pictures and texts don't describe every single detail. It DEFINITELY doesn't mean "we have absolutely no idea how they did it". We know how to quarry the stone and cut it - because it was successfully demonstrated with the tools available at that tie. Same goes for moving the stones, also shipping the stones on the Nile. (There are notes from a supervisor describing the daily jobs, houses, tools, food remains etc. of the builders were found and so on. Also, we have several means of how to actually build a pyramid (also demonstrated, so we know they could have used several methods - but we may not know exactly which ones they did). As a matter of facts, with one of the best organised method using many zigzagging ramps, Kufu's pyramid could have been built using a bi, but not enormous force of professional builders in 3-5 years, depending on the number of shifts. Yes, it required skill and knowledge, but if you look at the history of pyramid building, you'll see the first attempts were quite primitive, but as they learnt from their mistakes and invented better techniques (as humans usually do), the results are better and better. (In the case of the great pyramid, actually too perfect, the outer casing stones were too precisely stuck together, and the thermal expansion damaged the stones, so they fell and got taken away.)
(1) Cleopatra was not black. (2) Egyptians were not black. (3) Egyptians built the Pyramids and they were the Pharaohs. The claim that all Egyptians, or even all the pharaohs, were black, is not valid. Most scholars believe that Egyptians in antiquity looked pretty much as they look today, with a gradation of darker shades toward the Sudan". I'm not attacking you, it's just a message to everyone.
I would not say they particular revered them. But, just personally, I always assumed that it had more to do with pest reduction than anything else. Same reason they were popular on ships. Not because the sailors revered or worshiped them. Just they were practical to have around. Even today, rodents consume an insane amount of stored grains. Like 3% maybe. Not to mention diseases. I can only imagine what a rodent could eat and contaminate back then.
Sure, but this doesn't mean they revered them. What it does signify is that they lived closely together. And cats being their cute selves it's probably an easy subject to choose when building a statue or engraving something. Also, imagine you are someone from the future looking at all the pictures on the internet from our times. There are vast amounts of cat pictures, so it's not improbable that they would think that we revere them, I mean why else would we post those, right. Surely it can't be because we keep them as pets and they are cute. There is a big mistake that was made when interpreting historic artifacts back in the day where ppl would just label anything they didn't understand as spiritual, religious or ritual, luckily that tendency is nowadays snubbed on among historians. Like when they discovered burried ppl with ocre facepaints, the simple explanation here is that it was merely a tribal marker to distinguish us from them (which we still see in tribes all around the world). Same with grave gifts, when my gf died, I also felt an urge to surround her in the mortuary with objects that she loved, and i'm about as religious or spiritual as the average carrot, so there is no real reason to assume that in ancient times this was definitively done for spiritual reasons. So there are often much simpler potential explanations for lots of ancient artifacts or customs, it doesn't mean that those explanations are correct, but claiming "spiritual" for anything we can't explain is even dumber as this is a simple cop out that can't be argued for or against. But when the field of history really got established the vast majority of ppl were religious so it was an easier leap to make and was less likely to get questioned. In other words, before jumping to reverence, it may be a good idea to see many statues with subjects that aren't definitively religious as not much more than an ancient form of snapchat so to speak. We depict the things we are around and that we like, there is no reason to assume that this was any different in "ancient" times. It doesn't mean that they didn't revere them in some way, but it does mean that there is no reason to assume it without clear evidence.
@@capusvacans interesting viewpoint. I think of artworks of the middle ages in Europe. It was exclusively Christian until the Renaissance because in that part of the world everything was about God, even if the actions of most of the people did not necessarily reflect Christian values. It was the Popes, priests and Kings who commissioned artworks, each having their own purpose, whether it was out of piety or power over the people. In ancient Egypt, religion was extremely important as well. Who were the patrons of art? It was likely the Pharaohs and temple priests. An artist in ancient Egypt probably would not have sculpted an animal for art sake. He knew it was time consuming and he had a family to feed and the tastes of the person who was paying were probably spiritual.
@@stevenleslie8557 Sure, but that still doesn't point to a reverence for cats. There could be many reasons for this. Ppl with money to waste could also just want pretty things (just look at some of the useless expansive crap that rich ppl surround themselves with these days). Or maybe pharaohs had pet cats and just wanted some memorabilia for them after they died etc. Just some random idea that isn't even inconceivable that i just came up with is: that maybe cats and other subjects that weren't directly linked to religion or the rulers were mostly made by apprentice or beginning sculptors as it may have been seen as disrespectful to mess up a statue of a god/ruler. Sure, i just made plenty of assumptions, but throughout the middle ages eg. this type of things was fairly normal. An apprentice would make some jewelry that was just intended to be pretty, a master would make the things that depicted religious subjects or which were intended for ecclesiastical use (like intricate scepters and chalices). Basically, all we know is: Egyptians had cats and they liked to depict them. Pretty much anything else is speculation, until we get clear evidence. But it is fun to speculate, as long as we don't mistake our speculation for truth.
As for cutting very smooth huge pieces of hard rocks like granit. There had been many ways to do it with rudimentary tools known for centuries. The more basic of it is : you take a bloc of the hardest stone (say granit), weighing tens of tons. You look at the weak points (any good artisan can spot them in seconds, not me btw but I've seen it done IRL). Then you make tiny holes. It can be done in many ways, even with wood, but more efficently with metal, even soft ones like copper - or stone, even soft ones, and basic patience and dedication (both lacking in pyramidiots). When you have the holes, you use wedges. Wedges can come in different ways. A common point : you make the holes in a straight line and you put wedges in them. Common wedges are pieces of wood or metal you apply a force on. It can be done by hammering them in sequence or wetting wood wedges which will grow bigger: it was known in prehistorical times and still used by talented artisans. At one point, the collective force of the wedges exceed what the stone can bear (even if each individual wedge is very very much less strong than the stone) and the stone breaks at its most vunerable surface, which is generaly very straigh and clean, almost polished. This is only one way to do it and specialists will excuse me for the simple explanation that doesn't do justice to there craftmanship or the craftmanship of there ancestors. This is amazing artisan work, learned at a young age by talented dedicated peoples (not pyramidiots), from prehistory to nowadays.
The tools being hand drills and hand saws, sometimes operated with two people back and forth, sand would be used as abrasive much like it STILL is, you know things like sandpaper or sandblaster, and they had PLENTY of sand... and water to cool. For transport, Egyptians build everything close to river shores and transporting stuff on boats is way simpler than dragging it on the ground.
@@KasumiRINA Yes! Absolutely! I only gave one example that I saw once and which impressed me. But you are right, there are many things we can do with what the ancient had.
IS THIS GUY FOR REAL??! Thousands of mummified cats were brought to Britain and ground up for bulding materials! And cats were extremely important to the Egyptiants for the same reason they have been important everywhere else: They hunt and kill rodents!!
The eyeliner was practically used to keep the sun out of their eyes. It’s the same reason why a baseball player would have those black marks under their eyes. It helps keep the sun from eyes. I’m surprised he didn’t think of that
I feel like they just found a historian that knows generally about the history of Egypt and not a full-blown Egyptologist. Something about his answers just being simple, with little to no explanation and seemingly wanting to get on with the next question quickly makes me think that. Maybe the channel directors told him to do that, idk, but it makes him look like he doesn't really fully understand what he's talking about. The answer about the cat is what made me start to question this guy because there's document proof as to why the Ancient Egyptians revered cats. Not just that "they liked them"
I guess that could be a good reason, but rich people wouldn't walk outside in the sun, they'd have servants and stuff making sure they are always shaded and what have you
@@larryredenbaugh6854 Yeah, I have to agree with you here. There's even a report of a Roman soldier being murdered by an angry mob after his chariot ran over a cat in Ancient Egypt. The fact that this guy didn't even bring up that story makes me wonder what his expertise really is. Having been through grad-school myself, I can tell you that anyone with a PhD _loves_ to share knowledge, _loves_ to talk about their research. But this dude? Didn't really seem all that interested.
@@larryredenbaugh6854he knows his stuff. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Naunton He’s just a lot more cautious. I wish he’d gone more into the hypotheses
WRT to the incestuous royal marriages: I understand your aswer that they may have thought it kept the bloodline pure and such more or less idealistic considerations. But wasn't it also just a way to keep wealth and power within the ruling family? Any dynasty will always need to keep their rivals in check, and if as a king you allow other nobles to marry into your family they might get ideas for themselves.
2:06 - I misread “The Meidum Pyramid” as “The Medium Pyramid,” and I have to say that in looking at the picture, I actually think “Medium” is a much better name for it anyway.
This is definitely not my favorite expert thats been on here. Usually they seem really excited to talk about their expertise. He seemed more annoyed, even laughed at simple questions as if he was thinking "wow they dont even know THAT?". At least that's how it seemed to me.
I don't think he seems annoyed, he seems more matter of fact. I laughed out loud at the question of did the Egyptians believe in an after life. I hope I could have suppressed that laugh if I was being filmed, but to be honest , I don't know if I could or not.
Ok, some of the answers were lacking. Even I, someone who has but a passing interest in Egyptology, know that they wore Kohl to protect them from the sun and from eye infections (of course, they didn't call them that). Even how the pyramids were built could have been elaborated on. Egyptologists have some theories on how they did it so he could describe some of those. Leaving it to "we don't know" invites pseudoscience to invent things.
Well yes, you've got a point. The problem I see is the format. The Expert didn't know which question he was confronted with and therefore had no time for preparation. It might be fun as a kind of live show but doesn't help the content. You can't possibly be up-to-date in every detail of your field, so I understand he's hesitant in his answers before spreading information he's not 100% sure of.
He also avoided answering the overall question of whether Egypt had slaves, instead talking only about it in the context of pyramid building. Even then, it was a rather incomplete explanation regarding them being commanded to do such service.
Why would a rich person need that? They would hardly ever go outside walking in the sun, if they did, I'm sure they'd have servants and slaves who'd carry them and provide shade
The problem here is real experts don't like answering questions that don't have well defined answers. The Ancient Egyptians did not write down or depict exactly how they built the pyramids. So it would be historically dishonest to just pick a presumed method and run with it. Sure, there are many theories on how they could have done it, but this video would be 4 hours long if he went into every possible answer to a question. It might be unsatisfying to hear "I don't know" but that's just the honest truth for most of history. Most of it is not written down for us to know what exactly happened and the tiny portion that is will have its own bias that needs to be accounted for. Was this a record written hundreds of years after the events it talks about? Is this a different culture writing about the events of the past, coloring it with their beliefs. Does the record come from a conquering culture? The majority of the old Norse culture we know about today comes from Christian missionaries, not people who actually worshipped the Norse pantheon or practiced Norse culture. "Vikings" left little actual documentation of their actions, so we have to piece together their actions from the Christian monestaries they raided, who of course described the invaders harshly.
He was a total coward when he said "Egyptians looked like human beings" - he didn't want to offend the people that make up "EgyPTiaNs WerE blACk" to make themselves feel good.
Damn, Chris… how vague and boring was this! But I’m relieved to know that the ancient Egyptians looked like human beings and ate bread made from grain.
I respect the honesty of "We don't know" but another egyptologist on Wired's version of this had definitive answers. So what are we supposed to understand or believe if there isn't a consensus.
I loved this! Wide range of questions that I think would engage everyone. Sadly one of the most frustrating things of Ancient Egypt, there is not a lot of answers. Oh for a time machine!
See... this is what I do not get... The question is about pyramids and footage of Tutanchamun is shown... whoms mummy was not buried in a pyramid, but in the Valley of Kings. If one wishes to truly inform, perhaps it's better not to mix things up like that. It's really irritating sometimes, especially due to the misinformation that has been going in on in the past years thanks to social media. We do not need to adapt that trend.
I went to Egypt and asked all 3 of our guides about the history of cat worshipping, they all told me that cats were never worshipped lol. This is something school drilled into us in the US so was quite shocked to hear that from 3 separate Egyptologists, born and raised in Egypt!!
Egyptology student here: Yeah, they didn't worship cats, they worshipped various gods, some of which had cat characteristics,. So cats were often the intermediary or representation of those gods, but that also goes for ibises, bulls, crocodiles, etc. And the "animal worship" stuff mostly came during the Graeco-Roman Period, when other cultures and religions were mixing into Egypt - Meaning that Egyptians likely wanted to heighten their own cultural differences, but also wanted to make money off of these foreign tourists. Ancient tourists would go to Egypt and be told they need to give animal offerings at temples, and so they were sold these animal mummies (some of which were just wrapped up sticks, half of the animal, an entirely different animal, etc. - So essentially an ancient scam)
I learned in school that some Egyptians believed that cats were like a God or the souls of the dead or something. Pretty sure that's not correct at all
First a Question for future reference: do any of the surviving texts say what a"service" in a temple was like? Were participants limited to priestly and higher levels only? Second is just a thought: we could use a more modern phrase to describe much of what was built back then : Public Works Projects. Same could be said for most Cathedrals in Europe.
The temples were not open to everyone-only priests/priestesses, and during certain ritual ceremonies members of the aristocracy. Priests and priestesses were generally the children of the aristocratic class, cementing the relationship between the state and religious practice. During ritual ceremonies and festivals, common people would have their activities in the area outside of the temples.
The temples didn't quite have "services" since they were limited to just the priests, but we DO have texts outlining the rituals done within temples, as well as a brief idea of how priests rose the ranks. For the temple rituals, the main one is the "Daily Temple Ritual" which consisted of opening the shrine that the god (in the form of a small statue) was housed in. The priests then washed and clothed the statue and, finally, swept away their own footprints to have everything pure. Other ceremonies included the various processions that involved placing the god on ceremonial barques and parading them between temples. For the priesthood ranks, the statue of Bakenkhons gives us the rough dates of how one goes from being a simple temple worker, to a wab priest (basic priest) and through the ranks to become the High Priest of Amun in Karnak - took about 70-80 years. There are also talks of initiations, with the Chamber of Gold in Dendera (I believe) having texts on the walls preventing non-initiated persons into the chamber
How did he get the first question wrong? Most scholars and historians mark the end of ancient Egyptian civilization with the Roman conquest in 30 BCE. I have never heard of anyone saying ancient Egyptian civilization ended in the 7th century AD with the Arab conquests.
@Bnswll He interpreted the question in a _cultural_ way, not in a _political_ interpretation. Ancient Egyptian civilisation - or culture - didn't stop in the minute they've lost their political autonomy to the Roman empire. They still continued to use their own language and scripts even through the Byzantine phase. The Arabic conquest during the 7th century CE changed all of it, so it makes sense to realise this as the end of the "ancient" period of Egypt, coming from this angle.
@@Spielkalb-von-Sparta that's nonsense. The arab conquest didn't change the religion or language over night... Egyptian culture basically finished with Greeks who thoroughly hellenised it... Rome was just the tipping point
@@shafsteryellow _Egyptian culture basically finished with Greeks who thoroughly hellenised it..._ So you would set the date to 305 BCE, when Alex's companion installed the Ptomelmaic Empire? My point being, history isn't divided into periods with clear cuts, it's the historians who construct those, depending on their approach. There's no such a thing like a full stop of "ancient Egypt" or other historical phases for that matter. Chris's arguments have their merits. _The arab conquest didn't change the religion or language over night..._ Neither did the Roman conquest in 30 BCE. See what I mean?
@@Spielkalb-von-Sparta The guy in the video is portrayed as an expert on ancient Egypt. As I said, the vast majority scholars mark the end of ancient Egyptian civilization with the Roman conquest of 30 BCE. So, in answer to the basic question 'when did the [ancient] Egyptians live? ', to give an unconventional answer as to the end date, without much further elaboration or justification, is seriously odd...
You guys should work with Jimmy Yu, or Guo Gu, a professor at Florida State in Tallahassee, Florida. He has a wealth of knowledge about China’s history and the transmission of Buddhism, he knows so much that would be valuable to share with the public in this way!
I just came back from a trip to Egypt. The guide had told me that the pyramids were more like lighthouses for vessels on the Nile River. What truth do you think this has? Thank you for taking the time to answer some of the questions from Google.
Indirectly, maybe. They used to be covered with plaster and have huge golden peaks, those golden peaks would shine in the sun, so in a way yes. But lighthouses are generally on the shore and not very tall, so it's not a very practical lighthouse lol
Why do you need light houses on a river? And why are pyramids built so far away from it you can't see them? It's the guide's job to tell fancy stories to tourists. I haven't been to Egypt, but even at tours in medieval castles some guides tell you a lot of rubbish.
I always thought the Ancient Egyptians wore eyeliner to keep the sun from their eyes. If you look at tabby cats, they naturally have that 'eyeliner' black marking around their eyes and it helps as a sun block. I hope someone can verify.
Thanks to my heritage, I have a VERY identifiable "Egyptian" appearance. Usually a girl will ask me "Are you Egyptian?" rather than asking me what my ethnic heritage might be. Guys have rarely ever asked me any such things. Conversely, I've had complete strangers (who were girls) approach me on the street to ask me if I'm from Egypt. The most flattering instance, however, was when I was at some ancient temple or other In Egypt (the one with an excessive number of statues of Ramases all about it, along with a large number of Lion statues). Anyway, a French girl started talking very excitedly at me. She was very intent and very animated, but she was also speaking French, which I couldn't understand for the life of me. Her brother was nearby, though and unlike her, he spoke English. When she paused to take a breath, he offered to translate (to English) for me, if only I could speak English. I suspect that he was as surprised as was his sister, when I told him that I could indeed speak English, that it was in fact my native tongue and that I'd dearly like to hear this translation. As he related it, the gist of what his sister was -babbling about- enthusiastically saying was "Holy Shit!! You look just like one of these statues, if it had come to life!!!" There's a point to all of this: Even though Egypt was conquered by the Persians in about 500 BC. And even though the Greeks evicted them (and then stayed on, in their place) about a hundred years later. And even though the Romans tossed out the Greeks, another 400 years later and then the Arabs had their turn to invade and so forth and so on... So, even though there's a LOT of ethnic variance in Egypt, due to the LARGE number of invaders, who weren't shy about spreading their genes, I don't have to wonder about my genetic heritage. Nor do I need to pay 23-And-Me/ Ancestry.Com/etc a modest sum to lie to me about DNA and technobabble (Vox, I think, did an expose on the industry, having twins send in their samples separately [to the same company], only to get back some 'DNA Ananlysis' which was nothing like the analysis that the other twin was sent. Seriously, you should watch that special)... I know where my genes are from, because I look just like the statues of my ancestors. It makes me just as identifiable as the unique Asian appearance does for Asians. Anyway, I say all this because I was unsatisfied with your answer to the question "What did they look like?" Well, it turns out that the art work and the sculptures and statues and such, are actually a very GOOD indicator as to what Ancient Egyptians looked like. Because if they didn't, then that would mean that they made all those statues to look like ME, rather than having it look like them, which is especially impressive when the artist in question lived some 5,000 years before me.
I’m a barber, we learned in school they also shaved their heads as a spiritual thing. They believed spirits were attached to your hair, so you cut the hair, you rid yourself of the spirit.
There is another video out there with an Egyptologist who is actually answering many of these questions -- she knew how the pyramids were built... dug channels and tools. It is so weird to see these different people answering the same things and those that have no idea what they're talking about, or don't know what they're talking about yet, or not fully understanding what they're talking about
because there are things that we just dont know in the field of Egyptology. We can have theories based on limited evidence, but when the academic consensus isn't fully established, it's better to admit that we don't fully know instead of giving potential misinformation.
@nychris2258 because it's fascinating and it covers a huge area - both in terms of time periods but also areas if speciality, such as texts, translations, art history, material analysis, experimental archaeology, chemical analysis, religion, medicine, social life, warfare, etc. No one Egyptologist can be an expert in all of them because of how wide-ranging it is. My focus is on Private Egyptian Ritual Magic. A friend of mine focuses on Egyptian bronze mirrors, another focuses on ancient Egyptian gynaecology. And within terms of a 'job', you do a lot of stuff. From excavation, artefact analysis, reports, text translations, writing books, museum work, writing academia papers, etc. etc.
@@glenchapman3899 and yet, overcomplicating things by talking about pretty dry academic arguments based on very limited evidence is also boring. What's wrong with saying "we don't know" when we don't know?
If my house were in an archeological dig in a thousand years from now, it might be speculated that the US Midwest was obsessed with cats. I do love cats and I have always had rescues living with me. As a result, I have lots of amazing cat related art that friends and family have gifted me.
8:40 probably they used "eyeliner"partly for aesthetic reasons but also because they believed that it protects the eye from infection ,wrinkles, flies, sun... But mostly highborn people used it.
22:00 in terms of ancient Egyptian curses - I did my BA Dissertation on Private Egyptian Magic, with a section on curses. While it's not the tomb curses that have been prevalent in our pop-culture views on Egypt, they certainly had spells that the living individuals would cast against people and evil spirits as a form of protection. One famous one if the "spell for smiting a man" (the actual name of the spell) in which the spell caster invocates, and assimilates with, the gods Montu, Osiris, and Seth in order to smite the adversary and "sever thy bones and eat thy flesh".
I accept that we don't exactly know how the pyramids were constructed but we do have some hypotheses and I would have preferred to hear one or two good ones rather than a simple we don't know.
🤔 I'm not sure why he's being overly cautious in responding, some of the answers have been mentioned in multiple books by multiple egyptologists over the years and they pretty much agree with each other... Could have said something to that effect. Like "A lot of egyptologists theorize that..." Otherwise he seems very uncertain.
I think a notable problem people have with Chris in this video is his approach to some of these questions. Either his answers are too plain, or the questions themselves are. For example, the question about what the Ancient Egyptians looked like is maybe a little too vague, but I also think Chris answered the question too vaguely as well. Is the question asking what species the Ancient Egyptians were, like if some people still believe the civilization was full of aliens? Is it asking what racial classification or ethnic group they'd look like? Chris could've gone beyond what he said in that case.
Why did the Egyptians think the gods have animal heads? Well Timmy it’s because of their idea of representation, the same way Athena would have an owl on her shoulder in our depictions they would show her with an owl head. Oh, you really wanted to know if they were all furrys? And now you want to go back to the electricity question? Still no.
To the ancient Egyptians not being obsessed with cats- for some reason it reminds me of Phoebe from friends. If you watched a few select episodes you would think she obsessed with cats (smelly cat, thinking the cat is her mom) but in the context of the show she seems to like cats as much as any other animal.
Eyeliner - khol - is still used in Egypt, India, Afghanistan, and many Middle Eastern countries as a form of sun protection for the eyes. Some extremists have suggested sunglasses are an example of Western decadence, that they should be eschewed by all "true believers," and only the ancient khol should be worn.
I'm Australian, but my ethnic heritage is Egyptian. My mother would take me to Egypt with her, at the end of each school year, to visit with her family. During one such visit, mum and I went on one of the Nile cruises that stop at all the Pharaonic monuments and temples and such. At some site or other, I heard the familiar twang of the Aussie accent and went to investigate, being immeasurably glad to have someone I could speak to in English (but who also spoke English with the same accent as me, so we'd have no problems understanding one another). Anyway, he claimed to be an Egyptologist from Melbourne (we lived in Sydney [when we were in Australia] at that time). He believed that the Ancient Egyptians had some form of "acid" (ie - something very caustic), which they would use to melt through granite and other igneous rocks. As evidence, he pointed to some marks in the granite that could be found, replicated precisely, at regular intervals. in fact, if you examined ANY large block of granite that had been worked, you could find these same marks, replicated precisely and once again appearing at regular intervals. While I hated to do it, I HAD to suggest to him that these marks may have been made more recently. Perhaps in the 60s, when- after building the Aswan High Dam, many of these ancient relics and even some temples, had to be moved, lest they end up underwater, in the newly forming Lake Nasser (forming as a direct consequence of the high dam). These marks could have been left by the tooth of a forklift, or whatever tools they were using to be able to move such enormous lumps of rock... ANYWAY, he still might have been correct about the use of a caustic agent to dissolve the rock...
