00:00 The medieval Arab traveler and scholar Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi was struck by the incredible variety of ancient remains in Egypt, particularly the pyramids, and was impressed by the mastery of engineering required to build such structures.

12:19 Egypt is one of the oldest inhabited regions in the world, with evidence of human presence dating back hundreds of thousands of years, and the ancient Egyptians considered the Nile to be their world, with the river dividing the two lands of Upper and Lower Egypt.

23:52 The Egyptians had various methods for hunting crocodiles and worshipped the river horse, and the most strategically important location was the balance of the two lands where the river split into its delta, giving rise to the city of Memphis and in turn to modern Cairo, and it is here that the Egyptians would build their most famous and lasting monuments, and each year the monsoon rains falling in the highlands of Ethiopia and Central Africa would swell the river and the annual flood would arrive, which happened with such regularity around the middle of August that the Egyptians timed it using the rising of the star Sirius, and the Egyptian year was divided into three seasons, the flood season of Ahet, the growing season of Peret, and the harvest season of Shemu, and Egyptian life was held in this delicate balance, and each year, if the river flooded too little or too much, the results could be devastating, as one ancient Egyptian hymn to the Nile makes clear, and during the period known as the pre-Dynastic era, the two halves of Egypt were divided, and this division was cultural as well as political, but around the year 3000 BC, or more than 5000 years ago, all that began to change because of a king of a kingdom called Thinus named Namaer, who successfully brought the two lands of Egypt together, leading to the growth of one of the most influential societies in early human history.

35:33 The Egyptian hieroglyphs were a mixed writing system that used a variety of phonetic symbols and symbols representing whole words, and the earliest discovered examples of hieroglyphs show that they may have been developed all at once and possibly by a single person, and the term "pharaoh" was not used to refer to Egypt's rulers until nearly 2,000 years after Na'mer's lifetime, but it has gained popularity and is still used to refer to all the rulers of Egypt across the ages, and the pharaoh in ancient Egypt was considered the living embodiment of the falcon god Horus and the son of the sun god Ra, and the Egyptians were compelled by their religious beliefs to embalm the bodies of the dead in preparation for the afterlife, and mummification was expensive and only affordable for the wealthy, and the kings of Egypt were buried in a new burial ground near Memphis called Sakada, which became full of tombs of kings and queens and countless royal attendants and nobles who followed them into the afterlife, and the reign of Joseph marked the beginning of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, during which he built a permanent capital at Memphis and embarked on an ambitious program of construction, and his royal architect, Imhotep, had a vision for a more ambitious burial structure.

47:04 Imhotep, the trusted architect of the king, Joseph, built a revolutionary stepped pyramid out of stone, which stood six layers high and became the tallest building on earth, and this construction method would challenge and inspire future kings of Egypt.

58:14 The Medoum pyramid, built by either Snefru or his predecessor Huni, was one of the most impressive failed pyramids in history, with the stone facing collapsing before completion, leading Snefru to order construction to be halted and try again with the pyramid at Dashur, which also faced issues with sinking stone and cracks, resulting in a reduced angle and height and a snub-nosed appearance known as the Bent Pyramid, before finally achieving success with the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza, which became the tallest man-made structure in the world and remained so for nearly 4,000 years.

01:09:58 The construction of pyramids began to decline after the completion of Menkaure's smaller pyramid, and over time, pharaohs started building smaller, less extravagant tombs due to changes in religious attitudes and concerns over tomb robbers, eventually leading to the end of the pyramid-building era in Egypt.

01:21:23 The chaos and succession crisis following the death of Pharaoh Pepe led to the fragmentation of Egypt, with regional governors declaring independence and ruling their provinces alone, resulting in economic collapse, famine, and violence.

01:33:09 The reign of Mentu Hotep brought about the reunification of Egypt after a period of conflict and destruction, leading to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, which saw a flourishing of literature and provided insights into the lives of ordinary people.

01:45:54 During the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, the Egyptians cooked hedgehogs, made cheese and foie gras, brewed beer, relied on domestic cats to control mice, and venerated cats as religious symbols, while also engaging in large-scale construction projects and expanding their territory into the Horizon Lands and Nubia.

01:57:25 During the Second Intermediate Period, Egypt experienced a succession crisis, split into two, faced rebellion in Nubia, and suffered the effects of the eruption of the Thera volcano, while the Hixos, who introduced chariots into Egypt, invaded and established their own kingdom in the Nile Delta.

02:08:53 During the New Kingdom, Egypt recaptured the city of Memphis, expanded its territory, adopted the technology of the horse-drawn chariot, and saw the rule of its first great woman pharaoh, Hatshepsut.

02:20:37 During the New Kingdom, Pharaoh Amunhotep IV, later known as Akhenaten, introduced a new system of worship centered around the sun god, the artan, and built a new capital city called Akhetaten, but his reforms were met with resistance and his reign was plagued by a deadly pandemic.

02:32:29 During the reign of Tutankhamun, he reversed his father's reforms, restored the worship of Amun, and brought Egypt back to stability, but his fame largely comes from the accidental preservation of his tomb and the discovery of its treasures in 1922 by Howard Carter.

02:44:04 The war between Egypt and the Hittites ended in a stalemate, and a peace treaty was signed, bringing nearly a century of relative peace to the region.

02:56:50 During a time of drought and unrest, Ramesses III, the last hope for Egypt, successfully repelled an invasion by the Sea Peoples by ambushing them at the mouth of the Nile.

03:09:04 Egypt, now standing alone in a devastated region, experienced a steep and unstoppable decline in its economy and imperial power after repelling the Sea Peoples, leading to a workers' strike and the assassination of Ramesses III by his own family members, followed by years of bickering among his heirs and the rise of power of the high priests of Amun in Thebes.

03:21:16 Egypt's influence continued to decline as the high priests of Thebes became the de facto rulers of Upper Egypt, the Libyan kings ruled in the north, and the Nubian kingdom of Kush rose to power, eventually conquering Egypt and establishing the 25th dynasty of Nubian pharaohs.

03:32:57 Egypt's power and influence declined after Taharka's reign, as the Assyrians invaded and sacked Thebes, marking the symbolic end of Egyptian power and leading to centuries of foreign rule.

03:45:11 The last known hieroglyphic inscription was written in the year 394 AD at the temple of Philae, marking the symbolic end of Egyptian power and the decline of ancient Egypt.