As a long time foreign correspondent, I've worked in lots of places, but nowhere is important

to the world as China.

I'm Jane Perlaz, former Beijing Bureau Chief for the New York Times.

Join me on my new podcast, Face Off, US versus China,

where I'll take you behind the scenes in the tumultuous US-China relationship.

Find face-off wherever you get your podcasts. And Welcome back to the Egyptian history podcast.

Episode 46, strong rulers, in which we meet one of the world's earliest landlords, a woman who could have been king, and finally reach the end of Senusaret the Third's long and prosperous

reign. over the Over the five previous episodes we have explored the reign of Karkaure Senusaret the third from the political, international, literary and religious angles.

But the common thread running through these episodes has been the fact that Egypt is enjoying one of its most prosperous economic and cultural periods so far.

But we haven't really explored this in any particular detail, beyond the big picture climate and administrative material.

We've talked about the aristocracy and the royal family, but the economy encompasses every

individual of a society.

So how do we know that the country as a whole was prospering?

The answer comes to us from a man named Heka Nacht, who wasn't a member of the Royal Family,

and wasn't an elite official or nobleman.

He was a rural landlord and held the very minor title of car priest. So he had some wealth but probably

not enough to live a life of leisure or avoid working daily to ensure his family's sustenance.

This makes Hekernakk the closest we have to a middle class individual from ancient Egypt.

He was a literate man who could leave written evidence of his existence,

but he was still connected to agriculture and the rural economy,

enough to give us a sense of what people outside the royal family and nobility experienced.

Surprisingly, Hecker Nacht's existence was revealed entirely by accident.

...