Hi everyone, this is Scott.

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Thanks again for listening. We left the Nile around 2,900 BC at the end of the first Egyptian dynasty.

Two and a half centuries inaugurated by Narmor and brought to an end by Ka'a.

Despite a lengthy rule of 33 years, Ka'a apparently had no heirs, or at least none that survived him.

On his death, two shadowy figures, Snefferu and Horace Bird, fought for his vacant throne.

But the last man standing at the end of the conflict was a figure named Hotep Sakemwi.

From his name, which means the two powers are reconciled, we can probably assume a few things.

That a civil war had likely transpired, that Hotep Sakemwi'd reconciled things, probably by introducing both rivals to the negotiating

end of his mace, and that Egypt was unified under a new royal house at the start of the second dynasty.

The first dynasty kings were all buried at Abidos in the south, where at least we could get some useful information from the contents of their tombs.

But, per John Romer, the second dynasty, abandoned the royal burial ground at Abidos and moved their cemetery up to Sakara near Memphis, where their tombs were swept away by

later builders. Without their tombs, all we have for the Second Dynasty are a few partial and

broken monuments and a mass of ambiguous descriptions. As a consequence, you'll hear a pretty heavy reliance on the good Dr. Romer

for his wonderful insights and detailed scholarship on the era. In a broad sense, we know that resources

were still being targeted and exploited to support the new royal court. Per Romer, under the Second Dynasty,

large numbers of small copper mines were established in the eastern desert, and in between those

in the Red Sea coast, a string of gold mines was established. They also enlarged an old

...