Egypt, Land of the Nile.

By the 12th century BC, this place was already old.

Vast temple complexes and pyramids dominating the horizon.

Monuments to the power of kings who ruled over a thousand years before.

A different time. A different dynasty. In the intervening years since those colossal edifices

had been hewn into the landscape.

Egypt had seen societal turmoil, outside invasion and dark age.

Yet, more than a millennia on, the same gods ruled over this land.

A more or less similar culture held sway. over this land.

A more or less similar culture held sway.

And now Egypt was no longer going it alone.

One piece of a vast interconnected trade system, the tendrils of which reached all the way to the southern shores of Britain

in the far north, to the mountains of Afghanistan and beyond in the east, the wealthiest and

most stable system the world had ever seen.

We know from a vast diplomatic library found at Amarna in Egypt, capital of the heretical

pharaoh Akanatan, that the great kings of this age regularly corresponded with one another.

Into marrying, making trade deals, and very occasionally going

to war. Organised campaigns fought primarily by charioteers, the tanks of the day, supported by masses of spearmen.

Nearly 300 cuneiform letters written in Acadian and Babylonian, the lingua franca of the day,

being sent from one side of the world

to the other for hundreds of years, from at least the 15th century BC, discovered at this

one site alone.

...