Welcome to the History of the World Podcast. My name is Chris Hasler.

And you're listening to volume 2, The Ancient World. This is episode 12, ancient Egypt, the old kingdom. Oh, So here we are at the beginning of the story of ancient Egypt, the land of the

River Nile, Pharaoh's, Pyramids, mummification and statues.

Before we start on our journey, we need to remind ourselves what brought us to this point.

Now if you want an in-depth analysis of what happened in the millennium's

leading up to now, I strongly recommend listening to episode 23 of the first volume

on Pre-Donastic Egypt. Should you not want to do that, let me give you a brief synopsis of what we discovered.

The lands of the modern day Arab Republic of Egypt were much more fertile 10,000 years ago and agricultural lifestyles emerged.

However, a ridification events forced the population to gravitate around the Nile River. These lands always

remained fertile and needed little encouragement with the reliable floodwaters.

It would be fair to say that the progression into sedentary

and stratified city states happen much more slowly in Egypt than in the

Near East.

There appeared to be much more of a clinging onto pastoralism and egalitarianism

than in Mesopotamia.

It may actually be the case that migrating peoples from the near east brought with

them the knowledge of more advanced societies so the Egyptians would become much

more like the Mesopotamians when they entered the

the Cardaculture period after 4,400 B.C.

It would be during this period that peoples would have come together into larger societies close to the Nile River,

with plenty of evidence of ceramic and metalwork. Some of the graves from this period

suggest that there was more of a class-based society. Certainly there was a strong

...