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 13 Ancient Egypt the Middle Kingdom Oh, Last time on the history of the World Podcast we outlined what we know about Egypt throughout the first part of the third millennium B.C. E. We discovered how Egypt went through a time of

prosperity where we saw great advances in tune building resulting in the most

astonishing achievement which we recognize today as the Pyramids.

We also determined that Egypt was a successful and expanding Unified Kingdom.

But we also found out that the Egyptian model began to fail and as such the local governors

began to defy the Pharaohs and that the kingdom fragmented, effectively ending what we now

look back on as the old kingdom of Egypt.

So what happened next? So Egypt was separated into administrative divisions called

Nomes. Nomes are very similar to the department, states or counties that modern countries have,

and the purpose of this is to install local governance.

And the powers of that local governance are determined by the kingdom or sovereign state itself.

In the case of ancient Egypt there were over 40 gnomes in both upper and lower Egypt combined.

Each of these gnomes was governed by a nomic. Traditionally the Egyptian kingdom was accountable to the

Pharaoh who was the nearest thing to a living deity and as such the biggest national projects were the tombs in which these pharaohs

would ultimately be laid to rest. Namely these were the mastobes and pyramids.

However it seems as though this period of Egyptian history

where the old kingdom is thought to have ended is a time when the Pharaoh appears to have lost the obedience of his nomarchs.

We originally stated that ancient Egypt has been split into 31 dynasties by modern scholars and that the first two dynasties

referred to a time period earlier than the Old Kingdom. The first dynasty to

follow the demise of the Old Kingdom would have numerically been called the seventh dynasty

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