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Modern humans have been on Earth
for probably around 200 to 300,000
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years. Thousands upon thousands of generations.
Probably over 100 billion people have ever been
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born. We can learn so much about the lives of
people who live deep in pre-history. Their diet,
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their culture, where they lived, where they died,
who their children were, how they relate to us,
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but there's one thing we can never know about
anyone who lived in prehistory, their names and
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then at some point that changed. We began writing.
I'm always interested in humanizing our ancestors,
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humanizing the past I think it just helps me
make sense of my place in the world there's
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nothing more humanizing than knowing someone's
name is there. This is a video about the people
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who lived at the dawn of writing, what we can
and can't know about them and most importantly
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what are the oldest names ever recorded? I
want to say them, I want to say these names.
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This video has been in the works for a really long
time and it just wouldn't be possible without the
00:01:09
help of Betterhelp who sponsored it. So shout
out to them. Listen to this this is from an
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ancient Babylonian medical text "I am continually
having pain of heartbreak, fright, fear, chills,
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I'm constantly anxious I'm continually afraid,
I continually talk with myself, I have fearful
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dreams". That could have been written yesterday,
couldn't it? There have definitely been times in
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my life when my mental health has taken a turn
for the worst and I almost certainly could
00:01:36
have benefited from speaking to a therapist, from
speaking to a trained professional but, you know,
00:01:42
I was kind of living abroad. I wouldn't even know
where to start with that sort of thing. There's
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just a lot of obstacles to seeking that kind of
help. This is where better help comes in. It's
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you don't have to worry about any of that
nonsense. So if you feel like you're struggling
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like that ancient Babylonian or you just need
someone to speak to consider giving Betterhelp
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a try. If you go to betterhelp.com forward slash
Stefan Milo you'll get 10% off your first month.
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It will help the channel out and I sincerely hope
it helps you too, I genuinely do. Big thanks to
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Betterhelp for sponsoring this video making it
possible and speaking of Babylonians we've got
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to kick this off in Mesopotamia you already know
we do you already know that's where we're going.
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All right I've come up with some criteria for this
question because there's a lot of names out there
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a lot of names and a lot of really old names.
Criteria number one, no Gilga, no Gilgamesh.
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Maybe he existed maybe he didn't,
he's strayed too far into mythology
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and likewise there won't be any names from the
Old Testament of the Bible or the Torah because
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I just can't show how old those names are. For a
similar reason there'll be no oral history because
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dating oral history is challenging, that's
not really the strength of oral history. It
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can be done, that's what my next video is about
but I can't show how name is transformed over
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the course of centuries or Millennia or anything
like that. What I'm after here is a contemporary
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document something that says "hi I'm Dave Etc"
a contemporary document from the time that
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this person was alive with their name on it. Not
mythological, nothing that says "5000 years ago
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Dave did this" We just want "hello I'm Dave I am
alive now" with that in mind there's one place we
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gotta start first you already know where I'm gonna
start first okay it's Iraq. We're going to Iraq.
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This is cuneiform over 5000 years ago it
emerged as the world's earliest writing system,
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perhaps alongside Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Cuneiform is incredibly complex and the
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study of it even more so so to help
me understand more I reached out
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to an assyriologist I know, Dr Sara
Mohr, she is really into cuneiform.
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[Stefan] Was that a cuneiform tattoo I saw there?
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[Sara] Yeah it is it's actually
one of the secrecy statements,
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it says "the one who knows may show the one who
knows, the one who does not know may not see".
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[Stefan] wow! can you tell
us briefly what is cuneiform?
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[Sara] Sure cuneiform is a script, it's an
important distinction that it's a script and
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not a language. It was a script that was used
to write a variety of different languages in
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the ancient near East. So you see it used for
Acadian, Sumerian, hittite, urartian, among
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others and it gets its name because of the wedge
shape that it's known for. Cuneiform, cuneus form,
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wedge-shaped, because each character is sort
of a formed of a series of wedges and lines.
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[Stefan] Cuneiform first emerged about 3200
BCE over five thousand years ago in the city
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of Uruk in what's now Southern Iraq. Uruk
in Iraq, almost a tongue twister. Uruk was
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probably the first true City in all of human
history, the first proper Urban environment.
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As life in this early city grew in complexity
they needed a way to keep track of things.
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[Sara] These early texts were mostly
dedicated to accounting purposes,
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keeping track of goods, keeping track of people,
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keeping track of people who got certain goods
and how much of those goods they received.
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[Stefan] This is an example of an early
text. You can see the head next to a bowl
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which is the symbol for a ration and
all the counting of goods around this.
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[Sara] So we start with these sort of
very pictographic looking texts what we
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call proto-cuneiform, it the images look
very much like what they're representing
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and as the script develops through time they
become more abstract and look less like it.
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[Stefan] These early tablets were written
by workers in the big institutions of Uruk,
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temples and great houses, stuff like that but
it wasn't long before names started appearing
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alongside these rations. Whose rations are
these? who gets the bowl of barley? If you
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Google who was the first person in recorded
history you're going to get one answer,
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kushim ,kushim, kushim, kushim. Who
was this person? Who was kushim?
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[Sara] the most interesting thing about kushim
is that he was basically just some guy, he was
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a temple administrator, he lived in Uruk which
is in southern Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE and
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so his job was sort of the maintenance of these
storerooms related to barley and wheat and beer.
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[Stefan] We know of kushim from 18
cuneiform tablets but dating these
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early tablets is is very very tricky. They
don't really contain much information other
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than we can see that they're using
this very early form of cuneiform.
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They were excavated in the 19th century when
archaeological standards were slack and you
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were basically lucky if the archaeologists
dynamite their way through the entire site.
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[plunger sound shhwwwooop and boom]
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But they probably date to around 3000 BCE to 3100
BCE around 5000 years ago is when kushim lived.
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You can see one of his tablets here. These symbols
represent numbers that add up to roughly 135,000,
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this is the product that they're counting barley,
symbols within a diamond represent months so this
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is 37 months, these symbols are unknown but
in some way it must be connected to Barley
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but these two symbols here
represent the sounds "Ku Šim".
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So the hypothesis is that
this is a receipt for 135,000
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measures of Barley to be received
over 37 months, signed kushim.
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Kushim actually is not alone in these texts
we also get hints of another possible name.
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[Sara] In some of the 18 texts
that feature his name. There is
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at least one that features the name of
another official who we'd call Nisa,
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again same caveats that's just how we
would pronounce it based on what we know.
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[Stefan] So we have these names Kushim and Nisa
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on tablets of Barley, what else
can we say about their lives?
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On some tablets, kushim's name appears
next to the cuneiform symbols for Sanga.
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A Sanga was a temple official typically
in charge of some of the administration
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of the temple. He's a bureaucrat, the
first person in history is a bureaucrat.
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[Sara] A Sangha official was usually
a temple official they were usually in
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charge of administration. They could
also work in the palace as well.
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[Stefan] There's one artifact from a little bit
after kushim's time period that I really love.
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It shows two people here sitting over a big
vase of beer, drinking it through straws.
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[Sara] I've heard that the reason they drink them
with the straws because well when we make beer
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today we're able to filter out a lot of the solids
that are left over, they couldn't and so there
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were some little bits of debris at the bottom
of their beer that they didn't want to drink.
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[Stefan] more like an alcoholic porridge
than what would you think of the beer.
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This image is from a cylinder seal, these were
tiny little carved round cylinders that would
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be rolled over wet clay to produce like an
ID, a signature, branding. To the people of
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Uruk thousands and thousands of years ago these
two people sitting down chilling, sipping beer,
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that would have been a recognizable image. They'd
have seen this and thought "Oh this is Flangeberts
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beer" I don't know, I don't know their name. It's
uh it's great to imagine Kushim and Nisa working
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in the temple, distributing this barley, they're
sitting around discussing this sipping beer
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through a straw. Although it does have to
be said Kushim and Nisa may have been doing
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too much drinking of beer and not enough
maths because several of the tablets do
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contain errors in them. Like this one
here the total on the reverse side of
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this tablet is missing three small measures
of barley. This could have been an innocent
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mistake obviously he's just missed three, but
who's to say Kushim wasn't cooking the books?
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[Stefan] Is he bad at maths or is he just
the first like mafia boss in history?
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[Sara] A fun interpretation because I
feel like we write these histories of
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just like single people we're sort
of assuming the best intentions like
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oh they're just mistakes but
what if they were purposeful?
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[Stefan] The first organized crime in
history. Kashim and Nisa both probably
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worked at the Temple of Eanna this was
a huge temple in the heart of a Uruk. At
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the time they lived it was decorated
with these beautiful stone mosaics,
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but these these were not just religious buildings,
to people of that time they meant so much more.
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[Sara] yeah so we pronounce it as Eanna as
one word that it's actually a combination of
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three signs so it's "A" or A2 because it's the
second sign that has that reading "A" which is a
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modern designation not an ancient one, which means
house and then "anna' it's House of the heavens.
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[Stefan mumbling] house of the heavens
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[Sara] right and most temples Temple names
would have that A2 in front of them which
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literally means house but that's because
the temples were considered the homes of
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the Gods. it's where their presence lived
and the Eanna is sometimes called the
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Temple of Inanna because it was Inanna's
house , for the Sumerian temple in Uruk.
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[Stefan] The temple was the literal House of the
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god that's where the statue of the god
lived. Kushim worshiped and worked at
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the Temple of Eanna but you probably
know this God by a different name.
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[Sara] She's called Ishtar and so some people may
recognize Ishtar more than Eanna. She's known for
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like Beauty and sex but also violence and War.
She appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh and she
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sort of portrayed as this Mercurial figure
whose mood can change at the drop of a hat.
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She Gilgamesh rejects her
advances and she gets very upset.
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[Stefan] The oldest copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh
that we currently have dates to around 2000 BCE,
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a thousand years after kushim lived but it's
entirely possible that these stories are based
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on earlier oral Traditions that just weren't
written down at that time. I wonder what they
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would think about this after 5000 years, we
know their names, we know where they worked,
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we know their mistakes, we know which God they
worshiped, we know what stories they're telling
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to each other it's kind of incredible how much
we can we can piece together about their lives
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but as with everything related to ancient history
there's a lot of nuance there's a lot of nuance.
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[Stefan] this is so early in writing and
cuneiform represented different languages,
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do we know that they'd have actually
said these symbols as ku šim?
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[Sara] We don't that's one of the
biggest challenges of these early texts.
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Ummm we we read it as kushim because they
resemble signs that in Sumerian we would
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read as kushim but we actually don't know
what language is being represented here.
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It's really it's likely Sumerian and that's
mostly what's been guiding the scholarship
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but we don't know for sure and I don't know
if there's a way that we can know for sure.
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[Stefan] We know Sumerian was spoken in Uruk
a couple of hundred years after kushim lived
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but we can't say for sure that it was spoken in
his time. It's very reasonable to think that's
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just a couple of hundred years but still
that is a small assumption at the heart
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of this information. So we can't really say
if he'd have pronounced his name ku šim....
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and we also can't actually
say if that was his real name.
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[Stefan] can we be sure like kushim is a
personal name? like do you know if someone
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was walking down the street would someone
shout "hey Kushim, where's the beer?" you know
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can we can we be sure of that?
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[Sara] we can't, it is our best guest but it's
also possible that kushim could designate the
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institution or the unit that deals with
barley and beer or maybe the name of
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some kind of secondary official because
you know he was a Sanga in the temple
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but kushim could be some sort of
other category that he belonged to.
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Kushim, Nisa, these could mean titles or houses
or some job that we just don't know anymore that's
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related to Sanga in some way uh we just don't know
these names are so early in the development of
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writing that we have to keep our minds open to the
possibility that they just mean something else.
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Kushim, ooop, kushim, Nisa I drew the names just
to be arty. By around 2900 BCE, about a hundred
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years after kashim and Nisa presumably lived,
Assryologists, people that study cuneiform,
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are more confident that we get personal names
appearing for the first time. There's a series
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of texts which describe the composition of goat
herds and and two personal names appear alongside
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these entries Ne-Pap-Hal and En-Šakan-Si. So
there's another really interesting archaic uniform
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text which appears to show a slave owner Gal-Sal
and their two slaves Enpap-X and Sugal-kir. It's
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very cool to think that two of the earliest names
ever recorded were slaves. Sugal-Kir and En-Pap-X,
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however you say that, were were slaves. Gal-Sal,
slave owner, boooo. I know it does absolutely
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nothing to alleviate their suffering
but it's kind of cool to think E-pap X,
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Sigal-kir were no doubt downtrodden and mistreated
when they were alive by many people in Uruk if
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they were truly slaves and yet all of those
powerful people their lives are faded to nothing,
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no record of them, and yet five thousand years
later we know their names at least. The only
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problem with these early cuneiform texts if our
mission is to find the first person in recorded
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history is that we just can't date them accurately
it's so hard to say which of these people lived
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before the other we just don't have enough context
about their lives, the writing that contains their
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names it's just it's just administrative,
they're just labels describing property so
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I wanted to try and find names and people that
we could speak about with a bit more confidence
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who we could see definitely who came before the
other to do that we've got to go somewhere else.
00:18:03
[Oooh dramatic music] Egypt's ancient history
is just so rich and special and unique
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I'm absolutely convinced that if you love history
if you love archeology you love Egypt it's
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impossible not to. They just expressed themselves
to the max everything about their civilization is
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just dramatic and inspiring and big I love it so
much. I didn't study Egyptology at University,
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you all know long time viewers I'm a
pre-history man. Fortunately for me
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though fellow YouTuber Dig it with Raven did
do her master's degree on the preservation
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of pre-dynastic artifacts and uh she really
loves Egypt she really loves hieroglyphics.
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Is that a hieroglyphics tattoo you had there?
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[Raven] yeah
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[Stefan] oh wow what does it say ?
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[Raven] it is part of um like one of
the standardized things that you'd put
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on a tomb in the Middle Kingdom,
called the appeal to the living,
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and it's this part is "as you
love to live and hate to die"
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yeah it's pretty cool so that's how they
started off like "oh you who loves to live
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and hates to die leave for me you know a
thousand loves bread a thousand jugs of
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beer" all that kind of stuff you know like
sustain me in the afterlife don't forget me
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everything like that.
[Stefan] wow
00:19:30
One of the few things I do know about ancient
Egypt is that they kept records of their kings,
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pretty good records in these so-called Kings lists
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so I figured we just need to find out
who's the first name on these lists.
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[Raven] the king's list
like they're great resources
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um but they don't have every king or a queen.
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[Stefan] unfortunately for us there are many
different Kings lists written at different
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times in ancient Egyptian history and they
don't agree with each other. There's the
00:20:01
Turin Kings lists written during the reign of
Ramses II which is in really bad condition. It
00:20:06
was on Papyrus it's basically totally fallen
apart except for a few scraps but there are
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some really complete ones one in particular in a
small town in abydos right in the heart of Egypt.
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Here in abydos there's a large temple built by
Pharaoh Seti I who was the Pharaoh in the mummy
00:20:28
by the way. Nestled amongst the huge Papyrus and
beautiful reliefs, the Pharaoh seti honored his
00:20:35
ancestors with an enormous family tree. All
in all it contains the names of 76 pharaohs.
00:20:41
Now it's definitely not perfect, it's
clearly omitting pharaohs that they
00:20:47
perhaps considered illegitimate, there's
no Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, Hatshepsut,
00:20:53
so it's definitely not perfect but crucially
for us it does preserve one major detail.
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[Raven] The one we do have
from Seti does have Dynasty one
00:21:04
on it the other ones don't have Dynasty one.
00:21:07
[Stefan] The first name on this Kings list
00:21:11
belongs to a chap called menace menace menis
but who they were is actually quite debated.
00:21:18
[Raven] We're not sure who Menes actually is
there's no real reference in Egyptian like I
00:21:26
guess in archaeological evidence
of Menes. so people think that
00:21:30
he would be either Narmer or
another one called Hor-aha.
00:21:37
[Stefan] There seems to be a bit of a
contradiction between these later Kings
00:21:41
lists that refer to a chap called Menes and
the archaeological evidence where the first
00:21:47
pharaoh seems to be a person called Namer now
as my criteria requires an artifact from the
00:21:56
time that person was alive with their name
on it uh we've got to find out who's Namer?
00:22:07
Namer is definitely most well known for
appearing on this incredible sculpture,
00:22:12
the Namar palette, this is namer's name right
at the top a chisel next to a big fish Nama
00:22:20
means something like Fierce catfish, this is
King Fierce catfish we're dealing with here,
00:22:25
not a man to be messed with as you'll see.
This palette was an offering to a temple that
00:22:31
was sort of a replica of a cosmetic palette that
ancient Egyptians might use to apply their makeup
00:22:38
and it's just an absolutely incredible work of
art. There's a procession, there's two mythical
00:22:46
creatures intertwining to make the part of the
palette where makeup could be mixed, there's
00:22:51
this chap who's about to get royally boshed
on the Noggin. But two details in particular
00:22:57
seem to suggest that Namer may
have been Egypt's first pharaoh.
00:23:01
[Raven] It was absolutely groundbreaking when it
was found because this is the first instance we
00:23:06
have of a ruler a named ruler especially wearing,
that's the ruler in general but because his name
00:23:13
is even more specia,l but it's the first instance
we have of a ruler wearing both crowns of Egypt so
00:23:20
we have the Red Crown which is the spiraly one
with a little doobadoop, that is the Red Crown
00:23:29
it's called Deshret and that is worn by the rulers
of Lower Egypt so that's the Deshret crown and
00:23:37
then the other one he's wearing which is that kind
of looks like a bowling pin um that is the White
00:23:44
Crown that's Hedjet and that is worn by rulers
of Upper Egypt and he's wearing both of them.
00:23:51
[Stefan] later on in Egyptian history you
can see lots of images and representations of
00:23:57
these two crowns sometimes they're one separately
sometimes they're merged together into one really
00:24:03
fancy Crown but the Namer palette is the first
image we have of a pharaoh wearing both of them,
00:24:09
both the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt.
Presumably Namer is the first pharaoh. Dating when
00:24:16
Namer lived is again very tough but we're looking
at 3000 to 3200 BCE about the same time as Kushim
00:24:25
if not maybe a little bit earlier. So was Menes
the first pharaoh or was Namer? Well maybe both
00:24:32
of them were. Alright so there's big debate namer,
menes, namer, Menes who were they? Were they the
00:24:38
same person? Who was the first pharaoh of Egypt?
I've been trying to track down this clue that was
00:24:44
on Wikipedia the original source for this picture
that I saw on Wikipedia and I found it check this
00:24:49
out. 'Royal tombs of the earliest dynasties' by
Flinders Petrie a major early egyptologist in
00:24:56
the 19th century he found this it's so humble that
could be so significant. Let me show you what's so
00:25:03
special about these three pieces of pottery
here, so it's three pieces of a broken pot
00:25:09
it's got some alternating names on it here
looks like it's namer's name, we've got the
00:25:15
top of a very rough catfish here, we've got
the bottom of his chisel there, seems like
00:25:21
this is talking about old Furious catfish himself
Namer but it's alternating with the name of Menes
00:25:29
we've got this I believe it's a granary or a town
something like that alternating with the zigzag
00:25:34
thing that's menes his name. ah don't squirt
me with a water pistol, my daughter's here too.
00:25:40
Based on fragmentary Clues like that small
piece of pottery egyptologists believe that
00:25:46
that Namer and Menace were probably the same
person. For some reason he just had two names.
00:25:52
Going back to the palette though there are some
other people on here with inscriptions alongside
00:25:58
them, I wanted to find out who these people were
and and whether we could read these inscriptions
00:26:04
fortunately Raven put me in contact with
her friend and egyptologist Hassan Elzawy.
00:26:09
[Hassan] so we really believe that the normal
palette is the Canon was the Canon of ancient
00:26:15
Egyptian arts. You get to see certain motifs
and certain symbols that are used from his
00:26:21
time again throughout ancient Egypt up until
Cleopatra and they include for example the
00:26:27
king smiting an enemy so he's holding like an
enemy here and he's smiting him with his mace,
00:26:33
he's wearing a false beard if you
can notice there's like a line going
00:26:37
around his chin into the beard so that's a
false beard, he's wearing the White Crown.
00:26:43
Behind Narmer here is a man carrying sandals.
The sandal bearer was sounds kind of funny to
00:26:49
us now but it was a really important position
in ancient Egypt. If you're carrying the king's
00:26:55
shoes you're going to be close to him right he
can't have gone far without you and proximity
00:27:00
to power just makes you powerful he has these
symbols next to him specifically this flower but
00:27:06
we're just not sure what they mean we can't read
them. The person in front of Namer though has two
00:27:12
symbols that can be read as Tjet. This could be
their name but it could also be namer's vizier.
00:27:19
[Hassan] because the way you pronounce
vizier later on is very similar to Tjet
00:27:24
which is Tjaty so it might be one of
the three or it might be that he is
00:27:29
his son who is also called Tjet who is also
a vizier again we're not necessarily sure.
00:27:34
[Stefan] the chap about to get his Noggin
absolutely boshed also has two characters
00:27:39
next to his name a harpoon and
a lake these also can be read.
00:27:44
[Hassan] Interestingly there is a two signs
here next to the enemy that he's smiting and
00:27:51
it translates as Wash uh we're not sure whether
Wash is the name of the actual person or if it's
00:27:58
the name of a tribe that he was defeating it's
a bit unclear to us what it actually means.
00:28:05
[Stefan] So Wash could have been a ruler,
could have been his name or it could have
00:28:09
been the tribe that was defeated there's just
not enough information to really say for sure
00:28:14
but one last thing we have to talk about here
next to Wash a pile of dead bodies presumably
00:28:20
what was left of Wash's army. Namer here,
Furious catfish, not a man to be crossed.
00:28:28
[Hassan] On the far right of the scene you get
to see a very interesting depiction of all of the
00:28:32
enemies that are decapitated and then their heads
are placed between their legs and if you notice
00:28:40
they have like something on their heads almost
all of them, if you could guess what that is.
00:28:47
[Stefan] it's looking uhhhh a little
bit sausage shaped I have to say.
00:28:52
[Hassan] yeah exactly so these are all of
their phalluses. So a one way of counting
00:28:59
the dead or counting the enemies after
a battle in ancient Egypt was either to
00:29:04
cut off their hands but another more practical
way, I guess, was to decapitate the phalluses.
00:29:10
[Stefan] If this Tjet was the Crown Prince
was namer's successor then we may know him
00:29:15
by another name Hor-Aha and it's in
the second Pharaoh's reign, Hor-Aha's
00:29:21
reign that we get the first names of ordinary
Egyptians not just Noggin boshing monarchs.
00:29:33
All of Egypt's earliest rulers were
buried at Abydos where Seti's Temple was
00:29:40
and like later Egyptian pharaohs sadly all
their tombs were robbed. It's no surprise
00:29:46
really considering the vast amount of wealth that
was probably buried with them as we learned from
00:29:50
Tutankhamun's tomb, fortunately for us though
the tomb robbers saw a little benefit in taking
00:29:56
things like pottery and tombstones and things like
that and we can learn an awful lot from those.
00:30:02
[Hassan] So Abydos is actually locally known
as Umm El Qa'ab, which literally means mother
00:30:07
of pots in Arabic just from the sheer amount
of pottery shirds that were found at the site.
00:30:13
[Stefan] wow that's incre...
I had no idea so much pottery.
00:30:16
[Hassan] like this is actually a picture I took on
00:30:20
a field trip to Abydos so this
is like a couple of years ago.
00:30:24
Amongst all these pots are the Tombstones the
stela, stelae, stela of ordinary Egyptians.
00:30:31
[Hassan] This is for uh actually belongs to
a woman called Seshmetka and she had a couple
00:30:38
of different uh titles um related to the god
Horus and about Set. We again are not sure what
00:30:47
they actually mean but we can say comfortably
that it might have been something religious,
00:30:53
she might have been some sort of Priestess
or had to do with some sort of uh religious
00:30:59
rituals or what, participated in
religious rituals of some sort.
00:31:03
[Stefan] Which symbols are her name
00:31:06
[Hassan] so this is her so this is her name
over here and then this is a title and then
00:31:15
this is another title so again you see the
horus bird here, another horus bird here,
00:31:20
and then this is uh the symbol for the god
Set and then this is a title related to the
00:31:27
god Set. So her titles was she who beholds Horus
female servant of Horus and she who lifts up Set.
00:31:36
[Stefan] To be buried by the King was
a huge honour in ancient Egypt. You can
00:31:40
see here in this photo of Giza all the
large tombs placed around the pyramids.
00:31:46
To be close to the king in the afterlife
just naturally showed you were close to
00:31:50
him in this life. So Seshmetka was not a peasant
farmer but she probably was not a member of the
00:31:57
royal family either and for her this great
honour of being buried close to the king
00:32:03
might have been somewhat negated by the
manner of her death.... it's not pretty.
00:32:11
[Hassan] Yes so Seshmetka is actually one
of the people that we believe was one of the
00:32:16
sacrifice burials from that time period. So
ancient Egypt practiced uh sacrifice burials
00:32:23
um just for like 100 or 150 years
in their early dynastic periods.
00:32:28
[Stefan] Egypt's first dynasty
practiced human sacrifice on an
00:32:32
enormous scale. Hor-Aha, Namer's successor,
had about 30 people buried alongside him when
00:32:39
he died. King Djer, Egypt's third Pharaoh, had
over 500 people buried with him when he died,
00:32:46
probably. It's hard to say exactly for
sure but that's a lot of people and as
00:32:52
sad as it might be these sacrificial burials
with their tombstones are the first accounts
00:32:58
we get of ordinary Egyptians people
who aren't members of the royal family.
00:33:02
[Hassan] We're not sure whether these people
committed suicide whether these people were
00:33:06
sacrificed uh or a mix of both but definitely
they felt that when the ruler died they kind
00:33:15
of wanted some of the high officials or Royal
Court members to accompany the the dead king.
00:33:22
[Stefan] After the first dynasty Egyptians
changed this practice somewhat they stopped
00:33:27
burying real people and started burying
Ushabties, little figurines of people
00:33:31
that they believed could be turned into
real servants in the afterlife. It's no
00:33:37
wonder this practice died out really
I mean it can't have created a smooth
00:33:42
succession for the new king if you buried half
the government with the old King. Unfortunately
00:33:48
for Seshmetka though, no ushabties in
her time, she had to go with the King.
00:33:56
So far we've learned about Namer and his
sons and the people killed alongside his sons
00:34:01
but there's one person I would find out from from
Raven and Hassan that we've missed, namer's wife.
00:34:10
Not only is she probably the
first woman in recorded history,
00:34:13
the name of the first woman but she was
probably a formidable ruler in her own right
00:34:25
Check this out do you see that little blue dot
there Wadi Ameyra in the Sinai desert in Egypt,
00:34:33
as I learned from Raven and Hassan
this is a really important site for
00:34:38
these earliest Egyptian rulers. They
would basically travel from Egypt
00:34:43
from the Nile over here across the water into the
Sinai to go hunting to go mining for resources
00:34:52
things like that and when they were making
these Expeditions they would leave inscriptions,
00:34:58
carvings in the desert to record the trip and
it provides us with another really great record
00:35:05
of these earliest rulers including what is
probably the first woman in human history
00:35:11
uh not the first woman but the first recorded
incidence of a woman in history Neithhotep.
00:35:18
[Hassan] you just have a close-up
is if you notice this pole this
00:35:24
flagpole almost and this sign
so this actually translates or
00:35:28
reads as Neithhotep and this is the first
attested female name from ancient Egypt.
00:35:34
[Stefan] We actually have quite a few references
to Neithhotep. Here's a particularly beautiful
00:35:41
example from the seal of a jar ,you
can clearly see her name all over it,
00:35:45
whatever was in this jar clearly belonged to
Neithhotep. Egyptologists believe Neithotep was
00:35:51
Namer's wife and and Hor-aha's mother based on
the evidence from her absolutely enormous tomb.
00:35:57
[Hassan] Actually when her tomb was found the
excavators this is in the earliest I think 20th
00:36:03
century, 19th century they actually thought it
she was a man or the own the tomb owner was a
00:36:07
man because of the sheer size of it but then when
they actually excavated and found the material
00:36:13
culture they realized that they are actually
looking at the tomb of a woman and not of a man.
00:36:19
Her enormous tomb contained pottery and artifacts
that contained namer's name and hor-aha's name so
00:36:26
clearly her life straddled the reign of the first
two pharaohs. So the hypothesis is that she was
00:36:34
namer's wife, hor-aha's mother. Throughout
Egyptian history we get these powerful women
00:36:39
and it's really interesting to think that this
tradition extends back to the first two pharaohs
00:36:46
that maybe the second ever de facto ruler of
a United Egypt was Neithhotep who guarded the
00:36:55
throne made sure it was safe for her son. We'll
probably never be able to say for sure that that's
00:37:02
what happened but based on the evidence that
we currently have that's perfectly reasonable
00:37:07
hypothesis. This family of Narmer's, Namer,
Neithotep, Hor-Aha were all incredibly important
00:37:14
people in the history of Egypt. Incredibly
powerful in their time five thousand years ago
00:37:20
but as powerful as they were
they didn't invent hieroglyphics
00:37:25
and as I was looking into this and chatting
to Hassan I would learn that we could push
00:37:30
this historical record even further back
in time we could get even more early names.
00:37:40
There are a few Royal tombs at Abydos,
abYdos that predate Namer. This is a
00:37:47
piece of pottery belonging to a ruler called
Ka, this is an artifact belonging to a King
00:37:53
called Scorpion 2 who we just don't know as
much about, their name has been lost to us,
00:37:58
currently we're calling them scorpion 2. But
out of all the tombs at Abydos there's one
00:38:03
that stands out not because it's huge and grand
or anything like that but because the artifacts
00:38:09
contain two little characters that we can still
read, we can still read this person's name.
00:38:14
[Hassan] The first mention of a name again
comes from Abydos but from cemetery B,
00:38:20
specifically the tomb of Iry-Hor. So this is
basically a map showing you tomb UJ where it's
00:38:26
located and then Iry-Hor is like next to it over
here and then all of these tombs are the tombs
00:38:32
of the Roy... the rulers who came during Dynasty
one and two and we'll get into that in a second
00:38:38
but Iry-Hor is basically first name ever
recorded from ancient Egypt and one of the
00:38:44
earliest names known from the ancient world
in general we're talking about 3200 BCE.
00:38:49
Iry-Hor's name consists of two symbols we've
got the Horus bird here, Falcon representing
00:38:56
the god Horus Horus was the Egyptian god of
kingship falcon-headed looks super cool you've
00:39:02
definitely seen images of Horus around in your
time especially if you watched Stargate SG1.
00:39:08
[Hassan] The King was believed to
be the embodiment of Horus on Earth
00:39:12
[Stefan] and we've got a mouth
00:39:14
[Hassan] So Iry-Hor literally
means the mouth of Horus.
00:39:17
[Stefan] his name means mouth of Horus. For a
long time over 100 years in fact there's been
00:39:25
a debate over whether Iry-Hor was really a king
really a ruler because his name is not contained
00:39:31
within Serekh, contained within a Cartouche. If
you look at all the other early pharaohs we've
00:39:37
discussed their names are all contained attained
within one of those boxes but Iry-Hor's is not.
00:39:41
But egyptologists do now believe he was a ruler
of Egypt. First, just from context alone he's
00:39:49
buried at Abydos with all that other earliest
Kings so that's a big clue but secondly his
00:39:54
inscription was also found in the Sinai desert
at Wadi Ameyra alongside narmer's alongside
00:39:59
Neithhotep's alongside all these earliest pharaohs
who were leading Expeditions into the Sinai.
00:40:04
[Hassan] but the earliest thing we have
from that region is this inscription and
00:40:09
if we got a close-up it again mentions if
you can notice the bird with the mouth sign.
00:40:20
So this kind of showed that no official
would have his name written like not only
00:40:26
in Abydos but all the way in the
Sinai and this shows like really
00:40:29
great influence and also this is a
very important like um kingly way
00:40:34
of depicting a person so we're definitely
sure that Iry-Hor now is actually a ruler.
00:40:39
[Stefan] Iry-Hor was almost certainly a king
he's buried at Abydos his leading expeditions
00:40:44
if he's not a king he's doing really kingly
stuff. He's just so early in the development
00:40:50
of writing that that custom that tradition
of putting the king's name in the special box
00:40:55
just didn't exist then and iry-Hor
is as far back in time as we can go
00:41:01
Beyond Iry-Hor we still get symbols we still get
writing but their meaning has been lost to us.
00:41:14
There's another early grave at Abydos,
00:41:17
tomb UJ which again sadly at some
point has been robbed in history.
00:41:23
[Hassan] I think however they left one
room that had hundreds and hundreds of pots
00:41:30
and these pots were mostly
containing wine, animal fat,
00:41:34
oils so that's why probably the robbers whoever
they were just didn't see it important to take
00:41:43
the pots. However a lot of these pots and
pot shirds contain certain inscriptions.
00:41:48
[Stefan] all of these enormous pots contain labels
00:41:52
and inscriptions of people of rulers
that lived at the very edge of history
00:41:58
[Hassan] and then the inscriptions were kind
of abstracty in a way so here you always get
00:42:05
to see a tree, a tree symbol and then an animal
symbol or an animal Motif and scholars believe
00:42:12
that the tree symbolize like an estate and then
the animal was a symbol of a king or of a ruler.
00:42:19
[Stefan] The most common Motif on
pottery from tomb UJ is a scorpion,
00:42:25
so Scholars call it the Tomb of the
Scorpion King AKA Dwayne The Rock
00:42:31
Johnson. We don't know his name we can't read
these symbols anymore they're too abstract.
00:42:37
These names are obscured by the mists of
time. Scorpion King was probably Iry-Hor's
00:42:44
father it's perfectly plausible but they're
just so early at the development of writing
00:42:50
that he lived in prehistory and Iry-Hor lived
in history it's kind of trippy to think about
00:43:00
were they aware of the changes
that were going on around them.
00:43:06
[very satisfying pop of a
beer bottle and i said "wooo"]
00:43:11
I'm drinking beer with a straw, no bits in the
bottom, just doing it for fun in honour of kushim
00:43:19
and Nisa and everyone else we've mentioned
today En-pap-X, Iry-Hor, Namer, Neithhotep,
00:43:27
Seshmetka these names that I can still say even
though those people died five thousand years ago.
00:43:35
[Hassan] and I mean we're still talking about
them till this very day and at the end of the
00:43:38
day what they wanted was some sort of immortality
maybe this is not the kind of immortality that
00:43:44
they were looking for but in a way they're kind of
imortal because yeah as you said here we are five
00:43:49
thousand years later talking about this woman
who's long dead but not really long forgotten.
00:43:55
[Sara] and when you think about gods and
temples and you think about a figure like
00:44:00
Inanna and Ishtar where they cared for these
statues of their gods in the temples they part
00:44:09
of their religious practice was taking care of
them making sure their house was in good order
00:44:14
and to think that we still have surviving
representations of Inanna or like what we think
00:44:21
are Inanna and they're being preserved in museums
there's something almost poetic to thinking
00:44:28
they achieved their goal the people who
were working to maintain these statues
00:44:34
and the presence of these Gods they're
long gone but the figures are still here.
00:44:38
[Stefan] It's pretty special
it's fantastic it's incredible
00:44:44
you know our connection to them seems so flimsy
and so tentative and everything around us today
00:44:52
seems so real and solid and fixed um and yet I
would bet in 5000 years time archaeologists may
00:45:03
still know the names of all of these people that
I've mentioned today but my name will be gone,
00:45:08
will be lost, your name probably gone, probably
lost because our names are not written on anything
00:45:16
durable. Narmer's name, Kushim's name written
on stone clay the Earth, the physical Earth the
00:45:24
stuff that the planet is made out of it can
survive for thousands and thousands of years
00:45:29
but everything that contains my name is kind
of flimsy it's paper it's digital the flick of
00:45:37
a switch can turn off a server and every digital
trace of my life Gone Forever it's kind of crazy.
00:45:46
Maybe if I'm lucky my Tombstone will be
preserved like Seshmetka, who knows, who knows
00:45:53
but I don't know these people have I've kind
of achieved not immortality I suppose they're
00:46:00
definitely dead but I don't know I
don't know if pseudo immortality,
00:46:07
vague immortality I don't know they I can still
say their names after five thousand years we can
00:46:12
still talk about them after 5000 years they
have achieved a kind of immortality, [Music]
00:46:20
Shout out to all of them shout out to all of you
guys shout out to all the names of the people in
00:46:25
this video and all of you watching I hope they
led a good life I hope you lead a good life
00:46:33
and that uh names will live on in
even a tenth as long as this cheers
