S01 E05: The Best Pharaoh You've Never Heard Of

Hello everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode about the pharaohs of Egypt's mysterious first dynasty. Anyways, I'm gonna post a map I created in Photoshop to help people not get lost, as I know that it can be kinda hard to keep up with my constant spewing of new cities and regions. I'll be updating this map for use in later episodes.

Anyways, included here is a map of the tomb complex in Abydos, Egypt. Here is where you can find the graves of two predynastic nomarchs (Iry Hor and Ka), the entirety of the First Dynasty, and the two pharaohs of the Second Dynasty. The fact to note about these tombs is how they allow you to roughly track the prosperity experienced during the rules of the pharaoh entombed. Generally, larger tombs mean that the pharaoh had more resources at their disposal at the end of their rule, indicating that Egypt was undergoing a period of economic prosperity at the time of construction.

(Note: Kaa is an alternative name for Qebeh. I chose to refer to him as Qebeh to avoid confusion with the predynastic ruler, Ka.)

In this week's episode, I briefly touched on the methods of burial and construction used to build mastabas. Here's a picture of one so you can really visualize the "pyramid with its top sliced off" comparison.

As mentioned in the episode, many of the royal attendants were buried with the First Dynasty pharaohs in an act of human sacrifice. If you'd like to learn more about the conduction of human sacrifice in Ancient Egypt, and how the practice came to eventually be abandoned, you can access it by supporting the show on Patreon. For just $1.99 a month, you'll receive access to all of our premium uploads. We rely entirely on supporters like you to ensure that our main series stays free and independent, and to pay for hosting. Thank you.