so it was said he was the last of egypt's greatpharaoh's a warrior a master strategist yeah one night king ramses the third met hismatch in the place he expected at least now three thousand years later anarchaeologist turn detective is cranking up the heat in a new investigation andwe'll lift the veil on a death of ramses
the third wasn't natural causes ormurder - 11:53 bc ancient egypt grams is the third arrives at his palacein thebes for a huge celebration he's led egypt for 30 years and he'sshowing signs of wear and tear this 20 day festival is designed to rejuvenatethe aging pharaohs vitality dozens of harem wives kick off the celebrationinside the medina habu palace but there's a dark side to thefestivities a minor queen is up to no good queen t a trusted wife of ramses formany years ancient records . to her as a
murder suspect and she's got a motive t his rival queen isis is rameses chiefwife so her son stands ready to an era thethrone queen t wants her own son where to be thenext pharaoh and like most ambitious mother's she'll do just about anythingto help her son even stay to cool night falls ramses arrives and thepalace comes alive
queen tea and her cohorts of waitedpatiently it's time to set their plan in motion there's no turning back what happens next will change the street susan redford distinguished egyptologistwants to figure out exactly what did happen that night but it won't be easy there's no single account and lots ofconflicting information ramses was a bundle of contradictions he was a giant in battle who crushedegypt's invaders
yet he never suspected that his mostdangerous enemies were right at his side it was a powerful and charismatic leaderbut as the last of the great pharaoh's even he could he say egypt redford's investigation turns up theunmistakable signs of a crumbling empire ramses egypt had tumbled into economicdecline in the streets his people were starving the pharaoh lived in gloriousextravagance with magnificent palaces and countless service
no one could have imagined this disaster100 years earlier during egypt's golden years the craftsman and laborers who built thedazzling royal tombs and temples were rewarded with generous salaries anddecent living conditions but under ramses watch the kingdomweakens and goes broke egypt loses access to key trading routes andessential materials like iron without the raw materials they can't compete money dries up andthe government stops paying workers for their services
with no food or supplies a middle classthat once lived comfortably now must get by on scraps an ancient text documents one workersplease we are extremely destitute truly we are already dying many believe ramses either doesn't knowor doesn't care about their misery but queen t does know and plots to use thegrowing hostility to her advantage as evening heats up and the pharaoh wineis down queen tease allies both in and out ofthe palace set their plan in motion and
begin to close in on ramsey 21st century egypt the cairo museum hmm the final stop for ramses the third egypt's last great pharaoh susan redford has been investigatingramses death for years but she's never been face-to-face with athree-thousand-year-old king now she finally has the chance for anautopsy of sorts and she's brought along one of the world's leading mummy expertsdr. salima ikram to help her read the
mummy it's absolutely astounding to me to haveactually looking to face of ramses third my rules beautifully preserved i'm curious as tohow is being so tightly wrapped how we can tell that he was quite an obese mani expected to see some folds of skin even after 3,000 years salima can tell that ramses liveluxuriously so well no i don't really see any folds of skin he's a little bitgenerally and if you look at his face he's is bones look quite broad and hedoes look a little bit
plumper then the other people that onewe can look at eighteen students to royal mummies are nineteen fifty theremuch spare but maybe possibility with double chin hear ya it could be that that's why it's in thekind of our trash yeah now he doesn't look what i wouldcall felt by any stretch of the imagination the pharaohs body does look like ramseshad a few more feasts than the one that fateful night history tells us he lived well figuringout how he died
is another story susan has establishedmotive in this investigation a queen's ambition for her son now she'slooking for opportunity how to kill a king and not get caught ramses wasn't an easy man to ambush clapduring his rule egypt beat back wave after wave of useless invaders egyptologist be in the shop a leadingauthority on ancient warfare privacy is a third that deal with with amuch wider range of the military threats than that than any of his predecessorshave to have it in fact probably more more more of a range of sets and thenyou went after him with as well
ramses had to overcome one of thetoughest military challenges imaginable a two-front war as commander he divides his army andmoves his forces from the one defensive front to another nobody previously had that it had beenunder attack from the both the west and the east at the same time this most ofthe stretched resources quite quite succeeded the libyans attacked first from the westbut the greatest threat came from the northeast by a group called the seapeoples
the sea peoples represented thecoalition of armies from the mediterranean and achieve these invaders didn't want the spoils ofthe land they wanted the land itself this was actual conflict with people whowere desperate to find find land so that there would be much more of a sense ofegypt being actually under siege itself you always get them through the centerof egypt fighting for its existence when ramses look to the sea he stared ata formidable force thousands of enemies and possibly the end of an empire it is certainly at a turning point forembassies the third particularly the
idea of having to fight a sea battlewhich was something that that essentially the egyptians that as far aswe know never never had to seriously do before ramses answered with pure tacticalbrilliance knowing he'd be crushed in a battle atsea ramses enticed the sea-people ships into the mouth of the nile then he sprung his ambush egyptian archers devastated the enemywith volley after volley deadly arrows he defeated the sea peoples before theycould ever touch land and he turned back
the libyans from the west but he never saw the betrayal in his ownhouse coming mmm for a closer look susan goes to thievesand the scene of the crime ramses temple medina tabu this massive complex of stone and mudbrick was known as the mansion of millions of years the defensive wallthat surrounds the temple is 10 meters nearly 40 feet thick and the ornate buildings how 75,000square feet
decorated surfaces this is the easternhigh gate and the main entry into the temple compound and they are right aboveour the hiring apartments a very extensive our living quarters of thehiring women and what the place where the king galley with his women and ithink the place where the coup and the conspiracy and assault on the kingactually took place ramses had palaces throughout egypt eachwith its own harem the main function of the hiring was ofcourse the entertainment and pleasure of the king these were royal palaces
in ancient egypt the word harem meantsecluded ones but it could also mean prison and that's just what it was the pharaohs wives and concubines wereconsidered his property they lived under a 24-hour lockdown andhad virtually no contact with the outside world you really get a sense of how isolatedthe women are just by the architecture of the complex itself it's far removed from the king's palaceon the temple
the woman who lived here develop greatskills as we verse entertainers and companions so there's a thought was definitely awhole economy of that revolved around these hurry in palaces they were thriving estates and they werequite productive in terms of producing limit and garments but their mostimportant job to encourage the king sexual desire and guarantee a healthyblood line so the dynasty continued the majority of the hiring women had sexual responsibilities to the kingthe king was called the great bull the
the great procreator many pharaohs had agreat number of offspring many by these women of the hari since children often died in infancyhaving many offspring increase the odds that the king wouldhave a healthy air and one famous pharaoh bothered me more thana hundred children having many children help the line of succession but createdfear sibling rivalries the pharaohs many wives all lived inluxury they wore the finest diamonds andjewelry they bathe inexpensive oils and had anendless supply
intoxicating fragrances like myrrh andfrankincense and jasmine most importantly being part of the haremguaranteed burials and tombs that brought safe journeys into the afterlife some wives were hand-picked for theirbeauty others were foreign princesses given as gifts all lost their freedom and nearly all accepted their faith but redford thinks the madinat habukaren was different she believes there's enough evidence toprove the harem actually murdered ramses
now she wants to figure out how theydidn't for centuries ramses mummy was lost tothe world then in 1881 archaeologists a meal groupdiscovered ramses body in a secret cache of 40 royal mummies thanks they moved the mummies to cairo tounwrap and examined the team estimated that ramses the thirdlived to 65 but reached no conclusion on what killed him in the 1960s an american egyptologistx-ray ramses body and susan wants salima to take another look
susan wants to know if an assassinmurder ramses in a violent fight if ramses had suffered a blow to his headhis x-ray should show trauma but salima doesn't see those signs i have looked at these x-rays are ramseythe 3rd to see if there was any kind of trauma that we could see on the bonesbut none of the x-rays showed anything that might be construed as trauma of anysort so if he were murdered then it couldn'thave been by a blow to the head or anything else so the x-rays eliminate drama theory butthere are still plenty of other ways to
murder an unpopular king spring 1155 bc egypt was breaking down and the aging pharaoh was losing touchwith his kingdom ramses had amassed great riches a haventells us in his palace he dined off bomb cutlery of fine goldenand silver his treasury was old but the people of thebes were obviously notgetting fed so of course this would not make from avery popular king at this . desperate times inspired desperatemeasures
the unpaid workers decided to takeaction they staged the world's first recordedstrike supervisor of the gable four chords that all work stopped on this day the men scaled the walls and headed forthe palace the text tell us what they said it'sbecause of hunger that we have been driven to this there's no clothing nooil no fish no vegetables send a pharaoh are good lord concerningthis some of the pharaohs wives have closefamily ties to the villagers and word of the strike reaches the heronand medina taboo the growing hostility
provides the opportunity queen tease been waiting for egypt economic collapse creates theperfect environment for igniting rebellion queen t discreetly recruits conspiratorsamong the other women of the era together they devised a way tocommunicate with the outside world virtually every day laborers come to thepalace to work or deliver supplies the harem develops allies among the workersto send messages in and out of the palace
the ancient record tells of one secretnote get people together inside hostilities in order to provokerebellion against their lord the women recruit professional soldiersincluding a commander who sister is part of the harem to lead the rebellionoutside the palace gates if all goes according to plan the soldiers will take over the palaceafter the pharaoh is murdered and make sure queen t son assumes the throne allthese things i think came together and coincide it to lay the groundwork forthis coup d'etat they were going to get rid of the kingand then we're going to do it right here
as the moon rises high in the sky the celebrations in full swing ramses relaxes in the splendor of medinahuh boo oblivious to the traders and thedesperation of his people his enemies have him surrounded now theywait for quinn teesside as ramses celebration winds down for wheaties coolpix up momentum she puts her plan to murder the pharaohin play the first weapon magic
t simmons the court magician recommenda--the to cast spells over the palace guards the egyptians very much believed in thepower of magic and they really felt they couldn't go forward without some magicalincantations to confuse people the egyptians believed the gods protectthe pharaoh someone assassination requires magic they think soldiers have the power toreverse decapitations and bring inanimate objects to life recommended repairs small wax figurineswhich will uses budu god's the magician
and the conspirators believed thesedolls will immobilize the palace guards now all the pieces are in place recommend casts spells as the recruitedsoldiers organize their men in the shadows of the palace waltz then they attack but breaking - magic fails to disablethe guards instead the centuries turn back theinsurgents and capture most of them the pharaohs guards crush the rebellion
inside the palace the harems murder plotmoves forward unaware of the failed attack outside the palace walls but the big question remains what weapon to the wives use againstramses poisons would have been a likely option they were often used as medicines andwould have been in the palace the egyptian pharmacopoeia is ischock-full of resins and poisons that that the egyptians you is to quiteliterally they were quite aware of the dosage it would take to put someone in a, say
mandrake for instance a poisonous plantoften added to whine to cure insomnia too much mandrake however brings about apermanent sleep and eating the fruit from a mandrake plant kills in less thanan hour copies which produce morphine we're justas common just as medicinal and just as deadly an overdose causes paralysis coma and ultimately death egypt also had a ready supply of thecastor-oil plant every egyptian new of it's healing effects
they also knew that the castor-oil plantcontain deadly ricin just a few seeds then as now can trigger fatal respiratory failure and rounding out the menu of deadlyoptions was nightshade it's still grows wild in egypt producingtoxic berries that can impair the human nervous system the harem at an embarrassment of deadlyriches to poison ramses and please he had important allies amongthe king's personal attendants people who had access to his food and drinking
the records indicate the palaces pantrychief hi baka mana as queen tease mainco-conspirator ramses probably doesn't even know thepantry chief's name up i baca mana controls everything the pharaoh eats anddrinks eibach amanha alone in the kitchen coulddiscreetly poor a deadly dose of man drink or nightshade into a goblet ofwine as ramses retires to the sanctuary ofhis heroin the women ensure that poison is the lastthing on his mind eventually one of the wise innocentlyhands the wine to ramses
what susan redford doesn't lie she thinks the poison theory is flawed41 many of the poisons have a bitter tasteso ramses might have rejected his first second the records indicate ramses diedslowly most poisons kill quickly he survived we know he survived at least dumb twoweeks possibly two and a half weeks so if the wives didn't use poison theymust have resorted to something else maybe they chose something that was justas deadly but killed more slowly a snake can be a chilly effectiveassassins tool
and it might have been the perfectchoice to kill ramses but how do you smuggle one into thepalace and how do you get it to bite the pharaoh it would have been quite easily toconvey a poisonous snake into the hiring quarters snake charmers are bound inegypt even today they can actually buy handling the head of the snake in acertain way on costs take to be very step hitting the right pressure . can turn arising snake into a straight arrow so straight that it can be tucked into asleeve and smuggled past palace guards
dr. zoltan taka ch a research scientistat the university of chicago as his own view about which type of snake wouldhave been best for the assassins if in fact this for killing hop and by asnake or snake venom then i would tend to believe thatcorporate was carpet like four it's easy to find a carpet viper in thedesert even today this species kills morepeople than any other snake in africa barely two feet long it's a ready-mademurder weapon it's a tiny little sleep but it's veryvery aggressive and the been on is very very toxic
the couple drops can kill you actually from the carpet viper it hasbeen estimated that all you need is about three milligrams of venom viperthan wreaks havoc on the body it ruptures the blood vessels makes a bloodlead into the tissues you start to bleed internally you can get from your gums you can lead in the gi system in yourbest interests in our system and you can read from all this cars so it's a prettybad scenario and more silver keys as you can have bleeding in your kidney or evenin your brain if one of queen tease accomplices couldsneak a carpet viper into the palace
the harem could make sure it had a closeencounter with the pharaoh with so many wives it's hard to keeptrack it just takes one to slip treacheryunder the covers so ramses returns to his chambers after a long night of celebration he doesn't want bodyguards here just thewife he's decided to spend the night with me the only thing on his mind is pleasure the only thing on her mind is murder
the snake by we are not kill youinstantly it needs time for the components of the venom to accept theirfx but they can be as long as like a week two weeks sometimes even more susan redford knows that grams died aslow death the snake is murder weapon theory makessense she also identifies important clues inthe court records the curious thing there is that twoconspirators who took leading roles in the conspiracy one is given the name the snake the other is called the lordof snakes
there's one other clue and amuletssuggesting ramses was actually bitten by a snake there is this some very small ambulettewhich was found that actually says that ramses arms are coated by the sun godray against the bite from with venomous snake that marvelous that is so coolbecause that does in a way are you for someone who has lived those snake by theother interesting thing about this amulet is that the where is supposed toapply it to his hand and it is a protection for the bedroom that's very uncanny if when we are goingto poison someone something in their
food would be less need it would be muchmore suspicious where's the snake that would wander into from the garden in theareas where they live and danced a bunch better chance of a sneaky and then beingregarded as a natural disaster had befallen the king rather thansomething that was particularly plan exactly there's no question that ramses had aconnection to snakes even the lid of his sarcophagus at a carving of a deadlyviper the case for assassination by snakeseems very strong still the three thousand year oldrecords don't heal all the answers
there's no mention for instance of whathappened to ramses in the hours after the assassination attempt the record however tells us exactly whathappened to the conspirators the king's guards rounded up all the suspects they tortured them for information andconfessions and one by one the members of the harem conspiracybroke crime against the pharaoh was a crimeagainst god 33 insurgents including prince pandawear green teas son
the court magician the pantry chief the commander and the two snake charmers face thecharge of high treason an offense punishable by death the harem women don't escape scrutinyeither they're taken into custody at the trial an official scribe recordthe entire proceedings on a papyrus the high offense such as treasonrequires judgment from the gods and communicating with the gods requirespriest the high priests of our moon
they alone decide the fate of thealleged assassins you're the real power in this trial andare emerging as a potent force across ramses egypt the priest go through a 10-day ritualcleansing before the hearing they were shaved completely no hairdressed in fine linen garments and even were told they were given a littlepellets of nature to cleanse their breath is world and they may have taken a littlesomething extra hallucinogens to help them speak to thegods
this trial has no cross-examinationsburdens of proof or legal niceties here the ornate gold idol plays judgejury and appeals court to address the article the bark was brought in aprocession around the court would have taken place at one point the bark would stop and thequestion would be presented to the god and it would be in the form simply of ayes or no answer should this person be given the deathpenalty is he guilty a trembling oracle means the gods areready to speak if it moves forward the god say yes
backwards means no suppose you can liken it to a ouijaboard where certain people who would like to address the ouija board swear upand down that they're making no movement of the piece as it moves and answerstheir question ok just like a ouija board the playerscontrol the outcome and these players weren't feelinggenerous the verdicts twenty son prince pen aware sentenced todeath for inciting rebellion
as royalty he escapes the publichumiliation of execution he quietly commit suicide by taking poison he commandeth the court magician guiltyof the treasonous use of black magic he opts for suicide as well hi back amanha the pantry chief guilty of colludingwith queen t in the era the oracle condemns him to publicexecution in all 33 conspirators die the oracle decrees they must be burned
alive in a public spectacle afterward officials scatter their ashesover heavily traveled dirt roads destroy any hope of an afterlife it's the ultimate degradation for anegyptian and the absolute opposite of what ut intended but that's not the end of the story thedesperate women must now try to save
themselves and time is running out as the noose tightens on theconspirators the women attempt a last-ditch effort to avoid execution they turn to lust the wife seduced forcourt officials including two judges a bailiff and the police - in an effort to gain leniency they have a secret rendezvous but are caught in the act
the papyrus doesn't give us a tell-allaccount but does tell us this much they had a fine party down there their misdeeds sees them the men are found guilty of minglingwith the prisoners the punishment comes swift and harshexecutioner's a lot of the officials ears and noses now . e in her chords have run out ofoptions and they won't even have the benefit of the trial they certainly would not have had apublic trial if any trial whatsoever
this these were the kings property sonone of this the royal dirty laundry would have been aired for the public there's no more mention of the harem inthe papyrus really simply vanish it's a long shot but susan redfordthinks an unidentified tomb might explain the fate of 20 in heraccomplices the valley of the queens is a vast burial ground for ramses familyand other royal wives and children . nice circle the royals commission theirown tuners size location and the core all reflected status
oh that's marvelous there's a country queen i system has allthe trappings of power was it difficult to get the vulturefeathers on her headdress signify her importance and standing is chief wife but not all tombs are created equal buti think we have is the tomb of queen isis and her offspring up through thisname they're all fair and off on this peripheral valley wehave possibly tweenty and her offspring this unfinished chambers it's off to theside and that's why susan thinks it
might belong to queen team very curiously i'm impressed by how close it is to thethree princes tombs on it is right next to a queen of ramses the second as wellit seems to have been fully excavated and the decoration was begun it has beeninvestigated to a certain extent all because it's it's been documented thatit does belong to a queen but that's as far as they know now would be interestedin this little boy fine this too may be empty because itsowner died before her time look
i'm not violently i'm in disgrace yeah its nose and medina tabu susan sees more signs inthe reliefs of ramses family one drawing in particular depicts a beautiful queen but something's missing the queen has noname no identity this might be a queen t nearby there is another nameless imageonly this one is a prince perhaps it's cool t son prince pentawhere robbing an identity is the supremepunishment for an egyptian royal it also
means there's virtually no chance for anafterlife definitive answers can be found amongtombs and incomplete court records we can deduce what might have happened from the bits of history we do have what is clear is that ramses lived longenough to a point 12 judges to his own murder trial but he didn't live to see the verdicts he died about two weeks after the haremsassassination attempt killing ramses was the only part ofqueen tease plot
it succeeded everything else was a disaster the rebellion failed and all of queentease allies paid with their lives i mean isis son ramsay's the fourthsucceeded his father as originally planned his six-year rain was undistinguished except for one thing ramses the fourth commission the recordof queen tease betrayal so the story of his father's murderwould survive
but he and his heirs couldn't keep theirgrip on absolute rule a new power was on the rise the amon priests sees the influence thepharaoh's lost they emerged as egypt's ruling class just 100 years after ramsesdead the age of pharaohs and their heroineswas over and egypt's 1500 year reign as the world's great superpower came to anend
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