Houni, the last pharaoh of the Third Dynasty, built forts in the south, showing that discord had begun between the Egyptians and their dark-skinned southern neighbors, the Nubians.
Nubians have darker skin, as Aristotle said, "Those who have too white skin are cowards, such as women; People with too dark skin are also cowards, just as the Egyptians and Nubians are; The complexion of a true warrior is somewhere in between."
Nubia roughly corresponds to the area around present-day Sudan.
The question of the color of ancient Egyptians has become a topic of frequent debate because of the combination of racism that flourished in the West in the 19th century and countercurrents of political correctness in the 20th century.
Some people believe that the ancient Egyptians were similar to the black African blood of today, based on the melanin of the mummy and the thick lips of the Sphinx, and the opposite can also find arguments from the clues in the mural that the Egyptians deliberately separated themselves from the Nubians, who had much darker skin.
It is possible that in the Neolithic period, about six or seven thousand years ago, some of the wandering people in Nubia migrated from the upper Nile to Egypt and became part of the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians.
For more than 3,000 years, Egypt and Nubia were in turmoil, resembling the complex interactions of other Eurasian civilizations with their nomadic neighbors to the north.
The founding pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, Snifru, was the son of Huni.
Although sporadic historical records of the previous Second and Third Dynasties suggest that the Egyptians were already expanding into Nubia to the south and Sinai to the east, to some extent, Sneferu left the earliest reliable information of the expansion of the empire.
After his expedition to Nubia, he proudly built the first archive in human history, the Palermo Stone (named after its preservation in present-day Palermo, Italy), which recorded his outstanding exploits - 7,000 prisoners and 200,000 head of livestock. He also built the first Great Wall in human history, the House of Sneferu, on the southern border.
He then conquered the Sinai Peninsula, mined copper mines there (Egypt entered the Bronze Age after the First Dynasty), and built a "House of Sneferu" there.
In fact, the expansion of kingdoms in ancient times was mostly related to scarce resources, and in the Bronze Age, it was all kinds of precious metals that could be smelted into bronze.
For example, Akkad of Sargon also obtained the sparse distribution of copper, tin, lead, etc. in the two river basins through expansion or trade (outside the radius of force projection), while the remains of the military colonies of the Shang kingdom in Wucheng and Xinkan Dayang City have the characteristics of controlling copper mines in the Yangtze River basin.
Sneferu built two pyramids, the "Red Pyramid" and the "Curved Pyramid", and an experimental semi-finished product of the "Unfinished Pyramid".
He assembled a huge fleet of 40 seagoing ships to Lebanon to transport back cedar, arguably the earliest seafaring sponsor in human history. For more than a thousand years, the Phoenicians of Lebanon became the stable partners of the Egyptians' cedar cedars, coexisting and prospering.
Sneferu's name is still recited thousands of years later, his relics remained a shrine of pilgrimage until the New Kingdom era, and there is a legend that one day he and his concubines were boating on the lake, and a palace jewelry fell at the bottom of the lake, and Sneferu used a spell to drain the lake and scoop it up.
All indications are that Snefru is such a popular and accomplished person, and he does not hesitate to show to weak women that "if you have something to find the big brother, the big brother can help you solve everything".
After the unremitting efforts of Imhotep, Snevru and others, by the time of Khufu, the pyramid manufacturing industry in ancient Egypt finally reached the pinnacle.
Khufu's grandson, Khafre, and Hafre's grandson, Menkaure, built three of the most famous pyramids in the Giza Heights, complete with sphinxes, which became immortal symbols of Egypt for 5,000 years. Among them, the one built by Khufu is the largest, so it is called the "Great Pyramid".
Like his father, Khufu continued his expeditions to the indigenous tribes of the Sinai Peninsula, proclaiming himself the "destroyer of the indigenous tribes of the Sinai" on his own archives.
Because Khufu's construction of the Great Pyramid emptied the treasury—it was not slaves who built the pyramids, but free Egyptian peasants.
In fact, the pyramid was built by slaves from the myth created by Hollywood black-and-white films in the early 20th century, and it is also in line with the Marxist historical school's imagination of "slave society".
The ancient Egyptians long ago divided the year into three seasons: sowing season, flood season, and harvest season according to Sirius' position in the sky.
When a quarter of the year floods flood and flood fertile land, the vast number of peasants have nothing to do, so they are organized to build pyramids, which is a means of maintaining stability.
Workers left graffiti near the pyramids, self-styled groups such as "Friends of Khufu", and competed with each other.
Even if the archaeological findings revealed that the bones of the thousands of people who had built the pyramids on the construction site had obvious scars, the people were still demoralized, and the pictures that followed their bodies were evidence of medical procedures, which was not the treatment of slaves.
More than two thousand years after the Great Pyramid, Herodotus may not have experienced the ancient Egyptians' devotion to the pharaoh as a god, so his records such as "Khufu let his daughter prostitute in order to build the pyramid" and "the people were unlucky to leave their bodies in the wilderness" are quite suspicious.
The workers drank well, were well nourished, had a meal of fish for three days, and a cow for five days (these are all archaeological discoveries), and finally there was the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the only surviving of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Slaves under the whip can never build pyramids, only people who love their jobs and have high morale can do such miracles. But the two pyramids of Khufu's descendants grew smaller and smaller, and the Fourth Dynasty finally flourished and declined.
To find out what happened, listen to the next breakdown.
Bibliography:
1, "The Pyramid of Khufu" by (American) Elizabeth Mann
2, "History of Ancient Egypt" Author: Alice Barnes-Brown Translator: Cao Mingyu
3, "The Ancient Egyptian Empire (Translation)" Author: (American) Wendy Christensen, translator: Guo Zilin
