Egyptologist Answers Google’s Most Popular Questions About Ancient Egypt

How did they build the pyramids? Why were they so obsessed with cats? Did they mummify everyone? Egyptologist Chris Naunton answers Google's most searched questions about Ancient Egypt.

00:00 Introduction
00:42 When did the Egyptians live?
01:43 Why did the Egyptians build pyramids?
02:25 How did the Egyptians build pyramids?
02:59 How did the Egyptians cut granite?
04:30 Why were the Egyptians obsessed with cats?
05:31 Did the Egyptians believe in an afterlife?
06:18 Why did the Egyptians mummify their dead?
06:45 Why did the Egyptians put organs in jars?
07:23 What did the Egyptians look like?
08:36 Why did the Egyptians wear eyeliner?
08:53 Why did the Egyptians shave their heads?
09:37 What did the Egyptians wear?
11:21 Why did the Egyptians use hieroglyphics?
12:23 How did the Egyptians become pharaohs?
14:24 Why did the Pharaohs wear false beards?
15:43 Why did the Pharaohs marry their siblings?
16:53 How long did the Egyptians live?
18:16 What did the Egyptians eat and drink?
20:25 What jobs did the Egyptians do?
21:58 Did the Egyptians believe in curses?
22:30 How many gods did the Egyptians have?
23:18 Did the Egyptians have electricity?
23:36 Who did the Egyptians fight?
26:17 Did the Egyptians have slaves?

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[inannanightingale]

The amount of time we spend looking at cat videos and memes on the internet will probably make future civilizations think we worship cats too!

[oceanbearmountain]

i think it's important to note when he's saying "we don't know" he doesn't mean it's a mystery; he means there's a number of theories which can very well account for how they accomplished the thing in question, but it can't be said for certain which ones were used: it could be mixtures, it could be that certain methods and techniques were used at some points and others at others (which, given its over 3000-year history, seems almost impossible to not be the case), etc. other egyptologists will state with more confidence that we _do_ know because they don't want the uncertainty regarding the aforementioned to be taken as "we don't know" and this taken as "it's a mystery" because the ancient alien people will then take this as a concession. in most areas of history this kind of epistemic modesty is refreshing, especially with regards to more modern history, but i fear that in this context it really is playing into the hands of ancient alien apologists :/

[saidtoshimaru]

Egyptologist: We don't know.
History Channel: Aliens.

[drsjwhitman]

Thank you Dr. Chris Naunton. I have enjoyed many of your YouTube lectures and read your book Searching for the Lost Tombs. As a history professor for 40 years, I congratulate your explanations and spreading of this information to the general public. Finally making my first ever Viking Cruise to Egypt in September.

[przan]

I love this type of content, no bullshit for views, honest and Straight forward.

[pradeepmax]

This is why Egypt is so fascinating: most of the answers end with 'we don't know.'

[sophiejones]

"Why were the Egyptians obsessed with cats?"
Meanwhile the internet is 70% cat videos/memes.
28:09 and getting paid to do work was a sure sight better than sitting at home bored and not getting paid. They worked in the off-seasons, farm for four months, pyramid work for four months, rinse and repeat. You said "subsistence farming" here, but Egypt was producing a massive surplus of grain from a very early era: to the extent that not only could they feed themselves during the off-seasons but they were also providing disaster relief to everyone else . When people say "subsistence farming" that's not usually what they mean.

[CMch]

It seems like when an expert says, “We don’t exactly know how they did xyz”, it’s assumed that it is a near impossible feat. It’s not. They’re just saying that it isn’t known *exactly* what method they used, that there could have been many methods, and that stating any particular process may have inaccuracies. It’s important to understand that a culture’s relationship with time can be very different from another’s, and that generally our modern relationship with time is very different from that of Ancient Egypt and so it’s hard for us to understand why so much time and energy would be devoted to building the pyramids. While I’m sure opinions varied, at the cultural level it was viewed as a worthy effort.

[jamieblanche]

The cat sculpture at 5:26 is brilliant! It's like a grumpy old git of a cat.

"Now get thee down t'ut co-erp an buy us some't whiskers! Ma food berl's empteh"

[shaha]

There is a theory that in the image around the 3 min mark a worker is pouring liquid past the statue. So in theory - they moved some heavy objects via a liquid friction system along with the ropes to ease it up and down Egypt for projects.

[zknight]

Hi, I’m once again begging for more series on the HistoryHit app (with video) with Kate Lister. I love her so much and will literally watch anything with her in it at this point but I suck at paying attention to podcasts so I’m struggling through Betwixt the Sheets bc I keep zoning out and having to go back 😅 Give us more Kate in video, I beg.

[BillPeaches]

I enjoyed the Wired Egyptologist answering questions better. Felt like she provided better answers.

[rubeusswagrid]

Video content/subject matter: 10/10. Delivery of said subject matter 3/10. I’ve never been more bored trying to watch a video about something I’m genuinely fascinated by. Sorry, Doc.

[bpax]

I know the idea to a degree is to a more casual answer from experts. However, as an anthropologist when you going to ask about topics as broad and/or debated as many of these questions were it would be a courteous to give them before hand. A decent a amount of the people in the comments are frustrated by him saying "I/We don't know" to what seem like relatively basic questions, which is unfortunate because as academic it usually means there isn't consensus on an issue /topic not that we literally do not know. Doing so would give the experts time to come up an answer includes different POVs on topics.

[JRRichards]

It'd be interesting to hear a presentation on the development of the afterlife "story" over time in Ancient Egypt. It seems like the Book of the Dead didn't exist during the old kingdom.

[Raz.C]

re - How long did they live?
When correcting for infant mortality skewing the mean, the median life expectancy would have been around the 50s, not "40 at most."
Even so, the median has confounding variables, just as the mean, since "armies" were normally press-ganged from the local populace and almost exclusively made up of men aged 20-30. Since many of them would never come home again, it's reasonable to conclude that:
If you survived childhood and the various military expeditions, then you could reasonably expect to live to around 60 years of age. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. Seeing a Pharaoh live into his 90s would have seemed like incontrovertible evidence that he was indeed a "Man-God."

[emilyverrinder]

As much as I love learning about ancient civilizations and History Hit in general, I gotta admit that I wasn't crazy about this expert. He didn't really seem to want to be here and share his knowledge, but seemed more annoyed at questions the general population had about this field. "When did the Egyptians live?" could have been brushed off with "well, ANCIENT Egypt took place between these years...." but his answers just came across as curt and like "ha, how could you be so dumb?" Maybe I'm being too picky 😅 but I've liked so many of their other experts so much more

[Arthur-jxbm]

Interesting you showed King Tut's tomb when talking about pyramids... when he wasn't buried in a pyramid!

[dreamjackson]

Props to this guy for saying, we don't know. That's good

[twonumber]

Scientists Against Myths have demonstrated how they could've cut and drilled various rock. And mechanical advantage seems like an obvious method of moving large stones.