saltlakemusic
The Nile Can Be a Real Bitch · Aug 6, 06:39 PM
Ancient Egypt once had two territories, the upper side and the lower side. If you were from the upper side you didnt fuck with dudes from the lower side because they would shoot your ass with short bows or cut you up with long handled copper axes, they didnt fuck around. Then there was this dude called Narmer who was so bad he took over both sides using smart desert warfare. When he dominated all of Egypt he was like “I’m the king you bitches so the next person who throws a punch is goin down!” The people loved it because there was no more fighting, and they built him a huge dam at the Nile and a city called Memphis. This city was awesome.
For 29 generations Narmers bloodline controlled the game in Egypt. His sons sons would be like “My great grandma had sex with God which makes me the great grandson of God so bow down!“ and the people did. Each city had its own God which was more sacred than the other gods and the most sacred god was the one that had sex with the Kings mom or whatever. The God Osiris was this fucked up God of the underworld who took care of all the afterlife shit. Egyptians thought that they couldnt go on to the next life unless their body was all clean and neat and smellin fresh and shit.
People were all obsessed about this God Osiris. They even started this twisted religious cult and set up base 300 miles from Memphis at a temple called Abydos. 300 miles seems like a long way but if you just get out of Memphis and hop on a boat and ride the Nile you can make it like nobodys business. While youre floating along on your way to the temple some other boats come and and theyre like “Hey you wanna buy this goat?” and you be like “Fuck your goat bitch I eat pork!” Then just like the ice cream man the pork boat comes sailin up and you buy a pig to sacrifice or whatever. These dudes got paid pretty good. Then this other beat up boat comes up and some old ladys like cmon man gimme a quarter. And you start rowing all quick.
At the temple itself the first ever conducted mortuary rituals were going down. Peoples guts were being pulled out through their butholes and their brains through their nostrils. Sometimes if the dead dude was important they would kill all his servants and leave the bodies next to his so they could get his tea and valet his chariot in the afterlife and shit. After they pulled out the guts they fill the gap with cotton balls and bandages, paint the face all pretty and put some accessories on them like noserings or whatever before they put them in this ancient Tupperware to keep the body from getting moldy and gross. The family would come along and leave food, toys and money.
After a while they were putting all kinds of crazy shit in the Mastabas, chambers of the pharaohs and rich citizens, like dead dogs, best friends and beer, until finally they started realizing it was kind of fucked up so they made figurines of people and dogs and left them in there instead. The priests were like “Thats good food going to waste right there!” and theyd go in and eat the food the families left for the dead people before it went bad. Then they would enjoy the beer with their meal because they were all about that shit back then. At night thugs would come around and try and rob the shit from the rich familys dead relatives so the priests were making haunted houses and shit to protect the money. They hid the shit in mazes and set up all kinds of booby traps like some Indiana Jones type shit.
Almost 500 years after Narmer, his great, great, great, great, great grandson Djoser in 2600 BC started building the biggest Mastaba ever so everyone would think he was a major badass when he died. Stone was all over the place but not enough trees, so everything was being built with stone except ships and shit like that. At that time the pyramids, called “step pyramids“ like the ones built by King Imhotep were totally weak, just a bunch of stone blocks stacked on each other, but King Sneferu changed all that when he built the real deal which looked tight as hell, all smooth on the sides and called it a “true pyramid.“ These Kings, also called “Pharoah“ controlled the entire game in Egypt, they were worshipped like Gods had major tasks and responsibilities, they were businessmen, politicians and sometimes just assholes. If some shit came up like a dude stepped on his neighbor’s pet cat and there was no law the pharaoh would just make one up right there and thatd be the law from then on. Every year the King had to put on this weird play that the previous Kings spirit was supposed to be like one of the main characters or some shit.
The Pharaoh was such a badass that he had mobs of people working under him to do all his bitch work. Each rank carried a lot of respect in the community, but nobody was as badass as the pharaoh and the pharaoh made sure all the people knew who was pulling the strings. The Vizier was the pharaohs first counselor and sheriff. This dude also was the highest commander of the pharaohs armies and judge of the highest courts, he also had to go around and collect tax money. Then below the Vizier was the Chancellor who basically just talked a lot of shit and didnt lift a damn finger but was rich or whatever and had some clout. The lowest bitches in the bureaucracy were the Nomarchs, these dudes were true gangsters who governed the cities and sometimes were like “fuck off pharaoh!” so the pharaoh would be like “what?” and roll in with all his armies and shit. But mostly they were too pussy to fuck around with the big dudes.
If you were living in this nice little house by the river and you have all this nice weather and your crops were kicking ass youd see the Vizier coming around for his taxes and youd be like “Oh shit“ because they taxed you depending on how good your crops did. That was how the King ran his shit. If you were a peasant life totally sucked, youd have to do the pharaohs bullshit pyramid building work during the fall when the crops were underwater because of the high river water, then during winter when the waters went back down youd work your ass off in the fields planting crops, and then when spring came around your ass was right back in the fields pulling up those damn crops so that the pharaoh could come along and be like “Yoink! Thanks for the crops bitch!” and hed take a really good cut from your stash right then.
Of course while the poor adults were out breaking their backs in the fields the little kids were at school learning their shit so they could grow up to be something better than peasants or soldiers. School costed a shitload so if your family wasnt pretty loaded you were out of luck. Your dad would put you on this weird home school shit and make you count radishes while you planted them, if you even had a dad. The luckier kids learned this comic book language called “Hieratic“ and since Egypt had so much of these reeds growing on the Nile these lucky kids even got to write on real paper. The schoolmaster would be asking you a question and if you werent paying attention he would beat the shit out of you with a fucking whip.
These same teachers that whipped the little kids were usually the priests who ran the temples. The pharaohs didnt like to fuck with the priests business because they knew that the priests had power over the public who were a bunch of paranoid motherfuckers. They did some weird religious shit, and regular dudes didnt hang out with the priests because they were supposed to be all magical and shit. They really didnt teach the students a lot besides worship this and worship that, maybe some art and how to mind their shit like good little kids. Only the Chief priests could actually go into the temples and do their religious shit, there werent a lot of these guys. Then there were Astrologists and musicians and scribes and other artsy fartsy dudes who didnt have much political power but they were good at something so they ate better and held more respect than the lowly dog ass clergymen who just sat there in their little costumes burning incense and acting all stupid like singing and shit. These weak-ass clergy dudes only worked one month a year and didnt get paid shit.
Most priests believed there were two heavens: a ritzy, silver coated heaven for the rich scallywags, then some northern Vegas motel heaven for the poor. They also thought the body had a spirit that leaves it when it dies called the “AKH“ then supposedly this spirit goes to heaven and becomes a star. Then it can turn into a fucking bird or something and come back to the body with the “BA“, or “soul“, whenever it wants. The living people who give offerings to the dead give the soul its “KA” which is like a refill on gas for the soul so it can keep making these trips. Next to the dead body was a little statue that was supposed to keep the body going.
By 2000 BC the Pharaohs were doing business with other countries bringing in wood and everything else they needed and selling papyrus, crops and rare materials. Pet midgets were a hot item in any rich Egyptian household. The Pharaoh was making bank off of this trade shit but the people eventually took matters into their own hands, doing some freelance shit. King Pepy II watched his kingdom turn to shit in 2250 BC when a famine came in after a huge Nile flood had destroyed entire villages. Shit turned ugly real quick and people started looting trying to get some food, but the Nomarchs had it all because they had gotten to be almost as rich and badass as the King himself. Suddenly the government started smacking around the people trying to keep it real, but the mob was relentless.
Then there was this dude called Mantuhotpe II who was like “fuck this shit” and he walked into Memphis with his pet thugs and took over control of Egypt. He kept it together for a while but his great grandsons couldnt make it happen, shit started getting worse as time went on. The new pyramids were being built from stones theyd ganked from the older pyramids and the government was broke as a damn joke. King Sesostris II tried to turn the economy around by building an artificial river in a natural canyon almost 300 feet wide to open up new trade routes. It worked pretty good and they started trading a lot more with far off countries like Palestine and Crete. In 1785 BC the worst floods yet hit Egypt, and the upper and lower halves started getting up in eachothers face again.
North of Egypt was the Nubians, East was the Bedouins, and to the West the Lybians. All of these dudes were like “Fuck you Egypt!” and they constantly fought. Now that the country was weak with civil unrest and stupid Nile floods the raids by enemies got worse and shit was crazy. The Pharaoh took prisoners of war and put them on the front lines to fight for Egypt, most of them wouldve died under the fucked up prison conditions anyway. The country couldnt afford to finance a kick-ass full-time army and their weapons were fucking weak. Egyptian soldiers wore little cloth hats and a loincloth and fought with wooden spears with copper tips. Their bows were so pussy that they had to be shoot them at close range along with rock slings and throwing axes. Forget helmets, shoes, shields, armor or any of that shit, these fuckers were lucky to have underwear. They eventually got their asses kicked when these Asian Hyskos dudes came in with chariots in 1650 BC and were like “Yoink!” and that was that.
Next time: The Babylonian Court System.
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