Original subtitles

In Tudor England,

a mysterious mathematician

claims the ability to predict the future

by communicating with angels.

John Dee is essentially

Queen Elizabeth I's court magician,

but he's not pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

This is a man who's engaging in the darker arts.

In medieval Japan,

a creature that lurks in the deep

is thought to be a harbinger of death.

It's a terrifying, grotesque monster

said to speak with the voice of screaming children.

But does seeing one spell disaster?

And in ancient Egypt,

an unlikely pharaoh seeks wisdom from the gods.

It's extremely important for Hatshepsut

to have this legitimacy because she's a woman.

She knew that without being seen

as someone who could protect the people,

she would never be respected.

July 1588,

the Spanish Armada approaches the English coast

preparing to invade and overthrow Queen Elizabeth I.

The English fleet steels itself in defense,

engaging the Armada in a tense battle

to protect their queen.

Then, as the Spanish fleet assesses its strategy,

the sails suddenly catch a gust of wind from the south.

The breeze grows in strength,

and soon churning winds and waves

transform into a powerful storm

that hurls the Armada into the North Sea.

As storms continue to rage,

Spanish ships are wrecked off the rocky coast

of Ireland and Scotland.

It's a reversal of fortune that turns the tide of the war.

But from the English victory, a story emerges.

Some say it wasn't simply good luck that won the day.

They believe it was magic:

A spell cast by the man

who has been at Elizabeth's court for decades,

her astrologer, the mysterious John Dee.

He was a man who was deeply involved

in alchemy, numerology,

and it's even said

that he was able to communicate with angels.

In the early 1550s,

John Dee enjoys a reputation as one of England's

most promising young mathematicians and astrologers.

One of the things that's interesting about John Dee

is his combination of what we think of

as a highly rational thing like mathematics,

but also this embrace of the spiritual.

But it turns out that those two are not inconsistent at all.

In fact, we can go back to Pythagoras

as one of the first who really thought

that there is some underlying structure to things,

and mathematics can sometimes capture that.

Science as we know it was centuries away.

People like Galileo, Copernicus, and even Isaac Newton

were all involved with things

that we would now consider the occult.

So in that context, John Dee is not unusual at all.

John Dee worked as a tutor

and also an astrologer for Britain's noble families.

It's very common for patrons

to pay for astrologers to draw up horoscopes.

And using the positions of the stars and the planets,

they can make predictions

and even offer medical diagnoses.

A natal chart is kind of the blueprint of your life.

It's your celestial DNA.

When you know someone's birth information,

you can do so much.

You can find out anything you really want.

Astrology is widely accepted as fact

in 16th century England,

and it is understood that the movements of the planets

influence the lives of everyone from commoners to royalty.

John Dee has this really interesting,

almost scientific or empirical in a way,

view of how astrology works.

He believes that

all of the heavenly bodies that are out there

are beaming these rays of what he calls celestial virtue

down upon us.

And when you're engaging in this charting of these planets

and the movements of different stars,

you're actually trying to predict

where those rays will fall.

But just when it seems

John Dee's star is on the rise,

something happens that he does not predict.

1553, the English monarchy

is thrown into a crisis of succession.

Edward VI dies at the age of 15.

His successor, Lady Jane Grey,

remains on the throne for only nine days

before being deposed by Edward's ruthless half sister, Mary.

England had joined the Protestant Reformation

with Henry VIII in the early 16th century

when he had sought a divorce from his first wife

and he was denied that divorce.

England itself, however,

had very, very different competing religious forces

all coinciding at the same time.

So you had in the country conservative Catholic elements

that wanted to see the country return

to the Catholic fold under the pope.

You had other Protestant elements

that wanted to see the country

complete its break from the Catholic Church.

And Mary,

the daughter of Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon,

is a devout Catholic.

And she wants to bring the country back

into the Catholic fold.

She gains a reputation for doing that using violent means.

Under Mary's reign,

at least 250 Protestants were burned at the stake.

And this wins her the name Bloody Mary.

In May of 1555, John Dee is arrested

and held in the Tower of London.

He is charged with calculating, conjuring, and witchcraft.

John Dee goes to work for Princess Elizabeth,

one of the daughters of Henry VIII,

and he starts casting horoscopes for Princess Elizabeth.

Now, this is potentially quite dangerous

because Elizabeth is not the monarch,

and predicting the death of the reigning monarch

in any way, shape, or form

can be construed as treason.

After his arrest,

new witnesses come forward claiming John Dee

has been trying to destroy Queen Mary with magic.

Any rumors that he was casting spells

that was a one-way ticket to the execution scaffold.

After several months

and with no strong evidence against him,

the charges are dropped

and John Dee is released from prison.

After John Dee is charged with conjuring,

his reputation is really shrouded

in apprehension and nervousness.

People don't know what to make of him.

He begins to be seen as a dangerous man,

as somebody who is dabbling in the darker arts,

somebody who cannot be trusted,

somebody who may be playing with demonic forces.

Queen Mary dies in November 1558.

As Elizabeth prepares to take the throne,

she will be the fifth monarch in just 12 years.

With pressure mounting

to ensure that her reign is calm and stable

compared to that of her predecessors,

it's not long before John Dee's skills

are called on once again.

John Dee becomes her scientific and astrological advisor.

In fact, it's based on John Dee's calculations and advice

that the date of her coronation is chosen.

When we're talking about something

like the coronation of a royal,

we're talking about electional astrology

which seeks to imprint an opportune moment to help ensure

that whatever it is that is born at that moment

continues on in the best and most easeful course imaginable.

So getting the right date

and getting the right time specifically is so pivotal.

John Dee

selects Queen Elizabeth's coronation date.

And on January 15th, 1559, she ascends the throne.

Whether by good divination or good statesmanship,

Elizabeth reigns for 45 years,

a period marked as England's golden age.

As Elizabeth enjoys a long and prosperous reign,

John Dee continues to assist the queen however he can.

In the first years of Elizabeth's reign,

people are very sensitive to signs

because they don't know

if Elizabeth is going to last as queen.

In 1577, a great comet passed close to Earth.

Its appearance was interpreted by some as a sign

that Queen Elizabeth's reign might be unsuccessful.

There was a very negative connotation with comets

where they're seen as this prophecy of doom and gloom.

John Dee is brought in to kind of reinterpret the comet.

There is this recasting of the comet

as a foretelling of prosperity.

And then we have the illnesses that rack Elizabeth's body,

and again, these are seen as a bad sign.

But Dee is brought in to try and cure her conditions

possibly with magic.

Over the next 20 years,

John Dee would advise Elizabeth and her government

on a host of scientific matters,

particularly to do with exploration.

England at that point in time

is in a race with other European countries

to exploit these new lands that had been discovered

a few decades earlier by Christopher Columbus.

And Dee coins the term the British Empire.

He opens up the eyes of people at Elizabeth's court

to the idea that Britain could be a major world power.

So, John Dee is doing all of this work in the court,

but he's never really in the in-crowd.

He's not able to shake his reputation

and the kind of darker association

that comes from his occult practices.

Because of these associations,

he's pushed further and further into the margins,

and in a way that only brings him closer to the occult

and it becomes this self-fulfilling cycle.

And as he became more and more interested in the occult,

he amassed an ever bigger library.

He collected parchments and books.

He had one of the most impressive libraries of the occult

in Europe at that time.

Dee's commitment to exploring the occult

is rooted in his desire to develop an understanding

of what he believes is the divine force

that powers the universe.

John Dee believes

that underlying the totality of the universe

is a divine force created by God with its own logic.

And he believes that he can harness the power

of this divine force through magic.

The promise of unlocking

the mysteries of the universe

only intensifies Dee's willingness

to pursue this knowledge by any means necessary.

At his house in Mortlake,

strange experiments were being conducted,

the sort of thing that would've scared his neighbors.

Some believe Dee

may have been engaging in alchemical experiments

to find the elixir of eternal life,

or even the philosopher's stone

which could turn base metals into gold.

His methods become increasingly unconventional

the more he studies this divine force,

as he realizes that he's coming up against questions

that only God Himself can answer.

Dee develops a strong interest

in trying to communicate with angels.

He wants to talk to this kind of intermediate layer

between us and God.

He also wants to discover the original language

that was spoken in the Garden of Eden,

and his hope is that in doing so,

he might learn about the original wisdom

that created the universe.

As he continues his pursuit

to discover the language of Adam,

Dee realizes that he cannot achieve this knowledge

through conventional means.

Despite concerns over his growing reputation

for dabbling in the dark arts,

Dee begins to work with scryers, or mediums,

who he believes can summon visions of angels.

Dee uses all kinds of methods

to try and discover the hidden truths.

And one of them is scrying,

which is looking into objects

in order to see patterns and visions.

And the sort of things that they use are crystal balls,

or Dee himself uses an obsidian mirror.

And you're peering into these surfaces

to try to see visions of potentially the past, the future.

You're tapping into this other realm.

He's not by his own admission a great scryer,

so he brings in a procession of scryers

to try and help him.

In March of 1582,

a 26-year-old man named Edward Kelly

knocks on John Dee's door

and offers to work as his new scryer.

In Edward Kelly, John Dee really finds a kindred spirit.

Here's someone else who's interested in pursuing knowledge,

not by conventional means,

but by whatever method produces results.

What happens next convinces Dee

that Kelly can provide the answers that others cannot.

Kelly is clearly keen to impress Dee.

And during one of his scrying sessions,

he claims to make contact with the Archangel Uriel.

This hugely impresses Dee

because Dee has been trying to talk to angels for ages

and Kelly has managed to bag an archangel.

The fact that Dee could not crack the scrying

with an angelic figure,

but Kelly could on his first try,

it either says he is extremely talented or he's a fake.

By the end of their first scrying session,

John Dee believes that Edward Kelly has brought him closer

to learning the language of Adam.

Kelly moves into his house,

and for the next several years,

the two of them work to summon angels regularly.

It's surprising that John Dee

isn't a little more suspicious of Edward Kelly.

Here is a man who suddenly turns up out of the blue

and says that he can communicate with angels.

Apart from anything else, he has a missing ear.

Now, the reason for that could be that the ear was cut off

as a result of a crime like coin counterfeiting.

This was not the sort of person

that Dee should be hanging around with,

and yet he ends up taking him in as a trusted friend.

When we're on the quest for something,

when there's something we desire or something we like,

like how John Dee wanted to discover this language,

if there's this hint that he's on the trail,

he can become very blind to anything else,

including the possibility

that this person is in fact conning them.

Kelly is conjuring these sort of fantastical visions

of what angels look like.

They are sometimes sparkling-eyed,

long either gold or purple robes.

Sometimes they're children

that are running around mischievously,

and sometimes they're terrifying spirits

that then end up going on to haunt Dee's home.

When he talks about what he's seeing with the angels,

he sometimes takes things that were actually in books

that he knows John Dee has read.

And this is really clever

because it kind of connects with an image of reality

that John Dee has already had in his mind.

It reaffirms to him,

"Oh, he really is talking to the angels."

Speaking through Kelly,

the angels soon deliver the very thing

that John Dee has been seeking all these years:

The language of Adam.

It's a language

that will eventually be termed as Enochian.

It will exert a huge influence on centuries of occultists

all the way down to the notorious Aleister Crowley,

who will become something of an obsessive

about the outpourings in Enochian

that was given to Dee and Kelly.

It is possible that he's just an extremely good charlatan,

but at the same time, he wouldn't have the education

to just be able to create a language such as that.

Enochian is extremely sophisticated.

And what's mystifying for John Dee

is even after he learns the language of Adam,

he's still unable to unlock the secrets of the universe.

Although the mysteries of the universe

remain agonizingly elusive,

the angels are quick to issue other commands

through Kelly.

At their instruction, the men leave England behind

to pursue patronage at the royal courts of Europe,

a voyage that will be the beginning of the end

of their partnership.

Dee and Kelly embark on a kind of occult roadshow.

They tour the royal courts of Europe

promising that they can use alchemy

to transmute base metals into gold and so on.

And the princes, the dukes, the archbishops of Europe

are transfixed by all of this.

Kelly starts to develop

an impressive reputation as an alchemist,

and the power balance between Kelly and Dee shifts,

with Kelly even treating John Dee as an assistant.

As so often happens with the occult,

sex comes into the equation,

and Kelly tells Dee that he's been informed by some force

that it's absolutely essential that he and Dee swap wives.

And Dee goes along with this.

This was deeply disturbing to John Dee

because despite all of his experiments in the magical world,

he was also a deeply religious man,

someone who very much believed in the sanctity of marriage.

Then, in February 1589,

they go their separate ways.

Dee returns to England,

while Kelly goes on to become the alchemist

for the most powerful man in Europe,

the Holy Roman emperor, Rudolf II.

However, just a few years later,

he's imprisoned by Rudolf.

He dies in this prison in the Holy Roman Empire.

John Dee and his family

return to England in late 1589

only to discover his home

and the life he had previously built in ruins.

His house has been ransacked.

Thieves have stolen his astrological equipment,

his alchemical materials,

and over 500 manuscripts and books.

His house in Mortlake

with his treasured library is ransacked,

some people think by an angry mob,

possibly by students

who just wanted to get their hands on his books.

John Dee was once a renowned member of English society,

but now he has very few friends.

And all of his years abroad

had essentially left him penniless and destitute.

After her death in 1603,

Queen Elizabeth is succeeded by King James I.

Unlike the open-minded Elizabeth,

James I comes down firmly against magic and superstition.

He enacts the Witchcraft Act of 1604,

which calls for the execution of anyone found guilty

of any invocation or conjuration

of any evil and wicked spirit.

King James I is somebody who's obsessed

with witch hunting.

And there really is an orgy of witch trials under this king,

and yet he leaves John Dee alone.

You then see Dee writing to King James

to get his name cleared

because people are starting to accuse him

of trying to conjure the devil, trying to conjure demons.

And this is quite insulting to Dee

because he's trying to contact angels,

he's trying to contact the heavens.

And the king simply ignores the letter,

maybe thinking, why kick a man when he's down?

John Dee spends the rest of his days

in relative obscurity and in poverty.

His wife dies in 1604 from the bubonic plague,

and afterwards John Dee is a shadow of his former self.

John Dee dies sometime around 1609.

Although his life ended unceremoniously,

his reputation has endured for centuries.

What was once the source of trouble for him during his life

is what keeps him in the history books today.

In many ways, John Dee had his feet in two worlds,

one side is the magical world,

and one side is something that we would consider

the more traditional scientific world,

but he wouldn't have seen it that way.

To him, these were two very legitimate ways

of pursuing knowledge.

It will only be centuries later

that we'll see the true demarcation

between these two areas of thought,

and magic will be put away in the realm of superstition

forever separated from science.

While John Dee attempted to use a crystal ball

to seek knowledge,

other worldly creatures from Japan seem to prophesize death.

1247, Japan, a villager walks along the beach by the sea.

He trips over a strange mound half buried in the sand.

He bends down to investigate

and notices the glint of a scaly tail.

It is a large fish that has washed up on the shore.

He continues to brush the sand away

until he is confronted with a horrific sight.

The creature has the body of a fish but the face of a man.

The ningyo is an omen of doom.

At least 10 more sightings of this creature are reported.

And in its wake it leaves chaos, destruction, and death.

But what is a ningyo?

Is it a real creature?

And why does it keep showing up

right before terrible things happen?

The ningyo has been written about

in Japanese history for over a thousand years.

Ningyo literally means human fish.

And when we think of a mermaid,

we think of a beautiful woman with luscious hair

and a siren-like voice.

But that's certainly not the case here.

The earliest descriptions of the ningyo

offer an image of a truly grotesque figure.

It's said to have the body of a fish,

but a somewhat human-like face

or sometimes the face of a monkey.

Some descriptions describe protruding lips,

tiny, sharp teeth.

And in addition, the ningyo is said to scream and cry

in a way that sounds like a human baby.

Seventh century Japan,

a fisherman standing along a canal pulls in his net.

He feels the net grow heavier.

He has a catch.

He excitedly pulls the net towards him.

But as the net emerges from beneath the murky water,

the fisherman realizes

that what he has caught is not a fish at all.

The fisherman has caught a creature

that is described as neither human nor fish.

And that same year, another half-man, half-fish creature

is seen in the Gamo River.

The earliest written stories of the ningyo

trace back to the 600s,

and can be found in an eighth century text

called the Nihon Shoki,

which chronicles 1,000 years of Japanese history.

Descriptions of the creature are terrifying,

but even more terrifying

is what people will come to believe it represents.

There are a number of stories involving the prince regent

and his encounters with the ningyo.

According to some accounts,

the prince regent's sighting of this strange creature

is followed by a harrowing nightmare

and a lingering sense of doom.

Then, just two years later, his wife meets a tragic death.

There's this association that's made

between these sightings and that event.

These haunting tales are some of the first

to portray the ningyo as an omen of death,

but they will not be the last.

Warfare and conflict mark 13th century Japan.

Rival clans battle each other for control of the country.

Mongols invade from the west.

It is a time of blood, chaos, and uncertainty,

and the ningyo's presence is never far behind.

The historical records point

to at least 10 sightings of ningyo during this period.

One of them is in 1247 someone encounters a carcass.

Later that year,

there is a massive battle between two warring clans,

and this development is attributed

to the appearance of the ningyo carcass.

In 1203, a ningyo was spotted in Tsugaru.

Soon after, the military ruler,

or shogun, Minamoto Noriyori is assassinated.

In 1213, another appears in Tsugaru.

Later that year,

there was a violent insurrection from the Wada clan

against the ruling Hojo clan.

Again and again, it seems as though a ningyo

always appears right before a horrific event.

You can imagine the people of Japan

were absolutely terrified.

Was the ningyo an omen of things to come,

or was it to blame?

If any of us wanna become prophets today,

probably the easiest path to do it is to predict

that horrible things are going to happen in the future.

They always do.

And if a prediction is that vague, as it is with this fish,

I see a fish, something bad is going to happen,

I tell you what, something bad is going to happen.

You're gonna be right.

So great is the fear of the ningyo

that special precautions are taken to ensure its disposal.

Buddhist monks are dispatched

to cleanse the land of its evil

by performing exorcisms through incantations and rituals

meant to calm the angry spirit.

Sightings of the ningyo continue through the centuries,

however, attitudes toward them begin to change.

Over time, the meaning of seeing a ningyo changes.

No longer does one have to run to a Buddhist monk

to seek an exorcism.

Now when you see a ningyo, you should eat it.

Stories abound about the magical properties

of this fish-like creature.

One of the most famous

circulates in and around the 15th century,

claiming that a young woman eats the ningyo

and lives for 800 years.

In the tales of the ningyo,

we see something we've seen played out many times,

which is this allure of the exotic.

At first there's a fear of it.

That fear is one indication that we think it has some power.

But sometimes we see the mind kind of change and say,

"Well, if it has power, I want that power."

There's this association

that's made with these ningyo and vitality and health.

So if you're able to eat one,

then you're able to live forever, ward off disease.

Displaying all manner

of marvels and curiosities,

exhibitions known as misemono

are incredibly popular in Japan

between the 1600s and the 1800s.

Between the 17th to 19th century,

a misemono was a place where you would see

what we'd understand to be sideshow attractions:

snake charmers, strong men, giants,

and if you were lucky, a mummified ningyo.

There's these strange creatures that are being displayed

and they're really posed in different ways.

So there may be the screaming ningyo or the crawling ningyo.

This vision or view of the ningyo

is spreading around through these shows.

We are always looking for physical proof

to back our belief.

So I think when they were seeing these mummies,

it was like, "Ah, yes, I have permission to believe this."

Yet, despite their terrifying appearance,

members of the public are told

that gazing upon a mummified ningyo

will grant them long life and protection from disease

without the need to actually consume the ningyo.

Of course, things change because our human word changes

every time we tell these stories.

Every time the story is retold,

it morphs into something else.

It's easy to imagine

how people are enthralled by a mummified ningyo.

And with modern eyes, it's hard not to look at them

and think about the Fiji mermaid.

The Fiji mermaid is a sideshow curiosity

displayed by P.T. Barnum in the 1800s,

which captivates American audiences for decades.

At some point,

Barnum encounters one of these ningyo mummies,

and acquires it and incorporates it into his show

as the Fiji mermaid.

The Little Mermaid or these Western mermaids

are very much like humanoid creatures,

but these creatures like the ningyo

and the Fiji mermaid are truly creatures.

They'd be more similar

to something like the Loch Ness Monster

than your traditional siren-like mermaid.

Eventually some scientific investigation

is done on the Fiji mermaid.

It is put through a CT scan,

and it turns out that it's actually a salmon

sewn to an orangutan.

Although many of the mummified ningyos

displayed in misemonos

are works of art and not works of nature,

what does that mean for the legend itself?

It's interesting to note

that the image of the ningyo evolves over time.

Initially, it is portrayed as a horrific monkey-fish hybrid.

But as Japan comes into contact with Europe,

depictions start to match

that of a typically European, Western mermaid

with the torso of a beautiful woman and the body of a fish.

And so one of the things

that the example of the ningyo offers us

is an archive of how mythological creatures

can endure over long periods of time

by undergoing a series of representational metamorphoses

in order to stay current with the popular imagination.

I actually love this idea that ningyo has always existed.

To me, it's further proof

that there are things in this world

that don't wanna be seen all the time,

that don't want to exist amongst us.

If you go hundreds of years saying

that these things are bad and wrong and evil,

these things are not gonna come around.

Every single corner of the Earth

has these stories of half-human, half-fish.

So why would we all have these stories

if we weren't talking about something that was real?

Stories give structure to our life.

And even if we talk about dreams, for example,

the dominant notion of dreams

is that random things get active in our brain,

but there's part of our brain

that then tries to connect them into a story

because everything has to be a story.

It gives us a beginning, a middle, and an end.

A causal relationship for things

makes us feel like we understand.

Early on in a time of violence, the notion was

it was going to predict violent events and such.

As things changed in the world

and the dominant fear became one of plague and health,

suddenly we see the ningyo get attributes related to health.

And so humans have fears,

and whatever their dominant fears are,

we often project them on these mystical objects we see.

The myth of the ningyo

has endured for over a millennia,

and there are still many in Japan who continue to believe.

Many temples throughout Japan today

still have mummified ningyos.

And even though some of these have been analyzed by science,

they remain prized possessions of the temple.

They are spiritual artifacts that carry magic

because of the belief in them.

While the ningyo represented doom

in the waters of Japan,

a queen seeks a prosperous future from the gods of Egypt.

One of Egypt's first female pharaohs

enters the temple of Amun in Karnak

seeking wisdom from the Oracle of Amun

to guide her through a tumultuous time in her reign.

Here Hatshepsut performs the secret rights and rituals

that promise to grant her access

to answers about her future.

How does an Oracle have the ability to command a pharaoh

with the authority of a god?

3,500 years ago,

ancient Egypt is in the midst of its golden age.

Egyptian religion is polytheistic,

so they have a pantheon of gods,

and they all have different areas of importance.

In Egypt at this time,

Amun is the most powerful and important god.

He is the patron of Thebes,

and Thebes is now the most important city in Egypt.

Ancient Egyptians believe

that the connection between the gods and man

is represented by the pharaoh.

The pharaoh sits in between

the divine realm and the human realm

negotiating a relationship between the two.

In the entire history of ancient Egypt,

only a handful of women have ever been pharaohs.

At the time of Hatshepsut,

the last female pharaoh reigned 300 years ago

and for only four years.

Hatshepsut's rise to power

is as unorthodox as her rule,

as a crisis of succession

leaves a vacuum of power for her to exploit.

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Thutmose I.

She marries her half brother, Thutmose II.

When her father dies, Thutmose II becomes the pharaoh.

However, not long into his reign, Thutmose II also dies.

Hatshepsut and Thutmose II only had a daughter,

which meant that the throne then passed to Thutmose III.

The only problem is that Thutmose III

is around three years old.

Hatshepsut is made the queen regent

with the idea that she will manage the affairs of the state

on behalf of her nephew until he is of age.

Although he's only a child,

Thutmose III is depicted as the pharaoh

using the state iconography reserved for the pharaoh.

In these depictions, Hatshepsut also sometimes appears,

but always to the side in a somewhat subservient role.

For the first few years of his reign,

Hatshepsut acts as a conventional queen regent

for Thutmose III.

But by the end of the seventh year of his reign,

she will no longer be sidelined.

Seemingly out of nowhere there's this massive change.

Hatshepsut is no longer the queen regent.

She's the pharaoh.

The pharaoh is the living embodiment

of the male god Horus.

Well, this posed a bit of a problem to Hatshepsut

because she's a woman.

So how is she going to overcome this?

In her depictions as a pharaoh on monuments, in the temples,

she is shown as a man.

And so she even has a beard, she has a manly chest.

She has become as a god male.

I mean, we could be really inspired

by this story in one way,

and then in another way it's still kind of disheartening

because she didn't get to be herself on the throne.

In order to take the throne,

she still had to be seen as a man.

Thutmose III is not out of the picture at this point.

He is still technically the co-ruler.

But at this time he is rarely depicted

in the position of the all-powerful ruler.

We have to think about how dangerous a moment this was

for Hatshepsut to move from being regent

to claiming the rule of pharaoh.

After all, Thutmose III was the pharaoh.

He was the one who the god Horus had legitimized.

That could only happen to one ruler.

Now, how will Hatshepsut construct her own divine authority?

The solution

to Hatshepsut's issue of legitimacy is so momentous,

she will later have it inscribed on the walls

of her funerary tomb in Thebes.

Hatshepsut would turn to the oracle

to construct her authority.

And it is this oracle that comes through

that says, "Actually Amun was disguised as your father

"and then you were born, so you are of divine parentage,"

which then legitimizes it being said

that Amun wishes her to occupy the throne.

So it's important that she's not making the claim herself,

that would be seen as sort of usurping,

but some external force

that the people of Egypt generally revere

gives her at least the first step she needs to be seen as,

"Okay, maybe you can be pharaoh for a while."

The Oracle of Amun

has given Hatshepsut crucial information

to solidify her legitimacy as a ruler

and maintain her power.

But who or what is the Oracle of Amun?

The term oracle means different things

across different cultures over time.

In ancient Egypt, an oracle isn't a person.

It's actually a statue or a cult image of a god.

And they believed that the oracles are the mouthpieces

for the gods here on Earth.

Now, it was genuinely believed

that the god resided inside the statue.

And if the litter

on which the statue is being carried by the priests

swayed this way or swayed that way

that indicated a message from the god in the statue

to everybody present.

The interpretation of these particular oracles

can be understood as part

of a series of divination practices

that interpret the movement of material objects

as some kind of communication from unseen or divine forces.

Other examples of this are pendulum swinging,

forms of automatic writing, or even Ouija boards.

Hatshepsut's recognition by the Oracle of Amun

is the first written example we have

of a pharaoh consulting with an oracle.

Through this act, she potentially changes

the religious landscape of Egypt forever.

After Hatshepsut has

this successful consultation with the oracle,

oracle readings become very popular in Egypt.

The thing about the priests is,

they were very secular minded in their own way.

They were immensely wealthy.

They were immensely powerful.

They were immensely political.

And it might just so happen that they'd make the god sway

in a direction that benefited their interests.

In later years,

there are some examples of oracles being corrupted.

There's a record of a temple priest

who is charged with the crime of manipulating an oracle.

During Hatshepsut's reign,

the high priest of Amun is named Hapuseneb,

who also works as the Overseer of the Works of the King.

There is some evidence

that there may have been an early alliance

between Hatshepsut and the head priest Hapuseneb

dating back to her time as regent.

Not long after, Hatshepsut's divine legitimacy

is confirmed by the Oracle of Amun,

the Oracle issues her another command,

"Seek ways to Punt,

"open roads to the terrace of myrrh,

"and lead the army on the water and the land

"to bring marvels from the land of the god to this god."

But at this point, ancient Egyptians

haven't been to Punt for hundreds of years.

So the question is,

why does Amun want Hatshepsut to go to Punt?

Or alternatively, why does she want to go to Punt herself?

Hatshepsut receives this prophecy

soon after she ascends to power,

which may provide a clue.

Punt was supposed to be a land of great riches,

and to lead a successful expedition there

and to come back with treasures

would be an indication that she was blessed by the gods.

You can easily imagine that this soon after seizing power

Hatshepsut's control over the throne is still not secure.

She might need a win.

And there are some historians who even speculate

that she may need to keep her army busy

so they don't turn against her.

Pharaohs were military leaders.

We have to remember that rulers in this time

were associated with peacekeeping and war-making.

So Hatshepsut, as a woman in particular,

had to embrace all those facets of the role,

including proving that she could protect her people

and expand the kingdom.

The expedition to Punt

is an incredible success.

They return with a bounty of raw materials,

luxury goods, and exotic plants and animals,

and Hatshepsut dedicates all of it to Amun.

The success of that expedition,

the wealth it brought back,

the promise of even more riches

if the Egyptians went back there,

she had unlocked

the key to her future survival as a pharaoh.

Hatshepsut reigns for approximately 20 years

and leads Egypt through a time of prosperity.

The record suggests

that Hatshepsut was in fact an incredibly able ruler,

that she was able to bring

a great deal of prosperity to Egypt.

She certainly expanded its borders.

We know that she was a great builder,

many of them temples of Amun.

She would help to promote that cult in particular.

Though there is a female pharaoh

that predates Hatshepsut,

many historians agree

she is the first female pharaoh to truly lead.

But Hatshepsut's glory is not a given.

For at least a time history does not remember her.

After Hatshepsut dies,

Thutmose III finally becomes the king.

But about 20 years after her death,

he suddenly tries to have every image

and monument of her destroyed.

Her statues are smashed and thrown in a ditch.

Their heads are cut off, their eyes are gouged out.

The memory of Hatshepsut is wiped out.

The natural suspicious mind thinks

that he uncovered some deception,

which maybe goes back to the Amun ritual in the first place.

Some deception that makes him now bitter

and feel that she was not deserving of the pharaoh title.

Perhaps it's not Hatshepsut herself

that he's trying to have destroyed,

but the precedent of a very powerful

and successful female pharaoh.

Whatever his motivations,

Thutmose III was successful.

Hatshepsut's memory is tragically lost to time.

That is until 19th century archeologists

rediscover her story.

Fortunately, over the last 200 years,

archeologists have been able to put together enough pieces

that we now know quite a lot about her legacy.

She was a remarkable pharaoh

whose consultation with the oracles

left a lasting impression on Egypt,

both physically and spiritually.

Throughout history,

humanity has yearned for other-worldly wisdom,

consulting ancient gods, heeding mystical creatures,

and clinging to the visions of divine scryers.

Yet as deception seeps into these encounters,

the promise of prophecy remains forever tempting,

yet equally suspect.