Certificate of Completion
At the end of this course you will be able to download a personalised certificate of completion from the classroom. A great way to keep track of your learning and celebrate your Egyptological journey.
The First Pharaohs
Professor Aidan Dodson
4 lectures delivered over 4 Monday evenings. 5th -26th January 2026. 7.30-9pm UK time
We love to see you for the live lectures, but if you have to miss one, don't worry, you can of course catch up (or watch again) at your leisure via the recordings. You will have access to the recorded lectures for a whole month after the last live lecture. Recordings will be available until the 26th February.
The five centuries that followed the unification of Egypt around 3000 BC were crucial in the evolution of the Egyptian state. During this time all the key elements of the civilization that would endure for three millennia were put in place, centred on the semi-divine king himself.
This course considers what we know about the two dozen kings (and one queen regent) who ruled Egypt during this formative era, from the scanty evidence for the events of their reigns, through to their surviving monuments. It also looks at how they were remembered under their distant successors, when some of the earliest kings’ names were attributed to allegedly ancient ideas and events, and the ways in which some of their monuments became tourist attractions or were even wholly repurposed.
We also explore how two centuries of modern scholarship have allowed these rulers to emerge from an oblivion so total that some archaeologists had come to doubt their very existence outside the works of ancient chroniclers. Then, within a decade at the end of the nineteenth century,
archaeological discoveries revealed a whole series of tombs and other monuments that not only confirmed these rulers’ existence, but also showcased the skills of Egyptian craftsmen at the dawn of history.
- Prehistory to history: the unification of Egypt
- Consolidation and disintegration: the First and Second Dynasties
- Step Pyramid Power: the Third Dynasty and the end of the beginning
- Rediscovering the first pharaohs
Professor Aidan Dodson
Aidan Dodson is honorary Professor of Egyptology at the University of Bristol, where he has taught since 1996. He received his BA from the University of Liverpool in 1985, and his MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge, in 1986 and 1995, being elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2003. Aidan was Simpson Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo for the spring of 2013, and Chair of Trustees of the Egypt Exploration Society from 2011 to 2016. He is the author of some thirty books, among which is The First Pharaohs: their lives and afterlives (2021).
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