 Would it surprise you to learn that Egypt underwent a period of 2000 years without having a single ruler who was born Egyptian? Now imagine the same period of time elapsing in China without a Chinese national ever being in charge. Imagine the writing of such a people's history from these outside sources. This astonishing fact underlines the world's fascination with Egypt. Everyone, including the people that lived throughout history, have been baffled by the mind-numbing architectural achievements that are on show for all to see. A kingdom once existed here that possessed advancements and understandings that are alien to us today. But the mighty dynasty of Egyptians who conquered all that went before them collapsed into the hands of the Greeks and never came back under any Egyptian control until 1953, after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. We look at the history of ancient Egypt. The information is scant and hard to piece together from the translations. Instead, we look to other kingdoms who traded with the Egyptians to draw conclusions of a history that we are all fascinated with and indeed, the 2000 years wilderness that Egypt is only now emerging from. It is in itself laced with some of the dramatic undertakings in human history, but for now we have the Greeks. The ancient language of the Greeks is our telescope into the past. Because of writers like Herodotus, we can be allowed the chance to remember a history that we are told is a mythological setting, a fantasy, that the gods of Egypt and indeed the Greek gods were merely figments of the imagination, to give us comfort that such protection to humankind was in fact being offered from the heavens. What inspired such thoughts? This is an ancient understanding that we are ignoring. The things we don't know of course are remarkably more interesting than what we have been told what may have happened, but nonetheless, it's a path we have to follow. The Greek histories of Herodotus are important because they are eyewitness testimonies of what they witnessed, what they saw. This means that there was a great trust to deliver the news of these things as accurately as possible. These claim that Africa was surrounded almost entirely by sea. How did he know this? He recounts the story of Phoenician sailors who were dispatched by King Neco II of Egypt and 600 BC to sail around continental Africa in a clockwise fashion starting in the Red Sea. This story, if true, recounts the earliest known circumnavigation of Africa, but also contains an interesting insight into the astronomical knowledge of the ancient world. The voyage took several years. Having rounded the southern tip of Africa and following a westerly course, the sailors observed the sun as being on their right hand side above the northern horizon. This observation simply did not make sense at the time because they didn't yet know that the earth was a spherical shape and that there is a southern hemisphere. But they recorded it anyway for the sake of future understanding and this led us to Aristarchus of Semos who argued that the sun was the central fire of the cosmos and placed all of the then known planets in their correct order of distance around it. This is the earliest known heliocentric theory of the solar system but unfortunately the original text in which he makes this argument has been lost to history. So we cannot know for certain how he worked it out. Aristarchus knew the sun was much bigger than the earth or the moon and he may have surmised that it should therefore have the central position in the solar system. Nevertheless, it is a jaw-dropping finding, especially when you consider that it wasn't rediscovered until the 16th century by Nicholas Copernicus who even acknowledged Aristarchus during the development of his own work. There you have it guys, thanks for watching and remember the ways by which we arrive at knowledge are hardly less wonderful than the discovery of these things themselves.