GWIN: Top priority was given to the first-born son and as you might expect, sibling rivalry was very real. Like, whose son gets to be on the throne next? A powder keg of different women, especially if they bore the king's sons. REDFORD: I mean, the harem had have been a hotbed of intrigue. Typically, there was a Great Royal Wife and then there were several other wives whose sons could also be in line for the throne. And the wives had a very important job: to keep the family dynasty going. There were schools, livestock, agriculture, dozens of wives, even more kids. It started out as a special place in the palace but by the time of Ramesses III, the harems had evolved into entire estates with their own mini-economies. To ensure the family line, Egyptian Pharaohs had a lot of wives. GWIN: This isn’t the usual stuff of royal harems. REDFORD: This document relates a conspiracy that was formed and instigated by the women of the royal harem against Ramesses III to overthrow him, to raise in rebellion, and to also displace the crown prince. But it’s got another name - the ‘Harem Conspiracy Papyrus.’ It’s named after the museum in Turin, Italy, where it’s normally housed. GWIN: Scholars call the papyrus Fred just showed us the Judicial Papyrus of Turin. REDFORD: Yeah, that’s what I call myself. GWIN: Penn State University’s Susan Redford is, well, a dirt archaeologist. SUSAN REDFORD (Egyptologist): I'm a dirt archaeologist. But thanks to science and some clever detective work by dogged archeologists, we now have a better idea about what really went down. What happened to Ramesses III? It’s been a mystery for more than 3000 years. And this is a story that has stumped scholars for a very long time. Egyptology is a field based on best interpretations. GWIN: It’s remarkable how much we still don’t know about Ancient Egypt. This week: a dynasty in disarray, a secret kept for millennia, and some new science that cracks the case wide open. A show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, and beautiful world. GWIN: I’m Peter Gwin and this is Overheard at National Geographic. A conspiracy hatched by the Pharaoh’s own family, by one of his wives. This papyrus tells the story of an inside job. Others were executed or forced to kill themselves. GWIN: 39 people were convicted of high treason. It describes how the perpetrators were forced to commit suicide. It describes having the perpetrators plead guilty. It's a record of a court proceeding, in which the court has identified a couple of perpetrators who were scheming to assassinate pharaoh Ramesses III. But the details written down here? Those are not pretty. GWIN: Fred says the text is written in hieratic - a cursive form of hieroglyphics. it's about 18 feet long, describing this conspiracy that happened to pop off the Pharaoh. HEIBERT: So we have here an absolutely unique papyrus. GWIN: He brings us over to a long glass case. We know that we have to open the box and it's like – wait, wait - oh, it's Thutmose! Here's this big box, it has no label whatsoever. HEIBERT: Opening the boxes, it's like Christmas 350 times over. GWIN: This is clearly a man who loves his job. HIEBERT: That’s a life-sized sculpture of Thutmose I. He points out a perfectly preserved royal sandal, a bust of Cleopatra, some stone statues of Pharaohs from the Valley of the Kings. Fred winds us through the dimly-lit exhibit. GWIN: When Fred’s not out in the field studying ancient trade routes or searching for Nefertiti’s Tomb, he’s back here, helping to curate this museum. HIEBERT: It's got 350 artifacts in it from the very oldest collection of Egyptian antiquities, actually, in the world. The museum hasn’t even opened yet and we’re getting a special tour from archaeologist-in-residence Fred Hiebert. PETER GWIN (HOST): So it’s 8:30 in the morning. for a magnificent new exhibition on Queens of Egypt. FRED HIEBERT (ARCHAEOLOGIST): We're at the National Geographic Museum here in Washington D.C.
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