Free audiobook

The Gift of the River

A history of ancient Egypt, from the first farmers on the Nile to the death of Cleopatra. Pyramids and pharaohs, but also tomb-builders on strike, a mother cutting her children out of her will, and the scholars who learned to read hieroglyphs again. Every quotation comes from a public-domain translation, and every chapter's sources are named.

35chapters
6.8hours
3,000years of history

Now playing

Chapter 1

0:000:00

Chapters

    Sources by chapter

    The ancient texts are quoted from public-domain translations: J. H. Breasted's Ancient Records of Egypt (1906), Herodotus (Macaulay, 1890), Strabo (Hamilton and Falconer), Plutarch (Perrin), Arrian (Chinnock), Cassius Dio (Cary), Petrie's excavation reports and Egyptian Tales (1889-1904), Carter and Mace (1923), Belzoni (1820) and others. Modern scholarship and museum records are listed under each chapter.

    Chapter 1. The Gift of the River
    Chapter 2. Before the Kings
    Chapter 3. The First Kings
    Chapter 4. Kings in the Desert: the First Dynasty
    Chapter 5. Horus and Seth: the Second Dynasty
    Chapter 6. The First Pyramid
    Chapter 7. Sneferu: Learning to Build a Pyramid
    Chapter 8. Giza
    Chapter 9. The Kings of the Sun
    Chapter 10. The Long Twilight of the Old Kingdom
    Chapter 11. Two Crowns, One River
    Chapter 12. The Reunifier
    Chapter 13. A Murder in the Palace
    Chapter 14. The Great Families
    Chapter 15. The Southern Frontier
    Chapter 16. The Labyrinth
    Chapter 17. Ordinary Lives
    Chapter 18. The Long Unravelling
    Chapter 19. The War of Liberation
    Chapter 20. To the Euphrates
    Chapter 21. The Woman Who Was King
    Chapter 22. The Road to Megiddo
    Chapter 23. The Dazzling Sun
    Chapter 24. The City of the Horizon
    Chapter 25. Wonderful Things
    Chapter 26. King of Kings
    Chapter 27. The Place of Truth
    Chapter 28. The Sea Peoples and the End of Empire
    Chapter 29. Libyans, Kushites and Assyrians
    Chapter 30. Bronze Men from the Sea
    Chapter 31. The Great King
    Chapter 32. The City of Alexander
    Chapter 33. Two Egypts
    Chapter 34. The Last Pharaoh
    Chapter 35. Epilogue: Reading the Silence

    Narrated by an AI voice. Written and fact-checked with the help of AI tools, from published scholarship, museum records and the ancient texts themselves; where scholars disagree, the book says so. Dates before 664 BC are approximate.

    Want to see it? The Ancient Egypt timeline has every pharaoh and event in this book, with sources.