These Egyptian Pharaohs were not to be messed with. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down the most ferocious, intimidating, and frightening pharaohs ever to govern the land of ancient Egypt.
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00:00After seven years on the Egyptian throne, Cleopatra finally gets what she's been striving for, absolute power.
00:08Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down the most ferocious, intimidating, and frightening pharaohs ever to govern the land of ancient Egypt.
00:16The mighty pharaoh is holding a group of cowering Asiatic prisoners by the hair, in readiness to behead them with his axe.
00:24Number 10. Thutmose III
00:26Given the long, long line of Egyptian rulers, we know that Thutmose III was truly not to be messed with, as he's generally remembered as Egypt's greatest warrior king.
00:36Even though he's pharaoh, he'll lead his men into battle.
00:41In the annals, we get images of Thutmose III, which show us he was prepared to go against the grain and to present himself, at least, as someone who was not some old fuddy-duddy ruler sitting in his throne room back in Egypt,
00:54but was out there in the field, making decisions.
00:58He's also considered to be one of the best and most influential high-level military figures of all time.
01:03After he initially assumed power when he was just two years old, his stepmother, Hatshepsut, ruled and then co-ruled until Thutmose's early 20s.
01:11Her stepson, Thutmose III, is now poised to take control.
01:17He'd been pharaoh for nearly 20 years, but Queen Hatshepsut had kept him under her thumb.
01:26Now, in his 20s, he can finally realize his own ambition for a bold new empire.
01:32Over the course of his elevated career, Thutmose spearheaded at least 17 victorious campaigns, all to expand his empire to unprecedented bounds.
01:40Cities fell to him, entire regions were converted to his rule.
01:45While perhaps there are other pharaohs tagged with more stories of specific outright cruelty,
01:50this was one king who simply refused to be beaten.
01:53Under his 32-year rule, Thutmose expanded Egypt's empire with arrows, armor, chariots, and axes, and the blood of his soldiers.
02:07He was a brilliant tactician who never lost a battle.
02:11Number 9.
02:12Ai.
02:13As the successor to the now world-famous boy king Tutankhamen,
02:16most of Ai's political career was actually spent as an advisor to multiple pharaohs before him, including Tutankhamen.
02:22A skilled and determined civil servant, his name meant divine father.
02:27And so, while he only ever ruled outright for four years, at some time around 1320 BCE,
02:34his story is shrouded in mystery.
02:36According to the most shocking claims,
02:38it's said that Ai might have had a direct hand in King Tut's death at just 19.
02:43Such was his desire to steal the throne from him.
02:45At about the age of 20, the young pharaoh suddenly died.
02:50Some believe he was murdered.
02:52He may have murdered his predecessor in order to create a power vacuum,
02:56which he promptly manipulated in his favor,
02:58with some suggestions that he also married Tutankhamen's widow just to shore up his credentials to become king.
03:04It's a tale of treachery that's never truly been confirmed,
03:07but the circumstances appear to cast Ai in a very shady light.
03:11Ai reigned for only four years, and like Tutankhamen, had no heirs to carry on the 18th dynasty.
03:18Number 8. Cambyses II
03:21In 525 BCE, Cambyses II, the son of Cyrus the Great, successfully invaded Egypt,
03:28bringing Persian rule to the empire and marking a pivotal shift in its ancient history.
03:32His time and power, known as the 27th dynasty,
03:35was characterized by efforts to merge Persian and Egyptian cultures,
03:39although he's thought to have done so harshly.
03:41Cambyses is infamous for desecrating temples and outlawing traditional religious practices,
03:46all seemingly to weaken the societal fabric that had bound the Nile Valley for millennia beforehand.
03:51In one of the cruelest episodes of his takeover,
03:54it's also said that he ordered his army to march with animals that were sacred to the Egyptians,
03:59such as cats and sheep, along the front line.
04:02He effectively used them as a shield,
04:04knowing that the Egyptians he sought to conquer wouldn't want or dare to hurt the animals that they linked to the gods.
04:10Number 7. Cleopatra VII
04:12She goes down in history as the last pharaoh,
04:15which might imply that Cleopatra's Egypt was in a much weaker state than it had been for thousands of years beforehand.
04:20This is what she has literally been raised to do,
04:23which is to backstab her siblings.
04:26She is having to rule and to plan and to plot
04:33to turn herself into an iron-fisted monarch.
04:41But that said, she's also regarded as having been a shrewd and intelligent leader,
04:46with a notably ruthless edge.
04:47Most famously, Cleopatra is said to have played a part in the deaths of three of her siblings.
04:52First, Ptolemy XIII, who she first married before he died during a civil war that she waged against him.
04:59Political violence is a necessity of Cleopatra's position,
05:04both as a Ptolemaic queen of Egypt,
05:06but also as a player in the Roman Republic.
05:11Then her sister, Arsinoe IV, was exiled and executed at her request,
05:16seeing as she was a threat to her power.
05:18And finally, after again marrying another of her brothers, Ptolemy XIV,
05:22it's said that she eventually poisoned him to make way for her son to rule in his stead.
05:27Shortly after Cleopatra comes back to Egypt,
05:30Ptolemy XIV disappears from the record.
05:35Many historians believe that Cleopatra poisoned her brother.
05:39The family dynamics here were complicated,
05:42but Cleopatra's determination to reign never wavered.
05:46Number 6, Seth Peripson.
05:48Ruling during the Second Dynasty more than 2600 years BCE,
05:52at a time when divine favor was paramount,
05:55Seth Peripson is a leader whose reign is shrouded in mystery.
05:58Most notably, though, there was a seeming and crucial name change,
06:01with this ruler choosing to honor the ancient god Set, or Seth,
06:05rather than the traditional Horus.
06:07Modern interpretations tend to have Set as the god most associated with chaos and violence,
06:12where Horus is seen as an emblem of continuity and protection.
06:15Seth Peripson's apparently deliberate distancing from Horus in favor of Set
06:20has led some to claim that his time as pharaoh was also fueled by chaos,
06:24that his Egypt was hugely divided by brutal war and fighting.
06:28That said, however, there is so very little that's truly known about him.
06:33Number 5, Khufu.
06:34Much of pharaoh Khufu's reputation for wickedness
06:37springs from the writings of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus,
06:40who considered him an evil king and a tyrant.
06:44Today, there's one world-famous piece of evidence toward that tyranny still standing,
06:48the Great Pyramid.
06:50The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the tallest,
06:53largest, and most enigmatic of all the pharaonic constructions.
06:57The only remaining wonder of the ancient world,
07:00the pyramid was originally built as a tomb for Khufu.
07:04It's thought to have required a rotating workforce of 100,000 people to construct it, though,
07:09all of them enslaved by Khufu under horrendous working conditions.
07:12For Herodotus and others, it was just one huge and unforgiving vanity project.
07:18Given how iconic the Great Pyramid is today,
07:20the story behind how it got there is sometimes lost.
07:23But Khufu, a man who's said to have sent his own daughter to the brothel
07:27to raise money when he needed it, was clearly a callous figure.
07:30Number 4.
07:31Khafre.
07:32They say, like father like son.
07:34And when your father is Khufu, perhaps you have a lot to live up to.
07:37Nevertheless, by most accounts,
07:39Khafre followed on from where his pyramid-crazed parent left off,
07:42again, seemingly treating his people with very little worth.
07:45Most of what's written about Khafre also derives from the early work of Herodotus.
07:49Although, it should be said that even he was writing some 2,000 years after the fact.
07:54Still, Khafre's reign was marked by a massive amount of building work,
07:58said to have been carried out by huge armies of enslaved people.
08:01The second largest pyramid at Giza is Khafre's.
08:04And there are even some theories that the Great Sphinx is meant to be a depiction of him as well.
08:09But, as to exactly how they came to be,
08:11it may have all been the result of one man's ruthless demands.
08:15Number 3.
08:16Sneferu.
08:17The era of Sneferu, the first pharaoh of Old Egypt's 4th dynasty,
08:21is remembered as another golden age of pyramid building.
08:24Though unknown today, he was the greatest of all the Egyptian pharaohs.
08:30He was Sneferu.
08:32There were multiple major pyramids erected under his watch,
08:35including what are today known as the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid,
08:38the third largest of all pyramids behind those of Khufu and Khafre.
08:42Again, though, the labor force that was required consisted of tens of thousands of people.
08:47They faced grueling conditions,
08:49with many dedicating their entire lives and ultimately dying,
08:52all for Sneferu's eternal legacy.
08:54He was pharaoh, but also a god on earth.
08:58And as a god, he needed a tomb that was the most magnificent creation the human mind could imagine.
09:03He needed a pyramid.
09:05But his story is also one of relentless invasion and conquest.
09:08His armies raided all across North Africa,
09:12mostly to capture, imprison, and enslave the workers who eventually built Sneferu's many monuments.
09:18Number 2. Akhenaten
09:19For better or worse, Akhenaten made an impact.
09:22His reign was a revolutionary departure from the long-entrenched traditions of Egyptian kingship.
09:29Scholars still struggle to understand this pharaoh.
09:33Was he a fanatic or a great reformer?
09:35A visionary or a madman?
09:37His lasting legacy is the attempted destruction of almost all traditional beliefs,
09:42in a bid to establish Atenism or sun worship as the dominant religion.
09:46Before Akhenaten, the empire had been very much polytheistic,
09:50with countless gods to draw upon.
09:51But during his reign, all of that was outlawed.
09:54As if to complete the transformation of Egyptian religion,
09:58the pharaoh changed his name from Amenhotep to Akhenaten,
10:02which meant servant of the sun god Aten.
10:05And sometimes aggressively outlawed as well.
10:08Temples were abandoned en masse,
10:10and those who had attended them had no choice but to convert.
10:13Life under Akhenaten's eye was seriously tough and usually short.
10:18Today, there's some debate around whether Akhenaten is unfairly remembered,
10:22and whether we should instead view him as the world's first individual.
10:25But for Egyptians at the time,
10:28his actions were enough for him to be branded an unbridled heretic.
10:32Akhenaten died in 1334 BC, during the 17th year of his reign,
10:38and with him died his religion, based on the worship of the sun disk.
10:43Soon after, there was a tremendous backlash against his religion and heresy,
10:47which led to the destruction of anything that bore his name.
10:50So much so that his name was almost written out of history completely,
10:55in a bid to forget what was considered the worst of times.
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11:14Number 1. Ramesses II
11:16As is becoming clear,
11:18the legacies of the Egyptian pharaohs are very rarely so straightforward
11:22as to deem any of them simply good or bad.
11:25Perhaps the most extraordinary pharaoh of all
11:28was the great warrior King Ramses II,
11:31remembered simply as Ramses the Great.
11:34But with Ramses II, we have one of the most divisive figures of all.
11:39He's also remembered as Ramses the Great,
11:41thanks to his long 66-year reign,
11:43during which the new kingdom of Egypt enjoyed a steady period of power and success.
11:48To achieve that though,
11:49he was another who brutally enslaved his prisoners,
11:52and continually invaded as many others as he could.
11:55During his long reign,
11:57he procured a formidable reputation as a warrior,
12:00a fact borne out by contemporary depictions.
12:03Only Thutmose III embarked on more military campaigns than Ramses,
12:07who was again always successful.
12:09A hero to many,
12:10he was a tyrannical threat to many more.
12:13He's also generally believed to be the crazed pharaoh
12:16as seen in the Bible's Book of Exodus,
12:18a mark on his reputation that simply never rubbed off.
12:21If Ramses is the pharaoh in the Bible,
12:24then his portrayal is less than flattering.
12:27But by his own people,
12:29Ramses was accorded almost godlike status.
12:33Which other pharaohs could have made this list?
12:35Which other stories of ancient Egyptian rule frightened you half to death?
12:38Let us know in the comments.
12:40Whatever the reason,
12:41it casts Thutmose,
12:43the man known as Egypt's Napoleon,
12:45as an enigma.
12:46A complex man struggling with his own demons.
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