William de Rimpel

There's the great kings, who all describe and talk to each other as brother this, brother that, and they're busy swapping daughters.

Or rather, the second division kings, like the Hittites and the Mitanni, are busy giving their daughters to Egypt, who are definitely...

the kind of number one big dog in the scene.

Yes.

And then the second half of the book is this fascinating world, which is oddly like today, whereby the whole of the Middle East is busy fighting with each other.

Every single country is busy.

Every single city state that seems to be evading each other.

There's constant warfare, assassinations, assassination attempts, interventions by foreign powers.

It all seems very, very familiar.

Welcome back.

So we are going to follow this system now.

We're going to go first to the great kings before we deal with these needy minor monarchs.

Let's go through the big boys.

And particularly, there's a very needy king of Babylon who's grumbling the whole time and also, understandably, wants to know what's happened to his sister who's disappeared into an Egyptian harem and hasn't been seen for 40 years or something.

Tell us all that.

That comes up a lot.

Interesting that, because that is the modern response, but he wouldn't necessarily assume that the Pharaoh would respond that way.

Yes.

And you get sort of whole families sort of relocating.

So, you know, the sisters, the aunties and the grandmothers are all there.