Many of you will have seen the movie, The Scorpion King, starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, but not many will know a great deal about the historical figure this Hollywood character is based on.
King Scorpion was a ruler in what Egyptologists call the Protodynastic Period of Upper Egypt, sometime between 5,500 and 5,200 years ago, an elusive figure to history but fragments of his memory survive, and continue to be found.In fact, experts believe there were two King Scorpions in Egypt’s Pre or Proto-Dynastic Period, and it's Scorpion 1st who I'm referring to in this video.
A new book has been released by professor Dr. Ludwig Morenz and researcher Mohamed Abdelhay Abu Bakr and it shows how early Egyptian rulers used art, symbolism and the landscape itself to legitimise their authority.
In this video I'll give you a brief overview of the facsinating discoveries, with some links below for further information.
00:00 - Introduction
00:27 - The Scorpion King
01:01 - Two King Scorpions
01:43 - The Eastern Desert of Aswan
02:08 - New Rock Art Finds
03:17 - Egypt's Territorial Markers
03:37 - The Association with Dangerous Animals
04:42 - Scorpion Deity Association
05:18 - Violence in Rock Art
05:53 - Ritual and Religious Scenes
06:11 - New Technology
06:44 - Future Work
07:01 - Concluding Remarks