Okay, Old Kingdom. This was really the glory age of ancient Egypt, when you got all the stuff that would later make Indiana Jones possible, like the pyramids at Giza, and the Sun King Ra, and the idea of divine kingship. The king, or pharaoh, was either a god or very close to a god, which seems like a good gig, except that it meant he wasn't expected to act like a person, he was expected to act like a god, which in ancient Egypt means acting like the Nile. Calm, cool, benevolent. There's no fun in that. And then, of course, there are the pyramids, which, aside from remaining impressive to behold, represent a remarkable degree of political and social control over the population, because it is not easy to convince people to devote their lives to building a sarcophagus for someone else. The most famous pyramids were built between 2575 and 2465 BCE.