Ancient Egypt, in this film's account, stands as the first great nation state, a civilization that held together for thousands of years under a ruling structure built around the Pharaoh, treated by his subjects as a living god. The film traces that structure as the backbone of Egyptian society, the office and its authority outlasting individual rulers and dynasties across the millennia. It then follows the thread forward past the pharaonic era into the Middle East as it exists after the spread of Islam, arguing that habits of civilization laid down in the Nile valley, hierarchy, administration, settled urban life, persisted and resurfaced in Moslem culture long after the last Pharaoh was gone. The case is broad rather than detailed, more interested in continuity across centuries than in any single event, reign, or monument.