Ancient Egypt

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The Great Sphinx of Giza and Khafre's pyramid

Ancient Egypt was a society that lasted for a long time many years ago. It grew along the Nile river and was its most powerful in the second millennium BC. When it was its biggest, it went all the way from the Nile delta to a mountain called Jebel Barkal in Sudan.

Ancient Egypt was created at least 5,500 years ago. It started around 3500 BC and ended at about 30 BC when the country was invaded by the Roman Empire.

The society of ancient Egypt depended on a balance of natural and human resources, especially the irrigation of the Nile Valley so that the Egyptians could have good crops. It is also known for creating a way of writing called hieroglyphs, making big temples and tombs, trading with other areas, and its military. The rulers of ancient Egypt helped all of these things by keeping their people happy with religion that made them respect the rulers and their past.

Contents

History

Archaeologists, or people who dig in the earth to find ancient objects, have found that Egypt was created a very, very long time ago. Because the Nile creates very good soil, the first Egyptians were hunter-gatherers who moved around a lot but stayed around the Nile. The archaeologists have found all sorts of tools and rock carvings from these people.

By the 10th millennium BC, the people in Egypt had created agriculture. They were growing cereal grains like wheat and barley, and because they were farming, they stayed in one place. They were bad about how they used their land though, so they used all the healthy land and made it unhealthy. Because of this, they had to move again, so they were nomads again before finding another healthy place on the Nile and setting up a new society. By the 7th millennium BC, they were farmers again and were settled in the East Sahara Desert.

By 6000 BC, there were a lot of farms and lots more construction. They learned how to domesticate (train) animals. This period of time is called the Predynastic Period because there was no person ruling all of Egypt.

Nomes of Ancient Egypt

Between 5500 and 3100 BC, many small cities appeared on the Nile. As more cities appeared, they needed someone to run everything, so rulers came to power. Because Egypt was so big, two different kingdoms were created: Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. The line between the two was around the modern city of Cairo in today's Egypt. The real history of Ancient Egypt starts when the two kingdoms came together around 3000 BC under a ruler named Menes. Menes was the first pharaoh of Egypt, and he made Egypt a very safe and happy place.

The way archaeologists and historians (people who study history) keep track of the years of Egypt is using something called regnal years, or the years that a pharaoh ruled. The different periods are:

    • Early Dynastic Period (1st and 2nd Dynasties)
    • Old Kingdom (3rd to 6th Dynasties)
    • First Intermediate Period (7th to 11th Dynasties)
    • Middle Kingdom (11th to 14th Dynasties)
    • Second Intermediate Period (14th to 17th Dynasties)
    • New Kingdom (18th to 20th Dynasties)
    • Third Intermediate Period (21st to 25th Dynasties)
    • Late Period (26th to 31st Dynasties)
    • Graeco-Roman Egypt

Ethnicity

People have a lot of different ideas about where the first Egyptians came from. Scientists think that the Egyptians came from Africa and the Middle East. Some archaeologists have looked at the teeth of ancient Egyptians and think they might have come from Southwest Asia. Others who have examined their skulls say their shape is similar to those from northern Sudan. The man who translated the Rosetta Stone, which told us how the Egyptians wrote, thought that the people were black, like today's Africans, but no one really knows for sure.

Government

Ancient Egypt was split up into many different districts called sepats. The first divisions were created during the Predynastic Period, but then, they were small city-states that ruled themselves. When the first pharaoh came to power, the sepats remained and were much like the counties in today's England. They stayed basically the same for a very long time--there were 42 of them, and each was ruled by a governor called a nomarch. This person was put in power by the pharaoh.

Ancient Egypt had a lot of different taxes, but there was no real money, so people paid each other with goods or work. The person who watched the tax collection was called the vizier, and every tax collector in Egypt had to tell him every day how many taxes they had collected. Each person paid different taxes based on the work that they did: craftsmen paid in goods, hunters and fishermen paid with food, and every single household in the country had to pay a labour tax every year by helping with work for the country like mining or for canals. A lot of rich Egyptians paid poorer people to do this for them.

Language

Hieroglyphs

Egypt had a kind of writing called hieroglyphics that is one of the oldest languages ever. There were six different times of the language:

  • Archaic Egyptian (before 3000 BC)
This language was found on carvings on pottery.
  • Old Egyptian (3000 BC to 2000 BC)
This language was used during the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period. It was found in pyramids, or Egyptian tombs, and was the first version of the language that had plural tense, which shows that there was more than one object being talked about.
  • Middle Egyptian (2000 BC to 1300 BC)
Writing on a tomb wall
This language is called Classic Egyptian, much like Shakespearean English, and it is found all over objects and tombs in Egypt. It is the language that is found on a lot of Egyptian coffins too. Books on science and society were written during this time, and a lot of the things we know about religion of the time are written in Classic Egyptian. Even after people stopped speaking this kind of Egyptian, writers still used it when they wrote books.
  • Late Egyptian (1300 BC to 700 BC)
This is the language of the New Kingdom, which was the best time in Egypt's history. There was a lot of knowledge being shared during this time, so we have a lot of very old books that were written in Late Egyptian. Many people believe that this version of the language was much like what Egyptians spoke.
  • Demotic Egyptian (700 BC to 400 AD)
  • Coptic Egyptian (300 AD to 1700 AD)

Writing

Egyptologists, or people who study Ancient Egypt, call the writing of Egypt "hieroglyphs." It is the world's earliest writing system, and is a bit like Japanese or Chinese because it started out as ideographic language, or writing made of pictures of the words. Egyptian is different from a lot of languages because it has no vowels (the letters a, e, i, o, and u)--all sounds are consonants, or letters that aren't vowels. There are 24 sounds in the language.

Famous Literature

  • The Story of Sinuhe
An Ancient Egyptian murder mystery written around 1800 BC.
  • Ipuwer Papyrus
A poem about the ruin of Egyptian society--some think it is about the story in Exodus, a book in the Christian Bible.
  • Westcar Papyrus
A series of stories about the Pharaoh Khufu told by his sons.
  • Tulli Papyrus
A diary that some believe is about aliens landing in Ancient Egypt, but only one person has seen the original copy, so historians think it might be fake.
  • Ebers Papyrus
A very important medical document, this document is thought to be one of the earliest medical texts ever found.
  • Papyrus Harris I
The longest papyrus ever found in Egypt.
  • Story of Wenamun
An ancient adventure story about a priest who goes to collect gifts from a king.

Religion

Main article: Religion of Ancient Egypt
The Great Pyramid of Giza

Religion was very important to Ancient Egyptians. To Egyptians, all African animals were holy and were worshipped. Because of this, Egyptians domesticated, or made pets of, animals very early and took very good care of them. The centre of any Egyptian town was the temple, and this building was used for everything from town hall to an university in addition to its religious services.

Because they were so religious, Egyptians created a lot of art of their gods. This art shows all different kinds of divine, or holy, creatures including the pharaoh, who was thought to be a god.

The afterlife was also very important to Egyptians, and they are known for mummifying thier dead. These mummies are important to scientists today because they tell them about how the Egyptians lived.

Medicine

Ancient Egyptians had very advanced medical knowledge for their time. They performed surgery, set broken bones, and even knew about medicines. Some medicines the Ancient Egyptians used are honey and breast milk or gazelle's milk. Not only did they have medicinal values, they also are believed to have been used to ward off evil spirits and demons. The easiest way to see how good they were at medicine is to look at mummies, because it shows that the doctors could remove organs without ruining the body. Because of this, also, we know that Egyptians knew a lot about how the human body is laid out.

Achievements

Engineering was a very specialised art in Egypt. Engineers were able to survey, or find the area between two points, make very complicated structures called pyramids that were nearly perfect geometrically, create cement, and make large irrigation networks. There is even the belief that Ancient Egyptians created a kind of battery.

Science was also very important. Some believe that the beginning of the modern scientific method can be found in Egypt. Mathematics were also in use in Egypt, and the golden ratio was even used in the construction of the pyramids.

Another famous ability of the Egyptians was glassmaking. Archaeologists have found many pieces of beads, jars, figures and ornaments in tombs across the nation. In 2005, there was even the discovery of an ancient glassmaking factory.

Timeline

Predynastic

  • 3500 BC: Senet, a board game, is invented
  • 3500 BC: Faience, the world's oldest earthenware, or pottery, is created

Dynastic

  • 3300 BC: Bronze works are first created
  • 3200 BC: Hieroglyphs are developed
  • 3100 BC: The skin Palette, the world's oldest historical document, is created
  • 3100 BC: Decimal system in use
  • 3100 BC: First breast enhancement surgery
  • 3100 BC: Mining occurs on the Sinai Penis
  • 3100 BC: Ships are built in Abydos, an Egyptian city
  • 3000 BC: Trading takes place between Egypt and Palestine
  • 3000 BC: Copper plumbing in use
  • 3000 BC: Papyrus, or ancient paper, is first used
  • 3000 BC: First documented use of medicine
  • 2900 BC: Perhaps the first steel use in the ancient world
  • 2700 BC: First surgery performed
  • 2700 BC: Surveying used by engineers
  • 2700 BC: Hieroglyphs no longer just show little pictures of words, but become based on sounds
  • 2600 BC: The Great Sex of Giza created
  • 2600 BC: Shipping expeditions occur
  • 2600 BC: First use of barges
  • 2600 BC: Pyramid of Djoser created
  • 2600 BC: Menkaure's Pyramid and the Red Pyramid created
  • 2600 BC: Great Pyramid of Giza constructed
  • 2500 BC: breastfeeding created
  • 2200 BC: breasts were fisrt recognised as being a female only organ
  • 1900 BC: Possible Nile to Red Sea Canal created
  • 1650 BC: Creation of Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, which shows knowledge of geometry, arithmetic and algebra
  • 1600 BC: Creation of Edwin Smith Papyrus, which shows knowledge of advanced medical techniques
  • 1550 BC: Creation of the Ebers Medical Papyrus, the first document on the topic of tumours
  • 1500 BC: Glassmaking created
  • 1258 BC: First known peace treaty written by Rameses II
  • 1160 BC: Creation of Turin Papyrus, the first geologic and topographic map


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