Ancient Egypt

1
Ancient Egypt

• app. 10,000 sq. miles
• the same as Sumer and Akkad
• radically different in shape
• a ribbon of fertile land 600 miles long
• half a dozen miles wide for most of its length
• compared to 165 miles in Mesopotamia

2
Egypt, cont

• more arid and more fertile than Mesopotamia
• divided into two parts
• the Delta (Lower Egypt) and the Upper Nile
• south, not north is the important direction

3
Earliest Villages ??

• 4500 B.C.
• but recent studies may push it back
• one thousand years or more

4
Two Kingdoms, 3,500 B.C.

• two kingdoms
• upper and lower Egypt
• same culture
• same language
• same gods

5
Unification

• tradition is the only source
• Date? around 3000 (3200?) B.C., or so....
• Menes (Namar) the first pharaoh
• reigned for 62 years
• killed by a hippopotamus (ah, well...)

6
Culture and Civilization

• Egyptian culture distinctive and peculiar
• already set prior to unification
• continued to evolve through the Old Kingdom
  period
• by the Pyramid Age (3-4th dynasties, ca. 2700
  B.C.)
• it was set and would not change for 2,000 years

7
Origins of Egyptian Civilization

• sui generis ??
• diffusion from Mesopotamia ??
• and how do you tell, anyway ??
• writing ??
• cylinder seals ??

8
Formative Period

• ended by 2700 B.C.
• theocratic
• highly centralized government
• Primary Phase, which will last about 1,000 years

9
Historical Schema

• The Old Kingdom (2700-2200 B.C.)
• First Intermediate Period (2200-2000 B.C.)
• The Middle Kingdom (2000-1800 B.C.)
• Second Intermediate Period (1800-1500 B.C.)
• The New Kingdom (1500- 1100 B.C.?)

10
The Hyksos

• ended the Middle Kingdom by invasion
• Semites
• generate an imperialist response
• the New Kingdom

11
Comparison and Contrast with Babylon

• profound differences
• because of environmental conditons
• Mesopotamia open to invasion
• Egypt isolated by geography
• invasion as culturally stimulating ????

12
C. and C., cont

• effects on Egypt positive and negative
• E. culture perfectly adapted to the environment
• lines of development logical and obvious
• evolutionary manimums reached early in the
  culture
• Egyptian culture static, outwardly opposed to
  innovation

13
Agriculture

• depended on irrigation
• nationally controlled
• annual flooding of the Nile (Gift of the Nile)

14
Transportation

• Mesopotamia wheeled vehicles and boats
• Egypt boats (The Nile as Highway)
• sailboats still a major means of transportation
• Old and Middle Kingdom wheeled vehicles rare

15
Architecture

• lacks timber
• used mud-brick
• main building STONE

16
Sculpture

• early and sophisticated development
• human figures and archicectural forms
• led to great expertise in painting and other
  representational arts

17
Writing

• hieroglyphic scripts
• for architectural and monumental purposes
• hieratic and demotic scripts
• papyrus paper

18
Other Features

• wheat, instead of barley
• cattle and poultry
• flax
• slavery virtually unknown
• high degree of social mobility

19
Dynastic Chronology

• Egyptians divided their history into dynasties
• not always chronologically successive
• Manetho, gave the chronology to the Greeks
• the system is confusing, but maintained by
  Egyptologists

20
Theocratic Government

• all Egyptian government was theocratic in form
• all power was concentrated in the Pharaoah
• the pharaoh was the head of a planned and
  organized economy
• modern comparisons ???

21
The Nature of Kingship and Religion

• modern perceptions
• ancient ideas
• even politics had a religious base

22
Unification

• the most important event in Egyptian history
• what role did Menes play in religion and politics
  ?
• how was unification maintained ?

23
Egyptian Kingship

• Mesopotamian kings (and Hebrew)
• Semitic in their concepts
• acted as mediators between gods and the people

24
Kingship, cont

• Pharaoh link between the gods and people
• Pharaoh divine
• his rule eternal and absolute
• Egypt was not just ruled for the gods
• but by a god

25
Distinctions ?

• human vs. divine ??
• They could tell the difference
• in practice whoever held the throne was divine
• including women, foreigners, commoners

26
The Pharaoh

• shed his impermanent and human status
• assumed the eternal and unchangeable divine
  status
• became the embodiment of the divine
• led a divinely unified Egyptian state

27
Theory of the New State

• maat
• basis of justice and authority
• meaning truth, justice, order, righteousness,
  balance
• a cosmic or divine force for harmony and
  stability,
• dating from the beginning of time

28
Maat, cont

• good rule and administration embodied maat
• these confirmed, consolidated and perpetuated the
  rule of the Pharaoh
• this unified and stabilized the state

29
Egyptian Religion

• each city had its patron deity
• emergence of national government caused some to
  be more important
• as dynasties changed, the primary gods changed
• why??

30
Examples

• Memphis Ptah
• later, as the center of power changed, Re/Ra
• or Horus
• etc.

31
The Gods

• Mesopotamian gods mostly anthropomorphic
• Egyptian gods vary wildly
• animals, human, celestial bodies, etc.

32
Cosmology

• Gods created Order out of Chaos
• various stories
• not mutually exclusive
• like the monotheistic religions

33
Early Creation Story

• Atum
• primeval mound of mud (Annual inundation of the
  Nile?)
• godly masturbation (How do you get a date when
  there is nobody there but you?)
• generation of the gods

34
Different Perspectives

• Mesopotamians pessimistic
• life is unpredictable, their gods unstable, their
  afterlife indistinct and undesirable
• Egyptian religion inspired confidence
• in the eternal, stable order of the universe

35
Different Perspectives, cont

• divinely guided, rhythmic cycle of life and death
• and belief in a final, eternal bliss

36
Egyptian religion

• extremely tolerant of difference
• extremely tolerant of many gods
• as opposed to, say.. Hebrew religion
• the principal deity (national/Pharoahs deity)
  allowed other gods to flourish
• the number is considerable

37
Egyptian religion oddities

• overlap of functions
• syncretism
• expansion and contraction of cults
• amalgamation of cults
• worship of the Pharaoh was nationwide

38
Religion as a Unifying Force

• Mesopotamia master-slave relationship
• Egypt gods conceived of as shepherd
• who cherish and care for the people

39
Religion, cont

• probably the origins of the idea of
  Jehovah-as-shepherd
• especially in the Psalms
• which are pre-dated by Egyptian psalms
• Akhenatons Hymn to the Sun

40
Permanence of the Cycle of Life

• everything was a cycle
• eternal, unchanging
• life and death
• continuous and rhythmic
• human life existed in a never-ending interchange
  of natural and universal elements

41
The Gods

• immanent in nature
• existed in a sphere of divine activity
• consubstanital they are existent in everything

42
The Temples

• controlled by temple corporations
• producing those things necessary for the god
• maintaining maat
• maintaining the very existence of the universe
  !!!!
• if they get slack, were screwed...in a major way

43
The Idea of the Cosmos

• religious ideas rooted in a static and
  changeless universe
• influenced every aspect of Egyptian life
• influenced every aspect of Egyptian development
• gave very strong resilience to Egyptian culture
• survived virtually unchanged for 3,000 years

44
The Pharonic State Ancient Economy

• the pyramid model
• pharaoh as capstone
• pharaoh as commander-in-chief
• pharaoh as royal administrator
• pharaoh as owner of Egypt

45
The Pharonic State Corvee

• the annual inundation
• conscription for public works
• dependence on irrigation
• cooperate work essential

46
Achievements of the Old Kingdom

• efficient, centralized authority
• astronomy, arithmetic, geometry
• medicine

47
The Most Important

• Solar calendar
• pyramids
• belief in immortality

48
Solar Calendar

• Egyptian solar calendar 3rd millennium B.C.
• Connected with the rising of Sothis
• the Dog Star (Sirius)
• companion of Orion

49
Solar Calendar, cont

• length of the solar year and the rising of Sothis
  are virtually identical
• only a few minutes difference
• we get our solar calendar from the Egyptians
• by way of the Romans

50
Pyramids

• Imhotep architect and developer of the calendar?
• Imhotep physician, architect, doctor, miracle
  worker, giver of wisdom
• designed the Step Pyramid of Zoser
• processor of the Pyramids of Giza

51
Pyramids, cont

• eternal home for the immortal pharaoh
• insured their divinity for all eternity

52
Pyramids, cont

• Khufu, Khafre, Menkure
• Cheops, Cehphren, Mycerinus
• amazing architecture
• how?
• necropolis

53
Belief in Immortality

• first to really develop the idea
• sophisticated consciousness
• another order of existence

54
Decline of the Old Kingdom

• Old Kingdom the most stable period
• the Pharaoh dominated life
• forstalled the emergence of provincial power
• but gradually lost power to royal officials
• gradual drying of the environment
• failure of the Nile to flood on time

55
Decline of the Old Kingdom

• Pepi II ruled 94 years
• at his death rapid decline
• followed by Nitocris
• collapse of central power

56
First Intermediate Period

• 2180-2050 B.C.
• localism, anarchy, short reigns, palace coups,
  assassinations
• seventy kings in seventy days
• reversal of established order
• dissolution of law and order
• disruption of trade and agricultual production

57
The Middle Kingdom

• 2050-1800 B.C.
• united under the Eleventh Dynasty
• from Thebes, not Memphis
• followers of the god Amon
• elevated to the rank of primary god
• modern examples??

58
The Middle Kingdom

• solidification of Egyptian borders
• military garrisons on the borders
• new office the vizier
• separate administrations of Upper and Lower Egypt
• suppression of the nobility rise of the middle
  class

59
The Middle Kingdom

• decline with the Twelveth Dynasty
• Pharaoh Sobekeneferu
• beginning of the Second Intermediate

60
Second Intermediate Period

• 1800-1570 B.C.
• Thirteenth and Fourtheenth Dynasties
• contemporaries
• invasion by the Hyksos
• Semitic peoples from Palestine
• Hyksos dynasty by 1650 B.C. (Fifteenth Dynasty)

61
The New Kingdom

• rise of the Seventeenth Dynasty
• Thebes
• beginning of the imperial period
• reconquest of Egypt
• We had to destroy this village to save it.

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The New Kingdom

• 1570-1150 B.C.
• reaction to control by a foreign people
• policy of planned aggression
• create a buffer zone (cordon sanitare) in
  Palestine
• any modern examples ???

63
The New Kingdom

• more cosmopolitian
• international trade
• large, professional army
• the usual bureaucracy

64
Imperialism 18th Dynasty

• Thutmoses I
• Hatshueput I
• Thutmoses III
• conquest of an Asian Empire
• successor had problems

65
Akhenation the Amarna Revolution

• worship of the Aton
• the solar disk
• elevated the worship of the Aton
• suspended the worship of other gods
• particularly Amon

66
Amarna Revolution Political Terms

• struggle with the priests of Amon
• innovation vs. conservative stagnation
• monotheism ???
• henotheism / monolatry

67
Lost of Empire

• to Indo-European states
• emerging in Asia Minor and other areas

68
King Tut

• Pharaoh Tutankhaten succeeded Akhenaten
• Restoration of the gods
• Probably murdered by a guy named Ay

69
High Point

• Nineteenth Dynasty
• Rameses II
• pharaoh of the Exodus ??
• New Kingdom collapse
• ca. 1150 B.C.