Ancient Egypt Unit

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Ancient Egypt Unit

• Grade 10 Social Studies
• Mr. McLaughlin

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Unit Outline

• Egypt Land of the Pharaohs
• Historical Overview
• Government
• Society and Culture
• Religion
• Social Organization
• Everyday Life
• Urban and Rural Living
• The Economy
• The Arts
• The Sciences

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Definitions Please search the text book for the
answers to these definitions (74-121)

• Wadis
• Dynasty
• Hieroglyphics
• Monarchy
• Pharaoh
• Nomes
• Nomarch
• Polytheistic

• Ankh
• Mummification
• Corvee Duty
• Polygamy
• Hieratic
• Demotic
• Secular
• Religious Cults

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Geography

• The ancient Egyptians thought of Egypt as being
  divided into two types of land, the 'black land'
  and the 'red land'.
• The 'black land' was the fertile land on the
  banks of the Nile. The ancient Egyptians used
  this land for growing their crops.
• This was the only land in ancient Egypt that
  could be farmed because a layer of rich, black
  silt was deposited there every year after the
  Nile flooded.

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Geography Cont.

• The 'red land' was the barren desert that
  protected Egypt on two sides.
• These deserts separated ancient Egypt from
  neighbouring countries and invading armies.
• They also provided the ancient Egyptians with a
  source for precious metals and semi-precious
  stones.

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Quiz

• Define the following words (6)
• Wadis
• Nomarch
• Polytheistic
• Polygamy
• Hieratic
• Ankh
• Would this picture be considered black land or
  red land? Why? (4)

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Ancient Egypt The British Museum

• http//www.ancientegypt.co.uk/geography/explore/ma
  in.html

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Egyptian Oasis
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http//www.egypttreasures.gov.eg/oasis_main.html

• Oasis definitions and pictures from Egypt.

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Historical Egypt

• Egypt is one of the most fertile areas of Africa,
  and one of the most fertile of the countries
  around the Mediterranean Sea.
• Because it is so fertile, people came to live in
  Egypt earlier than in most places, probably
  around 40,000 years ago.
• At first there were not very many people, but
  gradually Egypt became more crowded, so there was
  more need for a unified government.
• Around 3000 BC (5000 years ago), Egypt was first
  unified under one ruler, who was called the
  Pharaoh.

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• From that time until around 525 BC, when Egypt
  was conquered by the Persians, Egypt's history is
  divided into six different time periods.
• These are called the Old Kingdom, the First
  Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom, the
  Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom, and
  the Third Intermediate Period.
• Unlike Mesopotamia, Egypt has almost no existing
  record of independent city-states.

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The Kingdoms of Egypt
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Old Kingdom

• Pharaohs organized the first systematic
  irrigation from the Nile river
• The Pyramids were built in this period as great
  tombs for the Pharaohs. Probably they were built
  by people who were usually farmers, like most
  people at that time.
• Recent archaeology suggests that the earliest
  Pharaohs also engaged in human sacrifice. About
  the same time, another great civilization was
  arising in Sumeria.

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Old Kingdom recap

• Pharaohs organized the first systematic
  irrigation from the Nile river.
• The Pyramids were built in this period as great
  tombs for the Pharaohs.
• Earliest Pharaohs also engaged in human
  sacrifice.

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Upper and Lower Egypt

• The two regions of Egypt began as separate
  kingdoms. The rulers of upper Egypt wore a tall
  white crown, and the lower rulers wore a red
  crown. Future rulers would wear a crown with a
  red and a white band, signifying the union of the
  two.
• About 3100bc, the king of Upper Egypt Menes
  founded a new capital city Memphis after winning
  a war uniting the two regions.
• Menes was the first in a long line of kings to
  rule ancient Egypt, beginning the Egyptian
  dynasty.

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True of False

• The land around the Nile provided the necessities
  of life for the Egyptian people
• The pyramids were built during the Old Kingdom.
• The Nile would flood twice per year, once in
  Spring and the other in Fall.
• Egypt had been divided up into many city-states
  before the time of the pharaoh.
• Egypt is one of the most fertile areas of the
  middle east.
• Egypt has existed for around 60,000 years.
• The pharaoh unified the people of Egypt about
  3000bc.
• Upper- White crown Lower- Red crown.

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Assignment Todays class!

• 1. Explain how each of the following physical
  features affected the development of civilization
  in ancient Egypt
• The Nile River
• The Libyan and Arabian deserts
• The Mediterranean Sea
• 2.
• How the landscapes of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt
  differ?
• What effect do you think these differences might
  have on the development of civilization in each
  region?
• 3.
• Using a map or a diagram, compare the natural
  environments of ancient Egypt and ancient
  Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia map page 28, and Egypt
  page 75.
• If you happen to finish this, please read through
• pages 77-83

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Middle Kingdom

• The Middle Kingdom was formed after a series of
  wars between the rulers of Upper Egypt (the
  South) and Lower Egypt (the North).
• The rulers of Upper Egypt won, and they reunified
  the country about 2000 BC, with the capital first
  at Thebes in the south, and then at a new city
  just south of Memphis.
• The Pharaohs of this period are not as powerful
  as before. They show themselves as taking care of
  their people, instead of as god-kings as in the
  Old Kingdom. They are the shepherds of the people
  now.
• In this period, Jerusalem, Jericho and Syria
  first came under Egyptian influence.

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Middle Kingdom cont

• At this time there was a great deal of trade with
  Western Asia, and Egyptian armies even conquered
  much of Israel and Syria, though they were
  constantly fighting the Hittites and Assyrians to
  keep control of it.
• Great temples were built all over Egypt. The
  Egyptian queens were very powerful at this time,
  and in 1490 BC one of them, Hatshepsut, became
  Pharaoh herself.
• In 1363 BC there was a famous Pharaoh named
  Akhenaten, who built a new capital at Amarna and
  seems to have worshipped a new sun god, and
  developed new art styles.

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New Kingdom

• He had no sons, and his successor was his
  son-in-law Tutankhamon. However, by 1333 BC the
  Pharaohs went back to the old religion.
• In 1303 BC a new northern dynasty or family of
  Pharaohs took over, the 19th Egyptian dynasty.
  Their first king, Rameses, moved the capital back
  to Memphis in the north. Priests became very
  powerful. Fighting with the Hittites in Western
  Asia continued, but also a lot of trade.
• The 20th dynasty Pharaohs, around 1200 BC,
  continued the same policies, and were all called
  Rameses. There were many attacks on Egypt, first
  from Libya to the west and then from West Asia,
  by a group that the Egyptians called the Sea
  Peoples.
• The Hittites were destroyed, though around 1100
  BC the Egyptians fought off the Sea Peoples in a
  great naval battle.

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Greek Control

• In 332 BC Alexander the Great conquered Egypt
  with a Greek army. At first the Egyptians thought
  he would make them independent again, but he did
  not.
• Alexander made Egypt part of his own empire.
  When Alexander died in 323 BC, his general
  Ptolemy (TA-low-mee) took over Egypt as his own
  territory.
• He and his successors (all called Ptolemy) ruled
  Egypt until the Roman Augustus conquered it from
  the last Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra in 30 BC.
  The Ptolemies succeeded in reconquering much of
  Israel and Syria.
• They brought Greek culture and the Greek language
  to Egypt, though ordinary people continued to
  speak Egyptian and worship Egyptian gods.

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Roman Control

• By the time of the Roman Julius Caesar, around 50
  BC, the Ptolemies, the Greek kings of Egypt, were
  much weaker than the Romans.
• When Julius Caesar visited Egypt, the Ptolemaic
  (Greek) queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, begged him to
  help her fight a civil war against her teenaged
  brother and husband, Ptolemy.
• Julius Caesar did help her, but he left Roman
  troops all over Egypt, and also took Cleopatra
  (klee-oh-PAT-rah) back to Rome with him as his
  girlfriend. When Julius Caesar was assassinated
  in Rome in 44 BC, Cleopatra returned to Egypt
  with another Roman leader, Mark Anthony (who was
  also her boyfriend).
• In a civil war between Julius Caesar's nephew
  Augustus and Marc Anthony, Antony and Cleopatra
  were defeated. They killed themselves (or perhaps
  were killed) in 30 BC, and the Romans took over
  Egypt.

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Islamic Egypt (700-present)

• As part of the rise of the new religion of Islam
  in Western Asia, the Arabs established a new
  empire centered on Syria.
• They soon conquered Egypt as well, so that just
  as under the Assyrians and then the Persians,
  Egypt came under the rule of West Asia.
• Gradually most Egyptians converted from
  Christianity to Islam, and learned to speak
  Arabic (the remaining Christians in Egypt are
  called Copts). A new capital was established in
  the north at Cairo (KYE-row).
• For a while around 1000-1300 AD, the Egyptians
  became independent of Asia under the Shiite
  Fatimid dynasty. This was a time of great
  achievements in Egypt.
• But then they were conquered by the Sunni
  Ayyubids, and then the Mamluks. Around 1500,
  Egypt became part of the Islamic Ottoman Empire,
  which held Egypt until modern times.

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Egyptian Government

• The Pharaoh (FARE-oh) owned all of Egypt, and
  everything in it.
• All the land, all the tools, all the animals, and
  all the people. He (or sometimes she) could tell
  anybody what to do, and they would have to do it.
  This is called a monarchy. Of course the Pharaoh
  could not always be telling everybody what to do.
  So the Pharaoh chose men to represent him, and
  assigned them to big estates all over Egypt.
• These rich men and women ran the estates, and on
  them they could tell everybody what to do. But
  even the rich people were supposed to do whatever
  the Pharaoh said to do, and they had to send him
  some of the food that was grown on that land.
• Some, at least, of these estate-holders were
  priests, holding the estate for the gods, but
  these religious estates were run in the same way,
  and they also had to pay some food to the
  Pharaoh.

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• When the Pharaoh was weaker, especially in the
  First and Second Intermediate Periods, sometimes
  he (or she) could not make the rich people do
  what he (or she) wanted them to.
• Often the Pharaoh had to compromise with them.
  But at least in theory, the rich people had to do
  whatever the Pharaoh said, and ordinary people
  had to do whatever the rich people said.

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Egyptian Justice and Law

• Egyptians had harsh punishments for breaking the
  law. The laws were based on a common sense view
  of right and wrong. It depended on which crime
  the criminal did to figure out which punishment
  they would receive. Not only would it disgrace
  them, but it would disgrace their whole family.
• Next, there were many laws in Egypt, as there
  were many punishments for breaking a law. On of
  the punishments were one hundred strokes of a
  cane, and if the crime was worse, five bleeding
  cuts were added. Other punishments included
  branding, exile, mutilation, drowning, beheading,
  and burning alive. The worst crime was tomb
  raiding because the treasures in the tomb were
  sacred. A lot of punishments were fatal, such as
  drowning, beheading, and burning alive. After
  that, the Egyptians had law officials that served
  the pharaoh by catching criminals. The officials
  were like the police today. They would wear a
  golden Maat pendant as their official badge.
  Maat was the goddess of truth, order, justice,
  and balance in the universe. When the officials
  caught a criminal, they took them to the pharaoh,
  who would decide the punishment in court.

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QUIZ
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Egypt Society and Culture

• As in Mesopotamia at the same time, the people of
  ancient Egypt were polytheistic throughout the
  Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New
  Kingdom. That means that they believed in many
  gods.
• Some of these gods were Anubis, Set, Osiris,
  Isis, and Horus. Egyptians worshipped these gods
  with animal sacrifices and with incense and many
  processions where people carried the image of the
  god from one place to another.
• People believed that all of Egypt belonged to the
  gods, and that the Pharaoh was the representative
  on earth of the gods, or maybe a kind of god
  himself, and so everything in Egypt sort of
  belonged to the Pharaoh.
• They thought that when you died, Anubis would
  weigh your soul against a feather, and if your
  soul was heavier than the feather (with bad
  deeds), you would be punished.
• They thought that after you died you went to a
  new world, just like this one, and so they put
  into your grave everything you would need in the
  next world.

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• Now, some punishments were fatal. A few of them
  were drowning, beheading, and burning alive.
  Only if the crime was really bad did the criminal
  die. For example, the punishment for tomb
  raiding was death because it was the worst crime.
  
• Finally, there were about eight books that had
  the Egyptian legal code. The pharaoh made all
  the laws. Everyone had to obey the pharaohs
  laws. There was no limit to his power.
• As you can see, the pharaoh made the laws to
  enforce a powerful and under control country.

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Religion

• But, as in Mesopotamia, there was also a little
  monotheism in Egypt.
• During the New Kingdom, the Pharaoh Akhenaten
  started a new worship of the god Aten, and he
  seems to have wanted people to believe that Aten
  was the only real god, or maybe the only god
  worth worshipping.
• After Akhenaten died, people went back to
  worshipping Anubis, Isis, and Osiris again, as
  they had before.

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Osiris
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Religion

• The Persian invasion of Egypt in 539 BC doesn't
  seem to have made any difference to Egyptian
  religion. The Egyptians just kept right on
  worshipping their own gods. But the Persians are
  known for their religious tolerance.
• When Ptolemy took over Egypt in 323 BC, that did
  make a difference. Under Greek rule, the
  Egyptians did begin to worship some Greek gods,
  although they kept on worshipping the old
  Egyptian gods as well.
• Greek people in Athens began to worship the
  Egyptian goddess Isis. They learned about Isis
  from traders sailing over from Egypt.

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Religion

• But little by little some Egyptians began to
  convert to Christianity, and by the time of the
  Great Persecution in 303 AD, there were many
  Christians in Egypt.
• After the Roman Emperors became Christian and the
  persecution ended, most of the people of Egypt
  seem to have converted to Christianity.
• This is the time of the great conflict between
  Arius and Athanasius, a good deal of which took
  place in Alexandria, in Egypt.

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This scene depicts what occurs after a person has
died, according to the ancient Egyptians.
Beginning with the upper left-hand corner, the
deceased appears before a panel of 14 judges to
make an accounting for his deeds during life. The
ankh, the key of life, appears in the hands of
some of the judges. Next, below, the jackal god
Anubis who represents the underworld and
mummification leads the deceased before the
scale. In his hand, Anubis holds the ankh
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Pyramids

• People tend to think that Egyptian styles stayed
  the same for the whole period of Egyptian
  history, but that's not true.
• The Egyptians built different kinds of buildings
  at different times, just like any other group of
  people. In the beginning, they built mainly
  mastabas, a kind of tomb with a flat roof like a
  house. Then throughout most of the Old Kingdom,
  the Egyptians built the pyramid tombs which are
  now so famous.
• In the Middle Kingdom, the mastaba tomb came back
  again, although in a more elaborate form for the
  Pharaohs. No more pyramids were built.
• Then in the New Kingdom there was a lot of
  building that was not tombs temples for the gods
  especially, but also palaces for the Pharaohs.

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http//www.thebanmappingproject.com/

• 3D Tomb Tour
• Valley of the Kings

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Social Organizations
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Society

• In Ancient Egypt there were definite social
  classes which were dictated by an Egyptian's
  profession. This social stratification is like a
  pyramid. At the bottom of the "Social Pyramid"
  were soldiers, farmers, and tomb builders, who
  represented the greatest percent of the Egyptian
  population.
• The workers supported the professionals above
  them, just as the base of the pyramid supports
  the rest of the structure.
• Above the workers were skilled craftsmen, such as
  artists, who used primitive tools to make
  everything from carts to coffins.

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Society

• Above the craftsmen were the scribes. The scribes
  were the only Egyptians who knew how to read and
  write, and therefore had many types of job
  opportunity.
• A scribe's duties ranged from writing letters for
  townspeople, to recording harvests, to keeping
  accounts for the Egyptian army. Above these
  scribes were more scholarly scribes, who had
  advanced to higher positions such as priests,
  doctors, and engineers.
• Priests were devoted to their religious duties in
  the temples at least three months out of every
  year, during which time they never left the
  temple. At other times the worked as judges and
  teachers.

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Women

• Unlike the position of women in most other
  ancient civilizations, including that of Greece,
  the Egyptian woman seems to have enjoyed the same
  legal and economic rights as the Egyptian man -
  at least in theory.
• This notion is reflected in Egyptian art and
  historical inscriptions.
• It is uncertain why these rights existed for the
  woman in Egypt but no where else in the ancient
  world.
• It may well be that such rights were ultimately
  related to the theoretical role of the king in
  Egyptian society.
• If the pharaoh was the personification of Egypt,
  and he represented the corporate personality of
  the Egyptian state, then men and women might not
  have been seen in their familiar relationships,
  but rather, only in regard to this royal center
  of society.

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Education

• Not very many boys and girls went to school in
  Ancient Egypt. Most of these boys and girls came
  from rich families and went to scribal school.
• They went to school so maybe one distant day
  they could grow up and enter the royal service,
  maybe even a famous pharaoh or wealthy scribe. In
  scribal school, they still used the utensils of a
  scribe a reed brush, ink made out of soot and
  water, and the worlds first paper papyrus.
• If you were not going to study to be a scribe,
  you would probably not go to scribal school.
  However some people who were not scribes did have
  a scribal school education.
• Instead you would become an apprentice. For
  example, if you wanted to become a doctor, you
  would go to work with a doctor and learn from
  him.
• If you wanted to become a baker, you would
  become a bakers apprentice and work with him to
  learn how to be a baker.

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Clothing/Cosmetics

• Unlike most of the people of the ancient
  Mediterranean, the Egyptians did not wear just
  one or two big pieces of cloth wrapped around
  themselves in various ways. Instead, both men and
  women in Egypt wore tunics which were sewn to fit
  them.
• These tunics were like a long T-shirt which
  reached to the knees (for men) or to the ankles
  (for women). They were usually made of linen and
  were nearly always white.
• Most Egyptians, both men and women, do not seem
  to have covered their heads with any kind of
  cloth. They often went barefoot, but sometimes
  they wore leather sandals.
• Men who were working outside usually wore short
  skirts instead of tunics, which may have been
  made as in Western Asia by winding a piece of
  cloth around your waist and legs.
• Both men and women wore blue and green eyeshadow
  and black kohl eyeliner, when they were dressed
  up.
• Men wore their hair short, and had no beards or
  mustaches, while women wore their hair down to
  their shoulders. Both men and women wore gold
  jewelry if they could afford to.

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Agriculture

• The ancient Egyptian economy was based on
  farming. Farmers had to give 3/5 of their crops
  to the pharoah as a tax.
• Farming land was called "black land for crops."
  Irrigation was VERY important for farming.
  Without irrigation, farming would have been
  impossible in the desert of ancient Egypt.
• Irrigation is watering dry land by using streams,
  canals -- even by carrying water back and forth
  in skin bags. The Egyptians were the first to use
  irrigation methods. Flooding of the Nile was
  important for growing crops. Farmers worked by
  the rise and fall of the Nile in a yearly cycle.
• They never needed fertilizers because the flood
  soil was so rich. The Egyptians believed that
  when Osiris, the god of death and rebirth, was
  dead, the river was low, but when Osiris was
  alive, the Nile river would overflow.
• Farming jobs included watering, plowing and
  sowing. Egypt's most important export crop was
  cotton.

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The Shaduf
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• Early Egyptian Boats
• Boats were a big part of both travel and trade in
  Ancient Egypt because of the Nile River. There
  were many different kinds of boats, but the first
  boats were made of papyrus reeds. The reeds were
  bound with papyrus rope, which is made from reed
  fibers. This boat wasnt in style forever. By
  3200 BC, timber was being imported from Lebanon
  to build wooden ships instead.
• They had ferries so people without boats could
  cross the Nile. These ferries carried people and
  goods across and along the river.
• Royal boats allowed the pharaoh and his family to
  ride in style. A huge canopy protected the royal
  family from the sun and people staring at them.
• The Egyptians even had cattle boats. These boats
  had wide flat decks for the cattle. The farmers
  would do almost anything to protect their cattle
  because their cattle was where most of their
  money came from.

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• Seagoing boats had to be bigger and stronger than
  riverboats, but they had almost the exact same
  basic design. Sea boats were usually made of
  cedar wood and called "Byblos-Boats."
• Egyptians did not travel often because they were
  suspicious of other places and thought it better
  to stay right at home.
• They were afraid that they would die in another
  place and not get the proper burial, leaving them
  unprepared for the Afterlife.
• The Egyptians needed to travel so they could
  trade for things like gold, silver, copper, and
  other precious stones and metals. They also
  needed to travel to trade for strange animals
  like panthers, giraffes, monkeys, and lots of
  other things and animals.

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Writing

• The ancient Egyptians believed that it was
  important to record and communicate information
  about religion and government. Thus, they
  invented written scripts that could be used to
  record this information.
• The most famous of all ancient Egyptian scripts
  is hieroglyphic. However, throughout three
  thousand years of ancient Egyptian civilization,
  at least three other scripts were used for
  different purposes.
• Using these scripts, scribes were able to
  preserve the beliefs, history and ideas of
  ancient Egypt in temple and tomb walls and on
  papyrus scrolls.

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http//www.ancientegypt.co.uk/writing/explore/main
.html
55

• http//www.greatscott.com/hiero/

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Literature

• Writing in Egypt goes back to pretty much the
  earliest writing anywhere. Nobody really knows
  yet whether the Egyptians figured out how to
  write for themselves, or whether they learned it
  from the Sumerians, who also began writing about
  the same time, about 3000 BC.
• The Egyptian form of writing, hieroglyphs, does
  not look the same or work the same as the
  Sumerian form of writing, cuneiform. So if they
  did get the idea from the Sumerians, the
  Egyptians certainly changed it a lot.
• What we have left of Egyptian writing, like
  Egyptian art, mostly comes out of tombs. Because
  of this, most of what we have left is prayers
  (because that is the kind of thing you put in
  people's tombs).
• Other writing like laws, letters to your mom, and
  lists of who gave their fair share to the temple
  mostly has rotted away, over the years.
• We don't know whether the Egyptians wrote novels
  or stories, but if they did then these stories
  have also rotted away. Probably they didn't write
  much literature, or some of it would have been
  saved.

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Building the Pyramids
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http//www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/pyr
amid_builder_game.shtml
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http//www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/mum
my_maker_game.shtml
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http//www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/com
plex_gallery.shtml
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Aerial View of Pyramids

• http//maps.google.com/