Thursday October 13, 2010

Pop Quiz: Label your map with the following

locations in the correct location
Mediterranean Sea 1st Cataract
Thebes (Luxor) Memphis
Upper Egypt Lower Egypt
2nd Cataract 3rd Cataract
Red Sea Nile River
Nile Delta
 Egyptian Civilization
• Religious beliefs about gods, values
and life after death affected the daily
lives of ancient Egyptians. In addition,
scribes used one of the world’s earliest
forms of writing to record information
and scholars and artists made
advances in science, art and literature.
 Religion Shapes Life in
Ancient Egypt
• Much of what we know about Ancient
Egypt comes from inscriptions on
monuments and wall paintings from the
tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
• Like in Mesopotamia, Egypt has many
gods and goddess as well?
• Question One: What is it called when
you believe in more than one god?
 Chief Gods and Goddesses
• Amon-Re: the chief sun god of Egypt
– During the Old Kingdom, he was known as
Re
– During the Middle Kingdom, he was
associated with another name, Amon. So
they combined the two names together.
– The pharaohs, whom Egyptians viewed as
gods as well as kings, were believed to
receive their right to rule from Amon-Re
• Osiris - God of the Afterlife, underworld and
the dead
– He also was the god of the Nile, thus he controlled
the annual flood of the Nile.
• Isis - Goddess of motherhood, magic and
fertility
– Both she and Osiris promised those who were
faithful to them that they would have life after death.
• Set - God of darkness, storms, desert, chaos
• Horace - God of the Sky
• Anubis - God of mummification
• QUESTION TWO: What was the story about
how Osiris becomes the god of the afterlife?
 Akhenaton
• In 1380 B.C., a young pharaoh named Amenhotep IV
ascended to the throne.
– He ordered that all priests in Egypt to worship a minor god
known as Aton. The priests also had to remove the name of the
other gods from their temples.
– He also changed his name to Akhenaton which means “he who
serves Aton”.
• These radical weren’t accepted in Egypt.
– Priests, nobles and people all deserted Akhenaton because they
were either afraid of abandoning their old beliefs for radical new
ones or because he neglected his duty of defending the empire.
• Once Akhenaton died, so did his ideas of worshipping
Aton.
 Egyptian Afterlife
• The Egyptians believed that each soul had to pass a test to
win eternal life. This was a several step process:
– 1. The dead souls would be ferried across a lake of fire to the hall of
Osiris
– 2. The dead person’s heart would then be weighed against the
feather of truth
• Those who were judged to be sinners would be fed to the crocodile shaped
Eater of the Dead
• Those who were worthy would enter the Happy Field of Food, where they
would live forever in bliss.
• To help guide them on the journey into the afterlife, Egyptians
used what was called the Book of the Dead to aid them.
– It contained spells, charms and formulas for the dead to use in the
afterlife.
 Preparing for the Afterlife
• Egyptians were buried with everything that
they would need to live on in the afterlife -
from food to clothing to toys to weapons.
• To give the soul use of the body in the
afterlife, it was preserved or mummified.
• At first only pharaohs and nobles were
mummified, but eventually ordinary Egyptians
won the right to mummify their dead -
including their animals.
 King Tut’s Tomb
• Due to the amount of riches that the pharaohs of the New
Kingdom were buried with in the Valley of the Kings, they
were often targets of ancient grave robbers.
• But due to his father's mistrusted ways (his father was
Akhenaton), Tutankhamen along with all of the other rulers
from the Amarna dynasty were essentially erased from the
pages of Egyptian history.
• For almost 3,000 years, King Tut and the treasures of his
tomb were forgotten and remained untouched until 1922
when British archeologist Howard Carter discovered his
tomb.
– Over 5,000 items were taken out of King Tut’s tomb. Most of them
are on display in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
– Imagine just what might have been in Ramses II’s tomb would
have held if grave robbers hadn’t of taken the items.
 Egyptian Society
• Society in Ancient Egypt was pretty
much like a pyramid, with a class
system - from the pharaoh down to the
slaves.
• Most Egyptians were peasant farmers
who worked the land as well as working
for the pharaoh during the off season.
 Women in Egypt
• Women could inherit property, enter
business deals, buy and sell goods, go
to court and obtain a divorce.
• These were more rights than women in
other civilizations had at the time.
• Even with all these rights, very few
women learned how to right and write.
 Writing
• Along with the hieroglyphic writing, the Egyptians also
created two other types of writing
– The first was called Hieratic, which was simpler and easier
to use everyday. This was a cursive form of the
hieroglyphics that was created when the picture forms were
simplified.
– The second was called Demotic, which eventually replaced
Hieratic.
• Hieroglyphics were not able to be deciphered until the
1820s.
– A French scholar, Jean Champollion, was able to unravel
the mystery to the ancient text once he figured out that the
three passages on the Rosetta Stone all said the same
thing.
– The languages on the stone were hieroglyphics, Demotic
Script and Greek.
 Advances…
• Egyptians accumulated a great deal of knowledge in
the fields of medicine, astronomy and math
– In Medicine, the Egyptians learned a great deal about the
human body thanks in part to mummification. They would
also perform complex surgical operations.
– In Astronomy, they charted the movement of the stars and
planets which helped them to create a 12 month calendar
with 30 days each along with 5 extra days added at the
end of the year - giving us the 365 day calendar.
– In Math, they created Geometry to help measure their
fields and help in creating the pyramids and their other
massive temple structures.
 Egyptian Arts and Literature
• The arts included statues, wall paintings in
tombs, family life or religious ceremonies.
– Often the pharaoh was shown larger then the
other figures because of his status.
• The oldest Egyptian literature included hymns
and prayers to the gods.
– But other writings tell of royal victories in battle,
gave practical advice or even told folk tales