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Chapter 2
Ancient Egypt
• Without the Nile River, Egypt would be just the
desert that surrounds the river.
• The Nile River rises in the highlands of Ethiopia
and the lakes of central Africa. Every spring the
rains in this region send water down from the
streams that feed the Nile.
• In ancient times, the Egyptians eagerly awaited
the annual flood. It soaked the land with much
needed water and deposited a layer of rich silt.
• The people had to cooperate to control the
Nile’s floods.
• Under the direction of early governmnet, they
built dikes, reservoirs, and irrigation ditches to
channel the rising river and to store water for
the dry season.
• Ancient Egypt had two distinct regions:
1. Upper Egypt in the south
2. Lower Egypt in the north
– Upper Egypt stretched from the Nile’s first
waterfall to within 100 miles of the
Mediterranean Sea, where it forms the Nile
Delta (delta is a triangular area of
marshland formed by deposits of silt at the
mouth of some rivers.)
• About 3100 BC, Menes, the king of Upper Egypt,
united the 2 regions.
• Menes founded Egypt’s first capital at Memphis,
a site where the Nile empties into its delta.
• Menes and his successors used the Nile as a
highway linking the North and South. They could
send officials or armies to towns along the river.
Thus, the Nile River helped make Egypt one of
the world’s first unified states.
3 main periods of
ancient Egyptian history:
1. Old Kingdon (2575-2130 BC):
– During this period, Egyptian rulers, called pharaohs,
organized a strong, centralized state.
– Pharaohs held absolute power and played key roles in
government and religion.
– Egyptians belived each pharaoh was a both god and
human. They were expected to behave morally and
were judged for their deeds.
– Pharaohs ruled through a bureaucracy and depended
on a vizier, or chief minister, to supervise the
government.
Old Kingdom
– Under the vizier, various departments looked after tax
collection, farming, and the all-important irrigation
system.
– During the Old Kingdom, pharaohs built many
necropolises, or cemetaries, containing pyramids in the
areas surrounding Memphis.
– Today the best known are the Great Pyramids at Giza.
– Tombs within the pyramids were thought to be homes
in which the deceased lived forever.
– Egyptians preserved the dead bodies and provided
them with everything they would need in the afterlife.
2. Middle Kingdom (1938-1630BC):
– Power struggles, crop failure and the cost of building
the pyramids all contributed to the collapse of the
Old Kingdom. After more than a century of disunity,
new pharaohs reunited the land and ushered in a
new era.
– The Middle Kingdom was a turbulent period.
• The Nile did not rise like it had in the past.
• Corruption and rebellions were common.
Middle Kingdom
– About 1700 BC, foreign invaders called the Hyksos
occupied the Nile Delta region.
– The Hyksos took over the governance of Egypt but
there was little conflict between the new rulers and
the Egyptian people.
– The Hyksos brought horse-drawn war chariots to
Egypt and the Egyptians mastered this new military
technology.
– The Hyksos were impressed by Egyptian civilization.
They soon adopted Egyptian customs, beliefs and
even names.
– After more than 100 years of Hyksos rule, new
Egyptian leaders arose and established a new era.
3. New Kingdom (1539-1075 BC):
A number of new, ambitious and powerful
pharaohs created a large empire.
– At its height in 1450 BC, the Egyptian empire reached
as far north as Syria and the Euphrates River.
– The era proved to be an age of conquest that brought
Eqyptians into greater contace with peoples in SW
Asia and other parts of Africa.
– Egypt’s first female ruler named Hatshepsut came to
power and exercised all the rights of a pharaoh.
• She encouraged trade along the Red Sea coast of Africa and
with eastern Mediterranean lands.
New Kingdom
– Hatshepsut’s stepson, Thutmose III, took over as
pharaoh once he reached adulthood.
– He was a great military general and he stretched
Egypt’s borders to their greatest extent ever.
– Much later, Ramses II became pharaoh and he
continued to extend the empire.
– He is one of the best known Egyptian rulers
because he boasted of his conquests on numerous
temples and monuments.
New Kingdom
– During the reign of Ramses, Egypt fought a number of
fierce battles with the Hittites of Asia Minor.
– After years of fighting, they signed a peace treaty, the
first such document in history known to have
survived.
– After 1100 BC, Egyptian power slowly declined.
Invaders such as the Assyrians and the Persians took
control of the Nile region.
– In 332 BC, the last Egyptian dynasty ended as the
Greeks took control.
Egyptian Religion
• Chief gods and goddesses:
– The chief god of Egypt was the sun god.
– During the Old Kingdom the sun god was named
Re (ray).
– By the Middle Kingdom, Egyptians associated Re
with another god named Amon and they called
this great lord of the gods Amon-Re.
– The pharaohs were believed to receive their right
to rule from Amon-Re.
Egyptian Religion
• Most Egyptians related to the god Osiris and the
goddess Isis.
• According to mythology, Osiris ruled Egypt until
his jealous brother, Set, killed him, cut him up
into little pieces and tossed them all over Egypt.
• Osiris’ wife, Isis, saved him by reassembling his
body and bringing him back to life.
• Because Osiris could no longer rule over the
living, he became god of the dead and judge of
souls seeking admission into the afterlife.
• To Egyptians Osiris was especially important
because, in addition to ruling over the
underworld, he was the god of the Nile.
• In that role, Osiris controlled the annual flood
that made the land fertile.
• Isis had special appeal for women, who believed
that she had first taught women to grind corn,
spin flax, weave cloth, and care for children.
• Like Osiris, Isis promised the faithful that they
would have life after death.
• About 1380 BC, a young pharaoh named
Amenhotep IV challenged the powerful priests of
Amon-Re.
• He devoted his life to the worship of Aton, a
minor god.
• The pharaoh took the name Akhenaton, meaning
“he who serves Aton.”
• He ordered priests to worship only Aton and to
remove the names of other gods from their
temples.
• Akhenaton’s radical ideas were not successful.
The priests and the people resisted the change.
• Belief in the after life affected all Egyptians, from the
highest noble to the lowest peasant.
• The Egyptians believed that each soul had to pass a
test to win eternal life.
• First, the dead soul would be ferried across a lake of
fire to the hall of Osiris.
• Then, the dead person’s heart would be weighed
against the feather of truth.
• Those Osiris judged to be sinners would be fed to the
crocodile-shaped Eater of the Dead.
• Worthy souls would enter the Happy Field of Food,
where they would live forever in bliss.
• To survive the dangerous jouney through the
underworld, Egyptians relied on the Book of the
Dead. It contained spells, charms and formulas for
the dead to use in the afterlife.
• Egyptians believed the afterlife would be much
like life on Earth.
• As a result, they buried their dead with
everything they would need for eternity.
• To give a sould use of its body in the afterlife,
Egyptians perfected skills in mummification,
the preservation of dead bodies by embalming
them and wrapping them in cloth.
• In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter
discovered the tomb of the young pharaoh
Tutankhamen (King Tut), who was the son-inlaw of Akhenaton.
• The body of the 18 year old pharaoh had been
placed in a solid gold coffin, nested with richly
decorated outer coffins.
• The treasures in his tomb included chariots,
weapons, furniture, jewelry, toys and games.
Egyptian Class System
1. Pharaoh and royal family
2. Government officials, high priests and
priestesses (who served the gods and
goddesses)
3. Merchants, scribes and artisans (tiny class who
provided the needs for the rich and powerful)
4. Peasants who worked the land (largest group)
– Many of these were slaves who worked the fields. In
the off-season, they were expected to serve the
pharaoh building temples, palaces and tombs.
• During the New Kingdom, trade offered new
opportunities to the growing merchant class.
• Foreign conquests brought riches to Egypt,
which in turn meant more business for
artisans.
• Egyptian women enjoyed a higher status and
greater independence than women elsewhere
in the ancient world.
• Under Egyptian law women could inherit
property, enter business deals, buy and sell
goods, go to court, and obtain a divorce.
• Also, a woman’s work was not confined to the
home.
• Scribes played a central role in Egyptian
society. Some kept records of ceremonies,
taxes, and gifts. Others served government
officials or the pharaoh. Scribes acquired skills
in mathematics, medicine, and engineering.
• Hieroglyphics was a system of writing in which
symbols or pictures called hieroglyphs
represented objects, concepts, or sounds.
• The Egyptians used hieroglyphs to record
important economic, administrative, and royal
information.
• Scribes developed hieratic writing, a simpler
script for everyday use. Hieratic was a cursive
form of writing created by simplifying the shapes
of the hieroglyphs.
• Overtime, hieratic script was replaced by a similar
form of writing called demotic.
• The Egyptians also learned to make paperlike
writing material from papyrus, a plant that
grows along the banks of the Nile River.
• Writing cursive scripts with reed pens and ink
on the smooth surface of papyrus strips was
much easier than chiseling words onto stone.
• Jean Champollion
• Rosetta Stone
• Advancements in medicine, science and
mathematics