Download Land of the Pharaohs - Cuyahoga Falls City School District

Land of the Pharaohs
Miss Lynch
6th Grade Social Studies
Chapter 4 Lesson 2 in the World text
The Big Picture
The Big Picture
 Farming towns grew into small cities.
 These communities created rules to promote peace and
fairness. These rules were created and enforced by the village
leaders.
 Along the Nile River in Egypt, groups of villages joined
together under the leadership of kings.
Union of Two Crowns
Egypt Joins Together
Union of Two Crowns
 Along the Nile, farmers were producing surplus crops and
developing new technology to make tools, pottery, and
jewelry. This led to an increase in trade.
Egyptians Join Together
 There was also terror and fear. Ruins of walls around early
towns and paintings of bloody battle scenes that there were
many wars between villages.
 To protect themselves, the people banded together into two
separate kingdoms.
Union of Two Crowns- Egyptians Join
Together
 Towns in Upper Egypt (which were located in the south)
supported a king who wore a white crown.
 Towns in Lower Egypt (which were located in the north)
followed a king who wore a red crown.
 In 3100 BC, Menes (King of Upper Egypt) lead forces and
they swept north into the Nile Delta.
 Here his army overthrew the king of Lower Egypt.
 To show his victory, he wore a double crown.
 This crown stood for the unification which is the joining
of separate parts into one.
Union of Two Crowns- Egyptians Join
Together
 Menes became the 1st pharaoh of Egypt.
 The word pharaoh means “great palace” which is where the
rulers lived.
 It later became the name of all rulers of Egypt.
Life in the Old Kingdom
Government Under the Pharaohs
Religion in Egypt
Egypt’s Economy
Life in the Old Kingdom
 At first, Egypt’s pharaoh did not greatly change the civilization
that they ruled. Over time, though, the pharaoh became the
center of the civilization.
Government Under the Pharaohs
 After unification, the most powerful leaders were made area
governors. They were in charge of collecting taxes and served as
local judges. They also made sure that flood waters were shared
among farmers through the use of canals and storage pools.
 The governors reported to the pharaoh’s headquarters in
Memphis, Egypt’s capital. Memphis was located between Upper
and Lower Egypt, near present-day Cairo.
Life in the Old Kingdom- Religion in
Egypt
 The pharaoh had great political and religious powers.
 Egyptians believed that the pharaoh was a child of their sun god,
Ra.
 They believed that Ra gave life to Earth and that the pharaoh
gave life to Egypt and its people.
 Egyptians worshipped both Ra and the pharaoh.
 Ra was the most important god to the Egyptians. They had
more than one god and believed each one had a different
role.
 Osiris was the god of the dead. He was important because
the belief in afterlife was central to the religion of Egypt.
Life in the Old Kingdom- Religion in
Egypt
 Egyptians believed that after a person died, he or she would
go to the “Next World.”
 They also believed that the dead could take food and objects to
the “Next World.
 This is why food and belongings were buried with the dead
 The Egyptians preserved the bodies of the dead royalty with a
process called mummification.
 The bodies were dried and wrapped with strips of cloth.
Life in the Old Kingdom- Egypt’s
Economy
 Since the pharaoh was considered a god, all things in Egypt
belonged to the pharaoh. This put the pharaoh at the center
of the economy.
 The economy of a country is the way its people manage money
and resources for the production of goods and services.
 Egypt’s economy was based on agriculture. Farmers
produced a surplus of food which fed the whole country.
 The pharaoh collected a large part of every family’s crops each
year as taxes.
 The crops collected were used to feed the pharaoh’s family and servants.
Life in the Old Kingdom- Egypt’s
Economy
 The pharaoh also took taxes on everything else made in
Egypt, such as leather goods, linen cloth and baskets.
 The pharaoh also taxed people’s time.
 During the flood season, Egyptians were called upon to build
canals or buildings for the government.
 Craftworkers and artists depended on the pharaoh for jobs.
 Their job was to make things for the temples.
 Egyptians “paid” for things by:
 Trading things
 Government paid for supplies
A System of Writing
Life of a Scribe
Writing on Paper
A Key to a Lost Language
A System of Writing
 A system of writing, hieroglyphics, was developed to allow the
pharaoh’s government to keep track of all its business details.
 Government would report back to the pharaoh if people were not
paying taxes.
 System of writing was developed sometime before unification.
 This system was called hieroglyphics and was made up of approx. 800
– 1000 pictures or symbols called hieroglyphs.
 Some hieroglyphics stood for objects and some stood for sounds, such as “s”
 Hieroglyphics are the reason we know so much about the lives of
ancient Egyptians.
A System of Writing- Life of a Scribe
 Pharaohs depended on written records to keep their
government in order.
 The writers were called scribes.
 They traveled throughout Egypt to keep records of details great
and small.
 They went out into the fields to record how much grain a
farmer harvested.
 They also determined how much farmers would owe the
government.
 Scribes also drafted letters and marriage contracts.
A System of Writing- Life of a Scribe
 Writing was only taught to a few people which meant that
scribes were highly respected.
 Only boys could become scribes and began their training at
10 years old.
 In school they chanted passages to improve their reading skills
and spent hours writing out stories over and over.
 If their attention wandered, they ran the risk of being beaten.
 Junior scribes used broken pottery as their “scrap paper.”
A System of Writing- Writing on Paper
 After the boys mastered a simple type of hieroglyphics, they
were allowed to write on papyrus, which is a reed plant that
grows along the Nile.
 Ancient Egyptians used these reeds to make papyrus, which is a
type of paper.
 The English word “paper” comes from papyrus.
 They used sharpened reeds as pens. They dipped their pens
in red or black ink.
 Two skills that a scribe had to have were:
 Good penmanship and good at math
A System of Writing- A Key to a Lost
Language
 By AD 400, hieroglyphics fell out of use and their meaning
was lost.
 The ancient symbols that were found were a mystery to the
people who found them.
 In 1799 a French soldier was digging in the town of Rosetta.
There, he found a large, black, stone with writing on it. It
contained a passage written three times, in hieroglyphics,
Greek, and demotic.
 By comparing these languages, the mystery of the hieroglyphics
was solved.
Building the Pyramids
Building the Pyramids
 The most challenging thing for the scribes to keep track of
was the building of pyramids.
 These stone structures were built as tombs, or burial places for
pharaohs.
 The Great Pyramid is the Old Kingdom's most spectacular
monument.
 It’s the biggest of all pyramids built in Egypt’s history.
 Pharaoh Khufu ordered its construction and was buried inside
with his belongings that he would take into the afterlife.
Building the Pyramids
 The project took 20 years and many people (100,000) were
forced to help build it.
 A lot of taxes were used to feed and clothe the workers.
 The landscapes of the Nile River was changed too.
 Entire cliffs of stone were cut into blocks to build this monument.
Why it Matters?
Why it Matters?
 Khufu was not the only pharaoh who demanded building
projects.
 These projects caused the following things to happen:
 Took a toll on the economy.
 Angered people.
 Egypt’s unity started to break down. Local governments
began resisting the orders of the pharaoh.
Why it Matters?
 Leaders in Upper Egypt revolted and set up a new pharaoh.
 They created a new capital located in Thebes.
 This division in Egypt brought an end to the Old Kingdom.
 This breakdown led to a rise in greater civilization.
 The pharaohs learned from their mistakes and stopped building
pyramids.
Main Ideas
Main Ideas
 Menes united the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt to
form the largest government in the world at that time.
 The pharaoh was central to Egypt’s government, economy,
and religion.
 The writing system of Egypt, called hieroglyphics, provided a
way for government workers to communicate over long
distances.
 Ordinary people worked to build huge, government building
projects like the Great Pyramid.
 This strained both Egypt's economy and its people.