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Ancient Egypt Unit
Grade 10 Social Studies
Mr. McLaughlin
Unit Outline:
• Egypt: Land of the Pharaohs
– Historical Overview
– Government
• Society and Culture
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Religion
Social Organization
Everyday Life
Urban and Rural Living
The Economy
The Arts
The Sciences
Definitions – Please search the text book for
the answers to these definitions (74-121)
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Wadis
Dynasty
Hieroglyphics
Monarchy
Pharaoh
Nomes
Nomarch
Polytheistic
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Ankh
Mummification
Corvee Duty
Polygamy
Hieratic
Demotic
Secular
Religious Cults
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.
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.
~Quiz~
• Define the following
words: (6)
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Wadis
Nomarch
Polytheistic
Polygamy
Hieratic
Ankh
• Would this picture be
considered ‘black land’ or
‘red land’? Why? (4)
Ancient Egypt – The British Museum
http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/geography/explore/main.html
Egyptian Oasis
http://www.egypttreasures.gov.eg/oasis_main.html
Oasis definitions and pictures from
Egypt.
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.
• 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.”
The Kingdoms of Egypt
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.
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.
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.
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.
Assignment: Today’s class!
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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
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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?
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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
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.
Middle Kingdom con’t…
• 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.
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.
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.
Roman Control
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By the time of the Roman Julius Caesar, around 50 BC, the Ptolemies, the
Greek kings of Egypt, were much weaker than the Romans.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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.
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.
• 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.
Egyptian Justice and Law
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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 Ma’at pendant as their official badge. Ma’at 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.
~QUIZ~
Egypt: Society and Culture
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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.
• 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
pharaoh’s 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.
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.
Osiris
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.
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.
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
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.
http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/
• 3D Tomb Tour
• Valley of the Kings
Social Organizations
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.
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.
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.
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 world’s 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 baker’s
apprentice and work with him to learn how to be a baker.
Clothing/Cosmetics
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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.
Agriculture
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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.
The Shaduf
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 wasn’t 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.
• 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.
http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/writing/explore/main.html
http://www.greatscott.com/hiero/
Literature
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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.
Building the Pyramids
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/pyramid_builder_game.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/mummy_maker_game.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/complex_gallery.shtml
Aerial View of Pyramids
http://maps.google.com/