Download Egypt`s Religious, Intellectual, Technological, and Economic History

Ancient Egypt’s Religious, Intellectual, and Technological History
The entire life of Egypt was steeped in religion. Performing one’s role in the
order of things was an act of worship of a local god or gods, or of a deity that had risen in
the esteem of Egyptians to be worshipped across the land. Each god or goddess had a
temple that was first his or her dwelling place, but also a physical representation of
creation (the mound-out-of-chaos idea). Because religion permeated every aspect of life,
temples were community centers, too. Temples were major employers.
Not surprisingly, the largest temple complex ever built in world history is
Egyptian, the sixty-acre Temple of Karnak. This series of structures was added to by
several successive pharaohs beginning around 2000 BC. It lies on the east bank of the
Nile near the ancient capital of the Middle Kingdom, Thebes, and is dedicated to the king
of Egyptian gods, Amon. Amazingly, the Egyptians produced an idol that was so small it
could be carried about by one man, and that was their god-king. The little statuette was
surrounded by the 130 giant columns seen in the movie. Fifteen giant obelisks surround
these columns, and even at Amon’s temple polytheism crept in since these obelisks were
dedicated to Re, the sun god. Don’t be confused. Egyptians came up with new gods
throughout their entire ancient history. Particular gods rose and fell in esteem based on
the exploits of the pharaohs who came from the local regions associated with those gods.
As said earlier, Egyptians believed in the immortality of the soul but also of this
world, and life after death was thought to be a continuation of this life for eternity. If a
person lived a moral life, they proceeded through the underworld, yet with obstacles to
their passage. Osiris, the god of the underworld, and forty-two other judges asked each
soul questions and riddles. Anubis weighed the soul on scales against a feather, while
Thoth recorded the results. If your soul (heart) equaled the feather, you were permitted to
enter eternal bliss. The Book of the Dead is a document that described the afterlife and
provided maps of routes there. Unworthy souls who lost their way fell into hellish pits
where a beast, known as the Eater of the Dead, would devour them.
The origins of all these gods followed a particular pattern common to polytheistic
religions. Egyptians first worshipped animals like the lion and the crocodile, or gods that
took the forms of these formidable beasts. Then, forces of nature were declared gods,
like the sun. It is thought that once humans began to look around at all the amazing feats
they were accomplishing for these gods, anthropomorphic gods came to be. In other
words, men became impressed with themselves and created gods in their own image.
Some had human forms with the old animal worship lingering with heads of a falcon, a
jackal, an iris, or a baboon. Later gods were born that were merely portrayed as men.
Amon, interestingly, came to dominance as the Egyptians encountered Hebrews, and
before he was cast as a little idol, he was portrayed as breath or spirit. The word “amon”
means “hidden.”
As we have seen, the pharaohs took on special religious status in life and in death.
While ruling, pharaohs were considered to be Horus, the falcon god who could fly over
Egypt and view everything and everyone. Upon his death, a pharaoh changed into Osiris
and ruled the underworld. The new pharaoh became Horus. As the worship of Re
became popular among the elites, the pharaoh was considered to be the son of Re, the sun
god.
Other important religious beliefs included first and foremost the notion that the
gods had made the world and everything in it precisely how it should be. Egyptian life,
therefore, was fixed, eternal, and proper. There were distractions like war and disease,
but these were usually attributed to someone pushing against the established order. Here
is a clear philosophical ideal that stabilized life and contributed to the maintenance of the
culture. Another socially useful religious idea was that of maat, or the valuing of truth,
justice, and righteousness. Every person from pharaoh to peasant sought to be in tune
with maat, which was considered a quality of the created world, not of men. Look for
ideas like these in other long-lasting cultures. Do not expect to find them in cultures that
flourished only for a short time.
Since the souls of men were thought to hover near their bodies after death, a look
at mummification is important. While, stunningly, no written Egyptian records exist
describing mummification, Herodotus, a Greek historian, traveled in Egypt and recorded
some basics. The goal was to preserve the body for use in the afterlife, and only the
upper classes could afford the varying levels of mummification all the way up to the 4070-day process for pharaohs. Internal organs were removed, including the brain which
was scraped out through the nose. These were set aside for use in the afterlife, but
Egyptians viewed them as the source of decomposition and kept them separate.
The body was then washed ritually and treated with a series of spices that
essentially pickled it. As the body was wrapped in strips of cloth, the embalmers applied
frankincense, myrrh, cinnamon, pine resin, honey, beeswax, and cinnamon. Since the
soul had to be able to recognize the body, an attempt was made to preserve distinctive
facial features. Ramses the Great had to have his nose stuffed with peppercorns to
maintain its prominence. Eyes were often replaced with onions or stones, although
Ramses has his eyelids closed. As time went on, more and more segments of society
were able to purchase the services of embalmers. A recent archaeological find
discovered by a donkey stepping into a hole is the largest cache of mummies ever found.
This crypt lies in what is now referred to as the Valley of the Golden Mummies deep in
the desert near an oasis.
The religious climax of each year occurred at the day of the beginning of the
flood of the Nile River. Priests started the day at the Temple of Karnak as usual by
washing, dressing, and feeding Amon, the little statue. Then the god took his annual
journey in a special boat carried in a fantastic procession to the water. He was towed
upstream a ways, then deposited at another temple where he spent a month and then went
home to Karnak. Remember, it was upon ceremonies like this one that the pharaohs
based their entire power. They used that power to harness annual labor contracts from
their millions of citizens, and the results were the biggest temple complex, the pyramids,
and the first empire in the world.
The Great Pyramid is a fitting transition from religion to technical and economic
achievements. Again, all pyramids were designed to be the tomb of the pharaoh
constructing them as well as a monument to his greatness. The one female pharaoh did
not build a pyramid, but she did build a temple. Hatshepsut called her temple the
Sublime of the Sublimes which is considered to be the most beautiful temple in Egypt
and is being completely restored by the government. The male pharaohs who built
pyramids also built temples at the foot of their pyramids. These construction projects,
though, were not just for the pharaohs. Historians have determined they were giant
public works welfare programs, too. Perhaps that is why Egyptians were comfortable
laboring on these structures as their religious duty, because they were well-fed while
working.
Back to the Great Pyramid, the Wonder of the World built by Cheops of the 4th
Dynasty. Cheops employed 100,000 workers three months of each year during the yearly
idle time after the harvest. He fed, clothed, and housed the workers near the construction
site in Giza. Ten years were spent just building the road that led from the Nile to the site.
Then the real construction began and lasted for twenty years. Engineers leveled the base
with a simple technique using water trenches, string, and rods. 2.5 million blocks of
stone averaging 2.5 tons in weight were then moved to the site, up temporary ramps, and
levered into place. Exactly how this was done remains a mystery even though an
architectural engineer came out the summer of 2007 with yet another theory.
Once the 481-foot summit was reached, workers smoothed the sides and removed
the ramps on the way down. The Great Pyramid’s base is 756 feet on a side and almost
perfectly square. It sits on approximately thirteen acres of land. A wonderful piece of
understatement is found in an inscription on the pyramid itself. Cheops recorded in stone
that he spent 1,600 talents of silver on radishes, onions, and garlic for the workers. Those
are just the flavorings of the food necessary to keep the workers happy and healthy. No
structure this high could ever again be afforded to be built by any means by any people
until the invention of the steel skyscraper of twentieth-century America (a late-medieval
cathedral reached over 500 feet, then collapsed).
Which is more important, a pyramid or a hieroglyph? What about when
hieroglyphs ceased being merely pictographic and became phonetic? Egyptians selected
24 hieroglyphs to stand for 24 different consonant sounds, added a few blended
consonants, and therefore approached having an alphabet (they never made it to vowels).
Their writing took on the form of some of our children’s games where I might convey the
word “beagle” by drawing a picture of a bee and an eagle. The intellectual achievements
of this ancient people could then be extended to literature including poetry, prose, myths,
and even historical romance (The Story of Sinuhe).
As writing developed, so did arithmetic. Their findings in astronomy,
engineering, and other abstract disciplines are all the more incredible considering their
math consisted of only addition and subtraction and never included a zero. They
multiplied, divided, and used fractions in a complex system of doubling of numbers as
many times as it took to get the answer in a way you’re going to have to find a math
teacher to explain. They could compute area and volume of simple shapes, notably a
pyramid, and approached 3.16 for ∏. The pyramids were so accurately laid out with this
math that they depart only a fraction of an inch from a true square! And using the stars
they oriented the Great Pyramid so that its faces point almost exactly north, south, east,
and west!
As Egyptian astronomy developed, they based their calendar on the sun rather
than on the Nile or on the moon like the Babylonians. They pinned down the 24-hour
day with a water clock which remained the most accurate timepiece until the invention of
the mechanical clock in medieval Europe. On top of this, the Egyptians published the
world’s first medical textbook which described what to do with 48 different types of
injuries. Egyptians seem to have invented splints, casts, sutures, and clamps. In more
general works, they reveal the discovery that castor oil is a laxative and catalogued so
many herbal remedies that their accomplishments are the basis of modern Western
medicine.
In war, Egyptians used chariots (that they borrowed from the Hittites) on land and
warships at sea. Foot soldiers and sailors fired arrows from bows made of wood and
animal horn with strings of sinew. Bronze daggers, axes, and scimitars were lethal for
close-in fighting. With these tools and tactics, Egyptians conquered, expanded the
empire, acquired slaves, and grew wealthy and fat, but also incited envy.
Assyrians and Lydians vied for imperial power with Egypt. Then Persians, then
Greeks, then Romans, then Christians, then Arab Muslims, then Turks, then the French,
and then the British dominated the Nile Valley until the twentieth century when Egypt
became independent again. It is fitting that when Napoleon drew up his soldiers in battle
array just before the Battle of the Pyramids that he steeled them with the words,
“Soldiers, from the summit of yonder pyramids, forty centuries look down upon you!”
We know what Napoleon said because someone wrote it down on a piece of paper, in
Egypt.