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ANCIENT EGYPT
Song Book
Age 5 – 11
©Words
and Music by Donna Minto
Lyrics Version
ANCIENT EGYPT
1. The Nile
2. Mummies
3. Mighty Pyramid
4. Hootin’ Rootin’ Tutankhamun!
5. Hieroglyphics
6. The Curse Of Tutankhamun
7. Building A Pyramid
8. The Sphinx
9. Toys And Games
10. Gods And Goddesses
1. The Nile
Chorus:
The Nile a mighty river,
The longest in the world.
Providing Egypt’s life force
As it slowly curls.
From Aswan in the south,
To Cairo in the north.
Making farm land fertile,
Bringing crops forth.
1. Heroditus said, and it is true:
“Egypt is the gift of the Nile”.
Without its water what could you do?
You’d be left with desert all the while.
2. Predicting the floods was hard to do.
Ancient Egypt thought out a plan.
The huge Nilometers gave a clue.
Was it feast or famine in the land?
Nilometer
2. Mummies
Get rid of all the moisture,
Taking forty days.
Internal organs are removed.
The brain it cannot stay.
Pack the body,
Cover it with natron, natural salt.
Then the coffin goes into a
sarcophagus,
that’s a vault.
Mummification,
Makes the body last.
Thousands of years later
We learn about the past.
3. Mighty Pyramid
Many years of strife.
All of Pharaoh’s life.
Building a grave.
Mighty Pyramid,
Where nobody would live,
But for all time the Pharaoh
Would unite with Re,
Great Sun God Re.
So many gods to please,
Pharaoh get on your knees.
Fill your great monument
With precious gold, silver,
jewels
and take your army.
For you may need to fight,
Before sun god Re unites.
The jackal, Anubis, will
Protect the dead.
4. Hootin’ Rootin’ Tutankhamun!
Chorus:
Hootin’, rootin’, tootin’ Tutankhamun.
Hootin’, rootin’, tootin’ Tutankhamun.
Born to be Pharaoh.
Died at an early age.
Then he was a mummy for a very long time.
1. One, three, three, six to one, three, two,
seven
B.C. equals long, long ago.
King at age nine, died at eighteen.
Buried in the Valley of the Kings you know.
2. He was discovered inside his tomb.
Nineteen twenty two was the date.
There was so much treasure inside.
All the archaeologists thought it was great.
5. Hieroglyphics
Chorus:
Hieroglyphics, Egyptian writing.
It has been around five thousand
years.
Using almost seven hundred
signs,
Scribes all wrote and made it
clear.
1. Painted on wood or papyrus.
Carved on stone or clay.
From the symbols we can decipher
What the hieroglyphics say.
2. One slab of stone from Rosetta,
Found there by the French.
Jean Francois Champollion
Figured out what it all meant.
The Rosetta
Stone
6. The Curse Of Tutankhamun!
Chorus:
What could be worse than an ancient curse?
“Death comes on wings to he who enters Pharaoh’s tomb.”
Did Lord Carnarvon simply die
Or was he cursed and met his doom?
1. At the opening of the tomb
There were twenty six in total present
there.
But within a decade, six had died,
Some a quite unusual death.
2. Only two who watched the
Sarcophagus being opened
Died within ten years.
Many of the people most involved,
Lived into old age that’s clear.
7. Building a Pyramid
Work, work, work, work.
Work, work, work, work.
1. Building in the sun
Is hard for everyone,
Working on a pyramid.
Logs to roll along,
Great big blocks of stone.
That’s what the Egyptians did.
2. All the working men
Were put in teams of ten,
Under foreman’s watchful eye.
Working from a camp,
Using earthen ramps,
Building up towards the sky.
3. Giza’s Pyramid,
The biggest one there is,
Built to please the sun god Re.
It took twenty years,
Blood and sweat and tears,
And two million stones they say.
Work, work, work, work.
Work, work, work, work.
Work, work, work until it’s done!
8. The Sphinx
Chorus:
The sphinx is enigmatic, full of mystery.
A lion with a Pharaoh’s head from long ago in history.
1. It didn’t look so grand,
Buried in the sand,
Only pharaoh’s head was seen.
In nineteen twenty five,
People did arrive,
They had to intervene.
2. The limestone of the sphinx,
Suffered from a jinx,
Germs were carried in the air.
Pollution overload,
Caused it to erode,
They should have left it there.
Chorus:
The sphinx……
Chorus:
The sphinx ......
9. Toys and Games
1. Inside Tutankhamun’s tomb was a game of senet.
Thirty squares on a board.
What score could you get I wonder?
Images could stand for perils or advantages,
In the struggle getting to the kingdom of Osiris.
2. Ball games were a popular pastime for Egyptians.
Leaping high in the air,
Sometimes piggy back position.
Balls were made of clay and sometimes filled with little seeds.
When you threw them they would rattle, might help you succeed.
3. In the game of snake the board looked like a coiled serpent.
Small stone balls, sometimes carved
With the names of Egypt’s Pharaohs.
Move the balls around the board, if you want to enter.
Now to win you must make sure you’re first one to the centre.
4. Khuzza Lawizza is known nowadays as leap frog.
Children had wooden toys,
Cats and dogs and other creatures.
Storytellers told of magical enchantment.
Boys had soldiers, girls had dolls to give them their amusement.
10. Gods and Goddesses
Chorus:
Many gods in Egyptian life
To help each day, to keep you safe
And protect you from strife.
All these gods were to keep you from 2. Thoth the Moon God, Ibis for a
harm.
head,
They had the heads of animals
Beak a crescent moon shape.
But were often drawn in human form. So the bird became the symbol
Thoth,
1. Scarab beetles symbolized Khepri, God of wisdom and of healing
Sun God in the morning.
too.
By the evening he became Atum,
Or he could be Re Harakhty too.
3. Tawaret the hippopotamus,
God of all the children.
Sekhmet had a lionesses head.
Vengeance was her job so please
take care!
4. Khnum, the ram’s head,
God of all the Nile,
Always spoke to Hapy.
Every year the flooding of the Nile
Was arranged by Khnum and Hapy
too.
5. Amun Re was King of all the gods
And protected Pharaoh.
Chorus:
Akhenaten banished all the rest.
Many gods in Egyptian life
Tutankhamun brought them back once
To help each day, to keep you
more.
safe
And protect you from strife.
All these gods were to keep you
from harm.
They had the heads of animals
But were often drawn in human
form.