Post by Pharaoh Sabé on Jan 1, 2008 7:52:23 GMT -5
Overview
Ancient Egypt was a civilization in northern East Africa concentrated along the middle to lower reaches of the Nile River that reached its greatest extent in the second millennium BC during the New Kingdom. It stretched from the Nile Delta in the north to as far south as Jebel Barkal, located at the Fourth Cataract of the Nile in modern-day Sudan. The fluid geographic range of ancient Egypt also included, at different times, areas of the southern Levant, the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea coastline, the Sinai Peninsula, and the oases of the Western desert.
The civilization of ancient Egypt was based on balanced control of natural and human resources under the leadership of the pharaoh, religious leaders, and court administrators. It was notable for many innovations: controlled irrigation of the fertile Nile Valley, mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of literature and an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions in east and central Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, and finally, military ventures that defeated foreign enemies and asserted Egyptian dominance throughout the region. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of the divine pharaoh who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people by means of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.
Administration and commerce
The pharaoh was the absolute monarch of the country and, at least in theory, wielded complete control of the land and its resources. The king was also the supreme military commander, responsible for all military and policy decisions. The king relied on a bureaucracy of officials to manage his affairs, and in charge of the administration was his second in command, the vizier. The vizier acted as the king's representative and coordinated land surveys, the treasury, building projects, the legal system, and the archives. At a local level, the country was divided into administrative regions called nomes which, by the late period, had reached 42 in number. Each nome's governor, called a nomarch, was accountable to the vizier for his jurisdiction. The temples formed the backbone of the economy and were not only houses of worship, but were also responsible for collecting and storing the nation's wealth in a system of granaries and treasuries. From these central storage facilities, administered by overseers, grain and goods could be distributed to the populace.
Egyptian society was highly stratified, and social status was expressly displayed. Farmers made up the bulk of the population, but agricultural produce was owned directly by the state, temple, or noble family that owned the land.[34] Most of the population did not have freedom of movement or a free choice of career. Farmers were also subject to a labor tax and were required to work on irrigation or construction projects in a corvée system. Artists and craftsmen were of higher status than farmers, but they were also under state control, working in the shops attached to the temples and paid directly from the state treasury. Scribes and officials formed the upper class in ancient Egypt, prominently displaying their social status in art and literature. Slavery was known in ancient Egypt, but the extent and prevalence of its practice are unclear.
The economy was centrally organized and strictly controlled. Although the ancient Egyptians did not use coinage, money was known in other forms: standard sacks of grain and the deben, a mass of roughly 91 grams, formed a common denominator. Laborers were paid in grain; a laborer might earn 5½ sacks (191 kg) of grain per month while a foreman might earn 7½ sacks (261 kg). Prices were fixed across the country and recorded in lists to facilitate trading; for example a shirt might cost five copper deben, while a cow might cost 140 deben. Grain could be traded for other goods, according to the fixed price list, but since it could not be kept indefinitely, the grain money system had a de facto negative interest attached to it.
Legal system
The head of the legal system in ancient Egypt was officially the pharaoh, who was responsible for proclaiming laws, delivering justice, and maintaining law and order, a concept the ancient Egyptians referred to as Ma'at. Though no legal codes from ancient Egypt survive, the many extant court documents of the period show that Egyptian law was based on a common-sense view of right and wrong that emphasized reaching agreements and resolving conflicts rather than strictly adhering to a complicated set of statutes.
The ancient Egyptians viewed men and women, including people from all social classes except slaves, as essentially equal under the law, and even the lowliest peasant was entitled to petition the vizier and his court for redress. Both men and women had the right to own and sell property, make contracts, marry and divorce, receive inheritance, and pursue legal disputes in court. Married couples could own property jointly and protect themselves from divorce by agreeing to marriage contracts, which stipulated the financial obligations of the husband to his wife and children should the marriage end.
Local councils of elders, known as Kenbet in the New Kingdom, were responsible for ruling in court cases involving small claims and minor disputes, although the Kenbet's ability to enforce its rulings was limited. Local Kenbets deferred serious or complicated cases involving murder, major land transactions, and tomb robbery to the Great Kenbet, over which the vizier or pharaoh presided. Plaintiffs and defendants were expected to represent themselves in legal matters and were required to swear an oath to an Egyptian deity that they had told the truth. In cases of tomb robbery or assassination plots, the state took on both the role of prosecutor and judge, and it could torture the accused with beatings to obtain a confession and the names of any co-conspirators. Whether the charges were trivial or serious, court scribes documented the complaint, testimony, and verdict of the case for future reference.
Punishment for minor crimes involved either imposition of fines, beatings, facial mutilation, or exile, depending on the severity of the offense. Serious crimes such as murder and tomb robbery were punished by execution, which was carried out by decapitation, drowning, or impaling the criminal on a stake. Punishment could also be extended to the criminal's family.
Agriculture
A combination of several favorable geographical features contributed to the success of the ancient Egyptian culture, the most important of which was the rich fertile soil resulting from annual inundations of the Nile river. The ancient Egyptians were thus able to produce an abundance of food, allowing the population to devote more time and resources to cultural, technological, and artistic pursuits. Land management was crucial in ancient Egypt because taxes were assessed based on the amount of land a person owned.
Farming in Egypt was dependent upon the cycle of the Nile River. The Egyptians recognized three seasons in their written records: Akhet (flooding), Peret (planting), and Shemu (harvesting). The flooding season lasted from June to September, depositing on the river's banks a layer of mineral-rich silt perfect for growing crops. After the floodwaters had receded, the growing season lasted from October to February. Farmers plowed and planted seeds in the fields, which were irrigated with ditches and canals. Egypt received little rainfall, so farmers relied on the Nile to water their crops. From March to May, farmers would use sickles to harvest their crops, which would then be threshed with a flail in order to separate the straw from the grain. Winnowing would remove the chaff from the grain, and the grain would then be ground into flour, brewed to make beer, or stored for later use.
The ancient Egyptians cultivated wheat, emmer, barley, and several other cereal grains, all of which were used to make the two main food staples of bread and beer. Flax plants, uprooted before they started flowering, were grown for the fibers of their stems. These fibers were split along their length and spun into thread, which was used to weave sheets of linen and to make clothing. Papyrus growing on the banks of the Nile River was used to make paper. Vegetables and fruits were grown in garden plots, close to habitations and on higher ground, and had to be watered by hand.
Natural Resources
Ancient Egypt was also rich in building and decorative stone, copper and lead ores, gold, and semiprecious stones; these natural resources allowed the ancient Egyptians to build monuments, sculpt statues, make tools, and fashion jewelry. They were so thorough in the search for gold that no new deposits have since been discovered in Egypt. Embalmers used salts from the Wadi Natrun for mummification, which also provided the gypsum needed to make plaster.
The ore-bearing rock formations of ancient Egypt were found in distant, inhospitable wadis of the eastern desert and the Sinai and required large, state-controlled expeditions to obtain the gold, copper ores, and decorative stones found there. The Wadi Hammamat was a notable source of granite, greywacke, and gold. Whenever possible, prisoners and slaves were forced into mining service, but Egyptian peasants were also conscripted for this unpleasant labor.
Flint was the first mineral collected and used to make tools, and flint handaxes are the earliest pieces of evidence of habitation in the Nile valley. Nodules of the mineral were carefully flaked to make blades and arrowheads of moderate hardness and durability even after copper was adopted for this purpose. The Egyptians worked deposits of the lead ore galena at Gebel Rosas to make net sinkers, plumb bobs, and small figurines. Copper was the most important metal for toolmaking in ancient Egypt and was smelted in furnaces from malachite ore mined in the Sinai. Workers collected gold by washing the nuggets out of sediment in alluvial deposits, or by the more labor-intensive process of grinding and washing gold-bearing quartzite. Iron deposits found in upper Egypt were utilized in the Late Period.
High-quality building stones were abundant in Egypt; the ancient Egyptians quarried limestone all along the Nile valley, granite from Aswan, and basalt and sandstone from the wadis of the eastern desert. Deposits of decorative stones such as porphyry, greywacke, alabaster, and carnelian dotted the eastern desert and were collected even before the First Dynasty. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, miners worked deposits of emeralds in Wadi Sikait and amethyst in Wadi el-Hudi.
Language
The Egyptian language belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language phylum and is related to the Semitic languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, as well as the Hamitic languages of North Africa, such as Berber and Cunutsic. Used continuously from before 3000 BC to the 11th century CE, ancient Egyptian was, at one point, the longest-surviving language in the world. The language underwent major changes in its pronunciation and usage over the course of history and was spoken in many dialects. The oldest stage of the language, Old Egyptian, was used until about 2100 BC, when it was gradually displaced by Middle Egyptian. By 1600 BC Late Egyptian began to develop and was used until about 600 BC. Demotic developed from Late Egyptian and survived until the 5th century CE; it was at one time commonly used alongside Coptic, the final phase of the language that was used from the 1st to the 11th century CE. A dialect of Coptic remained in use for services of the Coptic church and is still in limited use today.
Writing
The ancient Egyptian writing system is known as "hieroglyphic" (incorrectly termed "hieroglyphics") and is composed of some 500 symbols called hieroglyphs. There is no explanation for exactly how the system was devised, but it was suddenly adopted and developed shortly before 3000 BC. Each hieroglyph is a picture of a real thing—a bird, tool, or body part— and most of the common hieroglyphs correspond to a letter or letter combination in the alphabet. Words in the language are spelled out by stringing together the hieroglyphs whose sounds make up the word. Like the semitic languages, ancient Egyptian does not indicate vowels.
Hieroglyphs were a formal script, used on stone monuments and in tombs, that could be as detailed as individual works of art. In day-to-day writing, scribes used a cursive form of writing, called hieratic, which was quicker and easier. While formal hieroglyphs may be read in rows or columns in either direction, hieratic was always written from right to left, usually in horizontal rows. After Demotic became the dominant spoken language, a new form of writing, of the same name, became the prevalent writing style, and it is this form of writing—along with formal hieroglyphs—that accompany the Greek text on the Rosetta Stone.
Architecture
The architecture of ancient Egypt includes some of the most famous structures in the world: the Great Pyramids of Giza, Abu Simbel, and the temples at Thebes. All major building projects were organized and funded by the state, and they not only fulfilled religious, military, and commemorative purposes, but also reinforced the power and reputation of the pharaoh to ensure his legacy for all time. The ancient Egyptians were skilled builders with expert knowledge of basic surveying and construction techniques. Using simple but effective measuring ropes, plum bobs, and sighting instruments, architects could build large stone structures with accuracy and precision.
Most buildings in ancient Egypt, including the pharaoh's palace, were constructed from perishable materials such as mud bricks and wood and, for this reason, have not survived. Important structures such as temples and tombs were intended to last forever and were instead constructed of stone. The first large scale stone building in the world, the mortuary complex of Djoser, was built in the Third Dynasty as a stone imitation of the mud-brick and wooden structures used in daily life.
The architectural elements used in Djoser's mortuary complex, including post and lintel construction of huge stone roof blocks supported by external walls and closely spaced columns, would be copied many times in Egyptian history. Decorative styles introduced in the Old Kingdom, such as the lotus and papyrus motifs, are a recurring theme in ancient Egyptian architecture.
The earliest tomb architecture in ancient Egypt was the mastaba, a flat-roofed rectangular structure of mudbrick or stone built over an underground burial chamber. The mastaba was the most popular tomb among the nobility in the Old Kingdom, and the first pyramid, the step pyramid of Djoser, is actually a series of stone mastabas stacked on top of each other. The step pyramid was itself the inspiration for the first true pyramids. Pyramids were built by the pharaohs of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but later rulers abandoned them in favor of less conspicuous rock-cut tombs. New Kingdom pharaohs built their rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and by the Third Intermediate Period, the pharaohs had abandoned building grand tomb architecture altogether.
The earliest preserved ancient Egyptian temples, dating back to the Old Kingdom, consist of single, enclosed halls with roof slabs supported by columns. The mortuary temples connected to the pyramids at Giza are examples of this early temple. During the Fifth Dynasty, pharaohs developed the sun temple, the focus of which was a squat, pyramid-shaped obelisk known as a ben-ben stone. The ben-ben stone and other temple structures were surrounded by an outer wall and connected to the Nile via a causeway terminating in a valley temple. In the New Kingdom, architects added the pylon, the open courtyard, and the enclosed hypostyle hall to the front of the temple's sanctuary. Because the common people were not allowed past the entry pylon, the deity residing in the inner sanctuary was distanced from the outside world. This type of cult temple was standardly used until the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods.
Art
The ancient Egyptians produced art to serve functional purposes rather than to express creative genius. For over 3500 years, artists adhered to artistic forms that were developed during the Old Kingdom, following a strict set of principles that resisted foreign influence and internal change. These artistic standards—simple lines, shapes, and flat areas of color combined with the characteristic flat projection of figures with no indication of spatial depth—created a sense of order and balance within a composition. Because of the rigid rules that governed its highly stylized and symbolic appearance, ancient Egyptian art served its political and religious purposes with precision and clarity.
Pharaohs used reliefs carved on stelae, temple walls, and obelisks to record victories in battle, royal decrees, and religious scenes. These art forms glorified the pharaoh, recorded that ruler's version of historical events, and established the relationship between the Egyptians and their deities. Common citizens had access to pieces of funerary art, such as shabti statues and books of the dead, which they believed would protect them in the afterlife.
The ancient Egyptians made little distinction between images and text, which were intimately interwoven on tomb and temple walls, coffins, stelae, and even statues. This mentality is evident even in the earliest examples of Egyptian art, such as the Narmer Palette, where the figures being depicted may also be read as hieroglyphs.
Religious Beliefs
Beliefs in the divine and in the afterlife were ingrained in the ancient Egyptian civilization from its inception. The pharaoh's right to rule stemmed from his connection to the gods, and he acted as a mediator between the material and spiritual realms. The Egyptian pantheon was populated by a diverse array of gods who had supernatural, though sometimes limited, powers and could be called upon for help or protection. However, the gods were not always beneficent, and they had to be appeased with offerings and prayers. The structure of this pantheon changed continually as new deities were promoted in the hierarchy, but priests made no effort to organize the diverse and sometimes conflicting creation myths and stories into a coherent system.
Officially, the gods were worshiped in cult temples by priests acting on the king's behalf. At the center of the temple, the cult statue of the god was placed in a shrine where the god could manifest himself. Temples were not places of public worship or congregation, and only on select feast days and celebrations would a shrine carrying the statue of the god be brought out for public worship. Normally, the god's domain was sealed off from the outside world and was only accessible to temple officials; common citizens seeking a more direct interaction with the gods could worship private statues and stelae in the home, and amulets offered continuous, personal protection against the forces of chaos.
After the New Kingdom, the pharaoh's connection to the divine, and thus his role as a spiritual intermediary, were de-emphasized as religious customs shifted to direct worship of the gods. As a result, priests developed a system of oracles to communicate the will of the gods directly to the people.[64] An oracle could be a statue of the god which could be asked a yes or no question, to which it would "respond" by hidden manipulations of a priest; the priests could also pose questions to the oracle behind closed doors. Oracles became very popular for appealing legal verdicts or for justifying military actions and political decisions.[65]
The Egyptians believed that every human being was composed of physical and spiritual parts, called aspects. In addition to the body, each person had a šwt (shadow), a ba (personality or soul), a ka (life-force), and a name. The heart, rather than the brain, was considered the seat of thoughts and emotions. After death, the spiritual aspects were released from the body and could move at will, but they required the physical remains (or a substitute, such as a statue) as a permanent home. The ultimate goal of the deceased was to rejoin his ka and ba and become one of the "blessed dead", living on as an akh, or "effective one". In order for this to happen, the deceased had to be judged worthy in a trial, in which the heart was weighed against a "feather of truth". If deemed worthy, the deceased could continue their existence on earth in spiritual form.
Burial Customs
The ancient Egyptians maintained an elaborate set of burial customs that they believed were necessary to ensure immortality after death. These customs involved preserving the body by mummification, performing burial ceremonies, and interring, along with the body, goods to be used by the deceased in the afterlife.
Before the Old Kingdom, bodies buried in desert pits were naturally preserved by desiccation. The arid, desert conditions continued to be a boon throughout the history of ancient Egypt for the burials of the poor, who could not afford the elaborate burial preparations available to the elite. However, many wealthier Egyptians lost the advantage of natural mummification by the desert when they began to bury their dead in stone tombs. As a result, the wealthy elite of the Old and Middle Kingdoms began to make use of artificial mummification, which involved removing the internal organs, wrapping the body in linen, coating it with plaster or resin, and sometimes painting or sculpting facial details. The body was then buried in a rectangular stone sarcophagus or wooden coffin. Beginning in the Fourth Dynasty, the intestines, lungs, liver, and stomach were preserved separately in canopic jars and symbolically protected by likenesses of the Four sons of Horus.
By the New Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had perfected the art of mummification; the best technique took 70 days and involved removing the internal organs, removing the brain through the nose, and desiccating the body in a mixture of salts called natron. The body was then wrapped in linen with protective amulets inserted between layers and placed in a decorated anthropoid coffin. Mummies of the Late Period were also placed in painted cartonnage mummy cases. Actual preservation practices declined during the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, while greater emphasis was placed on the outer appearance of the mummy, which was decorated with elaborate rhomboidal patterns formed by the wrapping bandages.
Wealthy members of society were buried with larger quantities of luxury items and furniture, but all burials, regardless of social status, included goods for the deceased, such as food and jewelry. Beginning in the New Kingdom, books of the dead were included in the grave and contained spells and instructions for protection in the afterlife. New Kingdom Egyptians were also buried with shabti statues, which they believed would perform manual labor for them in the afterlife.
All Egyptian burials was accompanied by rituals in which the deceased was magically re-animated. This procedure involved touching the mouth and eyes of the deceased with ceremonial instruments to restore the power of speech, movement, and sight. After burial, living relatives were expected to occasionally bring food to the tomb and recite prayers on behalf of the deceased.
The End. May be expanded at a later date, but I'm bored at the moment...
Ancient Egypt was a civilization in northern East Africa concentrated along the middle to lower reaches of the Nile River that reached its greatest extent in the second millennium BC during the New Kingdom. It stretched from the Nile Delta in the north to as far south as Jebel Barkal, located at the Fourth Cataract of the Nile in modern-day Sudan. The fluid geographic range of ancient Egypt also included, at different times, areas of the southern Levant, the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea coastline, the Sinai Peninsula, and the oases of the Western desert.
The civilization of ancient Egypt was based on balanced control of natural and human resources under the leadership of the pharaoh, religious leaders, and court administrators. It was notable for many innovations: controlled irrigation of the fertile Nile Valley, mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of literature and an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions in east and central Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, and finally, military ventures that defeated foreign enemies and asserted Egyptian dominance throughout the region. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of the divine pharaoh who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people by means of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.
Administration and commerce
The pharaoh was the absolute monarch of the country and, at least in theory, wielded complete control of the land and its resources. The king was also the supreme military commander, responsible for all military and policy decisions. The king relied on a bureaucracy of officials to manage his affairs, and in charge of the administration was his second in command, the vizier. The vizier acted as the king's representative and coordinated land surveys, the treasury, building projects, the legal system, and the archives. At a local level, the country was divided into administrative regions called nomes which, by the late period, had reached 42 in number. Each nome's governor, called a nomarch, was accountable to the vizier for his jurisdiction. The temples formed the backbone of the economy and were not only houses of worship, but were also responsible for collecting and storing the nation's wealth in a system of granaries and treasuries. From these central storage facilities, administered by overseers, grain and goods could be distributed to the populace.
Egyptian society was highly stratified, and social status was expressly displayed. Farmers made up the bulk of the population, but agricultural produce was owned directly by the state, temple, or noble family that owned the land.[34] Most of the population did not have freedom of movement or a free choice of career. Farmers were also subject to a labor tax and were required to work on irrigation or construction projects in a corvée system. Artists and craftsmen were of higher status than farmers, but they were also under state control, working in the shops attached to the temples and paid directly from the state treasury. Scribes and officials formed the upper class in ancient Egypt, prominently displaying their social status in art and literature. Slavery was known in ancient Egypt, but the extent and prevalence of its practice are unclear.
The economy was centrally organized and strictly controlled. Although the ancient Egyptians did not use coinage, money was known in other forms: standard sacks of grain and the deben, a mass of roughly 91 grams, formed a common denominator. Laborers were paid in grain; a laborer might earn 5½ sacks (191 kg) of grain per month while a foreman might earn 7½ sacks (261 kg). Prices were fixed across the country and recorded in lists to facilitate trading; for example a shirt might cost five copper deben, while a cow might cost 140 deben. Grain could be traded for other goods, according to the fixed price list, but since it could not be kept indefinitely, the grain money system had a de facto negative interest attached to it.
Legal system
The head of the legal system in ancient Egypt was officially the pharaoh, who was responsible for proclaiming laws, delivering justice, and maintaining law and order, a concept the ancient Egyptians referred to as Ma'at. Though no legal codes from ancient Egypt survive, the many extant court documents of the period show that Egyptian law was based on a common-sense view of right and wrong that emphasized reaching agreements and resolving conflicts rather than strictly adhering to a complicated set of statutes.
The ancient Egyptians viewed men and women, including people from all social classes except slaves, as essentially equal under the law, and even the lowliest peasant was entitled to petition the vizier and his court for redress. Both men and women had the right to own and sell property, make contracts, marry and divorce, receive inheritance, and pursue legal disputes in court. Married couples could own property jointly and protect themselves from divorce by agreeing to marriage contracts, which stipulated the financial obligations of the husband to his wife and children should the marriage end.
Local councils of elders, known as Kenbet in the New Kingdom, were responsible for ruling in court cases involving small claims and minor disputes, although the Kenbet's ability to enforce its rulings was limited. Local Kenbets deferred serious or complicated cases involving murder, major land transactions, and tomb robbery to the Great Kenbet, over which the vizier or pharaoh presided. Plaintiffs and defendants were expected to represent themselves in legal matters and were required to swear an oath to an Egyptian deity that they had told the truth. In cases of tomb robbery or assassination plots, the state took on both the role of prosecutor and judge, and it could torture the accused with beatings to obtain a confession and the names of any co-conspirators. Whether the charges were trivial or serious, court scribes documented the complaint, testimony, and verdict of the case for future reference.
Punishment for minor crimes involved either imposition of fines, beatings, facial mutilation, or exile, depending on the severity of the offense. Serious crimes such as murder and tomb robbery were punished by execution, which was carried out by decapitation, drowning, or impaling the criminal on a stake. Punishment could also be extended to the criminal's family.
Agriculture
A combination of several favorable geographical features contributed to the success of the ancient Egyptian culture, the most important of which was the rich fertile soil resulting from annual inundations of the Nile river. The ancient Egyptians were thus able to produce an abundance of food, allowing the population to devote more time and resources to cultural, technological, and artistic pursuits. Land management was crucial in ancient Egypt because taxes were assessed based on the amount of land a person owned.
Farming in Egypt was dependent upon the cycle of the Nile River. The Egyptians recognized three seasons in their written records: Akhet (flooding), Peret (planting), and Shemu (harvesting). The flooding season lasted from June to September, depositing on the river's banks a layer of mineral-rich silt perfect for growing crops. After the floodwaters had receded, the growing season lasted from October to February. Farmers plowed and planted seeds in the fields, which were irrigated with ditches and canals. Egypt received little rainfall, so farmers relied on the Nile to water their crops. From March to May, farmers would use sickles to harvest their crops, which would then be threshed with a flail in order to separate the straw from the grain. Winnowing would remove the chaff from the grain, and the grain would then be ground into flour, brewed to make beer, or stored for later use.
The ancient Egyptians cultivated wheat, emmer, barley, and several other cereal grains, all of which were used to make the two main food staples of bread and beer. Flax plants, uprooted before they started flowering, were grown for the fibers of their stems. These fibers were split along their length and spun into thread, which was used to weave sheets of linen and to make clothing. Papyrus growing on the banks of the Nile River was used to make paper. Vegetables and fruits were grown in garden plots, close to habitations and on higher ground, and had to be watered by hand.
Natural Resources
Ancient Egypt was also rich in building and decorative stone, copper and lead ores, gold, and semiprecious stones; these natural resources allowed the ancient Egyptians to build monuments, sculpt statues, make tools, and fashion jewelry. They were so thorough in the search for gold that no new deposits have since been discovered in Egypt. Embalmers used salts from the Wadi Natrun for mummification, which also provided the gypsum needed to make plaster.
The ore-bearing rock formations of ancient Egypt were found in distant, inhospitable wadis of the eastern desert and the Sinai and required large, state-controlled expeditions to obtain the gold, copper ores, and decorative stones found there. The Wadi Hammamat was a notable source of granite, greywacke, and gold. Whenever possible, prisoners and slaves were forced into mining service, but Egyptian peasants were also conscripted for this unpleasant labor.
Flint was the first mineral collected and used to make tools, and flint handaxes are the earliest pieces of evidence of habitation in the Nile valley. Nodules of the mineral were carefully flaked to make blades and arrowheads of moderate hardness and durability even after copper was adopted for this purpose. The Egyptians worked deposits of the lead ore galena at Gebel Rosas to make net sinkers, plumb bobs, and small figurines. Copper was the most important metal for toolmaking in ancient Egypt and was smelted in furnaces from malachite ore mined in the Sinai. Workers collected gold by washing the nuggets out of sediment in alluvial deposits, or by the more labor-intensive process of grinding and washing gold-bearing quartzite. Iron deposits found in upper Egypt were utilized in the Late Period.
High-quality building stones were abundant in Egypt; the ancient Egyptians quarried limestone all along the Nile valley, granite from Aswan, and basalt and sandstone from the wadis of the eastern desert. Deposits of decorative stones such as porphyry, greywacke, alabaster, and carnelian dotted the eastern desert and were collected even before the First Dynasty. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, miners worked deposits of emeralds in Wadi Sikait and amethyst in Wadi el-Hudi.
Language
The Egyptian language belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language phylum and is related to the Semitic languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, as well as the Hamitic languages of North Africa, such as Berber and Cunutsic. Used continuously from before 3000 BC to the 11th century CE, ancient Egyptian was, at one point, the longest-surviving language in the world. The language underwent major changes in its pronunciation and usage over the course of history and was spoken in many dialects. The oldest stage of the language, Old Egyptian, was used until about 2100 BC, when it was gradually displaced by Middle Egyptian. By 1600 BC Late Egyptian began to develop and was used until about 600 BC. Demotic developed from Late Egyptian and survived until the 5th century CE; it was at one time commonly used alongside Coptic, the final phase of the language that was used from the 1st to the 11th century CE. A dialect of Coptic remained in use for services of the Coptic church and is still in limited use today.
Writing
The ancient Egyptian writing system is known as "hieroglyphic" (incorrectly termed "hieroglyphics") and is composed of some 500 symbols called hieroglyphs. There is no explanation for exactly how the system was devised, but it was suddenly adopted and developed shortly before 3000 BC. Each hieroglyph is a picture of a real thing—a bird, tool, or body part— and most of the common hieroglyphs correspond to a letter or letter combination in the alphabet. Words in the language are spelled out by stringing together the hieroglyphs whose sounds make up the word. Like the semitic languages, ancient Egyptian does not indicate vowels.
Hieroglyphs were a formal script, used on stone monuments and in tombs, that could be as detailed as individual works of art. In day-to-day writing, scribes used a cursive form of writing, called hieratic, which was quicker and easier. While formal hieroglyphs may be read in rows or columns in either direction, hieratic was always written from right to left, usually in horizontal rows. After Demotic became the dominant spoken language, a new form of writing, of the same name, became the prevalent writing style, and it is this form of writing—along with formal hieroglyphs—that accompany the Greek text on the Rosetta Stone.
Architecture
The architecture of ancient Egypt includes some of the most famous structures in the world: the Great Pyramids of Giza, Abu Simbel, and the temples at Thebes. All major building projects were organized and funded by the state, and they not only fulfilled religious, military, and commemorative purposes, but also reinforced the power and reputation of the pharaoh to ensure his legacy for all time. The ancient Egyptians were skilled builders with expert knowledge of basic surveying and construction techniques. Using simple but effective measuring ropes, plum bobs, and sighting instruments, architects could build large stone structures with accuracy and precision.
Most buildings in ancient Egypt, including the pharaoh's palace, were constructed from perishable materials such as mud bricks and wood and, for this reason, have not survived. Important structures such as temples and tombs were intended to last forever and were instead constructed of stone. The first large scale stone building in the world, the mortuary complex of Djoser, was built in the Third Dynasty as a stone imitation of the mud-brick and wooden structures used in daily life.
The architectural elements used in Djoser's mortuary complex, including post and lintel construction of huge stone roof blocks supported by external walls and closely spaced columns, would be copied many times in Egyptian history. Decorative styles introduced in the Old Kingdom, such as the lotus and papyrus motifs, are a recurring theme in ancient Egyptian architecture.
The earliest tomb architecture in ancient Egypt was the mastaba, a flat-roofed rectangular structure of mudbrick or stone built over an underground burial chamber. The mastaba was the most popular tomb among the nobility in the Old Kingdom, and the first pyramid, the step pyramid of Djoser, is actually a series of stone mastabas stacked on top of each other. The step pyramid was itself the inspiration for the first true pyramids. Pyramids were built by the pharaohs of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but later rulers abandoned them in favor of less conspicuous rock-cut tombs. New Kingdom pharaohs built their rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and by the Third Intermediate Period, the pharaohs had abandoned building grand tomb architecture altogether.
The earliest preserved ancient Egyptian temples, dating back to the Old Kingdom, consist of single, enclosed halls with roof slabs supported by columns. The mortuary temples connected to the pyramids at Giza are examples of this early temple. During the Fifth Dynasty, pharaohs developed the sun temple, the focus of which was a squat, pyramid-shaped obelisk known as a ben-ben stone. The ben-ben stone and other temple structures were surrounded by an outer wall and connected to the Nile via a causeway terminating in a valley temple. In the New Kingdom, architects added the pylon, the open courtyard, and the enclosed hypostyle hall to the front of the temple's sanctuary. Because the common people were not allowed past the entry pylon, the deity residing in the inner sanctuary was distanced from the outside world. This type of cult temple was standardly used until the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods.
Art
The ancient Egyptians produced art to serve functional purposes rather than to express creative genius. For over 3500 years, artists adhered to artistic forms that were developed during the Old Kingdom, following a strict set of principles that resisted foreign influence and internal change. These artistic standards—simple lines, shapes, and flat areas of color combined with the characteristic flat projection of figures with no indication of spatial depth—created a sense of order and balance within a composition. Because of the rigid rules that governed its highly stylized and symbolic appearance, ancient Egyptian art served its political and religious purposes with precision and clarity.
Pharaohs used reliefs carved on stelae, temple walls, and obelisks to record victories in battle, royal decrees, and religious scenes. These art forms glorified the pharaoh, recorded that ruler's version of historical events, and established the relationship between the Egyptians and their deities. Common citizens had access to pieces of funerary art, such as shabti statues and books of the dead, which they believed would protect them in the afterlife.
The ancient Egyptians made little distinction between images and text, which were intimately interwoven on tomb and temple walls, coffins, stelae, and even statues. This mentality is evident even in the earliest examples of Egyptian art, such as the Narmer Palette, where the figures being depicted may also be read as hieroglyphs.
Religious Beliefs
Beliefs in the divine and in the afterlife were ingrained in the ancient Egyptian civilization from its inception. The pharaoh's right to rule stemmed from his connection to the gods, and he acted as a mediator between the material and spiritual realms. The Egyptian pantheon was populated by a diverse array of gods who had supernatural, though sometimes limited, powers and could be called upon for help or protection. However, the gods were not always beneficent, and they had to be appeased with offerings and prayers. The structure of this pantheon changed continually as new deities were promoted in the hierarchy, but priests made no effort to organize the diverse and sometimes conflicting creation myths and stories into a coherent system.
Officially, the gods were worshiped in cult temples by priests acting on the king's behalf. At the center of the temple, the cult statue of the god was placed in a shrine where the god could manifest himself. Temples were not places of public worship or congregation, and only on select feast days and celebrations would a shrine carrying the statue of the god be brought out for public worship. Normally, the god's domain was sealed off from the outside world and was only accessible to temple officials; common citizens seeking a more direct interaction with the gods could worship private statues and stelae in the home, and amulets offered continuous, personal protection against the forces of chaos.
After the New Kingdom, the pharaoh's connection to the divine, and thus his role as a spiritual intermediary, were de-emphasized as religious customs shifted to direct worship of the gods. As a result, priests developed a system of oracles to communicate the will of the gods directly to the people.[64] An oracle could be a statue of the god which could be asked a yes or no question, to which it would "respond" by hidden manipulations of a priest; the priests could also pose questions to the oracle behind closed doors. Oracles became very popular for appealing legal verdicts or for justifying military actions and political decisions.[65]
The Egyptians believed that every human being was composed of physical and spiritual parts, called aspects. In addition to the body, each person had a šwt (shadow), a ba (personality or soul), a ka (life-force), and a name. The heart, rather than the brain, was considered the seat of thoughts and emotions. After death, the spiritual aspects were released from the body and could move at will, but they required the physical remains (or a substitute, such as a statue) as a permanent home. The ultimate goal of the deceased was to rejoin his ka and ba and become one of the "blessed dead", living on as an akh, or "effective one". In order for this to happen, the deceased had to be judged worthy in a trial, in which the heart was weighed against a "feather of truth". If deemed worthy, the deceased could continue their existence on earth in spiritual form.
Burial Customs
The ancient Egyptians maintained an elaborate set of burial customs that they believed were necessary to ensure immortality after death. These customs involved preserving the body by mummification, performing burial ceremonies, and interring, along with the body, goods to be used by the deceased in the afterlife.
Before the Old Kingdom, bodies buried in desert pits were naturally preserved by desiccation. The arid, desert conditions continued to be a boon throughout the history of ancient Egypt for the burials of the poor, who could not afford the elaborate burial preparations available to the elite. However, many wealthier Egyptians lost the advantage of natural mummification by the desert when they began to bury their dead in stone tombs. As a result, the wealthy elite of the Old and Middle Kingdoms began to make use of artificial mummification, which involved removing the internal organs, wrapping the body in linen, coating it with plaster or resin, and sometimes painting or sculpting facial details. The body was then buried in a rectangular stone sarcophagus or wooden coffin. Beginning in the Fourth Dynasty, the intestines, lungs, liver, and stomach were preserved separately in canopic jars and symbolically protected by likenesses of the Four sons of Horus.
By the New Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had perfected the art of mummification; the best technique took 70 days and involved removing the internal organs, removing the brain through the nose, and desiccating the body in a mixture of salts called natron. The body was then wrapped in linen with protective amulets inserted between layers and placed in a decorated anthropoid coffin. Mummies of the Late Period were also placed in painted cartonnage mummy cases. Actual preservation practices declined during the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, while greater emphasis was placed on the outer appearance of the mummy, which was decorated with elaborate rhomboidal patterns formed by the wrapping bandages.
Wealthy members of society were buried with larger quantities of luxury items and furniture, but all burials, regardless of social status, included goods for the deceased, such as food and jewelry. Beginning in the New Kingdom, books of the dead were included in the grave and contained spells and instructions for protection in the afterlife. New Kingdom Egyptians were also buried with shabti statues, which they believed would perform manual labor for them in the afterlife.
All Egyptian burials was accompanied by rituals in which the deceased was magically re-animated. This procedure involved touching the mouth and eyes of the deceased with ceremonial instruments to restore the power of speech, movement, and sight. After burial, living relatives were expected to occasionally bring food to the tomb and recite prayers on behalf of the deceased.
The End. May be expanded at a later date, but I'm bored at the moment...
