Friday, July 24, 2015

Egyptian Writing

The ancient Egyptians thought it was important to write down information about religion and important events.  So they invented scripts (ways of writing).  There are three main Egyptian scripts.
  • Hieroglyphics, or ‘sacred writing’. The most famous script is hieroglyphic, which uses pictures as symbols.  Hieroglyphics were carved or painted on stone monuments, tombs where the dead were buried, and temples where the gods were worshipped. 

  • Hieratic, or ‘priests’ writing’.  Hieroglyphics were too difficult to use as handwriting so a simpler form was invented so that the priests could write records on papyrus. Hieratic writing still used pictures as symbols. 

  • Demotic, or ‘people’s writing’ developed from hieratic writing but was much simpler and had no pictures.  Unlike hieroglyphics or hieratic this was in common use. Like hieratic writing, it was written on papyrus, the earliest form of paper which was made from papyrus reeds. 
Hieroglyphic writing
Egyptian hieroglyphics

Hieroglyphics were carved or painted by the priests and scribes.  At first Egyptian hieroglyphics were simply pictures.  They showed simple things, such as the sun, plants, parts of the body and animals.  Later the hieroglyphics came to mean more.  A symbol of the legs not only meant legs, but also walking.  An arm not only meant an arm, but also strength.  A symbol of an eye meant first an eye, and an eye with a teardrop meant sadness.
This way of writing could not say everything.  For example, the scribes could not write ‘he’ or a person’s name.  They could not show the difference between ‘walk’ or ‘walked’.  So some symbols were chosen to represent sounds.
For example, the picture of a house meant the sound ‘pr’ because that was the Egyptian word for a house (we do not know exactly how Egyptian was pronounced).  So if, for example, you wanted to write the English word ‘price’ using ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, you would start with a picture of a house.  (This would not be the ancient Egyptian word for price, simply the English word using Egyptian hieroglyphics.)
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There are nearly 2000 Egyptian hieroglyphs.  For example we have
Hieroglyphs showing single sounds; below we have the sounds k, h, s, t, and n.
hieroglyphs single sounds
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Hieroglyphs showing what someone is doing: below we have five different hieroglyphs which mean 1) a man or, if there were more than one, people; 2) praying;  3) hiding;  4) being tired,  5) dying, a dead enemy.
five hieroglyphs
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Hieroglyphs of agriculture and crafts: below we have five hieroglyphs which mean  1) to loosen the soil, to dig the ground;  2) to cut the crops with a sickle;  3) to measure the cereal crops (the Egyptians grew barley and a cereal called emmet);  4) to crush salt (which came in blocks); this can also mean ‘heavy’;  5) to bake bread ( this is a picture of the long shovel which bakers still use to put loaves into a hot oven and to pull them out again).
 hieroglyphs griculture and crafts
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All of these hieroglyphs can also be used to represent sounds.  The last symbol above, the baking bread symbol, can also mean the sound of the letters rth, or hnr, or hnj.  Vowel sounds, a,e,i,o,u are not shown at all (as they are not shown in modern Arabic or Hebrew writing) so you need to imagine what these combinations sounded like: hnr may have sounded ‘hanur’ but we really do not know.
So you can see that ancient Egyptian is a very, very difficult language to learn to read!
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For nearly 2000 years after the end of Egyptian civilisation no-one could read these scripts.  Scholars studied them but were unable to decipher them (work out what they meant).  They thought the hieroglyphic writing was simpler than it really is: the pictures were taken as drawings of real things rather than symbols.
Hieroglyphic and demotic writing were finally deciphered by a French scholar called Champollion.  He studied a piece of black stone which had been found in Egypt and which was covered with three kinds of writing.  The upper part was in hieroglyphics, the middle part was in demotic, and the lowest part was in Greek.
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Since he was able to read the Greek text, Champollion was able to work out the rest.  This black stone is known as the Rosetta Stone, after the place in Egypt where it was found.  It is one of the most important treasures of the British Museum in London.
 Rosetta Stone
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Egyptian Literature 
In addition to keeping records of religious rituals and government actions, the Egyptians wrote many other works from the time of the Old Kingdom.
  • collections of wise sayings, such as The Advice of an Egyptian Wise Man, which gave warnings to the king and foretold of better times ahead; 
  • love poetry and religious humns, of which the best known is King Akhnaten’s hymn of praise to Aten, the sun’s dsic; 
  • stories of seafaring and travel, such as the Story of Sinuhe from the 12th dynasty and the Journey of Unamon from the 20th dynasty. these both tell of voyages to the land of Canaan. 

Egyptian Daily Life

Egypt is a dry, hot desert country and ancient life depended on the waters of the River Nile. The Nile was used for:
  • water to irrigate the fields; 
  • the main means of travelling and of transporting goods, all by boat; 
  • an important source of protein food when people caught fish; 
  • the main building material was mud brick 
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Houses
People lived beside the Nile and Egyptian houses were almost all built from bricks of Nile mud. (The palaces of the Pharaohs were built from stone.) The mud was carried in baskets from the Nile and poured into moulds. When the mud in the mould was dry, it was turned out and left to bake in the heat of the sun.
A house built from mud bricks:
  • was cool inside. 
  • had a flat roof so that in very hot weather people could sleep on the roofs in the cool of the night. 
  • often had courtyards with walls built round them. 
  • Cooking was done out of doors in the courtyard. 
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We know about Egyptian daily life from the huge number of wall paintings in tombs and temples. The houses we are shown are the houses of wealthier people, priests and scribes, government officials, and master craftsmen. The paintings show a large number of servants, or probably slaves, working in the houses. From the paintings we know that the servants:
  • looked after the charcoal fires; 
  • ground wheat to make bread; 
  • cooked meat over fires; 
  • carried baskets full of vegetables. 
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The richer families in ancient Egypt had houses with beautiful gardens, looked after by slaves or servants. Men went wild-fowling (hunting wild duck) in the marshes and women are shown sitting on couches talking to each other and listening to music.
Egyptian-house
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Games and entertainment
Children played with toys such as spinning tops and wooden models of animals which they could pull along on strings. They played with balls made of clay and they played at leapfrog. Girls played dancing games, holding hands in a ring, and little boys played at being soldiers.
Adults played a number of board games. We know that they played a game for two people called Senet on a board with 30 squares. The aim was to reach the kingdom of Osiris through all the dangers on the way.
The Egyptians also enjoyed story-telling, parties and music. There were a number of great public festivals, such as the celebration of the resurrection of Osiris (see Egyptian religion) where thousands of people danced to the music of harps and flutes.
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The Farmers
The vast majority of people in Egypt, however, were farmers who farmed the fields on the bank of the Nile. Men, women and children from a young age all worked in these tiny fields.
  • They ploughed the land with a wooden plough pulled by oxen. 
Egyptian-farmers

  • They sowed the fields with seed and watered the ground with water from the Nile. 
  • They harvested the grain using a sickle. 

Egyptian-farmers-harvesting

  • They threshed (beat out the grain from the husk) it by getting their oxen to walk round and round treading on it. 
  • All the grain was controlled by royal officials and kept in a royal granary. 

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You may remember the story of the Pharaoh who dreamt of the seven fat cattle followed by the seven lean cattle. Joseph interpreted his dream, telling him that there were going to be seven very good harvests, followed by seven poor harvests.
He advised the Pharaoh to collect the grain during the seven good years so that the people would not starve during the seven poor years. This story is more evidence that the grain was controlled by the Pharaoh’s government and was then distributed when necessary.
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Food
The crops and vegetables meant that even the poorer Egyptians usually ate a balanced diet.
  • The staple food was bread from the grain. 
  • They grew onions and leeks and salad vegetables 
  • They grew beans and dried them so that they could be cooked and eaten throughout the year 
  • They grew fruit such as figs and pomegranates. 
  • They caught fish from the Nile. 
  • They kept cattle. 
  • They made beer from barley and richer people drank wine made from grapes. 
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Clothes
Farmers also grew flax. Linen cloth is made from flax and Egyptian clothing was made from linen. Men wore a short linen kilt and women usually wore a linen tunic that hung from their shoulders. Little children sometimes wore no clothes at all but often wore jewellery round their neck.

Egyptian-clothes
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Trades

Although most people were farmers, there were many other trades, carpenters, metal-workers, bakers, goldsmiths, boat builders. Trade was carried out by way of exchanging goods. For example, a farmer might exchange a basket of onions for a bag of charcoal, or a cow for a small boat.
Everything in Egypt depended on the Nile and everything was transported on boats and ships on the river.
In order to fish and to transport goods from one place to another people had small boats made of papyrus stalks bound together. Bigger boats and larger ships were made of wood, which was mostly imported from Lebanon.
We have many paintings of boats carrying cattle and other heavy goods on the Nile. It was a very busy river with constant traffic.
Egyptian-boat

The Pyramids

The ancient Egyptians are famous for the building of the Pyramids. The pyramids were built as the burial places of the Egyptian kings from before the start of the Old Kingdom until the end of the Middle Kingdom.
Because the Egyptians kept religious and government records, we are able to read about the building of some of these pyramids.
The Step Pyramid at Saqqara
Pyramid-at-Saqqara
  • The Step Pyramid at Saqqara is the earliest pyramid that is still there today. 
  • The Step Pyramid was built in 2630 B.C. 
  • It was the burial place of King Djoser. 
  • The architect of the Step Pyramid was Imhotep. 
  • Imhotep was the High Priest of Ra, the sun-god. He became famous for his great wisdom and knowledge. The Egyptians later worshipped Imhotep as a god. 
  • The Pyramid rose in six giant steps. 
  • These steps were meant as a huge stairway for King Djoser to climb up to join Ra, the sun-god. 
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There are still over eighty pyramids in Egypt today. They are all more than 3000 years old. The architects of these pyramids were very skilled in mathematics, in technical drawing, and in knowledge of the position of the sun and stars. The pyramids were carefully designed to be in a straight line with, for example, a certain star constellation at a certain time of year, or sunrise on a particular day.
Some of the pyramids were built as step pyramids like the one at Saqqara, but many others were a real pyramid shape, with sides that were smooth and sloping.
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The Great Pyramid at Giza
Great-Pyramid-at-Giza
  • The most famous of all the true pyramids is the Great Pyramid at Giza, which is the largest of the three Giza pyramids. 
  • The Great Pyramid was built in 2528 B.C. for King Khufu, which means that it is more than 4500 years old. 
  • It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. 
  • It was the tallest building in the world for more than 4000 years, until the 20th century. 
  • It is built from over 2 million huge blocks of limestone. 
  • It was covered with great smooth slabs of white limestone, but these were later removed to build the city of Cairo. 
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Because the pyramids were the burial places of kings, they were full of treasure. All the king’s riches and belongings were buried with him to keep him happy in the afterlife.
Robbers tried to break into the pyramids to steal the treasure. So the architects tried to fool the robbers:
  • Each pyramid had only one true entrance, but several other, false, entrances were made. 
  • The inside of the pyramid had lots of false doors and false passages which led to rooms filled with rubble or blank walls. 
  • The doors were built of granite and were almost impossible to move. Even if the robbers managed to open a door, they might find a blank wall behind it. 
However, almost all the royal tombs were eventually broken into and all the treasure removed.
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The Temples
The Egyptians also built magnificent temples, which they believed were the homes of the gods and goddesses. The temples were added to over the centuries so several architects helped to plan them.
  • The temples were built of stone, as at Luxor, or built into the solid rock, as at Abu Simbel. 
  • The temples were filled with high stone pillars which supported a heavy stone roof. 
  • The walls were covered with carvings showing the pharaoh’s victories in war. The pictures also showed the pharaoh together with the gods. 
  • Many of the temples contained enormous statues of the pharaoh. 
  • The temple at Abu Simbel has four huge statues of the Pharaoh Ramses the Second, 20 metres high, wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. 
temple-at-Abu-Simbel
  • There are also several temples at Luxor with statues of the Pharaoh Ramses the Second, who was worshipped as a god. 
Pharaoh-Ramses-the-Second
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The building of a temple was accompanied by rituals connected to the worship of the goddess Seshat, ‘The Mistress of the House of Architects’. All the rituals had a practical side and the Pharaoh played an important role.
The words spoken by the Pharaoh at the ritual of making the measurements on the ground are recorded in hieroglyphics on a temple wall:
“I hold the peg. I grasp the handle of the club and grip the measuring cord with Seshat (Goddess of Architects). I turn my eyes to the movements of the stars. I send forth my gaze to the Bull’s thigh (the star constellation of the Great Bear). I count time. I watch the clock. I establish the four corners of your temple.”


Tutankhamun

Tutankhamun or “King Tut” is probably the most well-known Egyptian pharaoh. One of the reasons is that his burial tomb is one of the few that was discovered with everything still in it. It was common for tomb raiders to steel all of the treasures that were buried with the pharaohs and so very little has ever been found. The tomb raiders didn’t locate King Tut’s tomb and we can use the contents of the tomb to learn about the culture and people of ancient Egypt.
Tutankhamun for KidsKing Tut lived around 1343 to 1323 BC, and because he was only ten years old when he became a pharaoh, he was called the ‘boy king’. King Tut’s father was the pharaoh Akhenaten. This pharaoh made complete changes to the religion of Egypt, getting rid of their idea of many gods and changing their worship to one god: Aten, the sun god. He became unpopular with the people of Egypt and the priests of the many temples, especially when he destroyed the images of all of the other gods. When he died, many people removed his image and name, hoping everyone would forget about him.
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King Tut’s original name was Tutankhaten which means ‘the living image of Aten”. After the death of his unpopular father, he changed his name to Tutankhamun which means ‘the living image of Amun”. His father had paid so much attention to making changes that he had moved the center of government to another city and ignored all of the foreign policies. King Tut relocated the city back to Thebes and rebuilt some of the temples for the gods. His hope was to restore popularity of the pharaoh and try to fix the damage that his father had done.
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King Tut did get married but he and his wife did not have any children that survived. Many people have tried to study King Tut’s mummy to see the reason that he died, but no one has come up with anything definite. King Tut died at the age of 19 and after he was buried there was very little information in the usual records for pharaohs. His tomb was never touched and so the people that study history didn’t even know that it existed.
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In 1922, British archeologist Howard Carter discovered the burial tomb of King Tut. This was the first tomb that had everything in it and was untouched. Ancient Egyptians believed that when a person died they would enter an ‘afterlife’ where they would live in the same way that they did when they were alive. In order to do that, they would need to take everything they needed with them. The burial tombs of pharaohs were piled with all of their possessions: beds, chariots, games, art work, walking sticks, weapons and even food. Pharaohs had the most highly crafted items, many were made of gold, imported wood, inlaid gems and ivory.
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When Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb, he found a huge chamber with four rooms filled with everything King Tut would need in the afterlife. The most prized item was a ‘sarcophagus’ which is usually the burial box for the mummy. For King Tut, they had placed the mummy in one sarcophagus and then that was in two additional ones. The third or last one was made of gold and that is the famous ‘gold’ image that has become the symbol of King Tut that we know today.
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TutankhamunIt took seventeen years to go through all of the things in the tomb and catalog (write down) each item. One of the things that Carter noticed when he first looked into the tomb is that many of the things appeared to have been tossed into the tomb, rather than organized. Another thing that was later noticed is that one of the sarcophagus may have belonged to someone else and they changed it for King Tut. It has been thought that the reason for this is that King Tut died so suddenly and unexpectedly that they didn’t have time to make a sarcophagus for him.

The Mummy’s Curse

Almost everyone has seen or heard about the curse of the mummy. It is a popular these for movies and books. The mummy’s curse first became well-known after the tomb of King Tut was found, but it was actually started a number of years before that.
The Mummy’s CurseIn 19th Century England, anything Egyptian was the trend. A stage show that was developed created a story about the mummy’s curse. In 1922 when King Tut’s tomb was opened, the news information was promised to only one newspaper. When people that had visited the tomb and participated in the excavation started dying, competitive newspapers created the story of the mummy’s curse. In reality, there were logical explanations for each of the deaths. Howard Carter, who discovered and opened the tomb of King Tut lived to be 65 years old.
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There are a few areas in ancient Egypt that actually have a ‘curse’ written on them for anyone that disturbs the tomb of the person buried there. The curses are supposed to scare anyone that might think of robbing the tomb and usually involve revenge by the Egyptian gods, or death by lions, snakes, crocodiles or scorpions. These curses have been found in the tombs that were built before the time of the pyramids.
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The reasons that the ancient Egyptians may have written a curse to scare anyone away is that in their religion, the mummified body had to remain undisturbed so that the spirit could go to the afterlife. It is said that the tomb of King Tut did have a written curse: "Death Shall Come on Swift Wings to Him Who Disturbs the Peace of the King."
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In recent times, there have been dangers discovered with opening burial tombs that have been sealed for so many years. The tombs contain natural items such as dead human bodies, remains of animals and food. These were placed in the tombs for the person who had died to take with them into the afterlife. Since they are in the tombs for thousands of years, they are going to decay.
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Scientists have discovered that many of the ancient mummies had a dangerous mold on them. The mold is so bad that it could cause very bad congestion. Other dangerous bacteria were also found in burial tombs. Anyone that entered the tombs when they were first opened would disturb the mold and bacteria and they could breathe it in. If they were not completely healthy, they could become very sick. They do not think it would cause anyone to die.
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Today scientists wear protective medical masks when they enter a burial tomb. They know that even if it has been open for a while, there is still a chance that there is active mold and bacteria that could cause discomfort.
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A majority of the myths of the mummy’s curse have been expanded in books and Hollywood movies. Everyone seems to like the mysterious, the magical and the unusual and they are fascinated with ancient Egypt. Creating the myths of a mummy’s curse is not based on any scientific evidence but make really great stories.

Egyptian Pyramids

The pyramids that we see in Egypt today continue to be ‘Wonders of the World’. They were built thousands of years ago and yet still stand. The ancient Egyptians created the pyramids as burial tombs to honor their pharaohs and since they believe them to be both man and god, they made the pyramids in a grand style.
Egyptian Pyramids for kidsIt’s believed that the original burial tombs for pharaohs and high ranking officials were flat monuments called ‘mastabas’. Over the years, each new burial tomb would have another smaller layer added to the top until they began to look like steps. The building of pyramids reached its height in the Old Kingdom time, between the Fourth and Sixth Dynasties; 2575 BC to 2150 BC. There are over 70 pyramids near the Nile River. It is thought that the first smooth sided pyramid was built between the years of 2680 to 2560 BC for the pharaoh King Snefru.
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Archeological excavations have found that unlike what most people might think, the pyramids were not built by slaves, but were Egyptians that lived in the area. They have found living areas that appear to be for the laborers and their families in an almost community style. The villages seem to be set up with shops, houses, butcher shops and even bakeries for the thousands of loaves of bread that was needed to feed the workers.
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There was a lot of planning that went into building a pyramid. Because of the weight, the location had to be on firm rock because building on sand would cause it to collapse. Specific measurements had to be made on the base size width and length. This was one of the most important decisions because it they were off, the pyramid would fall. Rock was cut out from quarries that were often quite a distance and carried on boats on the River Nile to the pyramid location. There were millions of pieces of rock that had to be just the right size to fit in place.
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Egyptologists are not really sure how the ancient Egyptians managed to get the heavy rock, often weighing many tons up to build the pyramids. Some think that they used ramps, while others think that they may have used sand to release and balance. There are many people throughout the world today that have tried to build smaller pyramids to figure out exactly how it was done.
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One of the things that everyone notices about the pyramids of Egypt is that they are incredibly large. The smallest of the Giza pyramids is over 200 ft high. The pyramid built by the pharaoh Khufu (pronounced Koo-foo) was originally 480 ft high and is made up of over 2.3 million stone blocks. Each of the blocks weighs about 5,000 lbs and had to be cut to the right size, brought to the pyramid and put in place by hand. The engineers of ancient Egypt were familiar with the difficult mathematics that were involved in creating a structure of such size.
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Ancient Egyptian Pyramid for kidsIf building the pyramids isn’t enough of a challenge, the ancient Egyptian engineers planned the blocks so that there were inner chambers and tunnels. It was thought that the pyramid chambers were for the burial of the pharaohs. Some of the huge stone burial sarcophagus have been found inside the pyramids but never any of the mummies or anything that would have been buried with the pharaoh.
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Once a pyramid was completed, it had armed guards to try to protect it from tomb raiders. The tombs were raided on such a regular basis that it is thought that the secrets were told to others by the builders. If anyone was caught raiding a pharaoh’s tomb, it was an instance death sentence.
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The pyramids that we see today have crumbled quite a bit and don’t look at all like they would have upon completion. Once all of the stones were in place, the entire pyramid was covered in white limestone and the top or cap of the pyramid would have been tipped in gold. In the bright Egyptian sunshine, the white and the gold would have gleamed brightly.

The four sons of Hor

 The four sons of Hor They are responsible for preserving the body parts of the deceased The first: My head is watery .... special for the l...