The word ancient egypt

Ancient Egypt was a civilization in Northeast Africa situated in the Nile Valley. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3100 BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology)^[1] with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes (often identified with Narmer).^[2] The history of ancient Egypt occurred as a series of stable kingdoms, separated by periods of relative instability known as Intermediate Periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age and the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.

Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power in the New Kingdom, ruling much of Nubia and a sizable portion of the Near East, after which it entered a period of slow decline. During the course of its history, Egypt was invaded or conquered by a number of foreign powers, including the Hyksos, the Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, and the Macedonians under the command of Alexander the Great. The Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom, formed in the aftermath of Alexander’s death, ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province.^[3]

The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military intended to assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.^[4]

The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying, and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems, and agricultural production techniques, the first known planked boats,^[5] Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites.^[6] Ancient Egypt has left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities were carried off to far corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for millennia. A newfound respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and Egyptians has led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy.^[7]

History

The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history.^[8] The fertile floodplain of the Nile gave humans the opportunity to develop a settled agricultural economy and a more sophisticated, centralized society that became a cornerstone in the history of human civilization.^[9] Nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the arid climate of Northern Africa had become increasingly hot and dry, forcing the populations of the area to concentrate along the river region.

Predynastic period

In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was much less arid than it is today. Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazing ungulates. Foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs, and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, and this is also the period when many animals were first domesticated.^[10]

By about 5500 BC, small tribes living in the Nile valley had developed into a series of cultures demonstrating firm control of agriculture and animal husbandry, and identifiable by their pottery and personal items, such as combs, bracelets, and beads. The largest of these early cultures in upper (Southern) Egypt was the Badarian culture, which probably originated in the Western Desert; it was known for its high-quality ceramics, stone tools, and its use of copper.^[11]

The Badari was followed by the Naqada culture: the Amratian (Naqada I), the Gerzeh (Naqada II), and Semainean (Naqada III).^{[12][page needed]} These brought a number of technological improvements. As early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes.^[13] In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan and the Byblos coast.^[14] Over a period of about 1,000 years, the Naqada culture developed from a few small farming communities into a powerful civilization whose leaders were in complete control of the people and resources of the Nile valley.^[15] Establishing a power center at Nekhen (in Greek, Hierakonpolis), and later at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile.^[16] They also traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the western desert to the west, and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East to the east, initiating a period of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations.^[17][when?]

The Naqada culture manufactured a diverse selection of material goods, reflective of the increasing power and wealth of the elite, as well as societal personal-use items, which included combs, small statuary, painted pottery, high quality decorative stone vases, cosmetic palettes, and jewelry made of gold, lapis, and ivory. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines.^[18] During the last predynastic phase, the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a full system of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language.^[19]

Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150–2686 BC)

The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early Sumerian-Akkadian civilization of Mesopotamia and of ancient Elam. The third-century BC Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the long line of kings from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a system still used today. He began his official history with the king named «Meni» (or Menes in Greek), who was believed to have united the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt.^[20]

The transition to a unified state happened more gradually than ancient Egyptian writers represented, and there is no contemporary record of Menes. Some scholars now believe, however, that the mythical Menes may have been the king Narmer, who is depicted wearing royal regalia on the ceremonial Narmer Palette, in a symbolic act of unification.^[22] In the Early Dynastic Period, which began about 3000 BC, the first of the Dynastic kings solidified control over lower Egypt by establishing a capital at Memphis, from which he could control the labour force and agriculture of the fertile delta region, as well as the lucrative and critical trade routes to the Levant. The increasing power and wealth of the kings during the early dynastic period was reflected in their elaborate mastaba tombs and mortuary cult structures at Abydos, which were used to celebrate the deified king after his death.^[23] The strong institution of kingship developed by the kings served to legitimize state control over the land, labour, and resources that were essential to the survival and growth of ancient Egyptian civilization.^[24]

Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BC)

Major advances in architecture, art, and technology were made during the Old Kingdom, fueled by the increased agricultural productivity and resulting population, made possible by a well-developed central administration.^[25] Some of ancient Egypt’s crowning achievements, the Giza pyramids and Great Sphinx, were constructed during the Old Kingdom. Under the direction of the vizier, state officials collected taxes, coordinated irrigation projects to improve crop yield, drafted peasants to work on construction projects, and established a justice system to maintain peace and order.^[26]

With the rising importance of central administration in Egypt, a new class of educated scribes and officials arose who were granted estates by the king in payment for their services. Kings also made land grants to their mortuary cults and local temples, to ensure that these institutions had the resources to worship the king after his death. Scholars believe that five centuries of these practices slowly eroded the economic vitality of Egypt, and that the economy could no longer afford to support a large centralized administration.^[27] As the power of the kings diminished, regional governors called nomarchs began to challenge the supremacy of the office of king. This, coupled with severe droughts between 2200 and 2150 BC,^[28] is believed to have caused the country to enter the 140-year period of famine and strife known as the First Intermediate Period.^[29]

First Intermediate Period (2181–2055 BC)

After Egypt’s central government collapsed at the end of the Old Kingdom, the administration could no longer support or stabilize the country’s economy. Regional governors could not rely on the king for help in times of crisis, and the ensuing food shortages and political disputes escalated into famines and small-scale civil wars. Yet despite difficult problems, local leaders, owing no tribute to the king, used their new-found independence to establish a thriving culture in the provinces. Once in control of their own resources, the provinces became economically richer—which was demonstrated by larger and better burials among all social classes.^[30] In bursts of creativity, provincial artisans adopted and adapted cultural motifs formerly restricted to the royalty of the Old Kingdom, and scribes developed literary styles that expressed the optimism and originality of the period.^[31]

Free from their loyalties to the king, local rulers began competing with each other for territorial control and political power. By 2160 BC, rulers in Herakleopolis controlled Lower Egypt in the north, while a rival clan based in Thebes, the Intef family, took control of Upper Egypt in the south. As the Intefs grew in power and expanded their control northward, a clash between the two rival dynasties became inevitable. Around 2055 BC the northern Theban forces under Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II finally defeated the Herakleopolitan rulers, reuniting the Two Lands. They inaugurated a period of economic and cultural renaissance known as the Middle Kingdom.^[32]

Middle Kingdom (2134–1690 BC)

The kings of the Middle Kingdom restored the country’s stability and prosperity, thereby stimulating a resurgence of art, literature, and monumental building projects.^[33] Mentuhotep II and his Eleventh Dynasty successors ruled from Thebes, but the vizier Amenemhat I, upon assuming the kingship at the beginning of the Twelfth Dynasty around 1985 BC, shifted the kingdom’s capital to the city of Itjtawy, located in Faiyum.^[34] From Itjtawy, the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty undertook a far-sighted land reclamation and irrigation scheme to increase agricultural output in the region. Moreover, the military reconquered territory in Nubia that was rich in quarries and gold mines, while laborers built a defensive structure in the Eastern Delta, called the «Walls of the Ruler», to defend against foreign attack.^[35]

With the kings having secured the country militarily and politically and with vast agricultural and mineral wealth at their disposal, the nation’s population, arts, and religion flourished. In contrast to elitist Old Kingdom attitudes towards the gods, the Middle Kingdom displayed an increase in expressions of personal piety.^[36] Middle Kingdom literature featured sophisticated themes and characters written in a confident, eloquent style.^[31] The relief and portrait sculpture of the period captured subtle, individual details that reached new heights of technical sophistication.^[37]

The last great ruler of the Middle Kingdom, Amenemhat III, allowed Semitic-speaking Canaanite settlers from the Near East into the Delta region to provide a sufficient labour force for his especially active mining and building campaigns. These ambitious building and mining activities, however, combined with severe Nile floods later in his reign, strained the economy and precipitated the slow decline into the Second Intermediate Period during the later Thirteenth and Fourteenth dynasties. During this decline, the Canaanite settlers began to assume greater control of the Delta region, eventually coming to power in Egypt as the Hyksos.^[38]

Second Intermediate Period (1674–1549 BC) and the Hyksos

Around 1785 BC, as the power of the Middle Kingdom kings weakened, a Western Asian people called the Hyksos, who had already settled in the Delta, seized control of Egypt and established their capital at Avaris, forcing the former central government to retreat to Thebes. The king was treated as a vassal and expected to pay tribute.^[39] The Hyksos («foreign rulers») retained Egyptian models of government and identified as kings, thereby integrating Egyptian elements into their culture. They and other invaders introduced new tools of warfare into Egypt, most notably the composite bow and the horse-drawn chariot.^[40]

After retreating south, the native Theban kings found themselves trapped between the Canaanite Hyksos ruling the north and the Hyksos’ Nubian allies, the Kushites, to the south. After years of vassalage, Thebes gathered enough strength to challenge the Hyksos in a conflict that lasted more than 30 years, until 1555 BC.^[39] The kings Seqenenre Tao II and Kamose were ultimately able to defeat the Nubians to the south of Egypt, but failed to defeat the Hyksos. That task fell to Kamose’s successor, Ahmose I, who successfully waged a series of campaigns that permanently eradicated the Hyksos’ presence in Egypt. He established a new dynasty and, in the New Kingdom that followed, the military became a central priority for the kings, who sought to expand Egypt’s borders and attempted to gain mastery of the Near East.^[41]

New Kingdom (1549–1069 BC)

The New Kingdom pharaohs established a period of unprecedented prosperity by securing their borders and strengthening diplomatic ties with their neighbours, including the Mitanni Empire, Assyria, and Canaan. Military campaigns waged under Tuthmosis I and his grandson Tuthmosis III extended the influence of the pharaohs to the largest empire Egypt had ever seen. Beginning with Merneptah the rulers of Egypt adopted the title of pharaoh.

Between their reigns, Hatshepsut, a queen who established herself as pharaoh, launched many building projects, including the restoration of temples damaged by the Hyksos, and sent trading expeditions to Punt and the Sinai.^[42] When Tuthmosis III died in 1425 BC, Egypt had an empire extending from Niya in north west Syria to the Fourth Cataract of the Nile in Nubia, cementing loyalties and opening access to critical imports such as bronze and wood.^[43]

The New Kingdom pharaohs began a large-scale building campaign to promote the god Amun, whose growing cult was based in Karnak. They also constructed monuments to glorify their own achievements, both real and imagined. The Karnak temple is the largest Egyptian temple ever built.^[44]

Around 1350 BC, the stability of the New Kingdom was threatened when Amenhotep IV ascended the throne and instituted a series of radical and chaotic reforms. Changing his name to Akhenaten, he touted the previously obscure sun deity Aten as the supreme deity, suppressed the worship of most other deities, and moved the capital to the new city of Akhetaten (modern-day Amarna).^[45] He was devoted to his new religion and artistic style. After his death, the cult of the Aten was quickly abandoned and the traditional religious order restored. The subsequent pharaohs, Tutankhamun, Ay, and Horemheb, worked to erase all mention of Akhenaten’s heresy, now known as the Amarna Period.^[46]

Around 1279 BC, Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great, ascended the throne, and went on to build more temples, erect more statues and obelisks, and sire more children than any other pharaoh in history.^[a] A bold military leader, Ramesses II led his army against the Hittites in the Battle of Kadesh (in modern Syria) and, after fighting to a stalemate, finally agreed to the first recorded peace treaty, around 1258 BC.^[47]

Egypt’s wealth, however, made it a tempting target for invasion, particularly by the Libyan Berbers to the west, and the Sea Peoples, a conjectured confederation of seafarers from the Aegean Sea.^[b] Initially, the military was able to repel these invasions, but Egypt eventually lost control of its remaining territories in southern Canaan, much of it falling to the Assyrians. The effects of external threats were exacerbated by internal problems such as corruption, tomb robbery, and civil unrest. After regaining their power, the high priests at the temple of Amun in Thebes accumulated vast tracts of land and wealth, and their expanded power splintered the country during the Third Intermediate Period.^[48]

Third Intermediate Period (1069–653 BC)

Following the death of Ramesses XI in 1078 BC, Smendes assumed authority over the northern part of Egypt, ruling from the city of Tanis. The south was effectively controlled by the High Priests of Amun at Thebes, who recognized Smendes in name only.^[49] During this time, Libyans had been settling in the western delta, and chieftains of these settlers began increasing their autonomy. Libyan princes took control of the delta under Shoshenq I in 945 BC, founding the so-called Libyan or Bubastite dynasty that would rule for some 200 years. Shoshenq also gained control of southern Egypt by placing his family members in important priestly positions. Libyan control began to erode as a rival dynasty in the delta arose in Leontopolis, and Kushites threatened from the south.

Around 727 BC the Kushite king Piye invaded northward, seizing control of Thebes and eventually the Delta, which established the 25th Dynasty.^[51] During the 25th Dynasty, Pharaoh Taharqa created an empire nearly as large as the New Kingdom’s. Twenty-fifth Dynasty pharaohs built, or restored, temples and monuments throughout the Nile valley, including at Memphis, Karnak, Kawa, and Jebel Barkal.^[52] During this period, the Nile valley saw the first widespread construction of pyramids (many in modern Sudan) since the Middle Kingdom.^[53][54][55]

Egypt’s far-reaching prestige declined considerably toward the end of the Third Intermediate Period. Its foreign allies had fallen under the Assyrian sphere of influence, and by 700 BC war between the two states became inevitable. Between 671 and 667 BC the Assyrians began the Assyrian conquest of Egypt. The reigns of both Taharqa and his successor, Tanutamun, were filled with constant conflict with the Assyrians, against whom Egypt enjoyed several victories. Ultimately, the Assyrians pushed the Kushites back into Nubia, occupied Memphis, and sacked the temples of Thebes.^[57]

Late Period (653–332 BC)

The Assyrians left control of Egypt to a series of vassals who became known as the Saite kings of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty. By 653 BC, the Saite king Psamtik I was able to oust the Assyrians with the help of Greek mercenaries, who were recruited to form Egypt’s first navy. Greek influence expanded greatly as the city-state of Naucratis became the home of Greeks in the Nile Delta. The Saite kings based in the new capital of Sais witnessed a brief but spirited resurgence in the economy and culture, but in 525 BC, the powerful Persians, led by Cambyses II, began their conquest of Egypt, eventually capturing the pharaoh Psamtik III at the Battle of Pelusium. Cambyses II then assumed the formal title of pharaoh, but ruled Egypt from Iran, leaving Egypt under the control of a satrap. A few successful revolts against the Persians marked the 5th century BC, but Egypt was never able to permanently overthrow the Persians.^[58]

Following its annexation by Persia, Egypt was joined with Cyprus and Phoenicia in the sixth satrapy of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. This first period of Persian rule over Egypt, also known as the Twenty-Seventh Dynasty, ended in 402 BC, when Egypt regained independence under a series of native dynasties. The last of these dynasties, the Thirtieth, proved to be the last native royal house of ancient Egypt, ending with the kingship of Nectanebo II. A brief restoration of Persian rule, sometimes known as the Thirty-First Dynasty, began in 343 BC, but shortly after, in 332 BC, the Persian ruler Mazaces handed Egypt over to Alexander the Great without a fight.^[59]

Ptolemaic period (332–30 BC)

In 332 BC, Alexander the Great conquered Egypt with little resistance from the Persians and was welcomed by the Egyptians as a deliverer. The administration established by Alexander’s successors, the Macedonian Ptolemaic Kingdom, was based on an Egyptian model and based in the new capital city of Alexandria. The city showcased the power and prestige of Hellenistic rule, and became a seat of learning and culture, centered at the famous Library of Alexandria.^[60] The Lighthouse of Alexandria lit the way for the many ships that kept trade flowing through the city—as the Ptolemies made commerce and revenue-generating enterprises, such as papyrus manufacturing, their top priority.^[61]

Hellenistic culture did not supplant native Egyptian culture, as the Ptolemies supported time-honored traditions in an effort to secure the loyalty of the populace. They built new temples in Egyptian style, supported traditional cults, and portrayed themselves as pharaohs. Some traditions merged, as Greek and Egyptian gods were syncretized into composite deities, such as Serapis, and classical Greek forms of sculpture influenced traditional Egyptian motifs. Despite their efforts to appease the Egyptians, the Ptolemies were challenged by native rebellion, bitter family rivalries, and the powerful mob of Alexandria that formed after the death of Ptolemy IV.^[62] In addition, as Rome relied more heavily on imports of grain from Egypt, the Romans took great interest in the political situation in the country. Continued Egyptian revolts, ambitious politicians, and powerful opponents from the Near East made this situation unstable, leading Rome to send forces to secure the country as a province of its empire.^[63]

Roman period (30 BC – AD 641)

Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire in 30 BC, following the defeat of Mark Antony and Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VII by Octavian (later Emperor Augustus) in the Battle of Actium. The Romans relied heavily on grain shipments from Egypt, and the Roman army, under the control of a prefect appointed by the emperor, quelled rebellions, strictly enforced the collection of heavy taxes, and prevented attacks by bandits, which had become a notorious problem during the period.^[64] Alexandria became an increasingly important center on the trade route with the orient, as exotic luxuries were in high demand in Rome.^[65]

Although the Romans had a more hostile attitude than the Greeks towards the Egyptians, some traditions such as mummification and worship of the traditional gods continued.^[66] The art of mummy portraiture flourished, and some Roman emperors had themselves depicted as pharaohs, though not to the extent that the Ptolemies had. The former lived outside Egypt and did not perform the ceremonial functions of Egyptian kingship. Local administration became Roman in style and closed to native Egyptians.^[66]

From the mid-first century AD, Christianity took root in Egypt and it was originally seen as another cult that could be accepted. However, it was an uncompromising religion that sought to win converts from the pagan Egyptian and Greco-Roman religions and threatened popular religious traditions. This led to the persecution of converts to Christianity, culminating in the great purges of Diocletian starting in 303, but eventually Christianity won out.^[67] In 391 the Christian emperor Theodosius introduced legislation that banned pagan rites and closed temples.^[68] Alexandria became the scene of great anti-pagan riots with public and private religious imagery destroyed.^[69] As a consequence, Egypt’s native religious culture was continually in decline. While the native population continued to speak their language, the ability to read hieroglyphic writing slowly disappeared as the role of the Egyptian temple priests and priestesses diminished. The temples themselves were sometimes converted to churches or abandoned to the desert.^[70]

In the fourth century, as the Roman Empire divided, Egypt found itself in the Eastern Empire with its capital at Constantinople. In the waning years of the Empire, Egypt fell to the Sasanian Persian army in the Sasanian conquest of Egypt (618–628). It was then recaptured by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (629–639), and was finally captured by Muslim Rashidun army in 639–641, ending Byzantine rule.

Government and economy

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 the supreme military commander and head of the government, who relied on a bureaucracy of officials to manage his affairs. In charge of the administration was his second in command, the vizier, who acted as the king’s representative and coordinated land surveys, the treasury, building projects, the legal system, and the archives.^[71] At a regional level, the country was divided into as many as 42 administrative regions called nomes each governed by a nomarch, who was accountable to the vizier for his jurisdiction. The temples formed the backbone of the economy. Not only were they places of worship, but were also responsible for collecting and storing the kingdom’s wealth in a system of granaries and treasuries administered by overseers, who redistributed grain and goods.^[72]

Much of the economy was centrally organized and strictly controlled. Although the ancient Egyptians did not use coinage until the Late period,^[73] they did use a type of money-barter system,^[74] with standard sacks of grain and the deben, a weight of roughly 91 grams (3 oz) of copper or silver, forming a common denominator.^[75] Workers were paid in grain; a simple laborer might earn 5+1⁄2 sacks (200 kg or 400 lb) of grain per month, while a foreman might earn 7+1⁄2 sacks (250 kg or 550 lb). Prices were fixed across the country and recorded in lists to facilitate trading; for example a shirt cost five copper deben, while a cow cost 140 deben.^[75] Grain could be traded for other goods, according to the fixed price list.^[75] During the fifth century BC coined money was introduced into Egypt from abroad. At first the coins were used as standardized pieces of precious metal rather than true money, but in the following centuries international traders came to rely on coinage.^[76]

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.^[77] Farmers were also subject to a labor tax and were required to work on irrigation or construction projects in a corvée system.^[78] 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, known as the «white kilt class» in reference to the bleached linen garments that served as a mark of their rank.^[79] The upper class prominently displayed their social status in art and literature. Below the nobility were the priests, physicians, and engineers with specialized training in their field. It is unclear whether slavery as understood today existed in ancient Egypt; there is difference of opinions among authors.^[80]

The ancient Egyptians viewed men and women, including people from all social classes, as essentially equal under the law, and even the lowliest peasant was entitled to petition the vizier and his court for redress.^[81] Although slaves were mostly used as indentured servants, they were able to buy and sell their servitude, work their way to freedom or nobility, and were usually treated by doctors in the workplace.^[82] 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. Compared with their counterparts in ancient Greece, Rome, and even more modern places around the world, ancient Egyptian women had a greater range of personal choices, legal rights, and opportunities for achievement. Women such as Hatshepsut and Cleopatra VII even became pharaohs, while others wielded power as Divine Wives of Amun. Despite these freedoms, ancient Egyptian women did not often take part in official roles in the administration, aside from the royal high priestesses, apparently served only secondary roles in the temples (not much data for many dynasties), and were not so likely to be as educated as men.^[81]

Legal system

The head of the legal system was officially the pharaoh, who was responsible for enacting laws, delivering justice, and maintaining law and order, a concept the ancient Egyptians referred to as Ma’at.^[71] Although no legal codes from ancient Egypt survive, court documents 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.^[81] Local councils of elders, known as Kenbet in the New Kingdom, were responsible for ruling in court cases involving small claims and minor disputes.^[71] More serious cases involving murder, major land transactions, and tomb robbery were referred to the Great Kenbet, over which the vizier or pharaoh presided. Plaintiffs and defendants were expected to represent themselves and were required to swear an oath that they had told the truth. In some cases, 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.^[83]

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, carried out by decapitation, drowning, or impaling the criminal on a stake. Punishment could also be extended to the criminal’s family.^[71] Beginning in the New Kingdom, oracles played a major role in the legal system, dispensing justice in both civil and criminal cases. The procedure was to ask the god a «yes» or «no» question concerning the right or wrong of an issue. The god, carried by a number of priests, rendered judgement by choosing one or the other, moving forward or backward, or pointing to one of the answers written on a piece of papyrus or an ostracon.^[84]

Agriculture

A combination of favorable geographical features contributed to the success of 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.^[85]

Farming in Egypt was dependent on the cycle of the Nile River. The Egyptians recognized three seasons: 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 ideal 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.^[86] From March to May, farmers used sickles to harvest their crops, which were then threshed with a flail to separate the straw from the grain. Winnowing removed the chaff from the grain, and the grain was then ground into flour, brewed to make beer, or stored for later use.^[87]

The ancient Egyptians cultivated emmer and barley, and several other cereal grains, all of which were used to make the two main food staples of bread and beer.^[88] 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. Vegetables included leeks, garlic, melons, squashes, pulses, lettuce, and other crops, in addition to grapes that were made into wine.^[89]

Animals

The Egyptians believed that a balanced relationship between people and animals was an essential element of the cosmic order; thus humans, animals and plants were believed to be members of a single whole.^[90] Animals, both domesticated and wild, were therefore a critical source of spirituality, companionship, and sustenance to the ancient Egyptians. Cattle were the most important livestock; the administration collected taxes on livestock in regular censuses, and the size of a herd reflected the prestige and importance of the estate or temple that owned them. In addition to cattle, the ancient Egyptians kept sheep, goats, and pigs. Poultry, such as ducks, geese, and pigeons, were captured in nets and bred on farms, where they were force-fed with dough to fatten them.^[91] The Nile provided a plentiful source of fish. Bees were also domesticated from at least the Old Kingdom, and provided both honey and wax.^[92]

The ancient Egyptians used donkeys and oxen as beasts of burden, and they were responsible for plowing the fields and trampling seed into the soil. The slaughter of a fattened ox was also a central part of an offering ritual. Horses were introduced by the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period. Camels, although known from the New Kingdom, were not used as beasts of burden until the Late Period. There is also evidence to suggest that elephants were briefly used in the Late Period but largely abandoned due to lack of grazing land.^[91] Cats, dogs, and monkeys were common family pets, while more exotic pets imported from the heart of Africa, such as Sub-Saharan African lions,^[93] were reserved for royalty. Herodotus observed that the Egyptians were the only people to keep their animals with them in their houses.^[90] During the Late Period, the worship of the gods in their animal form was extremely popular, such as the cat goddess Bastet and the ibis god Thoth, and these animals were kept in large numbers for the purpose of ritual sacrifice.^[94]

Natural resources

Egypt is 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.^[95] Embalmers used salts from the Wadi Natrun for mummification, which also provided the gypsum needed to make plaster.^[96] Ore-bearing rock formations were found in distant, inhospitable wadis in the Eastern Desert and the Sinai, requiring large, state-controlled expeditions to obtain natural resources found there. There were extensive gold mines in Nubia, and one of the first maps known is of a gold mine in this region. The Wadi Hammamat was a notable source of granite, greywacke, and gold. 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.^[97] Ancient Egyptians were among the first to use minerals such as sulfur as cosmetic substances.^[98]

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.^[99] 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 used in the Late Period.^[100] 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.^[101]

Trade

The ancient Egyptians engaged in trade with their foreign neighbors to obtain rare, exotic goods not found in Egypt. In the Predynastic Period, they established trade with Nubia to obtain gold and incense. They also established trade with Palestine, as evidenced by Palestinian-style oil jugs found in the burials of the First Dynasty pharaohs.^[102] An Egyptian colony stationed in southern Canaan dates to slightly before the First Dynasty.^[103] Narmer had Egyptian pottery produced in Canaan and exported back to Egypt.^[104][105]

By the Second Dynasty at latest, ancient Egyptian trade with Byblos yielded a critical source of quality timber not found in Egypt. By the Fifth Dynasty, trade with Punt provided gold, aromatic resins, ebony, ivory, and wild animals such as monkeys and baboons.^[106] Egypt relied on trade with Anatolia for essential quantities of tin as well as supplementary supplies of copper, both metals being necessary for the manufacture of bronze. The ancient Egyptians prized the blue stone lapis lazuli, which had to be imported from far-away Afghanistan. Egypt’s Mediterranean trade partners also included Greece and Crete, which provided, among other goods, supplies of olive oil.^[107]

Language

Historical development

r n kmt ‘Egyptian language’
Egyptian hieroglyphs

The Egyptian language is a northern Afro-Asiatic language closely related to the Berber and Semitic languages.^[108] It has the longest known history of any language having been written from c. 3200 BC to the Middle Ages and remaining as a spoken language for longer. The phases of ancient Egyptian are Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian (Classical Egyptian), Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic.^[109] Egyptian writings do not show dialect differences before Coptic, but it was probably spoken in regional dialects around Memphis and later Thebes.^[110]

Ancient Egyptian was a synthetic language, but it became more analytic later on. Late Egyptian developed prefixal definite and indefinite articles, which replaced the older inflectional suffixes. There was a change from the older verb–subject–object word order to subject–verb–object.^[111] The Egyptian hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic scripts were eventually replaced by the more phonetic Coptic alphabet. Coptic is still used in the liturgy of the Egyptian Orthodox Church, and traces of it are found in modern Egyptian Arabic.^[112]

Sounds and grammar

Ancient Egyptian has 25 consonants similar to those of other Afro-Asiatic languages. These include pharyngeal and emphatic consonants, voiced and voiceless stops, voiceless fricatives and voiced and voiceless affricates. It has three long and three short vowels, which expanded in Late Egyptian to about nine.^[113] The basic word in Egyptian, similar to Semitic and Berber, is a triliteral or biliteral root of consonants and semiconsonants. Suffixes are added to form words. The verb conjugation corresponds to the person. For example, the triconsonantal skeleton S-Ḏ-M is the semantic core of the word ‘hear’; its basic conjugation is sḏm, ‘he hears’. If the subject is a noun, suffixes are not added to the verb:^[114] sḏm ḥmt, ‘the woman hears’.

Adjectives are derived from nouns through a process that Egyptologists call nisbation because of its similarity with Arabic.^[115] The word order is predicate–subject in verbal and adjectival sentences, and subject–predicate in nominal and adverbial sentences.^[116] The subject can be moved to the beginning of sentences if it is long and is followed by a resumptive pronoun.^[117] Verbs and nouns are negated by the particle n, but nn is used for adverbial and adjectival sentences. Stress falls on the ultimate or penultimate syllable, which can be open (CV) or closed (CVC).^[118]

Writing

Hieroglyphic writing dates from c. 3000 BC, and is composed of hundreds of symbols. A hieroglyph can represent a word, a sound, or a silent determinative; and the same symbol can serve different purposes in different contexts. 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 (though typically written from right to left), hieratic was always written from right to left, usually in horizontal rows. A new form of writing, Demotic, 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.^[120]

Around the first century AD, the Coptic alphabet started to be used alongside the Demotic script. Coptic is a modified Greek alphabet with the addition of some Demotic signs.^[121] Although formal hieroglyphs were used in a ceremonial role until the fourth century, towards the end only a small handful of priests could still read them. As the traditional religious establishments were disbanded, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was mostly lost. Attempts to decipher them date to the Byzantine^[122] and Islamic periods in Egypt,^[123] but only in the 1820s, after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and years of research by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion, were hieroglyphs substantially deciphered.^[124]

Literature

Writing first appeared in association with kingship on labels and tags for items found in royal tombs. It was primarily an occupation of the scribes, who worked out of the Per Ankh institution or the House of Life. The latter comprised offices, libraries (called House of Books), laboratories and observatories.^[125] Some of the best-known pieces of ancient Egyptian literature, such as the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, were written in Classical Egyptian, which continued to be the language of writing until about 1300 BC. Late Egyptian was spoken from the New Kingdom onward and is represented in Ramesside administrative documents, love poetry and tales, as well as in Demotic and Coptic texts. During this period, the tradition of writing had evolved into the tomb autobiography, such as those of Harkhuf and Weni. The genre known as Sebayt («instructions») was developed to communicate teachings and guidance from famous nobles; the Ipuwer papyrus, a poem of lamentations describing natural disasters and social upheaval, is a famous example.

The Story of Sinuhe, written in Middle Egyptian, might be the classic of Egyptian literature.^[126] Also written at this time was the Westcar Papyrus, a set of stories told to Khufu by his sons relating the marvels performed by priests.^[127] The Instruction of Amenemope is considered a masterpiece of Near Eastern literature.^[128] Towards the end of the New Kingdom, the vernacular language was more often employed to write popular pieces like the Story of Wenamun and the Instruction of Any. The former tells the story of a noble who is robbed on his way to buy cedar from Lebanon and of his struggle to return to Egypt. From about 700 BC, narrative stories and instructions, such as the popular Instructions of Onchsheshonqy, as well as personal and business documents were written in the demotic script and phase of Egyptian. Many stories written in demotic during the Greco-Roman period were set in previous historical eras, when Egypt was an independent nation ruled by great pharaohs such as Ramesses II.^[129]

Culture

Daily life

Most ancient Egyptians were farmers tied to the land. Their dwellings were restricted to immediate family members, and were constructed of mudbrick designed to remain cool in the heat of the day. Each home had a kitchen with an open roof, which contained a grindstone for milling grain and a small oven for baking the bread.^[130] Ceramics served as household wares for the storage, preparation, transport, and consumption of food, drink, and raw materials. Walls were painted white and could be covered with dyed linen wall hangings. Floors were covered with reed mats, while wooden stools, beds raised from the floor and individual tables comprised the furniture.^[131]

The ancient Egyptians placed a great value on hygiene and appearance. Most bathed in the Nile and used a pasty soap made from animal fat and chalk. Men shaved their entire bodies for cleanliness; perfumes and aromatic ointments covered bad odors and soothed skin.^[132] Clothing was made from simple linen sheets that were bleached white, and both men and women of the upper classes wore wigs, jewelry, and cosmetics. Children went without clothing until maturity, at about age 12, and at this age males were circumcised and had their heads shaved. Mothers were responsible for taking care of the children, while the father provided the family’s income.^[133]

Music and dance were popular entertainments for those who could afford them. Early instruments included flutes and harps, while instruments similar to trumpets, oboes, and pipes developed later and became popular. In the New Kingdom, the Egyptians played on bells, cymbals, tambourines, drums, and imported lutes and lyres from Asia.^[134] The sistrum was a rattle-like musical instrument that was especially important in religious ceremonies.

The ancient Egyptians enjoyed a variety of leisure activities, including games and music. Senet, a board game where pieces moved according to random chance, was particularly popular from the earliest times; another similar game was mehen, which had a circular gaming board. «Hounds and Jackals» also known as 58 holes is another example of board games played in ancient Egypt. The first complete set of this game was discovered from a Theban tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhat IV that dates to the 13th Dynasty.^[136] Juggling and ball games were popular with children, and wrestling is also documented in a tomb at Beni Hasan.^[137] The wealthy members of ancient Egyptian society enjoyed hunting, fishing, and boating as well.

The excavation of the workers’ village of Deir el-Medina has resulted in one of the most thoroughly documented accounts of community life in the ancient world, which spans almost four hundred years. There is no comparable site in which the organization, social interactions, and working and living conditions of a community have been studied in such detail.^[138]

Cuisine

Egyptian cuisine remained remarkably stable over time; indeed, the cuisine of modern Egypt retains some striking similarities to the cuisine of the ancients. The staple diet consisted of bread and beer, supplemented with vegetables such as onions and garlic, and fruit such as dates and figs. Wine and meat were enjoyed by all on feast days while the upper classes indulged on a more regular basis. Fish, meat, and fowl could be salted or dried, and could be cooked in stews or roasted on a grill.^[139]

Architecture

The architecture of ancient Egypt includes some of the most famous structures in the world: the Great Pyramids of Giza and the temples at Thebes. Building projects were organized and funded by the state for religious and commemorative purposes, but also to reinforce the wide-ranging power of the pharaoh. The ancient Egyptians were skilled builders; using only simple but effective tools and sighting instruments, architects could build large stone structures with great accuracy and precision that is still envied today.^[140]

The domestic dwellings of elite and ordinary Egyptians alike were constructed from perishable materials such as mudbricks and wood, and have not survived. Peasants lived in simple homes, while the palaces of the elite and the pharaoh were more elaborate structures. A few surviving New Kingdom palaces, such as those in Malkata and Amarna, show richly decorated walls and floors with scenes of people, birds, water pools, deities and geometric designs.^[141] Important structures such as temples and tombs that were intended to last forever were constructed of stone instead of mudbricks. The architectural elements used in the world’s first large-scale stone building, Djoser’s mortuary complex, include post and lintel supports in the papyrus and lotus motif.

The earliest preserved ancient Egyptian temples, such as those at Giza, consist of single, enclosed halls with roof slabs supported by columns. In the New Kingdom, architects added the pylon, the open courtyard, and the enclosed hypostyle hall to the front of the temple’s sanctuary, a style that was standard until the Greco-Roman period.^[142] The earliest and most popular tomb architecture in the Old Kingdom was the mastaba, a flat-roofed rectangular structure of mudbrick or stone built over an underground burial chamber. The step pyramid of Djoser is a series of stone mastabas stacked on top of each other. Pyramids were built during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but most later rulers abandoned them in favor of less conspicuous rock-cut tombs.^[143] The use of the pyramid form continued in private tomb chapels of the New Kingdom and in the royal pyramids of Nubia.^[144]

• 

  Model of a household porch and garden, c. 1981–1975 BC

Art

The ancient Egyptians produced art to serve functional purposes. For over 3500 years, artists adhered to artistic forms and iconography that were developed during the Old Kingdom, following a strict set of principles that resisted foreign influence and internal change.^[145] 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. Images and text were intimately interwoven on tomb and temple walls, coffins, stelae, and even statues. The Narmer Palette, for example, displays figures that can also be read as hieroglyphs.^[146] 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.^[147]

Ancient Egyptian artisans used stone as a medium for carving statues and fine reliefs, but used wood as a cheap and easily carved substitute. Paints were obtained from minerals such as iron ores (red and yellow ochres), copper ores (blue and green), soot or charcoal (black), and limestone (white). Paints could be mixed with gum arabic as a binder and pressed into cakes, which could be moistened with water when needed.^[148]

Pharaohs used reliefs to record victories in battle, royal decrees, and religious scenes. 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.^[149] During the Middle Kingdom, wooden or clay models depicting scenes from everyday life became popular additions to the tomb. In an attempt to duplicate the activities of the living in the afterlife, these models show laborers, houses, boats, and even military formations that are scale representations of the ideal ancient Egyptian afterlife.^[150]

Despite the homogeneity of ancient Egyptian art, the styles of particular times and places sometimes reflected changing cultural or political attitudes. After the invasion of the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period, Minoan-style frescoes were found in Avaris.^[151] The most striking example of a politically driven change in artistic forms comes from the Amarna Period, where figures were radically altered to conform to Akhenaten’s revolutionary religious ideas.^[152] This style, known as Amarna art, was quickly abandoned after Akhenaten’s death and replaced by the traditional forms.^[153]

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  Egyptian tomb models as funerary goods. Egyptian Museum in Cairo

• 

  Kneeling portrait statue of Amenemhat holding a stele with an inscription; c. 1500 BC; limestone; Egyptian Museum of Berlin (Germany)

• 

  Falcon box with wrapped contents; 332–30 BC; painted and gilded wood, linen, resin and feathers; 58.5 × 24.9 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)

Religious beliefs

Beliefs in the divine and in the afterlife were ingrained in ancient Egyptian civilization from its inception; pharaonic rule was based on the divine right of kings. The Egyptian pantheon was populated by gods who had supernatural powers and were called on for help or protection. However, the gods were not always viewed as benevolent, and Egyptians believed 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 myths and stories into a coherent system.^[154] These various conceptions of divinity were not considered contradictory but rather layers in the multiple facets of reality.^[155]

Gods were worshiped in cult temples administered by priests acting on the king’s behalf. At the center of the temple was the cult statue in a shrine. Temples were not places of public worship or congregation, and only on select feast days and celebrations was a shrine carrying the statue of the god 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 could worship private statues in their homes, and amulets offered protection against the forces of chaos.^[156] After the New Kingdom, the pharaoh’s role as a spiritual intermediary was 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.^[157]

The Egyptians believed that every human being was composed of physical and spiritual parts or aspects. In addition to the body, each person had a šwt (shadow), a ba (personality or soul), a ka (life-force), and a name.^[158] 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». 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.^[159] If they were not deemed worthy, their heart was eaten by Ammit the Devourer and they were erased from the Universe.

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 with the body goods the deceased would use in the afterlife.^[149] Before the Old Kingdom, bodies buried in desert pits were naturally preserved by desiccation. The arid, desert conditions were a boon throughout the history of ancient Egypt for burials of the poor, who could not afford the elaborate burial preparations available to the elite. Wealthier Egyptians began to bury their dead in stone tombs and use artificial mummification, which involved removing the internal organs, wrapping the body in linen, and burying it in a rectangular stone sarcophagus or wooden coffin. Beginning in the Fourth Dynasty, some parts were preserved separately in canopic jars.^[160]

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.^[161]

Wealthy Egyptians were buried with larger quantities of luxury items, but all burials, regardless of social status, included goods for the deceased. Funerary texts were often included in the grave, and, beginning in the New Kingdom, so were shabti statues that were believed to perform manual labor for them in the afterlife.^[162] Rituals in which the deceased was magically re-animated accompanied burials. After burial, living relatives were expected to occasionally bring food to the tomb and recite prayers on behalf of the deceased.^[163]

Military

The ancient Egyptian military was responsible for defending Egypt against foreign invasion, and for maintaining Egypt’s domination in the ancient Near East. The military protected mining expeditions to the Sinai during the Old Kingdom and fought civil wars during the First and Second Intermediate Periods. The military was responsible for maintaining fortifications along important trade routes, such as those found at the city of Buhen on the way to Nubia. Forts also were constructed to serve as military bases, such as the fortress at Sile, which was a base of operations for expeditions to the Levant. In the New Kingdom, a series of pharaohs used the standing Egyptian army to attack and conquer Kush and parts of the Levant.^[164]

Typical military equipment included bows and arrows, spears, and round-topped shields made by stretching animal skin over a wooden frame. In the New Kingdom, the military began using chariots that had earlier been introduced by the Hyksos invaders. Weapons and armor continued to improve after the adoption of bronze: shields were now made from solid wood with a bronze buckle, spears were tipped with a bronze point, and the khopesh was adopted from Asiatic soldiers.^[165] The pharaoh was usually depicted in art and literature riding at the head of the army; it has been suggested that at least a few pharaohs, such as Seqenenre Tao II and his sons, did do so.^[166] However, it has also been argued that «kings of this period did not personally act as frontline war leaders, fighting alongside their troops.»^[167] Soldiers were recruited from the general population, but during, and especially after, the New Kingdom, mercenaries from Nubia, Kush, and Libya were hired to fight for Egypt.^[168]

Technology, medicine and mathematics

Technology

In technology, medicine, and mathematics, ancient Egypt achieved a relatively high standard of productivity and sophistication. Traditional empiricism, as evidenced by the Edwin Smith and Ebers papyri (c. 1600 BC), is first credited to Egypt. The Egyptians created their own alphabet and decimal system.

Faience and glass

Even before the Old Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had developed a glassy material known as faience, which they treated as a type of artificial semi-precious stone. Faience is a non-clay ceramic made of silica, small amounts of lime and soda, and a colorant, typically copper.^[169] The material was used to make beads, tiles, figurines, and small wares. Several methods can be used to create faience, but typically production involved application of the powdered materials in the form of a paste over a clay core, which was then fired. By a related technique, the ancient Egyptians produced a pigment known as Egyptian blue, also called blue frit, which is produced by fusing (or sintering) silica, copper, lime, and an alkali such as natron. The product can be ground up and used as a pigment.^[170]

The ancient Egyptians could fabricate a wide variety of objects from glass with great skill, but it is not clear whether they developed the process independently.^[171] It is also unclear whether they made their own raw glass or merely imported pre-made ingots, which they melted and finished. However, they did have technical expertise in making objects, as well as adding trace elements to control the color of the finished glass. A range of colors could be produced, including yellow, red, green, blue, purple, and white, and the glass could be made either transparent or opaque.^[172]

Medicine

The medical problems of the ancient Egyptians stemmed directly from their environment. Living and working close to the Nile brought hazards from malaria and debilitating schistosomiasis parasites, which caused liver and intestinal damage. Dangerous wildlife such as crocodiles and hippos were also a common threat. The lifelong labors of farming and building put stress on the spine and joints, and traumatic injuries from construction and warfare all took a significant toll on the body. The grit and sand from stone-ground flour abraded teeth, leaving them susceptible to abscesses (though caries were rare).^[173]

The diets of the wealthy were rich in sugars, which promoted periodontal disease.^[174] Despite the flattering physiques portrayed on tomb walls, the overweight mummies of many of the upper class show the effects of a life of overindulgence.^[175] Adult life expectancy was about 35 for men and 30 for women, but reaching adulthood was difficult as about one-third of the population died in infancy.^[c]

Ancient Egyptian physicians were renowned in the ancient Near East for their healing skills, and some, such as Imhotep, remained famous long after their deaths.^[176] Herodotus remarked that there was a high degree of specialization among Egyptian physicians, with some treating only the head or the stomach, while others were eye-doctors and dentists.^[177] Training of physicians took place at the Per Ankh or «House of Life» institution, most notably those headquartered in Per-Bastet during the New Kingdom and at Abydos and Saïs in the Late period. Medical papyri show empirical knowledge of anatomy, injuries, and practical treatments.^[178]

Wounds were treated by bandaging with raw meat, white linen, sutures, nets, pads, and swabs soaked with honey to prevent infection,^[179] while opium, thyme, and belladona were used to relieve pain. The earliest records of burn treatment describe burn dressings that use the milk from mothers of male babies. Prayers were made to the goddess Isis. Moldy bread, honey, and copper salts were also used to prevent infection from dirt in burns.^[180] Garlic and onions were used regularly to promote good health and were thought to relieve asthma symptoms. Ancient Egyptian surgeons stitched wounds, set broken bones, and amputated diseased limbs, but they recognized that some injuries were so serious that they could only make the patient comfortable until death occurred.^[181]

Maritime technology

Early Egyptians knew how to assemble planks of wood into a ship hull and had mastered advanced forms of shipbuilding as early as 3000 BC. The Archaeological Institute of America reports that the oldest planked ships known are the Abydos boats.^[5] A group of 14 discovered ships in Abydos were constructed of wooden planks «sewn» together. Discovered by Egyptologist David O’Connor of New York University,^[182] woven straps were found to have been used to lash the planks together,^[5] and reeds or grass stuffed between the planks helped to seal the seams.^[5] Because the ships are all buried together and near a mortuary belonging to Pharaoh Khasekhemwy, originally they were all thought to have belonged to him, but one of the 14 ships dates to 3000 BC, and the associated pottery jars buried with the vessels also suggest earlier dating. The ship dating to 3000 BC was 75 feet (23 m) long and is now thought to perhaps have belonged to an earlier pharaoh, perhaps one as early as Hor-Aha.^[182]

Early Egyptians also knew how to assemble planks of wood with treenails to fasten them together, using pitch for caulking the seams. The «Khufu ship», a 43.6-metre (143 ft) vessel sealed into a pit in the Giza pyramid complex at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza in the Fourth Dynasty around 2500 BC, is a full-size surviving example that may have filled the symbolic function of a solar barque. Early Egyptians also knew how to fasten the planks of this ship together with mortise and tenon joints.^[5]

Large seagoing ships are known to have been heavily used by the Egyptians in their trade with the city states of the eastern Mediterranean, especially Byblos (on the coast of modern-day Lebanon), and in several expeditions down the Red Sea to the Land of Punt. In fact one of the earliest Egyptian words for a seagoing ship is a «Byblos Ship», which originally defined a class of Egyptian seagoing ships used on the Byblos run; however, by the end of the Old Kingdom, the term had come to include large seagoing ships, whatever their destination.^[183]

In 1977, an ancient north–south canal was discovered extending from Lake Timsah to the Ballah Lakes.^[184] It was dated to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt by extrapolating dates of ancient sites constructed along its course.^[184][d]

In 2011, archaeologists from Italy, the United States, and Egypt excavating a dried-up lagoon known as Mersa Gawasis have unearthed traces of an ancient harbor that once launched early voyages like Hatshepsut’s Punt expedition onto the open ocean. Some of the site’s most evocative evidence for the ancient Egyptians’ seafaring prowess include large ship timbers and hundreds of feet of ropes, made from papyrus, coiled in huge bundles.^[185] In 2013, a team of Franco-Egyptian archaeologists discovered what is believed to be the world’s oldest port, dating back about 4500 years, from the time of King Cheops on the Red Sea coast near Wadi el-Jarf (about 110 miles south of Suez).^[186]

Mathematics

The earliest attested examples of mathematical calculations date to the predynastic Naqada period, and show a fully developed numeral system.^[e] The importance of mathematics to an educated Egyptian is suggested by a New Kingdom fictional letter in which the writer proposes a scholarly competition between himself and another scribe regarding everyday calculation tasks such as accounting of land, labor, and grain.^[188] Texts such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus show that the ancient Egyptians could perform the four basic mathematical operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division—use fractions, calculate the areas of rectangles, triangles, and circles and compute the volumes of boxes, columns and pyramids. They understood basic concepts of algebra and geometry, and could solve simple sets of simultaneous equations.^[189]

2⁄3
Egyptian hieroglyphs

Mathematical notation was decimal, and based on hieroglyphic signs for each power of ten up to one million. Each of these could be written as many times as necessary to add up to the desired number; so to write the number eighty or eight hundred, the symbol for ten or one hundred was written eight times respectively.^[190] Because their methods of calculation could not handle most fractions with a numerator greater than one, they had to write fractions as the sum of several fractions. For example, they resolved the fraction two-fifths into the sum of one-third + one-fifteenth. Standard tables of values facilitated this.^[191] Some common fractions, however, were written with a special glyph—the equivalent of the modern two-thirds is shown on the right.^[192]

Ancient Egyptian mathematicians knew the Pythagorean theorem as an empirical formula. They were aware, for example, that a triangle had a right angle opposite the hypotenuse when its sides were in a 3–4–5 ratio.^[193] They were able to estimate the area of a circle by subtracting one-ninth from its diameter and squaring the result:

Area ≈ [(8⁄9)D]² = (256⁄81)r² ≈ 3.16r²,

a reasonable approximation of the formula πr².^[194]

The golden ratio seems to be reflected in many Egyptian constructions, including the pyramids, but its use may have been an unintended consequence of the ancient Egyptian practice of combining the use of knotted ropes with an intuitive sense of proportion and harmony.^[195]

Population

Estimates of the size of the population range from 1–1.5 million in the 3rd millennium BC to possibly 2–3 million by the 1st millennium BC, before growing significantly towards the end of that millennium.^[196]

DNA

In 2012, the DNA of the 20th dynasty mummies of Ramesses III and another mummy believed to be Ramesses III’s son Pentawer were analyzed by Albert Zink, Yehia Z Gad and a team of researchers under Zahi Hawass, then Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egypt. Genetic kinship analyses revealed identical haplotypes in both mummies. Using the Whit Athey’s haplogroup predictor, they identified the Y chromosomal haplogroup E1b1a (E-M2).^[197]

In 2017, a team led by researchers from the University of Tuebingen and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena tested the maternal DNA (mitochondrial) of 90 mummies from Abusir el-Meleq in northern Egypt (near Cairo),^[198] which was the first reliable data using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods.^[199] Additionally, three of the mummies were also analyzed for Y-DNA. Two were assigned to West Asian J and one to haplogroup E1b1b1 both common in North Africa. The researchers cautioned that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were from a single archaeological site. Whilst not conclusive since the few relatively older mummies only go back to the 18th–19th dynasty, the rest being from then up to late Roman period, the authors of this study said the Abusir el-Meleq mummies «closely resembled ancient and modern Near Eastern populations, especially those in the Levant.» The genetics of the mummies remained remarkably consistent within this range even as different powers—including Nubians, Greeks, and Romans—conquered the empire.» A wide range of mtDNA haplogroups were found including clades of J, U, H, HV, M, R0, R2, K, T, L, I, N, X, W. The authors of the study noted that the mummies at Abusir el-Meleq have 6–15% maternal sub-Saharan DNA while modern Egyptians have a little more sub-Saharan ancestry, 15% to 20%, suggesting some degree of influx after the end of the empire.^[200] Other genetic studies show greater levels of sub-Saharan African ancestry in modern southern Egyptian populations^[201] and anticipate that mummies from southern Egypt would show greater levels of sub-Saharan African ancestry.

Gourdine, Anselin and Keita criticised the methodology of the Scheunemann et al study and argued that the Sub-Saharan «genetic affinities» may be attributed to «early settlers» and «the relevant Sub-Saharan genetic markers» do not correspond with the geography of known trade routes».^[202] In 2022, Danielle Candelora noted several limitations with the 2017 Scheunemann et al. study such as its “untested sampling methods, small sample size and problematic comparative data” which she argued had been misused to legitimise racist conceptions of Ancient Egypt with “scientific evidence”.^[203]

Because the 2017 study only sampled from a single site at Abusir el-Meleq, Scheunemann et al.(2022) carried out a follow-up study by collecting samples from six different excavation sites along the entire length of the Nile Valley, spanning 4000 years of Egyptian history. 81 samples were collected from 17 mummies and 14 skeletal remains, and 18 high quality mitochondrial genomes were reconstructed from 10 individuals. The authors argued that the analyzed mitochondrial genomes supported the results from the earlier study at Abusir el-Meleq.^[204]

In 2018, the 4000-year-old mummified head of Djehutynakht, a governor in the Middle Kingdom of the 11th or 12th dynasty, was analyzed for mitochondrial DNA. The sequence of the mummy most closely resembles a U5a lineage from sample JK2903, a much more recent 2000-year-old skeleton from the Abusir el-Meleq site in Egypt, although no direct matches to the Djehutynakht sequence have been reported.
^[205] Haplogroup U5 is also found in modern-day Berbers from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt. A 2008 article by C. Coudray, «The complex and diversified mitochondrial gene pool of Berber populations», recorded haplogroup U5 at 16.7% for the Siwa^[206] whereas haplogroup U6 is more common in other Berber populations to the west of Egypt.

In 2018, the mummified remains of two high-status Egyptian relatives, Nakht-Ankh and Khnum-Nakht were analyzed DNA by a team of researchers from the University of Manchester. The results found differences in the Y chromosome SNPs of the two mummies which indicated different paternal lineages and concluded that Nakht-Ankh and Khnum-Nakht were half-brothers but Y chromosome sequences were not complete enough to determine paternal haplogroup. The SNP identities were consistent with mtDNA haplogroup M1a1 with 88.05–91.27% degree of confidence, thus confirming the African origins of the two individuals.^[207]

A 2020 DNA study by Gad, Hawass et al., analysed mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal haplogroups from Tutankhamun’s family members of the 18th Dynasty, using comprehensive control procedures to ensure quality results. They found that the Y-chromosome haplogroup of the family was R1b, which originated in Europe and which today makes up 50–90% of the genetic pool of modern western Europeans. The mitochondrial haplogroup was K, which is most likely also part of a Near Eastern lineage. The profiles for Tutankhamun and Amenhotep III were incomplete and the analysis produced differing probability figures despite having concordant allele results. Because the relationships of these two mummies with the KV55 mummy had previously been confirmed in an earlier study, the haplogroup prediction of both mummies could be derived from the full profile of the KV55 data. The 20th Dynasty pair of Ramesses III and his son were found to have the haplogroup E1b1a, which has its highest frequencies in modern populations from West Africa and Central Africa, but which is rare among North Africans and nearly absent in East Africa.^[208]
Genetic analysis indicated the following haplogroups:

• Tutankhamun YDNA R1b / mtDNA K
• Akhenaten YDNA R1b / mtDNA K
• Amenhotep III YDNA R1b / mtDNA K
• Yuya G2a / mtDNA K
• Tiye mtDNA K
• Thuya mtDNA K

The specific clade of R1b was not determined.

In 2010 Hawass et al. undertook detailed anthropological, radiological, and genetic studies as part of the King Tutankhamun Family Project. The objectives included attempting to determine familial relationships among 11 royal mummies of the New Kingdom, as well to research for pathological features including potential inherited disorders and infectious diseases.^[209] In 2012, Hawass et al. undertook an anthropological, forensic, radiological, and genetic study of the 20th dynasty mummies of Ramesses III and an unknown man which were found together.^[210] In 2022, S.O.Y. Keita analysed 8 Short Tandem loci (STR) data published as part of these studies by Hawass et al., using an algorithm that only has three choices: Eurasians, sub-Saharan Africans, and East Asians. Using these three options, Keita concluded that the majority of the samples which included Tutankhamun and Rameses III had a population «affinity with «sub-Saharan» Africans in one affinity analysis». However, Keita cautioned that this does not mean that the royal mummies “lacked other affiliations” which he argued had been obscured in typological thinking. Keita further added that different “data and algorithms might give different results” which reflects the complexity of biological heritage and the associated interpretation.^[211]

Legacy

The culture and monuments of ancient Egypt have left a lasting legacy on the world. Egyptian civilization significantly influenced the Kingdom of Kush and Meroë with both adopting Egyptian religious and architectural norms (hundreds of pyramids (6–30 meters high) were built in Egypt/Sudan), as well as using Egyptian writing as the basis of the Meroitic script.^[212] Meroitic is the oldest written language in Africa, other than Egyptian, and was used from the 2nd century BC until the early 5th century AD.^[213] The cult of the goddess Isis, for example, became popular in the Roman Empire, as obelisks and other relics were transported back to Rome.^[214] The Romans also imported building materials from Egypt to erect Egyptian-style structures. Early historians such as Herodotus, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus studied and wrote about the land, which Romans came to view as a place of mystery.^[215]

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Egyptian pagan culture was in decline after the rise of Christianity and later Islam, but interest in Egyptian antiquity continued in the writings of medieval scholars such as Dhul-Nun al-Misri and al-Maqrizi.^[216] In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European travelers and tourists brought back antiquities and wrote stories of their journeys, leading to a wave of Egyptomania across Europe, as evident in symbolism like the Eye of Providence and the Great Seal of the United States. This renewed interest sent collectors to Egypt, who took, purchased, or were given many important antiquities.^[217] Napoleon arranged the first studies in Egyptology when he brought some 150 scientists and artists to study and document Egypt’s natural history, which was published in the Description de l’Égypte.^[218]

In the 20th century, the Egyptian Government and archaeologists alike recognized the importance of cultural respect and integrity in excavations. Since the 2010s, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has overseen excavations and the recovery of artifacts.^[219][220]

• 

See also

• Glossary of ancient Egypt artifacts
• Index of ancient Egypt–related articles
• Outline of ancient Egypt
• List of ancient Egyptians
• List of Ancient Egyptian inventions and discoveries
• Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
• Archeological Map of Egypt
• British school of diffusionism

Notes

Citation

References

Further reading

• Baines, John; Málek, Jaromír (2000). Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt. Checkmark Books. ISBN 978-0-8160-4036-0.
• Bard, Kathryn A., ed. (1999). Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-66525-9.
• Grimal, Nicolas (1994) [1988]. A History of Ancient Egypt. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-631-19396-8.
• Helck, Wolfgang; Otto, Eberhard, eds. (1972–1992). Lexikon der Ägyptologie. O. Harrassowitz. ISBN 978-3-447-01441-0. – de:Lexikon der Ägyptologie
• Lehner, Mark (1997). The Complete Pyramids. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-05084-2.
• Redford, Donald B., ed. (2001). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-510234-5.
• Wilkinson, R.H. (2003). The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-05120-7.

External links

• «Egypt/2 Ancient Egypt» . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 9 (11th ed.). 1911.
• BBC History: Egyptians – provides a reliable general overview and further links
• Ancient Egyptian Science: A Source Book Door Marshall Clagett, 1989
• Ancient Egyptian Metallurgy A site that shows the history of Egyptian metalworking
• Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt, Art History.
• Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics.
• Priests of Ancient Egypt Archived 22 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine In-depth-information about Ancient Egypt’s priests, religious services and temples. Much picture material and bibliography. In English and German.
• UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
• Ancient Egypt and the Role of Women by Dr Joann Fletcher
• Full-length account of Ancient Egypt as part of history of the world Archived 24 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine

Ancient Egypt as a general historical term broadly refers to the civilization of the Nile Valley between the First Cataract and the mouths of the Nile Delta, from circa 3300 B.C.E. until the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.E.. As a civilization based on irrigation, it is the quintessential example of a hydraulic empire. It was one of the oldest, and the longest, human civilizations. Egypt has been a great source of inspiration and of interest for Europeans especially, who regard it as of almost mysterious significance. Egypt served as a conduit between Europe and Africa.

Egyptian civilization had a bias towards unity, rather than towards confrontation. Ancient Egyptian contributions to knowledge in the areas of mathematics, medicine, and astronomy continue to inform modern thought. Egyptian hieroglyphs underlay our alphabet. Through the Alexandria Library and such scholars as the mathematician Claudius Ptolemaeus and the Hellenistic-Jewish scholar Philo, this reputation continued. Through the Ptolemies, Hellenistic and Egyptian ideas came together and Egyptian religion, especially the cult of Isis, became popular throughout the Greco-Roman world. The Roman Emperors, after Cleopatra the last Ptolemy, claimed the ancient title and honor of the Pharaohs.

Many Christians see deep significance that Jesus, according to tradition, spent time in Egypt. Indeed, early Christianity in Egypt saw much theological thought and several alternatives to what emerged as mainstream Christianity emerged, some stressing the feminine role while the Nag Hammadi collection of formerly lost texts, including the Gospel of Thomas, has significantly supplemented modern Bible scholarship. The Coptic church of Egypt is one of the world’s oldest.

Geography

Most of the geography of Egypt is in North Africa, although the Sinai Peninsula is in Southwest Asia. The country has shorelines on the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea; it borders Libya to the west, Sudan to the south, and the Gaza Strip, Palestine and Israel to the east. Ancient Egypt was divided into two kingdoms, known as Upper and Lower Egypt. Somewhat counter-intuitively, Upper Egypt was in the south and Lower Egypt in the north, named according to the flow of the Nile river. The Nile flows northward from a southerly point to the Mediterranean. The river, around which much of the population of the country clusters, has been the lifeline for Egyptian culture since the Stone Age and Naqada cultures.

Two Kingdoms formed Kemet («the black«), the name for the dark soil deposited by the Nile floodwaters. The desert was called Deshret («the red«) Herodotus wrote, «Egypt is a land of black soil…. We know that Libya is a redder earth» (Histories, 2:12). However Champollion the Younger (who deciphered the Rossetta stone) wrote in Expressions et Termes Particuliers (“Expression of Particular Terms”) Kemet did not actually refer to the soil but to a negroid population in the sense of a «Black Nation.»

Ancient Egyptian peoples

Neolithic Egypt was probably inhabited by black African (Nilotic) peoples (as demonstrated by Saharan petroglyphs throughout the region). Following the desiccation of the Sahara, most black Africans migrated south into East Africa and West Africa. The Aterian culture that developed here was one of the most advanced Paleolithic societies. In the Mesolithic the Caspian culture dominated the region with Neolithic farmers becoming predominant by 6000 B.C.E.. The ancient Egyptians spoke an Afro-Asiatic language, related to Chadic, Berber, and Semitic languages, and recorded their origin as the Land of Punt.

Herodotus once wrote, «the Colchians are Egyptians … on the fact that they are black-skinned and have wooly hair» (Histories Book 2:104). A genetic study links the maternal lineage of a traditional population from Upper Egypt to Eastern Africa.^[1] A separate study that further narrows the genetic lineage to Northeast Africa^[2] reveals also that “modern day” Egyptians «reflect a mixture of European, Middle Eastern, and African»). The racial classification of Ancient Egypt has come to play a role in the Afrocentrism debate in the United States, where Egypt’s legacy becomes a prize over which Africans and Europeans contest ownership.

History

The ancient Egyptians themselves traced their origin to a land they called Land of Punt, or «Ta Nteru» («Land of the Gods»). Once commonly thought to be located on what is today the Somali coast, Punt now is thought to have been in either southern Sudan or Eritrea. The history of ancient Egypt proper starts with Egypt as a unified state, which occurred sometime around 3000 B.C.E., though archaeological evidence indicates a developed Egyptian society may have existed for a much longer period.

Along the Nile in the tenth millennium B.C.E., a grain-grinding culture using the earliest type of sickle blades had been replaced by another culture of hunters, fishers, and gathering peoples using stone tools. Evidence also indicates human habitation in the southwestern corner of Egypt, near the Sudan border, before 8000 B.C.E. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 8000 B.C.E. began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, eventually forming the Sahara (c. 2500 B.C.E.), and early tribes naturally migrated to the Nile river where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society. There is evidence of pastoralism and cultivation of cereals in the East Sahara in the seventh millennium B.C.E.. By 6000 B.C.E., ancient Egyptians in the southwestern corner of Egypt were herding cattle and constructing large buildings. Mortar was in use by 4000 B.C.E.. The Predynastic Period continues through this time, variously held to begin with the Naqada culture. Some authorities however begin the Predynastic Period earlier, in the Lower Paleolithic age.

Egypt unified as a single state circa 3000 B.C.E.. Egyptian chronology involves assigning beginnings and endings to various dynasties from around this time. Manetho, who was a priest during the reigns of Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II (30th dynasty), divided the dynasties into 30; the 31st (Persian) and 32nd dynasties (the Ptolemies) were added after his death. Sometimes, though, he placed a Pharaoh in one dynasty who may properly have been considered founder of the next one, thus the beginning and ending of dynasties seems arbitrary. Even within a single work, archeologists may offer several possible dates or even several whole chronologies as possibilities. Consequently, there may be discrepancies between dates shown here and in articles on particular rulers. Often there are also several possible spellings of the names.

The Pharaohs stretch from before 3000 B.C.E. to around 30 C.E. and continued through the Roman Emperors, who claimed the title.

Dynasties

• Early Dynastic Period of Egypt (1st — 2nd Dynasties; until c. 27th century B.C.E.)
• Old Kingdom (3rd — 6th Dynasties; 27th — 22nd centuries B.C.E.)
• First Intermediate Period (7th — 11th Dynasties)
• Middle Kingdom of Egypt (11th — 14th Dynasties; 20th — 17th centuries B.C.E.)
• Second Intermediate Period (14th — 17th Dynasties)
• Hyksos (15th — 16th Dynasties)
• New Kingdom of Egypt (18th — 20th Dynasties; 16th — 11th centuries B.C.E.)
• Third Intermediate Period (21st — 25th Dynasties; 11th — 7th centuries B.C.E.)
• Late Period of Ancient Egypt (26th — 32nd Dynasties; 7th century B.C.E. — 30 C.E.).

Significant Events and Rulers

Around about 3100 B.C.E., the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were united and the first dynasty was established. This is largely credited to Menes, or Aha of Memphis (who founded the city), who may also have authored the founding myth or story of Egypt. He may have been the first Pharaoh to be identified with Horus, the Falcon-god associated with the sky. During the fourth dynasty, founded by Snefru, the Great Pyramid at Giza was built by Khufu, known to the Greeks as Cheops, who is said to have reigned for 50 or 60 years.

During the sixth dynasty (2345-2181 B.C.E.), possibly due to a fluctuation in the flow of the Nile that resulted in periods of famine, central authority was weakened and the two kingdoms were divided. Mentuhopet of Thebes (c. 2040 B.C.E.) established the Middle Kingdom when he reunified the two Egypts. During this period, Amun the God of Thebes became identified with the Sun God, Re, and to be seen as the chief God and as sponsor of the Pharaohs. This was a period of vigorous trade with Syria, Palestine, and Nubia. Several important forts were built near the second Cataract of the Nile. Art and literature flourished.

During the next period, known as the Second Intermediate Period (1720-1550 B.C.E.), a tribe known as the Hyksos, from the East, gained power over parts of Egypt and real power devolved from the center to local rulers, again compromising the unity of the two Egypts.

Circa 1550 B.C.E. the rulers of Thebes once again re-unified Egypt, establishing the New Kingdom. They acquired an empire stretching as far as the Euphrates in the North and into Nubia in the South. Huge building projects, mainly temples and funerary monuments, characterized this period. The cult of Amun-Re dominated, with the High Priest exercising considerable power, except for the brief intermission when Akhenaten declared that the God, Aten, was the sole God who could not be visually represented. One of the most well known Pharoahs, Rameses II (1279-1213 B.C.E.), dates from this period. He is popularly associated with the Pharaoh of the time of Moses who engaged in war with the Hittites. His courage during the battle of Kadesh against the Hittites made him into a living legend. The many Temples commissioned during his reign include Abu Simbel, the Colossus of Ramesses at Memphis and Nefretari’s tomb in the Valley of the Queens. Queen Nefretari is depicted as Rameses’ equal. Renowned for her beauty, she may also have exercised power alongside her husband, since Queens were traditionally portrayed as smaller than their consorts. During the reign of Rameses III, known as the last of the great pharaohs, Egypt’s security was constantly threatened from the east by the Lybians. The external territories were lost and by the start of the twentieth dynasty, the two Egypts were divided once again.

In 341 B.C.E., the last native dynasty (the thirtieth) fell to the Persians, who controlled Egypt until 332 B.C.E. when Alexander the Great conquered the territory. In 323, Ptolemy, one of Alexander’s Generals, became ruler and founded the Ptolemaic dynasty that lasted until its conquest by Rome after the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C.E. The Ptolemies were patrons of learning, and Egypt’s already well established tradition as a center of knowledge continued under their sponsorship. Many Jews living in Egypt prospered, and temples were built there on Elephantine island in the Aswan delta (as early as the fifth century B.C.E.) and later, in 160 B.C.E., at Heliopolis (Leontopolis.) One of the most important Jewish thinkers, Philo, lived in Alexandria—which later produced some leading Christian scholars. The Roman emperors continued to claim the title and honors of the Pharaohs.

Government

Subnational administrative divisions of Upper and Lower Egypt were known as Nomes. The pharaoh was the ruler of these two kingdoms and headed the ancient Egyptian state structure. The pharaoh served as monarch, spiritual leader and commander-in-chief of both the army and navy. The pharaoh was believed to be divine, a connection between men and gods. Below him in the government, were the viziers (one for Upper Egypt and one for Lower Egypt) and various officials. Under him on the religious side were the high priest and various other priests. Generally, the position was handed down from father to eldest son but it was through the female that power was actually inherited, so it was marriage to the king’s eldest daughter that sealed succession. Occasionally a woman assumed power and quite often Queens were powerful figures in their own right. Governance was closely associated with the duty of ruling with justice and of preventing chaos by maintaining harmony and balance. The priests especially the High Priest of Amen-Ra exercised considerable power partly because of the wealth of the cultus and also because they had the final say in determining the succession. Akhenaten’s break with the traditional cultus followed a power struggle between Pharoah and the priesthood.^[3]

Language

The ancient Egyptians spoke an Afro-Asiatic language related to Chadic, Berber and Semitic languages. Records of the ancient Egyptian language have been dated to about 32nd century B.C.E. Scholars group the Egyptian language into six major chronological divisions:

• Archaic Egyptian (before 2600 B.C.E.)
• Old Egyptian (2600–2000 B.C.E.)
• Middle Egyptian (2000–1300 B.C.E.)
• Late Egyptian (1300–700 B.C.E.)
• Demotic Egyptian (7th century B.C.E.–4th century C.E.)
• Coptic (3rd–12th century C.E.)

Writing

Egyptologists refer to Egyptian writing as Egyptian hieroglyphs, together with the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia ranking as the world’s oldest writing system. The hieroglyphic script was partly syllabic, partly ideographic.
Hieratic is a cursive form of Egyptian hieroglyphs first used during the First Dynasty (c. 2925 B.C.E. — c. 2775 B.C.E.). The term Demotic in the context of Egypt, that is, «indigenous» from a Hellenistic point of view, came to refer to both the script and the language that followed the Late Ancient Egyptian stage from the Nubian 25th dynasty until its marginalization by the Greek Koine in the early centuries C.E.. After the conquest of Umar ibn al-Khattab, the Coptic language survived into the Middle Ages as the liturgical language of the Christian minority.

The hieroglyphic script finally fell out of use around the fourth century, and began to be rediscovered from the fifteenth century.

The oldest known alphabet (abjad) was also created in ancient Egypt, as a derivation from syllabic hieroglyphs.

Literature

• c. 26th century B.C.E. — Westcar Papyrus
• c.19th century B.C.E. The Story of Sinuhe
• c. 1800 B.C.E. — Ipuwer papyrus
• c. 1800 B.C.E. — Papyrus Harris I
• c. 11th century B.C.E. — Story of Wenamun

Culture

The religious nature of ancient Egyptian civilization influenced its contribution to the arts of the ancient world. Many of the great works of ancient Egypt depict gods, goddesses, and pharaohs, who were also considered divine. Ancient Egyptian art in general is characterized by the idea of order, which was the dominant motif of Egyptian religion.

The excavation of the workers village of Deir el-Madinah has resulted in one of the most thoroughly documented accounts of community life in the ancient world that spans almost four hundred years. There is no comparable site in which the organization, social interactions, working and living conditions of a community can be studied in such detail.^[4]

Most ancient Egyptians were farmers tied to the land. Their dwellings were restricted to immediate family members, and were constructed of mud-brick designed to remain cool in the heat of the day. Each home had a kitchen with an open roof, which contained a grindstone for milling flour and a small oven for baking bread. Walls were painted white and could be covered with dyed linen wall hangings. Floors were covered with reed mats, while wooden stools, beds raised from the floor and individual tables comprised the furniture.^[5]

The ancient Egyptians placed a great value on hygiene and appearance. Most bathed in the Nile and used a pasty soap made from animal fat and chalk. Men shaved their entire bodies for cleanliness, and aromatic perfumes and ointments covered bad odors and soothed skin. Clothing was made from simple linen sheets that were bleached white, and both men and women of the upper classes wore wigs, jewelry, and cosmetics. Children went without clothing until maturity, at about age 12, and at this age males were circumcised and had their heads shaved. Mothers were responsible for taking care of the children, while the father provided the family’s income.^[5]

Music and dance were popular entertainments for those who could afford them. Early instruments included flutes and harps, while instruments similar to trumpets, oboes, and pipes developed later and became popular. In the New Kingdom, the Egyptians played on bells, cymbals, tambourines, and drums as well as imported lutes and lyres from Asia.^[6] The sistrum was a rattle-like musical instrument that was especially important in religious ceremonies.

The ancient Egyptians enjoyed a variety of leisure activities, including games. Senet, a board game where pieces moved according to random chance, was particularly popular from the earliest times; another similar game was mehen, which had a circular gaming board. Juggling and ball games were popular with children, and wrestling is also documented in a tomb at Beni Hasan.^[5] The wealthy members of ancient Egyptian society enjoyed hunting and boating as well.

Egyptian cuisine remained remarkably stable over time, as evidenced by analysis of the hair of ancient Egyptian mummies from the Late Middle Kingdom.^[7] In fact, the cuisine of modern Egypt retains some striking similarities to the cuisine of the ancients. The staple diet consisted of bread and beer, supplemented with vegetables such as onions and garlic, and fruit such as dates and figs. Wine and meat were enjoyed by all on feast days while the upper classes indulged on a more regular basis. Fish, meat, and fowl could be salted or dried, and could be cooked in stews or roasted on a grill.^[5] However, mummies from circa 3200 B.C.E. show signs of severe anemia and hemolitic disorders.^[8] Traces of cocaine, hashish and nicotine have also been found in the skin and hair of Egyptian mummies.^[9]

The Egyptians believed that a balanced relationship between people and animals was an essential element of the cosmic order; thus humans, animals and plants were believed to be members of a single whole.^[10] Animals, both domesticated and wild, were therefore a critical source of spirituality, companionship, and sustenance to the ancient Egyptians. Cattle were the most important livestock; the administration collected taxes on livestock in regular censuses, and the size of a herd reflected the prestige and importance of the estate or temple that owned them. In addition to cattle, the ancient Egyptians kept sheep, goats, and pigs. Poultry such as ducks, geese, and pigeons were captured in nets and bred on farms, where they were force-fed with dough to fatten them.^[5] The Nile provided a plentiful source of fish. Bees were also domesticated from at least the Old Kingdom, and they provided both honey and wax.^[11]

The ancient Egyptians used donkeys and oxen as beasts of burden, and they were responsible for plowing the fields and trampling seed into the soil. The slaughter of a fattened ox was also a central part of an offering ritual.^[5] Horses were introduced by the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period, and the camel, although known from the New Kingdom, was not used as a beast of burden until the Late Period. There is also evidence to suggest that elephants were briefly utilized in the Late Period, but largely abandoned due to lack of grazing land.^[5]

Dogs, cats and monkeys were common family pets, while more exotic pets imported from the heart of Africa, such as lions, were reserved for royalty. Herodotus observed that the Egyptians were the only people to keep their animals with them in their houses.^[10] During the Predynastic and Late periods, the worship of the gods in their animal form was extremely popular, such as the cat goddess Bastet and the ibis god Thoth, and these animals were bred in large numbers on farms for the purpose of ritual sacrifice.^[12]

Religion

Egyptian religion permeated every aspect of life. It dominated life to such an extent that almost all the monuments and buildings that have survived the century, including huge constructions that required thousands of laborers or slaves and many years to build, are religious rather secular. The dominant concern of religion was maintenance of the rhythm of life, symbolized by the Nile, and with preventing order from degenerating into chaos. The term maat was used to describe the essential order of the universe, and the Pharaoh’s duty was to uphold this by the rule of law and by ensuring that justice was done. Egyptians believed profoundly in an afterlife, and maat was so important that it represented an eternal principle before which even the Gods deferred.

Around about 3000 B.C.E., Menes established Memphis as the new capital of both Egypts and elevated what had been the Memphis-myth as the dominant myth. However, many local myths of creation and of origins also continued to exist alongside this dominant one without creating tension. In the Memphis-myth, a supreme entity called Ptah created everything, or, rather, everything that is, ideas, truth, justice, beauty, people, Gods, emanated from Ptah originating as «thoughts» in Ptah’s mind. Egypt’s unity was central to this myth. Other creation myths depicted creation as proceeding from out or primordial chaos, or from a primordial slime, which had eight elements, namely matter and space, darkness and obscurity, the illimitable and the boundless and the hidden and concealed). The annual flooding by the Nile, leading to new life, may lie behind this mythology.

The gods Seth (of winds and storms) and Horus (falcon sky-god) struggled for control of Egypt, mediated by Geb (or Ptah). Initially, each ruled one Egypt but the bias towards unity resulted in Geb ceding both Egypts to Horus, the elder of the two. Other myths have a group of Gods create earth, with another group acting as mediators between the Gods and humans. The latter group includes Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nepthys. Osiris was the god of the dead; Isis was the Mother-God; Nepthys was the female counterpart of Seth. Horus assumed importance as the child of Isis and Osiris. Osiris is said to have taught Egyptians agriculture and religion, while Isis restored Osiris to life when his jealous brother, Seth, murdered him. The cult of Isis spread throughout the Roman Empire. It involved secret knowledge, secret texts, visions of Isis and of Osiris, and the concept of salvation as a return for personal dedication to the Goddess. Horus is credited with battling against Seth to vindicate his father, and with winning control of Egypt. Thus, Horus becomes prince of the Gods and sponsor of the Kings, who were regarded as his human forms. Some 2,000 deities made up the pantheon. Local variations of myth and local myths appear to have co-existed side by side with the master or dominant narrative without conflict.

Much effort and wealth was invested in building funerary monuments and tombs for the rulers. It was believed that humans consist of three elements, the ka, the ba, and the akh. The ka remained in the tomb and can be described as the «genius» of the individual. The ba resembles a soul, while the akh acquires a supernatural power after death, remaining dormant until then. After death, all are judged according to the principle of maat, weighed by the jackal-God, Annubis, against the heart of the deceased. If the heart is heavier, the deceased will be consigned to oblivion. If maat is heavier, Osiris receives the deceased into his realm. This was the «abode of the blessed,» a locality believed to be literally in the heavens where the Gods dwelt. Thoth, the ibis-headed god of wisdom, records all. Many of the legends and practices are described in the Book of the Dead.^[13]Temples were earthly dwelling places for the Gods, and functioned as meeting-points between heaven and earth, or as cosmic centers. The priests served the Gods but also performed social functions including teaching, conducting religious rites and offering advise. Death was regarded as transitory.

The divine and the human were intricately linked. Gods were at one and the same time divine and human. Their depiction as animals was another indication of the divinity of the earth and of nature itself; the divine was part and parcel of creation. The gods were concerned with human problems, not detached and distant. Anyone who killed an animal faced death. Cats were especially revered, and were even mummified. The Nile, from which Egypt drew its water and on which it depended for its fertility, was itself sacred. The concern with fertility informed what has been described as a healthy attitude towards sex, which was not regarded as tainted with guilt but as an enjoyable activity, although within the parameters of marriage. Adultery was illegal. The Gods are depicted as enjoying sex and as sometimes breaking the rules. Ra is said to have masturbated his children, Shu and Tefnut, into existence. Incest was also illegal with the exception of the royal family, where brother-sister marriage was necessary for the succession. Believing that life after death would be more or less a continuation of life on earth, sexual activity would not cease after death. Thus, some Egyptian men attached false penises to their mummies while Egyptian women added artificial nipples.^[14]

Mummification

Mummies are probably most popularly associated with Egyptian religion. Mummification was religious and accompanied by ritual prayers. Internal organs were removed and separately preserved. The idea behind mummification was probably to maintain the link between the ka and the other two elements, which could be sustained in the afterlife by the preservation of the body in this world. ^[15] Cats and dogs were also mummified, evidence of the important place that pets occupied in Egyptian life.

Scientific achievements

The art and science of engineering was present in Egypt, such as accurately determining the position of points and the distances between them (known as surveying). These skills were used to outline pyramid bases. The Egyptian pyramids took the geometric shape formed from a polygonal base and a point, called the apex, by triangular faces. Cement was first invented by the Egyptians. The Al Fayyum water works was one of the main agricultural breadbaskets of the ancient world. There is evidence of ancient Egyptian pharaohs of the dynasty using the natural lake of the Fayyum as a reservoir to store surpluses of water for use during the dry seasons. From the time of the first dynasty or before, the Egyptians mined turquoise in the Sinai Peninsula.

The earliest evidence (c. 1600 B.C.E.) of traditional empiricism is credited to Egypt, as evidenced by the Edwin Smith and Ebers papyri. The roots of the Scientific method may be traced back to the ancient Egyptians. The ancient Egyptians are also credited with devising the world’s earliest known alphabet and decimal system in the form of the Moscow and Rhind Mathematical Papyri.^[16] An awareness of the Golden ratio seems to be reflected in many constructions, such as the Egyptian pyramids.

Milestones in Ancient Egyptian civilization

• 3300 B.C.E. — Bronze artifacts from this period
• 3200 B.C.E. — Egyptian hieroglyphs fully developed during the First Dynasty)
• 3200 B.C.E. — Narmer Palette, world’s earliest known historical document
• 3100 B.C.E. — Decimal system,^[16] world’s earliest (confirmed) use
• 3100 B.C.E. — Mining in the Sinai Peninsula
• 3100 B.C.E. — 3050 B.C.E. — Shipbuilding in Abydos,^[17]
• 3000 B.C.E. — Exports from Nile to Israel: wine
• 3000 B.C.E. — Copper plumbing
• 3000 B.C.E. — Egyptian medicine
• 3000 B.C.E. — Papyrus, world’s earliest known paper
• 2900 B.C.E. — Senet, world’s oldest (confirmed) board game
• 2700 B.C.E. — Surgery, world’s earliest known
• 2700 B.C.E. — precision Surveying
• 2600 B.C.E. — Great Sphinx of Giza, still today the world’s largest single-stone statue
• 2600s-2500 B.C.E. — Shipping expeditions: King Sneferu.^[18]
• 2600 B.C.E. — Barge transportation, stone blocks
• 2600 B.C.E. — Pyramid of Djoser, world’s earliest known large-scale stone building
• 2600 B.C.E. — Menkaure’s Pyramid & Red Pyramid, world’s earliest known works of carved granite
• 2600 B.C.E. — Red Pyramid, world’s earliest known «true» smooth-sided pyramid; solid granite work
• B.C.E.— Great Pyramid of Giza, the World’s tallest structure until 1300 C.E.
• 2400 B.C.E. — Egyptian Astronomical Calendar, used even in the Middle Ages for its mathematical regularity
• B.C.E. — possible Nile-Red Sea Canal (Twelfth dynasty of Egypt)
• B.C.E. — Alphabet, world’s oldest known
• 1800 B.C.E. — Berlin Mathematical Papyrus,^[16] 2nd order algebraic equations
• 1800 B.C.E. — Moscow Mathematical Papyrus, generalized formula for volume of frustum
• 1650 B.C.E. — Rhind Mathematical Papyrus: geometry, cotangent analogue, algebraic equations, arithmetic series, geometric series
• 1600 B.C.E. — Edwin Smith papyrus, medical tradition traces as far back as c. 3000 B.C.E.
• 1550 B.C.E. — Ebers Medical Papyrus, traditional empiricism; world’s earliest known documented tumors
• 1500 B.C.E. — Glass-making, world’s earliest known
• 1160 B.C.E. — Turin papyrus, world’s earliest known geologic and topographic map
• Other:
  • c. 2500 B.C.E. — Westcar Papyrus
  • c. 1800 B.C.E. — Ipuwer papyrus
  • c. 1800 B.C.E. — Papyrus Harris I
  • c. 1400 B.C.E. — Tulli Papyrus
  • c. 1300 B.C.E. — Ebers papyrus
  • Unknown date — Rollin Papyrus

Open problems

There is a question as to the sophistication of ancient Egyptian technology, and there are several open problems concerning real and alleged ancient Egyptian achievements. Certain artifacts and records do not fit with conventional technological development systems. It is not known why there is no neat progression to an Egyptian Iron Age or why the historical record shows the Egyptians taking so long to begin using iron. It is unknown how the Egyptians shaped and worked granite. The exact date the Egyptians started producing glass is debated.

Some question whether the Egyptians were capable of long distance navigation in their boats and when they become knowledgeable seamen. It is contentiously disputed as to whether or not the Egyptians had some understanding of electricity and if the Egyptians used engines or batteries. The relief at Dendera is interpreted in various ways by scholars. The topic of the Saqqara Bird is controversial, as is the extent of the Egyptians’ understanding of aerodynamics. It is uncertain if the Egyptians had kites or gliders.

The pigmentation used for artwork on buildings has retained color despite thousands of years of exposure to the elements and it is not known how these paints were prepared, as modern paints are not as long lasting.

Legacy

Arnold Toynbee claimed that of the 26 civilizations he identified, Egypt was unique in having no precursor or successor. Arguably, however, the successor to Egyptian civilization was humanity itself, since Egypt bequeathed many ideas and concepts to the world in addition to mathematical and astronomological knowledge. One example is the impact of Egypt upon the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, which continues to affect the lives of many people today.

Evidence of mummies in other civilizations and pyramids outside ancient Egypt indicate reflections of ancient Egyptian belief values on other prehistoric cultures, perhaps transmitted over the Silk Road. It is possible that Egyptians traveled to the Americas, as demonstrated by Thor Heyerdahl’s Ra expeditions of 1972.^[19]

It can be argued that while Egypt was a highly advanced culture religiously, technologically, politically, and culturally, it did not exert the same enduring impact on future world development that came from the small tribes of Israel that seemed somehow destined to be related to Egypt yet to perhaps to exert a greater influence. Yet another way of viewing this is to say that Israel was a channel through which aspects of Egyptian civilization spread more widely. Egyptian belief in the afterlife does not seem to have impacted much on Jewish thought, but this did find its way into much African spirituality, where a similar view of the spiritual world is still widely accepted—for example, the idea of returning spirits. The pyramids were fashioned in such a way that returning the spirits could easily find their way back to the body. The view of returning ancestors and naming grandchildren after grandparents as a form of spiritual liberation of the grandparents is still prevalent in Africa today.

Israel’s period of slavery in Egypt resulted in especial concern for the gerim (stranger) in their midst. Egypt may have influenced Hebrew writing, while Egyptian understanding of the role of the King as mediator between heaven and earth may have informed the Hebrew’s understanding of society as subject to divine law. There are also parallels between Egyptian and Hebrew ethics. The monotheistic experiment failed in Egypt but flourished through the two related faiths of Judaism and Christianity. Both of these faiths acknowledge a certain indebtedness to Egypt, where the Septuagint (Greek version of the Bible) was translated (300-200 B.C.E.), where Philo, Origen, and Clement of Alexandria among other significant contributors to Jewish and Christian thought flourished, as later did Maimonides. Jesus’ family sought refuge in Egypt, which enabled the infant Jesus to survive Herod’s slaughter of the children.

Notes

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Budge, E.A. Wallis. The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians Retrieved February 4, 2011. BiblioBazaar, 2009 (original 1914). ISBN 978-1113804822
• Childress, David Hatcher. Technology of the Gods: The Incredible Sciences of the Ancients. Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 2000. ISBN 0932813739
• Knapp, Ron. Tutankhamun and the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt. New York, NY: Julian Messner, 1979. ISBN 0671330365
• Jacq, Christian. Magic and Mystery in Ancient Egypt. London: Souvenir Press, 1998. ISBN 0285634623
• Manley, Bill (ed.). The Seventy Great Mysteries of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames & Hudson, 2003. ISBN 0500051232
• National Geographic Society. Mysteries of Egypt. National Geographic Society, 1999. ISBN 0792297520
• Nicholson, Paul T., and Ian Shaw (eds.). Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology. Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0521120982
• Oakes, Lorna. Ancient Egypt: An Illustrated Reference to the Myths, Religions, Pyramids and Temples of the Land of the Pharaohs. Barnes & Noble, 2003. ISBN 0760749434
• Putnam, James. Mummy. New York, NY: Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Guides, 1993. ISBN 0751360074
• Schulz, Regine. Egypt: The World of the Pharaohs. Konemann, 1998. ISBN 3895089133
• Sitchin, Zecharia. The Earth Chronicles Expeditions: Journeys to the Mythical Past. Rochester, VT: Bear & Co., 2004. ISBN 1591430364
• Strouhal, Eugen. Life of the Ancient Egyptians. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. ISBN 9774242858

External links

All links retrieved June 19, 2021.

• Ancient Egypt Online
• Catchpenny Mysteries of Ancient Egypt Larry Orcutt
• The Great Pyramid of Giza Sacred Sites
• Egyptology Groks Science Show 2004-06-30. Interview with Mark Rose, editor of Archaeology magazine.
• History of Ancient Egypt Pages translated from the Arabic Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt.
• 10 Interesting Egyptian Facts You Never Knew

ancient Egypt, civilization in northeastern Africa that dates from the 4th millennium bce. Its many achievements, preserved in its art and monuments, hold a fascination that continues to grow as archaeological finds expose its secrets. This article focuses on Egypt from its prehistory through its unification under Menes (Narmer) in the 3rd millennium bce—sometimes used as a reference point for Egypt’s origin—and up to the Islamic conquest in the 7th century ce. For subsequent history through the contemporary period, see Egypt.

Introduction to ancient Egyptian civilization

Life in ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt can be thought of as an oasis in the desert of northeastern Africa, dependent on the annual inundation of the Nile River to support its agricultural population. The country’s chief wealth came from the fertile floodplain of the Nile valley, where the river flows between bands of limestone hills, and the Nile delta, in which it fans into several branches north of present-day Cairo. Between the floodplain and the hills is a variable band of low desert that supported a certain amount of game. The Nile was Egypt’s sole transportation artery.

The First Cataract at Aswān, where the riverbed is turned into rapids by a belt of granite, was the country’s only well-defined boundary within a populated area. To the south lay the far less hospitable area of Nubia, in which the river flowed through low sandstone hills that in most regions left only a very narrow strip of cultivable land. Nubia was significant for Egypt’s periodic southward expansion and for access to products from farther south. West of the Nile was the arid Sahara, broken by a chain of oases some 125 to 185 miles (200 to 300 km) from the river and lacking in all other resources except for a few minerals. The eastern desert, between the Nile and the Red Sea, was more important, for it supported a small nomadic population and desert game, contained numerous mineral deposits, including gold, and was the route to the Red Sea.

To the northeast was the Isthmus of Suez. It offered the principal route for contact with Sinai, from which came turquoise and possibly copper, and with southwestern Asia, Egypt’s most important area of cultural interaction, from which were received stimuli for technical development and cultivars for crops. Immigrants and ultimately invaders crossed the isthmus into Egypt, attracted by the country’s stability and prosperity. From the late 2nd millennium bce onward, numerous attacks were made by land and sea along the eastern Mediterranean coast.

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At first, relatively little cultural contact came by way of the Mediterranean Sea, but from an early date Egypt maintained trading relations with the Lebanese port of Byblos (present-day Jbail). Egypt needed few imports to maintain basic standards of living, but good timber was essential and not available within the country, so it usually was obtained from Lebanon. Minerals such as obsidian and lapis lazuli were imported from as far afield as Anatolia and Afghanistan.

Agriculture centred on the cultivation of cereal crops, chiefly emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare). The fertility of the land and general predictability of the inundation ensured very high productivity from a single annual crop. This productivity made it possible to store large surpluses against crop failures and also formed the chief basis of Egyptian wealth, which was, until the creation of the large empires of the 1st millennium bce, the greatest of any state in the ancient Middle East.

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Basin irrigation was achieved by simple means, and multiple cropping was not feasible until much later times, except perhaps in the lakeside area of Al-Fayyūm. As the river deposited alluvial silt, raising the level of the floodplain, and land was reclaimed from marsh, the area available for cultivation in the Nile valley and delta increased, while pastoralism declined slowly. In addition to grain crops, fruit and vegetables were important, the latter being irrigated year-round in small plots. Fish was also vital to the diet. Papyrus, which grew abundantly in marshes, was gathered wild and in later times was cultivated. It may have been used as a food crop, and it certainly was used to make rope, matting, and sandals. Above all, it provided the characteristic Egyptian writing material, which, with cereals, was the country’s chief export in Late period Egyptian and then Greco-Roman times.

Cattle may have been domesticated in northeastern Africa. The Egyptians kept many as draft animals and for their various products, showing some of the interest in breeds and individuals that is found to this day in the Sudan and eastern Africa. The donkey, which was the principal transport animal (the camel did not become common until Roman times), was probably domesticated in the region. The native Egyptian breed of sheep became extinct in the 2nd millennium bce and was replaced by an Asiatic breed. Sheep were primarily a source of meat; their wool was rarely used. Goats were more numerous than sheep. Pigs were also raised and eaten. Ducks and geese were kept for food, and many of the vast numbers of wild and migratory birds found in Egypt were hunted and trapped. Desert game, principally various species of antelope and ibex, were hunted by the elite; it was a royal privilege to hunt lions and wild cattle. Pets included dogs, which were also used for hunting, cats, and monkeys. In addition, the Egyptians had a great interest in, and knowledge of, most species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish in their environment.

Most Egyptians were probably descended from settlers who moved to the Nile valley in prehistoric times, with population increase coming through natural fertility. In various periods there were immigrants from Nubia, Libya, and especially the Middle East. They were historically significant and also may have contributed to population growth, but their numbers are unknown. Most people lived in villages and towns in the Nile valley and delta. Dwellings were normally built of mud brick and have long since disappeared beneath the rising water table or beneath modern town sites, thereby obliterating evidence for settlement patterns. In antiquity, as now, the most favoured location of settlements was on slightly raised ground near the riverbank, where transport and water were easily available and flooding was unlikely. Until the 1st millennium bce, Egypt was not urbanized to the same extent as Mesopotamia. Instead, a few centres, notably Memphis and Thebes, attracted population and particularly the elite, while the rest of the people were relatively evenly spread over the land. The size of the population has been estimated as having risen from 1 to 1.5 million in the 3rd millennium bce to perhaps twice that number in the late 2nd millennium and 1st millennium bce. (Much higher levels of population were reached in Greco-Roman times.)

Nearly all of the people were engaged in agriculture and were probably tied to the land. In theory all the land belonged to the king, although in practice those living on it could not easily be removed and some categories of land could be bought and sold. Land was assigned to high officials to provide them with an income, and most tracts required payment of substantial dues to the state, which had a strong interest in keeping the land in agricultural use. Abandoned land was taken back into state ownership and reassigned for cultivation. The people who lived on and worked the land were not free to leave and were obliged to work it, but they were not slaves; most paid a proportion of their produce to major officials. Free citizens who worked the land on their own behalf did emerge; terms applied to them tended originally to refer to poor people, but these agriculturalists were probably not poor. Slavery was never common, being restricted to captives and foreigners or to people who were forced by poverty or debt to sell themselves into service. Slaves sometimes even married members of their owners’ families, so that in the long term those belonging to households tended to be assimilated into free society. In the New Kingdom (from about 1539 to 1075 bce), large numbers of captive slaves were acquired by major state institutions or incorporated into the army. Punitive treatment of foreign slaves or of native fugitives from their obligations included forced labour, exile (in, for example, the oases of the western desert), or compulsory enlistment in dangerous mining expeditions. Even nonpunitive employment such as quarrying in the desert was hazardous. The official record of one expedition shows a mortality rate of more than 10 percent.

Just as the Egyptians optimized agricultural production with simple means, their crafts and techniques, many of which originally came from Asia, were raised to extraordinary levels of perfection. The Egyptians’ most striking technical achievement, massive stone building, also exploited the potential of a centralized state to mobilize a huge labour force, which was made available by efficient agricultural practices. Some of the technical and organizational skills involved were remarkable. The construction of the great pyramids of the 4th dynasty (c. 2575–c. 2465 bce) has yet to be fully explained and would be a major challenge to this day. This expenditure of skill contrasts with sparse evidence of an essentially neolithic way of living for the rural population of the time, while the use of flint tools persisted even in urban environments at least until the late 2nd millennium bce. Metal was correspondingly scarce, much of it being used for prestige rather than everyday purposes.

In urban and elite contexts, the Egyptian ideal was the nuclear family, but, on the land and even within the central ruling group, there is evidence for extended families. Egyptians were monogamous, and the choice of partners in marriage, for which no formal ceremony or legal sanction is known, did not follow a set pattern. Consanguineous marriage was not practiced during the Dynastic period, except for the occasional marriage of a brother and sister within the royal family, and that practice may have been open only to kings or heirs to the throne. Divorce was in theory easy, but it was costly. Women had a legal status only marginally inferior to that of men. They could own and dispose of property in their own right, and they could initiate divorce and other legal proceedings. They hardly ever held administrative office but increasingly were involved in religious cults as priestesses or “chantresses.” Married women held the title “mistress of the house,” the precise significance of which is unknown. Lower down the social scale, they probably worked on the land as well as in the house.

The uneven distribution of wealth, labour, and technology was related to the only partly urban character of society, especially in the 3rd millennium bce. The country’s resources were not fed into numerous provincial towns but instead were concentrated to great effect around the capital—itself a dispersed string of settlements rather than a city—and focused on the central figure in society, the king. In the 3rd and early 2nd millennia, the elite ideal, expressed in the decoration of private tombs, was manorial and rural. Not until much later did Egyptians develop a more pronouncedly urban character.

Do you know your ba from your ka? What’s a vizier? How about a cartouche? Our handy glossary of Ancient Egyptian terms will have you speaking like a pharaoh in no time.

The terms we use to describe the religion, history and artifacts of Ancient Egypt are a strange mishmash of words that have French, Greek, English, Arabic — and yes, sometimes even Egyptian — origins.

Talk Like an Egyptian 

As you read more about the fascinating and complex world of Ancient Egypt, it helps to familiarize yourself with the terms that come up the most often. It’s probably a good idea to bookmark this page for easy reference — especially if you’re considering a visit. 🤗 

ankh: The hieroglyphic symbol for life, similar to a cross but with a loop in place of the upper arm. It was especially popular in jewellery and on temple carvings, where it was held in the hands of deities or being given by them to the pharaoh, to represent their power to sustain life and to revive human souls in the afterlife.

atef: The atef crown was made up of the White Crown of Upper Egypt with red ostrich feathers on either side. It was worn by the god of the underworld, Osiris.

ba: The ba is, essentially, the concept of the soul. Depicted as a bird with a human head, it could leave a person’s tomb to fly about. 

barque: These thin boats that curve up at either end were the transports of the gods, especially during festival processions. In temple sanctuaries, models of barques held statues of a deity. When a pharaoh died, a barque would transport them on their way to becoming a god.

Book of the Dead: This is the modern name ascribed to a collection of 200 hymns, rituals and spells that allowed the deceased to travel safely through the underworld and enter the afterlife. Ancient Egyptians knew it as the Spells for Going Forth by Day.

canopic jars: Four containers used to store the preserved internal organs of the deceased (the lungs, stomach, liver and intestines) extracted during the mummification process. Each jar was topped with the head of one of the god Horus’ sons.

cartouche: The oval frame that surrounds the name of a king, queen or god in inscriptions.

Coffin Texts: Collected during the First Intermediate Period, around 2134-2040 BCE, these 1,185 incantations and other forms of religious writing were inscribed on coffins to help the deceased navigate the afterlife, providing maps of the underworld and the best way to avoid dangers on one’s way to paradise.

deshret (or Red Crown): The crown, with a square base that curved upward into a point and had a coil spiraling out in front, was worn by the rulers of Lower Egypt.

djed: A representation of the spine, it symbolized stability. A djed amulet was often placed in coffins, where the backbone of the deceased would lay, to ensure eternal life. During a Sed festival, the pharaoh, with the help of priests, would raise a djed column. 

Duat: The underworld, home of the gods Osiris, Anubis and Ma’at, as well as many grotesque monsters. The sun deity Ra travels through the Duat every night, where he battles the serpent Apep, or Apophis. This is where a deceased person’s soul travels for judgment. 

Eye of Horus (aka udjat eye or wedjat eye): A falcon’s eye that acts as a protective talisman and symbolizes rebirth after death. Its origins lie in a myth where the evil god Set plucks out one of his nephew Horus’ eyes. 

faience: A powdered quartz paste that ranges in color from turquoise to teal. Modeled and sometimes fired, it was commonly used for jewelry, pottery and sculptures.

hedjet (or White Crown): The crown of Upper Egypt, it’s often irreverently (but accurately) described as looking like a bowling pin.

hieroglyphs: Think of them as the emojis of their day. Often mistakenly called hieroglyphics, they make up the system of pictorial writing used in Ancient Egypt. Though they sometimes represented the actual objects they depicted, hieroglyphs usually stood for particular sounds. 

Horus name: Beginning in the Predynastic Period, pharaohs would take on an additional name, cementing their relationship with the falcon-headed god Horus. The pharaoh oversaw their entire country and, like the bird of prey, could strike at enemies below. 

hypostyle hall: The reception area of a temple. Originally, most would have had a roof over rows of densely packed columns with capitals depicting palms, papyri or lotuses to represent the lush island of creation.

ka: The best way to describe this is as a soul — it’s someone’s other self, what makes them unique. It’s with a person throughout their life, but upon death the ka and the body become separate. The body has to be preserved, and the ka nourished, or it will starve and cease to exist. It’s represented as a human with upraised arms — or just the arms raised at a 90-degree angle. 

khepresh (or Blue Crown): Often worn by pharaohs when going into war, the khepresh was a blue headpiece with a uraeus on the brow.

kohl: Black powder made from galena ore (the chief source of lead) mixed with oil and used as an eyeliner by women and men.

Lower Egypt: The Ancient Egyptian worldview was upside-down compared to ours. Lower Egypt was the northern half of Egypt, so called because the Nile flows north before entering the Mediterranean Sea. Its capital was Memphis.

ma’at (aka maat): The principle of balance and cosmic order, personified by a goddess of the same name. It was a pharaoh’s duty to rule according to ma’at.

mammisi: A birth house, where a woman would go to deliver a child and recover for two weeks or so. These chapels were often situated in front of a temple and were said to be where a god had been born.

mastaba: A type of tomb first created in the Old Kingdom. From the Arabic word for “bench,” they were rectangular and flat-roofed, with a substructure belowground. As time went on, architects stacked stories atop them, leading to step pyramids and, eventually, the triangular pyramids like those at Giza.

nemes: A striped head covering worn by pharoahs. It covered the brow and skull, hung down on the side to rest on the shoulders, and was drawn together in the back in a sort of ponytail. King Tut was a fan. 

Opening of the Mouth: A ceremony held at the tomb, where the mouth of a mummy was symbolically opened so the dead could use their senses in the afterlife.

Opet: A festival held during the inundation, or flooding of the Nile. The statue of the chief god Amun would travel upon a barque from his sanctuary at Karnak to Luxor Temple.

papyrus: The writing surface used by Egyptian scribes. Derived from the pith of the stalks of papyrus, which grew along the banks of the Nile, the plant was also used to make boats, sandals, baskets and rope. 

pectoral: An elaborate necklace that covered much of the chest.

pharaoh: The supreme ruler of Ancient Egypt. He or she (there are a few times when a woman took the throne, like the remarkable Hatshepsut) was considered a god.

pschent (or the Double Crown): A combination of the deshret and hedjet crowns, it showed that the pharaoh controlled both Lower and Upper Egypt.

pylon: A massive gateway leading into a temple. Some held rooms, like the one for the harem at Medinet Habu.

Pyramid Texts: The earliest religious texts of Ancient Egypt. These spells, religious beliefs and myths were inscribed on the walls of Fifth and Sixth Dynasty pyramids (2465-2150 BCE). They were used to magically transform the deceased into the god of the afterlife, Osiris. Composed of 2,217 spells grouped into 714 “utterances,” they gave way to the Coffin Texts.

rekhyt: A stylized lapwing bird with wings spread and human arms raised in adoration, representing the general populace or the pharaoh’s subjects. When depicted on the walls of ancient temples, it signified that the public was allowed in that area. 

sarcophagus: A large stone container that held a mummy’s coffin. Its name comes from the Greek sarkophagos, meaning “flesh-eater.”

Sed: A festival of rejuvenation that renewed the powers of a pharaoh, it was usually — but not always — held in their 30th year of rule.

senet: A game played in Ancient Egypt. No one knows the rules, but they think it was a bit like chess. Pieces were usually fashioned from animal bone or clay. 

shabti (also shawabti or ushabti): A small mummy statuette of a servant placed in tombs that could be magically brought to life to perform tasks for the deceased in the afterlife.

sistrum: A sacred rattle made of a wood, metal or clay frame set loosely with crossbars strung with small metal discs. It was shaken during ritual dances for the goddess Hathor and later Isis.

sphinx: A mythological beast with the body of a lion that usually had the head of a pharaoh or god. The famous one sits outside Cairo at Giza. 

stele (also stela): An upright slab of stone that served as a monument, inscribed with religious or historical text.

Upper Egypt: The southern half of the kingdom of Ancient Egypt. It’s called Upper Egypt because the Nile River flows northward, from Upper to Lower Egypt. Its capital was Thebes.

uraeus: A rearing cobra in a threatening pose that represented divine authority, worn as a crown or head ornament by Ancient Egyptian divinities and rulers. It showed that the pharaoh had the protection of the goddess Wadjet, the patroness of Lower Egypt.

vizier: The second in command after the pharaoh. The role held many responsibilities, including administration of the government, security, judgement and the safety of the empire.

was scepter: A staff that’s often forked at the bottom and topped with the head of a creature, possibly the Bennu bird, a mythological heron who wears the atef crown. Carried by gods and pharaohs, the was scepter stood for power and dominion. –Wally

Who knew that Egypt wasn’t really called Egypt in its heyday? In fact, it didn’t receive that name until the archaic Greek era.

It’s All Greek to the Egyptians

In The Odyssey, Homer used “Aegyptus” to refer to the land of Egypt, meaning it was in use by the eighth century B.C. Victorian sources suggested «Aegyptus» a corruption of Hwt-ka-Ptah (Ha-ka-Ptah), “home of the soul of Ptah.” That was the Egyptian name for the city of Memphis, where Ptah, the potter-creator god, was chief deity. But there was a fellow named Aegyptus who plays a big role here, too.

According to Pseudo-Apollodorus in his Library, a line of mythological Greek kings ruled over northern Africa. That false statement gave his people a right to «claim» another region’s rich history. Epaphus, son of Zeus and Io, the woman-turned-cow, “married Memphis, daughter of Nile, founded and named the city of Memphis after her, and begat a daughter Libya, after whom the region of Libya was called.” Thus, huge swathes of Africa owed their names and livelihoods to the Greeks, or so they said.

Descended from this family was another name-inducing man: Aegyptus, who “subjugated the country of the Melampodes and named it Egypt.” Whether or not the original text of the Library stated he named it after himself up for debate. In Greek, “Melampodes” means “black feet,” perhaps because they walked in the rich dark soil of their land, which the annual Nile inundation/flood brought up from the river floor. But the Greeks were far from the first people to notice the black soil of the Land of the Nile.

The Duality Dilemma

The Egyptians themselves, of course, adored the fertile black dirt brought up from the depths of the Nile. It coated the land along the river with minerals amidst the soil, which allowed them to grow crops. The people of Egypt called their country “the Two Lands,” which signifies the way they viewed their home—as a duality. Monarchs frequently used the phrase “Two Lands” when discussing the realms over which they ruled, especially to stress their roles as unifiers of a large territory.

What were these two divisions? It depends on whom you ask. Perhaps the two «Egypts» were Upper (Southern) and Lower (Northern) Egypt, the way the Egyptians perceived their land to be divided. In fact, pharaohs wore the Double Crown, which symbolically represented the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by combining crowns from both regions into one big one.

Or maybe the twosome referred to the two banks of the River Nile. Egypt was even sometimes known as the «Two Banks.» The West Bank of the Nile was considered the land of the dead, home to necropolises galore—the life-giving Sun, after all, does set in the west, where Re symbolically “dies” each evening, only to be reborn in the east the following morning. In contrast to the silence and death of the West Bank, life was personified on the East Bank, where cities were built.

Perhaps it is related to the aforementioned Black Land (Kemet), the trip of arable land along the Nile, and the barren deserts of the Red Land. This last option makes a lot of sense, considering that the Egyptians often referred to themselves as “the people of the Black Land.”

“Kemet” first made its appearance around the Eleventh Dynasty, around the same time as another term, “The Beloved Land” (ta-mery) did. Perhaps, as scholar Ogden Goelet suggests, these monikers came out of a need to emphasize national unity after the chaos of the First Intermediate Period. To be fair, though, those words often appear in Middle Kingdom literary texts, many of which were probably edited centuries after the fact, so one cannot be sure how often these terms were used during the period of the Middle Kingdom itself. By the end of the Middle Kingdom, though, Kemet seems to have become the official name of Egypt, since pharaohs begin to use it in their titulary.

Invaders’ Epithets

In the mid-first millennium B.C., Egypt, often torn apart by internal strife, suffered centuries’ worth of conquests; this came after the already troublesome invasions of its Libyan neighbors. Each time it was conquered, it received a new name, part of its invaders’ psychology of subjugation.

In this so-called «Late Period,» the Egyptians fell subject to various peoples. First among these were the Assyrians, who conquered Egypt in 671 B.C. We don’t have records indicating if the Assyrians renamed Egypt, but it’s worth noting that, sixty years later, the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II was honored when the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal gave the former’s son, Psammetichus, an Assyrian name and rulership over an Egyptian city.

The Persians took power in Egypt after Cambyses II defeated the people of Kemet at the Battle of Pelusium in 525 B.C. The Persians turned Egypt into several provinces of their empire, also known as satrapies, that they called Mudraya. Some scholars have suggested Mudraya was the Persian version of the Akkadian Misir or Musur, a.k.a. Egypt. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for Egypt in the Bible was Mitzrayim, and Misr is now the Arabic word for Egypt.

And then the Greeks came…and the rest was history!

 Overview and Timeline of Ancient Egypt

The civilization of Ancient Egypt is known for its stupendous achievements in a whole range of fields, including art and architecture, engineering, medicine and statecraft. Its great buildings on the banks of the River still strike awe into those who see them.

The civilization of Ancient Egypt was one of the earliest in world history. It is usually held to have begun around 3000 BCE, when the lower Nile Valley became unified under a single ruler. At this date the only other people in the world to have a literate, urban civilization were in Mesopotamia.

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Timeline of Ancient Egyptian civilization:

c.5000 BCE: The coming of farming to the Nile Valley

c. 3500-3000: The Pre-dynastic period, leading to the unification of Egypt

c. 2650: The beginning of the Old Kingdom: soon the Great Pyramids of Giza built

c. 2150: The fall of the Old Kingdom leads to the 1st Intermediate period begins

2074: The Middle Kingdom begins; Egypt is united and powerful again

1759: The fall of the Middle Kingdom leads to the 2nd Intermediate period, and the occupation of northern Egypt by the Hyksos

1539: The reunification of Egypt and the expulsion of the Hyksos begins the New Kingdom, a period when Egypt became a leading power in the Middle East

1344-1328: The pharaoh Akhenaton carries out a short-lived religious reformation

1336-1327: Tutankhamun reigns

1279-1213: The reign of Rameses II brings Egypt to the height of its power

c. 1150 onwards: The New Kingdom falls into decline

728: Egypt is conquered by Nubian kings

656: Egypt is occupied by the Assyrians

639: The Egyptians expel the Assyrians and begin a period of revival

525: Egypt is conquered by the Persians

332: Egypt is conquered by Alexander the Great

305: Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great’s generals, founds a Greek-speaking dynasty

30: Cleopatra, the last queen of independent Egypt in ancient times, dies, and Egypt is annexed by the Roman Empire

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As can be seen, as well as being one of the earliest, Ancient Egypt was one of the longest lasting civilizations in world history. The great days of Ancient Egypt fell between c. 3000 BCE and c. 1000 BCE, but the civilization remained very much a going concern for centuries after this.

Egypt was a leading Middle Eastern power again between 612 and 525 BCE, and the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great felt the need to have himself crowned as pharaoh in 332 BCE – which suggests that the civilization of the pharaohs still had life in it. His general, Ptolemy, on becoming independent ruler of the country in 305 BCE, was also crowned pharaoh, and his line lasted down to the famous queen, Cleopatra, who died in 31 BCE. Some may regard the civilization of Egypt under the Ptolemies as being more Greek than Egyptian, but the older civilization was still vital enough for the kings to feel the need to present themselves to their subjects in the traditional style of the pharaohs. After that, the Nile Valley became a province of the Roman empire, and was ruled from outside its borders for nearly a thousand years. During this time its culture changed out of all recognition.

This period of history, between the civilization’s beginnings in c. 3000 BCE to its conquest by the Romans in 31 BCE, was almost a thousand years longer than the period between 31 BCE and the present day.

Geography of Ancient Egypt

Egypt is situated in the Nile Valley, in the north east of Africa. Its origins lay in several chiefdoms in Upper Egypt, at Abydos and Hierakonpolis, which then spread northwards towards Memphis and the Mediterranean. By 3000 BCE, the unified kingdom of Egypt occupied the entire Nile Valley north of a series of rapids called the 1st Cataract (the other cataracts lay in a chain stretching south along the River Nile into present-day Sudan). At its greatest extent, in c. 1250 BCE, Ancient Egypt occupied the land in all directions from the Syrian coast in the north, to the Red Sea in the east, down the Nile Valley to Nubia in the south, and spreading west inland into the Lybian Desert.

The life of Ancient Egypt centered around the river Nile and the fertile land along its banks. The farmers in the long, narrow Nile Valley developed irrigation methods to control the flow of the water, so that crops could grow through both its rainy and dry seasons. The valley was fertile and rich, creating vast surpluses of crops that made possible incredible building projects such as the Pyramids and the temples of Luxor. The surpluses were also used to fund a refined lifestyle for the elite; to develop overseas trade and diplomacy; and to pay for wars of conquest.

The achievements of the civilization involved innovations in writing – hieroglyphics and demotic; in administration; in quarrying and surveying, maths and architecture; in irrigation and agricultural methods; as well as in developing some of the earliest ships.

Ancient Egyptian Government

The Ancient Egyptian civilization produced the first government to rule an entire nation. The Sumerians, who were the only other people to have a literate and urban civilization by 3000 BCE, lived in small city-states, each numbering no more than a few tens of thousand people. The unified kingdom of Egypt, on the other hand, covered an entire country thousands of square miles in size and with millions of inhabitants.

The Pharaoh was the ruler of Ancient Egypt, both politically and religiously. The Pharaoh held the title ‘Lord of the Two Lands’, meaning that he ruled all of Upper and Lower Egypt; and ‘High Priest of Every Temple’, meaning that he represented all the gods on all the Earth. In Egyptian eyes, the pharaoh was a god himself, who stood between heaven and earth. His personal welfare and the welfare of the entire people were bound tightly together.

Pharaoh was in charge of the army, and would go to war when his lands were threatened – demanding valuable gifts from the conquered people if victory was obtained.

To help the Pharaoh in governing the land, an elaborate organization of officials, scribes and overseers – the world’s first civil service – developed, bringing the reach of government down to the lowliest villager. Egypt was divided into nomes, which were administrative regions (up to 42 of them), each governed by a nomarch. Pharaoh himself was surrounded in his palace by high officials, ministers and courtiers. For much of Ancient Egypt’s history the Pharaoh was served by a powerful chief minister called a Vizier. He represented the Pharaoh in the administration of the land, treasury and legal system. Temples were used as places of worship and also as granaries and treasuries where grain and goods were stored.

The Army

Soldiers of ancient Egyptian armies were armed with bows and arrows, spears, and round-topped shields made from stretched animal skin over wooden frames. Weapons and armor continued to improve after the adoption of bronze: shields were now made from solid wood with a bronze buckle, spears were tipped with a bronze point, and the bronze Khopesh – a hook shaped slashing weapon – was introduced. In the New Kingdom, chariots became a standard part of the army.

Pharaohs are often shown riding at the head of the army. Modern scholars tend to think this may be a propaganda device, as for a commander-in-chief to be fighting in the thick of the action alongside his troops would not necessarily have been the best place for him to be. On occasion, however, he may well have done; many commanders in subsequent history have charged into battle in person when conditions called for this kind of example. What is not in doubt is that being the commander of the army was an important part of the Pharaoh’s role.

The prime duty of the army was to defend Egypt against foreign invasion. It was also at times deployed in conquering and occupying foreign possessions, in protecting mining expeditions to the Sinai and Nubia, and in garrisoning forts along important trade routes, especially in Nubia.

Ancient Egyptian Religion

The ancient Egyptians worshipped many gods and goddesses. These included Ra, the sun god; Isis, the goddess of nature and magic; Horus, the god of war; and Osiris, the god of the dead. The pantheon of gods and goddesses gradually changed over time, as new gods became more important, and some less so. The rise and fall of gods and goddesses seems to have mirrored the political fortunes of the different temples and priesthoods. For example, when the rulers of Thebes became kings of all Egypt, and founded the New Kingdom, its local god Amun became the chief god, and was united with Ra to become Amun-Ra.

Gods were worshipped in temples run by priests. These were not apparently places of public worship: the place where the god’s image was located was usually sealed off from the outside world. Only on occasions was the god brought out and shown to the public. Small domestic statues were used by normal Egyptians to worship the gods and goddesses in their own homes. Charms and amulets were worn for protection against the forces of evil.

Egyptian religious beliefs about the afterlife also changed over time. In early times, the afterlife seems to have been intimately connected to the preservation of the physical body by mummification. This always retained some force. However, the idea grew up that human beings are composed of both physical and spiritual aspects. After death, the latter lived on. Some people become disembodied souls, or ghosts, wandering the earth; but if judged worthy, a person could become a “blessed one”, living in a land of goodness and plenty.

Economy and Society of Ancient Egyptian

As with all pre-industrial civilizations, Ancient Egypt’s economy was based on agriculture. The great majority of the people were peasant farmers. Because of the fertile nature of the Nile Valley, they were able to produce the large surplus which sustained the refined lifestyle of the Pharaoh and his court, his officials, the priests and all the other members of the elite. Peasants also provided the mass labour which built the pyramids and temples along the Nile Valley.

Agriculture

Farming in Egypt was dependent completely on the Nile River. Just a few miles away from the river, on both sides, was bone dry desert.

Satellite Image of the Nile River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile#/media/File:Nile_composite_NASA.jpg 

The flooding season lasted from June to September, depositing a layer of wonderfully fertile silt on the land beside the river. As much as the flood water as possible was stored in tanks and ponds. After the flood waters had receded, the growing season lasted from October to February. Egypt receives very little rainfall, so farmers irrigated their fields with river water from the reservoirs, and from the river itself. Ditches and canals carried the water to the fields.

Trade

Trade inside Egypt would have been greatly aided by the presence of the River Nile, and by the fact that no part of the country lay more than a few miles from this great waterway. Until modern times, for anything longer than very small distances, water transport has always been much less expensive than land transport. Numerous towns dotted the river bank, centers of local administration, and of local markets. Egypt has often been regarded as a civilization without cities. This is not true. Unlike the Sumerians, Egyptian cities were not independent states; however, there were numerous urban settlements in the Nile Valley, and Memphis was one of the largest cities in the world, if not at times the largest.

In the Bronze Age, international trade was almost the same as diplomacy, taking the form of exchanges of “gifts” between rulers. The Egyptians were ideally situated to take full advantage of this. Before the development of long-range trade routes across the Sahara, the Nile Valley functioned as the only “pinch point” through which trade goods from sub-Saharan Africa could flow north to the Mediterranean. Trading expeditions ranged far south into the present-day Sudan and the Red Sea in search of exotic goods such as ivory, gold, ostrich feathers and black slaves.  These highly valued commodities  underpinned Egypt’s influence in the international world of the Bronze Age Middle East, finding their way to Hittite, Syrian and Mesopotamian courts.

Mineral resources

Egypt is rich in mineral resources, and these were well exploited in ancient times. Limestone and granite quarries occurred along the Nile valley. In the eastern desert was mined porphyry, alabaster, carnelian and emeralds. There were extensive gold mines in Nubia. Copper smelted from malachite ore mined in the Sinai. Iron deposits found in upper Egypt were utilized in the Late Period.

Many of these minerals were to be found in distant, inhospitable locations in the eastern and the Sinai deserts. They required large expeditions to get at them. These were organized by the government, and often had to be protected by troops. However, these natural resources allowed the ancient Egyptians to build monuments, sculpt statues of all sizes, manufacture metal tools and fashion jewelry.

Society

As in all societies of the ancient world, peasant farmers made up the bulk of the population. However, the land was owned by the Pharaoh, or by one of the temples, which were immensely wealthy, or by a noble family. Peasants were also subject to a labour tax, and were at times required to work on public projects such as irrigation or construction works.

Craftsmen seem to have had a higher status than farmers. Most of these probably worked for temples or the state. Scribes and officials were of high rank in ancient Egyptian society. Within this elite group were also priests, physicians and engineers; and from them were drawn the leading priests, ministers and courtiers.

At the very top was the royal family, below which was a powerful class of hereditary landowners (nobles). Slavery was known in ancient Egypt, but its extent is unclear. Most slaves seem to have been used as domestic servants in wealthy households rather than as agricultural workers. By law, slaves were able to buy and sell, like other people, or work their way to freedom.

Women seem to have had a comparatively high status in Egyptian society. Like men, they could own and sell property, make contracts, marry and divorce, receive inheritance, and pursue legal disputes in court. Married couples could own property jointly. Some women enjoyed huge status as high priestesses. On the other hand, as in virtually all ancient societies, public office was almost always reserved for men.

Ancient Egyptian Writing and Literature

The first hieroglyphic writing that has come down to us dates from c. 3000 BCE. A hieroglyph can represent a word, a sound, or a silent determinative; and the same symbol can serve different purposes in different contexts. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is composed of hundreds of symbols, which could be read in rows or columns, and in either direction (though in the majority of cases, written from right to left).

An example of cursive hieroglyphic writing: Egyptian Book of the Dead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs#/media/File:Papyrus_Ani_curs_hiero.jpg

Hieroglyphics were, as far as we know, exclusively used on stone monuments and in tombs. In their daily work, scribes used another kind of writing, called hieratic. This uses a cursive script (that is, joined-up writing) which was far quicker and easier to use than hieroglyphics. Hieratic writing was always written from right to left, usually in horizontal rows.

Later, around 500 BCE, and therefore towards the end of Ancient Egyptian civilization, a new form of writing, Demotic, came into widespread use. This was a phonetic, semi-alphabetical script, which began life as the transcription of everyday spoken language, but over time developed into the language of literature, high culture and religion.

Literature

Egyptian hieroglyphic literature is found on public monuments, and the walls of temples and tombs, and consists of records of the deeds of gods and men, as well as poetry. Love poetry, hymns, proverbs, spells and curses, instructional and medical texts, and myths and legends, are found in hieratic, and later demotic scripts. One of the best-known examples of Egyptian literature is a collection of spells dating to the New Kingdom period and labelled the “Book of the Dead”: its object is to enable people to pass successfully from this life into the next.

The Story of Sinuhe is probably the best known work of Egyptian literature that has come down to us. Another popular tale is the Story of Wenamun, which gives an insight into Egypt in its declining phase.

Ancient Egyptian Art

Much of the art of Ancient Egypt which has come down to us is funerary art – art designed for the tomb. The Ancient Egyptians believed that life could continue into the afterlife, and so the dead were accompanied in their graves by everyday and luxury goods – including art objects – to help them enjoy their new life.

Ancient Egyptian art emphasized a rigid style which changed remarkably little over the millennia. This did not mean that Egyptian art was unchanging – but change took place within fairly narrow bounds. Ironically, in the declining centuries of Ancient Egyptian civilization, its art became more conservative and rigid, harking back to the glorious days of old.

The iconic Egyptian two-dimensional style is found in tombs, temples and statues. Egyptian statues were carved from stone and rock, or wood as a cheap alternative, with paint obtained from mineral ores quarried from surrounding areas.

A statue from Ancient Egypt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_ancient_Egypt#/media/File:Ka_Statue_of_horawibra.jpg

The wall paintings in tombs often depict lively scenes of everyday life, bringing this ancient civilization vividly to life. The houses of the wealthy also had richly painted walls with scenes of people, birds, water pools, deities and geometric designs.

Architecture of Ancient Egypt

The Ancient Egyptians built some of the most-awe inspiring structures the world has ever seen, such as the Pyramids of Giza. The construction of pyramids was in fact restricted to the earlier days of Egyptian civilization. Later monumental architecture can be seen most clearly in the temples and giant statues of the Valley of the Kings and Abu Simbel.

The average Egyptian lived in a simple mud, wood or brick abode, with the elite having elaborate multi-room mansions with richly painted walls, decorated floors, and built around courtyards.

Ancient Egyptian Technology

Mathematics

The Ancient Egyptians developed high levels of mathematical skills to enable them to build their pyramids and temples with remarkably simple tools. There mathematics seems to have been of a more practical nature than that of the Mesopotamians, and therefore may have influenced later civilizations less; however, this practical mathematics must have been of a very high order indeed.

Medicine

Ancient Egyptian funerary practices, which involved embalming the dead, did not lead to detailed knowledge of human anatomy. Nevertheless, Egyptian medicine acquired an excellent reputation in the Ancient World. Ancient Egyptian doctors could stitch up wounds, repair broken bones and amputate infected limbs. Cuts were bandaged by raw meat, linen, and swabs soaked with honey. Opium was also used as a painkiller. Onions and garlic were used as health foods in the diet.

Close proximity to the Nile meant that water-borne diseases, such as malaria, were rife. Other common ailments included physical stresses caused from a life of labour. Life expectancy was between 30 (women) and 35 (men), however about one third of infants never reached adulthood.

Ship Building

The long river along which Ancient Egyptian civilization flourished was an ideal environment for the development of boat technology. As early as 3000 BCE an Egyptian ship of 75ft in length had been built. Planks of wood were originally held together by straps, with reeds or grass pushed in to seal the gaps. Soon tree nails were used to hold planks together, with pitch and caulking to close the seams; and mortise and tenon joints had also been developed. However, despite having ships on which to sail, they were not renowned as great sailors and do not seem to have engage in shipping across the Mediterranean or Red Seas on a regular basis.

Depiction of an Ancient Egyptian Seafaring ship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient Egypt#/media/File:Ancient_Egyptian_Seafaring_Ship.jpg‘

When did Ancient Egyptian civilization disappear?

There are various dates given for the end of Ancient Egypt as a civilization.

Was it the Persians?

The conquest of Egypt by the Persians in 525 BCE is sometimes seen to mark the point at which Ancient Egypt ceased to be an independent nation. However, it regained its independence in a successful rebellion in 402 BCE, and retained it for almost 60 years.  The Persians at length regained Egypt in 343 BCE, and this indeed marked the end of an independent Egypt in ancient times. It would not be for another thousand years or more before an independent state appeared in Egypt. This was not ruled by native Egyptians (its Islamic emirs were of central Asian origin), and in any case the civilization of Ancient Egypt – its religion, literature, art and architecture – was long dead.

The restored Persian rule only lasted a decade before Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BCE. His early death meant that the country fell under the rule of one of his Macedonian generals, Ptolemy. He and his descendants would govern the country until its conquest by the Romans in 30 BCE.

It was under the Ptolemies that the civilization of Ancient Egypt began to weaken. Its powerful priesthood – and under their patronage, Egyptian architecture, art, literature (including hieroglyphic texts), and of course religion – had survived Persian rule. Indeed it was to retain much of its power under the Ptolemies.  However, the Ptolemaic kings established their capital at the new foundation of Alexandria, which was a Greek-style (or Hellenistic) city. The administration and army was manned by Greek-speaking officials and soldiers, most of whom were Greeks or Macedonians and their descendants. In fact Egypt acquired wholesale a new ruling class, made up most of foreigners and predominantly of Greek culture.

Nevertheless, the Egyptian priesthood retained great influence with the native population, and the new rulers sought – and to a large extent succeeded – in maintaining good relations with them. The Ptolemies claimed to rule as heirs of the pharaohs, and participated in traditional Egyptian ceremonies in pharaonic styles and dress. Formally speaking,  the old Egyptian ways were very much alive. However, Egypt now formed just one part of the wider Hellenistic world, and this had a deep impact on Egyptian culture. Public art became a synthesis of Greek and Egyptian styles, and the old Egyptian religion was permeated by new beliefs and practices.

Under the Romans, things were different. The country was now again the province of a large empire, as it had been under the Persians centuries before. The Roman government, with vast reserves of military power at its command, had no real incentive to favor the native priesthood. They did, however, follow the usual Roman practice of tolerating local religions and – so land as these did not foster revolt – priesthoods. Egypt was generally peaceful under Roman rule, and the old temples retained their place in local society.

It was the spread of Christianity within Egypt which really undermined the old religious establishment. The new religion seems to have found fertile ground in the Egyptian population, and spread more rapidly here than in most other parts of the empire. When Christianity became a legitimate religion within the Roman empire, from the reign of the emperor Constantine, many high ranking people in Egypt became Christians (or identified as such). The old priesthoods rapidly lost influence – and along with them, the art, architecture and hieroglyphic writing of Ancient Egypt went into steep decline.

With Christianity becoming the official religion of the Roman empire, in 391 CE, the temples to the Egyptian gods began to be closed down. The last example we have of hieroglyphic writing is dated 394 CE. This can be taken as the last gasp of this glorious civilization.

Ancient Egypt in World History

The clearest evidence for the legacy of Ancient Egypt can be seen in architecture.  The later Egyptian temples look very similar to early Greek temples; and it has been suggested that the Ancient Greeks got the very idea of monumental building in stone from the Egyptians.

Other items of Egypt’s legacy are harder to pin down. Archaic Greek sculpture seems to be more closely related to Mesopotamian and astronomical models than Egyptian; similarly, Greek mathematics bears a closer relationship to Babylonian precedents.

What is unmistakable is that this ancient civilization has exercised an unmatched spell upon future civilizations. The Greeks already regarded Egypt as a land of wisdom and mystery, and the Ancient Roman fascination with Egypt can be seen in the number of obelisks to be found in the city of Rome to this day (some of them shipped from Egypt to the imperial capital, others copies of Egyptian models). The medieval Arabs wrote about Egyptian civilization, and the modern European fascination with Egypt was fueled by Napoleon’s conquest of the country in 1798. Modern Egyptology started at that date, and has continued ever since. Today, Egypt is one of the prime tourist destinations of the world, witnessing to the ongoing fascination with this, one of the world’s truly great civilizations.

So what, in sum, is the place of Ancient Egypt in world history? It is surely this – here, almost at the very beginnings of recorded history, was a great civilization which produced wonderful art, architecture, engineering, literature, medicine and so on. The wide range of highly-developed practical techniques these involved were transmitted to other peoples and later cultures; but more than this, what an inspiration it must have been for the civilizations which came after! We know that many Greeks and Romans travelled to the land of Egypt, and were awed by the magnificent remains they saw there. In short, Ancient Egypt set the bar high!

Further study

Maps

Maps tracking Ancient Egypt’s history start at: Ancient Egypt 3500 BCE

See also:

Maps giving an overview of Middle Eastern ancient history start at: Middle East 3500 BCE

Maps giving an overview of Africa’s ancient history, start at: Africa 3500 BCE

Maps showing the World at the time of Ancient Egypt start at: The World 3500 BCE

Maps which include references to ancient Egypt are:

Syria 2500 BCE

Syria 1500 BCE

Nubia 1500 BCE

Nubia 1000 BCE

Nubia 500 BCE

Nubia 200 BCE

Timeline

Timeline of Ancient Egypt

Articles

History of Ancient Egypt

Broader context:

History of the Ancient Middle East (includes much about ancient Egypt in a broader regional context)

The Origins of Civilization (looks at how civilization first emerged, and has much of relevance to ancient Egypt)

The following articles include references to Ancient Egypt:

The History of Ancient Mesopotamia on origins

The History of Ancient Greece – in section of the Minoan civilization, on Greek art, and on the Athenian empire.

The History of Ancient Palestine – in the introduction and in the sections on the fall of Judah, and on the exile.

The History of Syria – in the introduction and in the sections on the fall of Assyria and on the Hellenistic period.

The History of Turkey in the section on the Hittites

Finally, whatever happened to the ancient Egyptians? Follow Egypt’s history right through to the present day, starting here, with Egypt 200 CE.

Books

The main sources I have used for the history of ancient Egypt are:

Manley, W, The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt, Penguin, 1996, is a great little introduction to a big subject.

Gardiner, A., The Egyptians, Clarendon, 1961, offers a detailed and scholarly coverage of the subject.

More recent general books on the subject which have been well-received, but which I have not yet read, are:

Shaw, I, The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, OUP, 2003

Fletcher, J., The Story of Egypt, Hodder & Stoughton, 2015; this is linked to a BBC documentary on the subject

Kemp, B.J., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation, Routledge, 2006

For an overview of the archaeology of ancient Egypt, I found the following useful (and enjoyable due to its lavish illustrations): Renfrew, C. (ed.), Past Worlds: The Times Atlas of Archaeology, Times Books, 1995, p. 122-3, 128-9, 136-9.

A work on general archaeology aimed more at students, but readable and with very good coverage of ancient Egypt, is Scarre, C. (ed.), The Human Past, Thames & Hudson, 2005, p. 363, 370ff.

For an insightful look at government in ancient Egypt, see Finer, S. E., The History of Government, I, Ancient Monarchies and Empires, OUP, 1999, p. 132ff., 179ff.

Websites

An informative website on ancient Egypt is the British Museum’s Ancient Egypt

Wikipedia of course has a vast amount of information on Ancient Egypt

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» Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic dictionary (English-Egyptian Hieroglyphic Online Dictionary) Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic dictionary contains about 12,000 words and phrases translated into English. You can search order of writing the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in their English meaning, Gardiner’s code or transliteration. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet has been moved to a separate table. For writing ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, you can use simplified Egyptian hieroglyphic text editor. For educational and entertainment purposes, discover the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic editor of names and simple sentences. Input code or it part by Gardiner: Input word or it part in English: Input transliteration or it part: Sort Если Вы заметили в тексте опечатку, выделите ее и нажмите Ctrl+Enter

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