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Ancient Egypt Cont…. Planning Pyramids. Were tombs for their leader(pharaoh) Measuring and math came in handy for the building of the pyramids More than 100,000 men worked nearly 20 years on the Great Pyramid at Giza These monuments housed the pharaoh’s soul, or ka for the afterlife.
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Planning Pyramids • Were tombs for their leader(pharaoh) • Measuring and math came in handy for the building of the pyramids • More than 100,000 men worked nearly 20 years on the Great Pyramid at Giza • These monuments housed the pharaoh’s soul, or ka for the afterlife
…cont. • The pyramids were stocked with food, clothing and personal items for the next world • Body was preserved using mummification • Archeologists have uncovered about 80 pyramids in Egypt • One pyramid in Giza spans over 480 ft. in height, and the base measures about 750 feet on all four sides. This took more than 10k workers and over 20 years.(2.5 million limestone blocks) • Many people actually volunteered to give honor to their most exalted pharaoh(Khufu).
Mummification • Nobody in history has devoted quite so much thought and energy to death and the afterlife • Began this tradition before the twenty-fourth century B.C. • Egyptian mummies can be identified b/c of hieroglyphics(King Tut found in 1922 in underground tomb)His tomb was perfectly kept • How you wrap a Mummy:
Religion • Creation stories-cultures have ways of accounting for the beginning of the world • Ancient Egyptian creation story: (P. 159) • Seems to have arisen from tribal beliefs that an animal represented a certain god. • As society developed, regions considered specific gods their own • The animal was not the god, but sacred to the god. For example, the hawk was sacred to the Sun-god Re and the sky god Horus(Cats-webpage)
Religion cont… • Therefore, the Early Egyptians were considered polytheistic(the belief in many gods) • In the fourteenth century BC, King Akhenaton(Amenhotep IV) imposed monotheistic worship of the sun-disc god, Aton(or Atum) in place of traditional Egyptian polytheism.(After he dies, his successors went back to the old ways.) • Ancient Egyptian religion(mythology) centers itself on nature, the earth, sky, moon, sun, stars, and the Nile River
…cont. • Atum’s children were then born when he spat out his son, Shu, and vomited up his daughter Tefnut(this after he mated with his shadow ( ‘The great He-She’)) • They were separated after awhile, then reunited, and when Atum wept tears of Joy, his tears created man. • Osiris’ story is where the roots of Mummification and the belief in the afterlife come from.(website:mythology)
Inventing Writing • Practical science and engineering methods arose to keep track of planting seasons • They studied the patterns of the Nile(flooding) as well as the sun and the stars; develop the most accurate calendar yet-with 365 days in a year. • Egyptians noted things by using pictographic writing, which evolved into hieroglyphics
Rosetta Stone • Slab of black basalt bearing an inscribed text in ancient Greek and two forms of old Egyptian writing(hieroglyphics) • In 1799, Napoleon’s soldiers found the rock on the Rosetta fork of the Nile at Raschid, near Alexandria • The rock was carved about 2,000 years earlier, in 196 B.C. • Scholars Thomas Young and Jean Francois Champollion worked to decipher the stone and in 1822, announced they could read hieroglyphics. • This provided an entryway into the remote Egyptian past(This stone can be seen in London’s British Museum.
