By Amy and Katie

1. Ancient Egypt By Amy and Katie

2. The River Nile • Where is the River Nile? • The River Nile is in Africa. It originates in Burundi, south of the equator, and flows northward through northeastern Africa, eventually flowing through Egypt and finally draining into the Mediterranean Sea. • Map of the River Nile from spaceNotice that the land is green on either side of the Nile. • Where is the source of the River Nile? • Lake Victoria, Africa's biggest lake, is generally thought of as the source of the River Nile. On the northern edge of the lake, water pours over a waterfall, known as Ripon Falls, into a narrow opening which some people believe is the beginning of the River Nile. • The true source of the River Nile • Ripon Falls may be the starting-point of the river, but the many streams that flow into Lake Victoria could claim to be the true source. • Much of Lake Victoria is surrounded by mountains with streams tumbling down into the lake. The largest tributary of Lake Victoria is the Kagera river. The Kagera and its tributary the Ruvubu, with its headwaters in Burundi, is now considered to be the true source of the Nile. It is from here that the Nile is measured as the world's longest river.

3. Facts about the river Nile • The Nile River is the longest river in the world. • The Nile flows into the Mediterranean Sea. • The largest source of the Nile is Lake Victoria. • The Nile has a length of about 6,695 kilometers (4,160 miles). • Its average discharge is 3.1 million litres (680,000 gallons) per second. • The Nile basin is huge and includes parts of Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Congo (Kinshasa), Kenya. • The name Nile comes from the Greek “neilos”, which means valley. • The Ancient Egyptians called the river Ar or Aur (black) because of the colour of the sediment left after the river’s annual flood.

4. What are Mummies? • What are mummies? • A mummy is the body of a person (or an animal) that has been preserved after death. • Who were the mummies? • They were any Egyptian who could afford to pay for the expensive process of preserving their bodies for the afterlife. • Why did the Egyptians make mummies? • The Egyptians believed in life after death. They believed that they had to preserve their bodies so they could use them in the afterlife. • What is the afterlife? • The Egyptians believed that when they died, they would make a journey to another world where they would lead a new life. They would need all the things they had used when they were alive, so their families would put those things in their graves. Egyptians paid vast amounts of money to have their bodies properly preserved. Egyptians who were poor were buried in the sand whilst the rich ones were buried in a tomb.

5. Hieroglyphs • What does the word hieroglyph mean? • Hieroglyphs is made from two Greek words: • hieros meaning holy • glyphe meaning writing • So hieroglyph means holy writing. • How do we know how to read hieroglyphics ? • This writing was uncovered by the Rosetta Stone. Hieroglyphics uses small pictures which represent the sound of the object or an idea associated with the object. • How do you know which way to read Hieroglyphs? • You need to look closely at the hieroglyphs to find out. It depends on which way the people or animals are facing. For example, if an animal hieroglyph faces right, you read from right to left. If it faces left, you read from left to right (the same way that we do). Just to confuse you, sometimes they read Hieroglyphs from top to bottom. • What did Ancient Egyptians write on? • Hieroglyphs were written on papyrus reed, which is a water or marsh plant, with tall straight hollow stems.The reeds were flattened, dried, and stuck together to make pages. • The Egyptians also carved hieroglyphs onto stone and painted them on the walls of the tombs.