• Medicine
the Egyptians were famously clean and fearful of diseases. Perhaps it is for this reason that medicine became such an important pursuit / hobby. Most of the medical information about ancient Egypt were written on papyrus scrolls. Some of these documents still exist to date. The most important are:
• The Edwin Smith papyrus
• The Elber papyrus dating back to 3000BC
• The Kahun Gynecological papyrus dating back to 1825BC.
– Ancient Egyptian doctors could stitch up wounds, repair broken bones and amputate (surgical remove) infected limbs. Cuts were bandaged by raw meat, linen, and swabs (pieces of cloth used to clean wounds) soaked with honey. Opium (powerful drug made out of plants) was used as a pain killer. They were also experts in dentistry and surgery.
Indicators of civilization in ancient Egypt
• Art
much of the Egyptian art was that of funeral art, the art designed for the tombs. The Egyptians believed that life could continue as normal in the after life, and so the dead were accompanied in their graves by every day and luxury goods including art objects to help them enjoy their new life.
• Mathematics
According to Herodotus, the mathematics of Egypt had its roots in surveying. The pharaohs of Egypt gave each Egyptian a plot of land of equal size and taxed them upon this. However, the annual floods of the Nile could quite easily wash away the land, so the king had to send surveyors to see by how much a tenant’s land had been reduced and lowered the taxes accordingly. This situation necessitated the development of mathematics.
– Furthermore, to rule effectively, an effective and efficient administration was developed for taking taxes, census and maintaining large army. All these required some mathematics.
– Thus, in ancient Egypt, mathematics was used for measuring time, straight lines, the level of the Nile flooding, calculating areas of land, counting money, working out and building of pyramids and other structures such as irrigation furrows.
– The Egyptians had a calendars as early as 4800BC, but in 4200BC their mathematics and astronomy produced a 365 day calendar ( 12 months of 30 days)
• Ship building
the long river along which ancient Egyptians civilization was built was an ideal environment for the development of boat technology. As early as 3000BC an Egyptian ship of about 75 feet in length had been built.
• Governance: the ancient Egyptian civilization produced the first government to rule an entire nation. The unified kingdom of Egypt covered an entire country with thousands of square miles in size and millions of inhabitants.
– The pharaoh was the ruler of ancient Egypt, both politically and religiously:
• The pharaoh held the title “ Lord of two lands” meaning that he ruled all of upper and lower Egypt.
• He was also a high priest of every temple meaning that he represented the honor of the gods on all the earth.
• In Egyptian eyes, the pharaoh was a god himself who stood between heaven and earth
• Pharaoh was the in charge of the army, and would go to war when his lands were threatened.
• To help the pharaoh in governing the lands:
– An elaborate organization of officials, scribes and overseerers, the world’s first civil service developed.
– Egypt was divided into Nomes, which were administrative regions each governed by a Nomarch.
– Pharaoh himself was surrounded in his palace by high officials, ministers, and courtier (people working in the king’s court).
– The pharaoh was served by a powerful chief minister called Vizier. He represented the pharaoh in the administration of the lands, treasury, and legal system.
• Legal system
the head of the legal system was officially the pharaoh, who was responsible for enacting laws, delivering justice, and maintenance of law and order, a concept the Egyptians referred to as Maat. Court documents indicates that Egyptian law was based on a common sense, the view of right and wrong.
• Religion
religion played a big part in the lives of the ancient Egyptians. They believed in a wide variety of gods and goddesses. These gods could take different forms usually as animals. The same animal may represent a different gods depending on the area, temple, or time frame. There were some gods and goddesses that were important and prominent than others. Here are some of the major important.
– Ra : this was the Sun god and the most important god to the ancient Egyptians. Ra was said to have created all forms life and was the supreme god.
– Isis : this was the mother goddess. It was thought that she would protect and help people in need. She was drawn as a woman with a headdress in the shape of a throne.
– Osiris : this was the ruler of the underworld and god of the dead. He was the husband of Isis and a father of Horus. Osiris was drawn as a mummified man with feathered headdress.
– Horus : this was the god of the sky. Horus was the son of Isis and Osiris. To the ruler of Egyptians, Pharaoh was thought to be the living version Horus. In this way pharaoh was the leader of the Egyptian religion and the peoples representative
– Thoth : this was the god of knowledge. He blessed the Egyptians with writing, medicine, and mathematics. He was represented as a baboon.
• Mummification
the after life was an important part of ancient Egyptian culture. One of the ways they prepared for the after life was to try to preserve the body as long as possible. They did this through a process known as mummification. The embalmed bodies are called mummies.
– The total process could take up to 40 days. Once the body was dry, it was covered in a sheet called shroud and placed in a stone coffin called Sarcophagus.
• Hieroglyphics
the ancient Egyptians used picture words to write called hieroglyphics. It is a very old form of writing that they started using as early as 3000BC. It was a very complicated way of writing involving 1000s of symbols. Hieroglyphs was different from how we write in many ways:
– There were no vowel sounds, only consonants.
– It could be written in any direction, left to right, right to left or top to bottom. The reader would figure out which way to read it by the direction of the symbols.
– There was no punctuations
– One of the goals in writing hieroglyphics was that the writing would look like art and be beautiful to look at.
– A single picture symbol could stand for a whole word called an ideogram or a sound called a phonogram. For example a picture of an eye could mean the word “eye” or letter “I”.
– The ancient Egyptians often wrote on tables or walls, but they also wrote on type of paper called papyrus.
• The pyramids
were built as burial places for the pharaohs. As part of their religion, the Egyptians believed that the pharaohs needed certain things to succeed in the after life. Deep inside the pyramids the pharaohs would be buried with all sorts of items and treasure that he may need to survive in the after life.
– There are around 138 Egyptian pyramids. The largest being the pyramid of Khuf, also called the great pyramid of Giza. This is the largest and the oldest pyramid. The Egyptian pyramid was featured by:
• The pyramid of Egypt were built to the west of the Nile river. This is because the western side was associated with land of the dead.
• The base of the pyramid was always a perfect square.
• They were built mostly of limestone
• There were traps put on the tombs and the pyramids to keep robberers out.
• Near the pharaoh’s chamber would be other rooms where family members and servants were buried
• Because it took so long to build the pyramids (over 23 years), pharaoh’s generally started the construction of their pyramids as soon as they became rulers.
• Because there were such valuable treasure buried within the pyramids, grave robbers would try to break in and steel the treasure. Despite the Egyptian efforts, nearly all of the pyramids were robbed of their treasure by 1000BC.
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