Ancient Egyptians had a complex religious system centered around major gods like Amun-Re, Osiris, and Isis. Their beliefs in gods and the afterlife heavily influenced daily life and customs like mummification. Egyptians made many advances in areas like medicine, astronomy, math, and architecture. Society was stratified with pharaohs, nobles, peasants, and slaves. Women had some rights but were still largely excluded from positions of power. Hieroglyphics, hieratic, and demotic scripts were used for writing.
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Thursday October 13, 2010: Locations in The Correct Location
Ancient Egyptians had a complex religious system centered around major gods like Amun-Re, Osiris, and Isis. Their beliefs in gods and the afterlife heavily influenced daily life and customs like mummification. Egyptians made many advances in areas like medicine, astronomy, math, and architecture. Society was stratified with pharaohs, nobles, peasants, and slaves. Women had some rights but were still largely excluded from positions of power. Hieroglyphics, hieratic, and demotic scripts were used for writing.
Ancient Egyptians had a complex religious system centered around major gods like Amun-Re, Osiris, and Isis. Their beliefs in gods and the afterlife heavily influenced daily life and customs like mummification. Egyptians made many advances in areas like medicine, astronomy, math, and architecture. Society was stratified with pharaohs, nobles, peasants, and slaves. Women had some rights but were still largely excluded from positions of power. Hieroglyphics, hieratic, and demotic scripts were used for writing.
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Thursday October 13, 2010: Locations in The Correct Location
Ancient Egyptians had a complex religious system centered around major gods like Amun-Re, Osiris, and Isis. Their beliefs in gods and the afterlife heavily influenced daily life and customs like mummification. Egyptians made many advances in areas like medicine, astronomy, math, and architecture. Society was stratified with pharaohs, nobles, peasants, and slaves. Women had some rights but were still largely excluded from positions of power. Hieroglyphics, hieratic, and demotic scripts were used for writing.
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Thursday October 13, 2010
Pop Quiz: Label your map with the following
locations in the correct location Mediterranean Sea 1st Cataract Thebes (Luxor) Memphis Upper Egypt Lower Egypt 2nd Cataract 3rd Cataract Red Sea Nile River Nile Delta Egyptian Civilization • Religious beliefs about gods, values and life after death affected the daily lives of ancient Egyptians. In addition, scribes used one of the world’s earliest forms of writing to record information and scholars and artists made advances in science, art and literature. Religion Shapes Life in Ancient Egypt • Much of what we know about Ancient Egypt comes from inscriptions on monuments and wall paintings from the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. • Like in Mesopotamia, Egypt has many gods and goddess as well? • Question One: What is it called when you believe in more than one god? Chief Gods and Goddesses • Amon-Re: the chief sun god of Egypt – During the Old Kingdom, he was known as Re – During the Middle Kingdom, he was associated with another name, Amon. So they combined the two names together. – The pharaohs, whom Egyptians viewed as gods as well as kings, were believed to receive their right to rule from Amon-Re • Osiris - God of the Afterlife, underworld and the dead – He also was the god of the Nile, thus he controlled the annual flood of the Nile. • Isis - Goddess of motherhood, magic and fertility – Both she and Osiris promised those who were faithful to them that they would have life after death. • Set - God of darkness, storms, desert, chaos • Horace - God of the Sky • Anubis - God of mummification • QUESTION TWO: What was the story about how Osiris becomes the god of the afterlife? Akhenaton • In 1380 B.C., a young pharaoh named Amenhotep IV ascended to the throne. – He ordered that all priests in Egypt to worship a minor god known as Aton. The priests also had to remove the name of the other gods from their temples. – He also changed his name to Akhenaton which means “he who serves Aton”. • These radical weren’t accepted in Egypt. – Priests, nobles and people all deserted Akhenaton because they were either afraid of abandoning their old beliefs for radical new ones or because he neglected his duty of defending the empire. • Once Akhenaton died, so did his ideas of worshipping Aton. Egyptian Afterlife • The Egyptians believed that each soul had to pass a test to win eternal life. This was a several step process: – 1. The dead souls would be ferried across a lake of fire to the hall of Osiris – 2. The dead person’s heart would then be weighed against the feather of truth • Those who were judged to be sinners would be fed to the crocodile shaped Eater of the Dead • Those who were worthy would enter the Happy Field of Food, where they would live forever in bliss. • To help guide them on the journey into the afterlife, Egyptians used what was called the Book of the Dead to aid them. – It contained spells, charms and formulas for the dead to use in the afterlife. Preparing for the Afterlife • Egyptians were buried with everything that they would need to live on in the afterlife - from food to clothing to toys to weapons. • To give the soul use of the body in the afterlife, it was preserved or mummified. • At first only pharaohs and nobles were mummified, but eventually ordinary Egyptians won the right to mummify their dead - including their animals. King Tut’s Tomb • Due to the amount of riches that the pharaohs of the New Kingdom were buried with in the Valley of the Kings, they were often targets of ancient grave robbers. • But due to his father's mistrusted ways (his father was Akhenaton), Tutankhamen along with all of the other rulers from the Amarna dynasty were essentially erased from the pages of Egyptian history. • For almost 3,000 years, King Tut and the treasures of his tomb were forgotten and remained untouched until 1922 when British archeologist Howard Carter discovered his tomb. – Over 5,000 items were taken out of King Tut’s tomb. Most of them are on display in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. – Imagine just what might have been in Ramses II’s tomb would have held if grave robbers hadn’t of taken the items. Egyptian Society • Society in Ancient Egypt was pretty much like a pyramid, with a class system - from the pharaoh down to the slaves. • Most Egyptians were peasant farmers who worked the land as well as working for the pharaoh during the off season. Women in Egypt • Women could inherit property, enter business deals, buy and sell goods, go to court and obtain a divorce. • These were more rights than women in other civilizations had at the time. • Even with all these rights, very few women learned how to right and write. Writing • Along with the hieroglyphic writing, the Egyptians also created two other types of writing – The first was called Hieratic, which was simpler and easier to use everyday. This was a cursive form of the hieroglyphics that was created when the picture forms were simplified. – The second was called Demotic, which eventually replaced Hieratic. • Hieroglyphics were not able to be deciphered until the 1820s. – A French scholar, Jean Champollion, was able to unravel the mystery to the ancient text once he figured out that the three passages on the Rosetta Stone all said the same thing. – The languages on the stone were hieroglyphics, Demotic Script and Greek. Advances… • Egyptians accumulated a great deal of knowledge in the fields of medicine, astronomy and math – In Medicine, the Egyptians learned a great deal about the human body thanks in part to mummification. They would also perform complex surgical operations. – In Astronomy, they charted the movement of the stars and planets which helped them to create a 12 month calendar with 30 days each along with 5 extra days added at the end of the year - giving us the 365 day calendar. – In Math, they created Geometry to help measure their fields and help in creating the pyramids and their other massive temple structures. Egyptian Arts and Literature • The arts included statues, wall paintings in tombs, family life or religious ceremonies. – Often the pharaoh was shown larger then the other figures because of his status. • The oldest Egyptian literature included hymns and prayers to the gods. – But other writings tell of royal victories in battle, gave practical advice or even told folk tales