egyptian pyramids | egyptian symbols

Arts and Crafts

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Egypt was a rich country, and many persons were engaged in creating luxuries for the wealthy. Goldsmiths and lapidaries produced beautiful jewelry. Sculptors carved stone and ivory into exquisite figurines and vessels. Apothecaries made ointments, lotions, and perfumes, and craftsmen shaped delicate alabaster vials to contain them.

Dynasties I and II

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About 3100 B.C. a king of Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt and united the Two Lands. According to tradition, the king was Menes, but a carved inscription names Narmer as the conqueror.
Rulers had several names, however, and Menes and Narmer may have been the same person.
The conqueror is reckoned as the founder of Dynasty I. Memphis was founded as the capital of the united country.
The king came to be called the pharaoh. He was considered an incarnation of the god Horus. Theoretically, he owned all the land and had complete power over all affairs, both civil and religious.

Formation of the Kingdom

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Ancient man lived first by hunting and gathering wild foods. In the Nile Valley he learned very early to grow grain crops and to raise livestock.

The Nile River overflowed its banks for about half of each year, leaving a deposit of fertile silt. There was little or no rain.

To first drain the fields and to then irrigate them required men working together, and so the early Egyptians became organized into communities. Ancient Egyptian, the common language, was an Afro-Asiatic tongue related to the present-day Berber, Cushitic, and Coptic tongues. Racially, the Egyptians were a Mediterranaen subgroup of the Caucasoid race.

They have traditionally been called Hamites, but the term is no longer used by most scholars.
The country divided naturally into two parts.

The south, from which the Nile flowed, was called Upper Egypt (because it was upriver). The north, consisting of the Delta, through which the Nile emptied into the Mediterranean, was Lower Egypt. Together, the sections were known as the Two Lands.

There was easy contact between them, because boats were carried northward on the Nile by the current and were propelled southward by the prevailing north wind. Sails were invented by the Egyptians about 4000 B.C.
There was also some contact with neighboring countries.

Egyptians sailed to the Lebanon coast for cedar oil, resins, and timber. They obtained copper from the Sinai Peninsula. With copper for tools, the Egyptians learned to carve stone and soon were producing handsome stone vases as well as fine sculptures.
For trade goods the Egyptians had many products---salt from the shallow waters of the Delta; beads of glass, which they discovered how to make about 4000 B.C.; papyrus stalks for rope, baskets, and a writing material called papyrus; linen woven from the native flax; jewelry made of the gold and gemstones found in the Eastern Desert.

The Egyptians, however, often obtained their imports by sending military expeditions to take what was wanted rather than by trading.
Monarchy developed as the system of government in each of the Two Lands, and a struggle for supremacy began. Apparently Lower Egypt gained control briefly about 3400 B.C.

Around that time a new people started to appear among the Egyptians, bringing with them art forms and objects of Mesopotamian origin, and introducing Semitic words into the language. Some of the newcomers became members of the ruling class.

Introduction to Ancient Egypt part 2

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Scholarly interest in ancient Egypt dates from Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of 1798. The French conquerors were astonished and awed by the pyramids, the Sphinx, and other relics of the distant past. Study of the ancient ruins and artifacts began at once, inaugurating the field of research known as Egyptology.

The Rosetta Stone, carrying the same inscription in two forms of Egyptian writing and in Greek, supplied the key to Egypt's written history.
Excavation of tombs and temples produced paintings, sculptures, inscriptions, and artifacts that gave a detailed picture of life in ancient Egypt.

Among archeologists known for their work in Egypt are Sir Flinders Petrie, who excavated very early sites and established a chronology, and Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb of Pharaoh (King) Tutankhamen. An outstanding American Egyptologist was James Breasted, who founded the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Most of Egypt's ancient history is expressed in terms of numbered dynasties (ruling houses). The three periods of greatest development are called the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom

Introduction to Ancient Egypt part1

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More than 3,000 years before the Christian Era, a highly developed civilization existed in Egypt.
The country at that time consisted of little more than the valley and delta of the Nile River.
It was one of the great powers of the ancient Middle East, retaining its dominant position for more than 2,000 years---many times longer than did other strong kingdoms that rose in that part of the world.
When Egyptian antiquities, preserved by the dry climate and isolation of their desert locations, first became known to outsiders in modern times, it was believed that the world's earliest civilization had evolved in Egypt.
As scholars learned more of ancient history, they found that some important early developments apparently had originated in neighboring lands, such as Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Palestine.
However, Egyptian achievements in many fields of activity stand as milestones in the history of civilization.

Egyptian Pyramids

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The Egyptians continued to construct taller and taller pyramids and started smoothing out the jagged edges of stepped pyramids. One of the earliest attempts was the Meidum pyramid, in 2570 B.C. It had seven steps progressing to eight, but

it collapsed and was abandoned.
Pyramid designers learned that if pyramids were going to be higher and have steeper slopes, their bases needed to be wider.

At Dahshur, further upstream along the Nile from Saqqara, laborers started the construction of a pyramid for the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Sneferu. Unfortunately, the designers chose a poor foundation, and the pyramid began to lean inward upon itself when it was about two-thirds complete. The builders reduced the angle of the upper portion to complete it and make it more stable, and it is now known as the Bent Pyramid (2565 B.C.).
Unsatisfied with the Bent Pyramid, Sneferu ordered another pyramid at Dahshur. The designers chose a better foundation and made this pyramid the same height as the Bent Pyramid, but with a wider base and a shallower angle. The Red Pyramid was completed in 2560 B.C.

How Pyramids Work-3

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The pyramids were built of limestone, granite, basalt, gypsum (mortar), and baked mud bricks. Limestone blocks were quarried at Giza and possibly other sites. Granite likely came from upriver at Aswan.
Alabaster came from Luxor and basalt from the Fayoum depression
Iron tools were not available, so workers used copper and stone-cutting tools to carve out the blocks in the quarries. They then used levers to move the stone blocks away from the quarry site.
Transporting building materials
Again, no one knows how laborers were able to get the 2.5-ton stone blocks from the quarries to the building site. Wheels wouldn't have been useful on the desert sand and gravel, so they most likely dragged the blocks with wooden sleds and ropes.
Some think that workers used quarter-circle wooden sleds that fit around a rectangular block. They attached the sleds to the block, and a crew of about eight men rolled them along the ground, much like rolling a keg of beer. Others say the laborers used wooden rollers.
For long-distance transport, the blocks were loaded on barges and transported down the Nile. Workers dug canals to get the barges nearer to the site
Egyptologists estimate that workers placed about 300 stones a day during pyramid construction. Several theories -- lever systems, ramps and kites, for example -- attempt to explain how the huge blocks got into place. Those in the know generally accept the ramp idea, but they debate the exact ramp configurations.
The ramps could have been long and straight, perpendicular to the sides or wrapped around the core.
While laborers placed stones in the core, stone cutters were making the chambers, passageways and shafts in the pyramid's interior. Artists inscribed the designs that adorned the chamber walls. Let's take a closer look at the workers who built the pyramids.

Workforce
The Greek historian Herodotus described the building of Khufu's pyramid by more than 100,000 slaves. Hollywood seized upon this image of slaves and their taskmasters in movies like "The Ten Commandments." But when Harvard archaeologist Mark Lehner led an expedition to uncover clues about the people who built the pyramids, he found no evidence of housing for such a large population. Instead, his group discovered housing and food storage places for small gangs of workers.
It appears that at any one time about 2,000 workers were on site, divided into two large divisions and smaller groups of about 200 men. The evidence indicates that they were probably paid and well fed. The working groups were periodically rotated over the years of pyramid construction, and the total workforce may have been about 30,000 [source: Harvard Magazine].
Pyramid building stopped in Egypt long ago. When the Spanish conquered the Aztecs and Mayans, the Central American pyramids were abandoned in the jungles until archaeologists uncovered and studied them.
Archaeological research continues on these structures today to resolve the many mysteries of how they were built

How Pyramids Work-2

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How Were the Pyramids Built?
Pyramid construction is a continuously debated topic. There are no existing records of building plans or discussions of construction methods, so no one knows exactly what happened. Of course, archaeologists and engineers have plenty of ideas -- some sound far-fetched and others seem more reasonable. We'll use the Giza pyramids as an example because we have the most information on them.
Let's break the task of building the pyramids into components:
Surveying and excavation: choosing a suitable site, orienting it and preparing the foundation
Obtaining building materials: quarrying rocks or making huge stones
Transporting building materials: transporting from the quarrying site to the pyramid
Workforce logistics: finding skilled workers, feeding them and housing them
Surveying and Excavation
Egyptian builders probably made plans and models of the pyramid. The projects were overseen by the pharaoh's master builder, or vizier.

The collapse of the Meidum pyramid and the shift of the Bent Pyramid taught builders that foundations were important. Once engineers found a suitable site with a good foundation, they had to lay out the site.

Pyramid sides always ran parallel to the north-south and east-west axes. The builders didn't have compasses, and there was no North Star at the time (the Earth's rotation wobbles like a top, and the position of true north in the sky changes over a 40,000-year cycle). So, they used the movements of circumpolar stars or the sun to figure out true north. Using sighting rods and circles, they could trace arcs of the rising and setting stars or the sun's shadow, measure the angles to the ends of the arc, and calculate true north. Once they established that, they could find the other directions with lines and right angles.
The ancient Egyptians used "cubits" (the length from the tip of your middle finger to your elbow) and "hands" (the width of your hand with the thumb on the side) for measurements. They dug post holes at regular intervals (10 cubits) along the base outline and laid out the site in a grid.
Then, laborers excavated and leveled the foundation. No one is sure of the exact method, but they were extremely exact -- the base of Khufu's pyramid is level to 2 centimeters (less than an inch).
There are two main theories about leveling methods:

1) Workers poured water into the excavated site and leveled all material above the waterline. Then they lowered the water level and removed more material, continuing the process until the foundation was level.

2) The builders installed posts at regular intervals. A line, leveled with plumb bobs, was pulled taut across the posts at a reference mark to ensure alignment. Then they could excavate the foundation down to the reference marks.

How Pyramids Work -1

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The Great Pyramid of Khufu
The Giza pyramid complex, on the west bank of the Nile, is the most famous group of pyramids in the world. As we discussed earlier, the grandest pyramid was built for Sneferu's son, Khufu, in 2540 B.C. The two smaller pyramids nearby were for Khufu's son, Khafre, and his grandson, Menkaure. After this dynasty, great pyramid building stopped, probably because of the time and expense of these massive state projects.
The Great Pyramid of Khufu on the Giza plateau in Egypt is the largest and most elaborately constructed pyramid in existence, representing the most advanced aspects of pyramid construction. Khufu's pyramid has the following features:
The primary burial chamber, or king's chamber, contains the sarcophagus (tomb) that held Khufu's body, and the walls are adorned with hieroglyphs (writing) depicting various aspects of ancient Egyptian history and religion.
The smaller queen's chamber (actually a misnomer -- it was not intended for the queen) lies within the pyramid, while another unfinished secondary burial chamber lies underneath the pyramid.
Weight-relieving chambers above the king's chamber distribute the weight of the overlying rock and prevent the king's chamber from collapsing.
The gallery is a large passageway with a vaulted, corbelled ceiling (the walls are layered upward, and each vertical layer sticks out further than the one below to form a primitive arch).
Descending and ascending passageways connect various chambers to each other and to the outside.
Air shafts connect the king's chamber to the outside. They may have been designed as a way for Khufu's spirit to exit the pyramid and rise to the heavens.
The entrance was sealed after the pharaoh's body was placed inside.
White limestone rocks line the pyramid's exterior, giving it a smooth face. These rocks have eroded away over time, but we know they existed because the Pyramid of Khafre still has some on its peak.

Pyramid of Userkaf

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There are over 100 pyramids in Egypt. Many, like the pyramid of Userkaf located near the step pyramid of Djoser, have become piles of rubble.This pyramid was built during the 5th dynasty

Inside The Red Pyramid

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Now, you enter the Red Pyramid for the first time.The original height of the pyramid was approximately 343 feet, while each side measured 722 feet. Modern steps have been installed to ease the ascension to the opening which is 94 feet above the ground level and between 12 - 13 feet east of center. Here is the internal layout of the pyramid, which consists of three chambers:
The first passageway descends at an angle of approx. 27 degrees at a length of approx 206 feet.

The end of the descending passageway empties into a level corridor that is approx. 25 feet long. This corridor leads into the first of three chambers.
The first chamber has a magnificent corbelled ceiling consisting of 11 courses and climbing to a height of approx. 40 feet.
At the south end of the chamber there is a opening into a second short passageway, which leads to the second chamber.
The second chamber has similar dimensions to that of the first. It is exceptional in that it is one of the only pyramid chambers to lie directly beneath the centerpoint or apex of the pyramid. At the south end, a staircase has been installed to allow access to the final chamber, the entrance for which is located approx. 25 feet above the floor of this second chamber.

The top of the stairs lead to a final passageway which is about 23 feet long. This passageway ends at the third and final chamber.
The final chamber is believed to have been the actual intended burial chamber. It's dimensions are approx. 14 x 27 feet with a final corbelled ceiling rising to a height of 50 feet. The floor has been systematically removed to a depth of 14 feet in a search for other passageways and chambers in this pyramid. No such other features were ever found.

Red Pyramid

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The Red Pyramid was built by Senefru and is 105 meters tall. It is the third tallest pyramid in Egypt, after the Cheops and Chefren pyramids in Giza.

The Red Pyramid is considered to be the first true pyramid and is made of sandstone.

The entrance is made of red stones.

Step Pyramid of Djoser

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The step pyramid of Djoser is located at Saqqara, just south of Memphis. The pyramid started out as a mastaba. It was then expanded six different times to six levels to the height of over 200 feet.
The architect credited with it's designs was the kings vizier named Imhotep.
This marks a large step in architectural design and size of buildings among early people. The pyramid was built during the 3rd dynasty around 2630 B.C.

Bent Pyramid of Dashur

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The Bent Pyramid in Dashur was built during the end of the reign of Humi of Dynasty III into the beginning of Sneferu's reign which started the Forth Dynasty.
The uniqueness of this pyramid is in the fact the angle of the wall was changed in mid-construction. It started at 55° up to 154 feet.

The angle then was changed to 43° from there to the top of the pyramid. The total height of the pyramid was almost 344 feet.

Pyramid of Menkura

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This third built for Menkura, grandson of Khufu, is much small then the other two on the Giza plateau. It's height is 218 feet, less than half of the other two pyramids.
The base measures 343 feet. Next to the pyramid are three much small pyramids.

Pyramid of Khafre

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The second largest pyramid is that of King Khephren, son of Khufu. This originally stood 473 feet high. It appears to be taller than Khufu's pyramid, because it is built on higher ground.
The pyramids base is about 706 feet long. In front of the pyramid is a causeway which leads to a valley temple.
Near the valley temple the famous sphinx was carved out of an outcrop of limestone.

Great Pyramid of Khufu

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The Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) is one of the largest structures built by man even today, 4,500 years later. It is estimate that 2.3 million blocks averaging 2.5 tons a piece were used in the building the pyramid.

Weight of the block ranged from 2 to 15 tons. The pyramid sits on 13.5 acres of land and is a height of 480 feet.

The length of its sides are 756 feet. It is estimated to have taken 100,000 men over 25 years to build the pyramid

Pyramids

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The great pyramids of Giza are located just south of present day Cairo. The three pyramids were built during the 4th dynasty of Egypt.

They pyramids are those of Khufu (Cheops), Khafre (Chephren), and Menkure (Mycerinus). They were constructed over 4,500 years ago and show us the power and wealth of the pharaoh in the Old Kingdom. Each had a mortuary temple and causeway.

Below is a basic map and lay out of the area on which these three pyramids were built.

Egypt's Colonial Period

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French Occupation

Napoleon Bonaparte sailed to Egypt in the 1790's while on his way to India.

The French and the British had been fighting and having wars, trying to expand their borders for foreign trade. When Napoleon landed in Egypt, the farmers and peasants fought him. He finally made it to Cairo and demanded to set up a ruling government of 10 people to oversee the country. The Egyptians were shocked by their new rulers, not knowing that the previous Mameluke rulers had failed to defend their country.

Napoleon brought the city of Cairo into civil war, the people fighting against him and against themselves. Muslims and Jews, as well as some women were sentenced to death and visibly killed as Napoleon tried to hold onto his rule in Egypt.

The Syrians and Turks were giving some trouble to the French, and more wars erupted. French Occupation of Egypt ended with Mohammed Ali of Albania being elected pasha, because of a revolt against the Turks.

British Occupation

The British did not get control of Egypt until 1882, when they took on Alexandria. There were no outward changes, because by then, Britain had been ruling Egypt indirectly for many years. The British did not do anything to try to promote the Egyptian people.

No pure water wells were drilled, no medical services were created, and no education was in place, all while the Europeans in Cairo lived very well. It was during World War II that the Egyptians finally began to receive some training and education, because the British were unable to get all of their supplies shipped from Britain.

As the War ended, Egypt lost a lot of the glamour of being supported by the British. They now had to work on liberating and ruling themselves.

Egypt's Archaic Islamic Period

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Islam started in the Arabian Peninsula about the same time the Christians were being persecuted by the Romans for their beliefs.
Islam spread quickly, and it was not long before the Arab Islamic State was able to free Egypt from the horrible reign of terror by Rome. Amr Bin Al Aas conquered the Romans in 640 AD and Egypt was bound to Islam as its greatest supporter.

There were several different periods to the Islamic rule of Egypt:
Abbasid Era
Fatimid Era
Ayyubid Era
Mameluke Era
Bahri Mameluke Era
Burgi Mameluke Era
Ottoman Turk Era

Egypt's Greco-Roman Period

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Alexander the Great's liberation of Egypt from Persian rule was the end of the Egyptian kings for quite some time. He built a new capital in Egypt where the Nile meets the Mediterranean sea, and called it Alexandria.
After Alexander's death the empire split into many parts, with the most powerful generals each ruling a section. Egypt eventually fell under the reign of Ptolemy. The Greeks did adopt some of the Egyptian customs and traditions, but they still spoke Greek and held onto their Greek customs.

"Egypt" is a Greek word that has survived the centuries. The Egyptian word for "Egypt" is "kmt" or "kemet." The Greek rulers and people thought that they were better than the lower class Egyptians.

The Romans became involved when Cleopatra VII argued with her half-brother as to who should succeed the throne. She invited Julius Caesar and the Romans to step in to settle the dispute. Cleopatra sided with Mark Antony and lost against Augustus Caesar and Rome took over Egypt's rule. No foreigners were hated as much as the Romans were. Christianity in Egypt came about because of Roman rule.

The early Egyptian Christians were called Copts. It was the Copts who used religion as a tool to stir up trouble in the Roman empire.

Egypt's Dynastic Period

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Predynastic Period (5500 - 3100 BC)
In the Predynastic Period of Ancient Egypt, people evolved from hunters and gatherers using stone weapons into an organized central society.
Animals such as donkeys are tamed and used in daily life, not just for food. Egyptians trace their roots back to a land they called Punt. At first, Egypt is ruled by many kings, each one fighting with others to try to take over and rule more kingdoms.

Early Dynastic Period (2920 - 2650 BC)
Ancient writing came about during the Early Dynastic period in the form of hieroglyphs. By the end of the Early Dynastic period, Egypt will be unified into one kingdom and ruled by a pharaoh.The Early Dynastic period consists of dynasties 0 through 2 usually, and lasted about 300 years. There were at least 30 kings during the Early Dynastic period and some of the first monuments and temples were built at Saqqara and Abydos during this time.

Old Kingdom (2650 - 2152 BC)
The Old Kingdom contained the 3rd through the 6th Dynasties, or about 500 years of rule. The capital was in Northern Egypt, in Memphis, and the rule was held solidly by the pharaohs. During this time, some pharaohs were even considered to be gods, and were worshipped as religious figures. The first pyramids were built as step pyramids of mud bricks early in the Old Kingdom period. The true pyramids were later constructed of stone blocks, forming the ancient monuments that we still study today. Ancient doctors knew quite a lot about the body, antiseptics and surgery. Artists were showing great talent in painting, carving and sculpting.

First Intermediate Period (2150 - 1986 BC)
All of the successes of the Old Kingdom began to fall apart during the First Intermediate Period. The Nile River was flooding, causing trouble for those living off of the land there. Crops were either being washed out from the floods, or not getting any water at all due to issues with irrigation. There was widespread hunger and death. The pharaoh had lost control of the lands to the local governments, some of which were corrupt.

Middle Kingdom - (1986 - 1759 BC)
Intef and Mentuhotep from Luxor were able to reunite the broken lands under local rule into rule by one king again. This began the 11th Dynasty. While the pharaoh never really regained power over the local governments, foreign trade started to happen again. Irrigation projects were fixed and completed. In fact, it could be dangerous to be the pharaoh. One of the Middle Kingdom kings was killed by a group of local governors who wanted to keep their power. It was well into the Middle Kingdom before power was restored to the pharaoh. Egyptians enjoyed wealth again, and the population began to grow.

Second Intermediate Period (1759 - 1539 BC)
Immigration of people who weren't born as Egyptians eventually led to the Second Intermediate Period. These people moved to Egypt from their countries and set up towns and communities which followed their own rules. They did not live by the Egyptian laws, nor did they recognize the rule of the pharaoh. During the Second Intermediate Period, Egypt was ruled by a string of foreign kings. Amosis, a military general, set off wars against these foreigners and the foreign rule, and eventually put Egypt back under Egyptian control, starting up the 18th Dynasty.

New Kingdom (1539 - 1069 BC)
After the Second Intermediate Period, the kings of the 18th Dynasty vowed that they would never want to see Egypt under a foreign king again. The kings of the 18th Dynasty were fierce military generals, fighting to keep Egypt ruled by Egyptians. They fortified the Egyptian borders to ward against foreign attacks. Egypt became wealthy and powerful again, and the kings taxed all foreigners and foreign trade heavily. Foreigners were treated badly.As the 19th Dynasty started, Egypt began to fail again. Foreign relations were not good, and the foreign rulers were waging war on Egypt. The strongest king of the time was Ramses II, but after his death there were many weak kings, pushing Egypt back into political chaos and disorder.

Third Intermediate Period (1070 - 657 BC)
Upon the death of Ramses XI, a man from Tanis named Smendes assumed the throne of Egypt. No one was really in charge at this point, and there was much chaos and confusion. The 22nd Dynasty was made up of Chiefs from Libya, and they ruled at the same time as the pharaohs of the 23rd Dynasty. This political strife lasted for several hundred years.

Late Kingdom - (664 - 332 BC)
Egypt was invaded by Nubia, as the southern Nubians rushed the northern Egyptians. The Nubians won, and for a short while began to restore old Egyptian traditions and religious practices. It was not long before the Assyrians conquered the Nubians.An Egyptian leader was put on the throne and the 26th Dynasty began.Peace came about by the second or third generation of kings, but Egypt never returned to the power and glory that it once had. Egypt was then conquered by Persia, and the Egyptians suffered badly.During this time the Greeks conquered Persia, and the rule of Egypt passed to Greece. Alexander the Great was welcomed into Egypt and recognized as the liberator of Egypt from Persian rule. It would be 2000 years before another Egyptian would hold the throne of Egypt again, in the 18th Century AD.

Egypt's Prehistory

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The prehistoric times of Egypt were a very long time ago. It was the time before the pharaohs, and before anyone knew how to write.

Prehistory dates from as far back as you can imagine, think millions of years, to about 3000 B.C. when the 1st Dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs began their rule.
There is not much that is known about prehistoric Egyptians. Egypt was not one big desert with a river giving it life such as it is now.

The land was green and grassy and there was rain. The people hunted with stone axes and bone spears, in search of fresh game to eat.

They made their clothing from the skins of these animals. These tribes of people lived in groups of about 8000 and learned to grow crops to add to their diet of hunted meat. Over thousands of years it began to rain less and less in Egypt, and the crops would no longer grow.

The grasslands died out from lack of water, and sand slowly replaced the plains, turning Egypt into the sandy desert that we know it as today.

Egypt's Past

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We can divide up Egypt's past into a number of parts, but it is important to remember that there is history, and the time before history, called prehistory. History is the period of time when humans made records by writing about events, while prehistory, is the time before people could write. Overall, we can divide Egypt's long past as:

Prehistory - The time before writing
The Dynastic Period - The time of Egyptian Pharaohs or Kings
The Greco-Roman Period - Egypt ruled by Greek Kings and Roman Emperors
The Archaic Islamic Period - After the Arab Invasion
The Colonial Period - Egypt ruled by Europeans

Pharaoh

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By 3100 BC, Egypt had a centralized government controlled by a line of hereditary rulers. These kings, called pharaohs, kept a royal court of advisors and nobility, and oversaw the governors of the provinces of the kingdom. They were also commanders of the Egyptian army. Even the priests and priestesses who officiated at the complex religious ceremonies and attended on the gods served the pharaohs. The rule of the pharaohs is considered dynastic; it can also be considered absolute in the truest sense of the word. The pharaohs came to be considered as the representatives of the gods on earth and even as gods themselves. [1] Most importantly, it was Pharaoh’s duty to ensure truth and justice. According to Egyptian mythology, Ma’at was the goddess of truth, justice, and order.The most famous Egyptian pharaoh today is, without doubt, Tutankhamun. The boy king died in his late teens and remained at rest in Egypt's Valley of the Kings for over 3,300 years. The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922 is considered the most important archaeological find of the century. After years of painstaking work in the Valley of the Kings, Carter's patron, Lord Carnarvon, had warned him that that would be the last season of work because nothing significant had been found. On November 22 of that year, Carter's persistence finally paid off. Tutankhamun became a household name, and his magnificent treasures became the measuring stick for all future archaeological discoveries. The mysteries surrounding his life and death are gradually being solved. And his story continues to unfold as new theories are proposed in an attempt to explain what really happened to the boy behind the golden mask.

Computer Directory

Egyptian Interaction with the Middle East

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Egypt has a rich and fascinating history with the Middle East. Although Egypt is the best known and most researched empire in the area, the others in the Middle East contributed to its grandeur. No culture has ever began with only its own traditions and methods.

Other cultures from the area contribute to all the things that distinguish one culture from another.

Interaction between Egypt and its neighbors has added many different aspects to Egyptian culture that we study today.
The most apparent interactions take place directly. These interactions are those that make direct connections from one culture to another.

Trade route that intersect areas and wars involving two or more cultures are examples of direct interaction.

Indirect interaction is less apparent, but none the less, it is just as important. Indirect interaction is the dealings that cultures have with others that don�t directly go from one popular culture to the next.

As ideas and goods are exchanged indirectly, they are modified to fit the culture that has adopted them. Indirect interaction with Egypt�s Middle Eastern neighbors was very influential in making Ancient Egypt what it was

Egyptian Pharaohs

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Egyptian Pharaohs were the Ancient Egyptian secular and spiritual leaders of ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs were responsible for safeguarding the well-being of all Egyptians in ancient times. The term 'Pharaoh' is a Greek interpretation of the Egyptian word Per-aa literally meaning 'Great House'.
Pharaoh is a title used to refer to the rulers of ancient Egypt in the pre-Christian and pre-Islamic period. The term 'Pharaoh', as in the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, is a Greek interpretation of the ancient Egyptian word Per-aa literally meaning 'Great House', used in the Old Kingdom as part of phrases like 'smr per-Aa' literally meaning 'Courtier of the Great House', with specific reference to the buildings of the court or palace itself. From the Twelfth Dynasty onwards the word appears in a wish formula 'Great House, may it live, prosper and be in health', but only with reference to the buildings of the court rather than the king himself. The earliest certain instance where 'Per Aa' is used specifically to address the king is in a letter to Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) in the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty (1539-1292 BC) which is addressed to 'Pharaoh, given life, prosperity and health, the Master'. From the Nineteenth Dynasty onwards it is used as regularly as hm.f 'His Majesty'.
Ancient Egypt was a long-lived ancient civilization geographically located in north-eastern Africa. It was concentrated along the middle to lower reaches of the Nile River reaching its greatest extension during the second millennium BC, which is referred to as the New Kingdom period. It reached broadly from the Nile Delta in the north, as far south as Jebel Barkal at the Fourth Cataract of the Nile. Extensions to the geographical range of ancient Egyptian civilization included, at different times, areas of the southern Levant, the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea coastline, the Sinai Peninsula and the Western Desert (focused on the several oases).
Ancient Egypt developed over at least three and a half millennia. It began with the incipient unification of Nile Valley polities around 3500 BC and is conventionally thought to have ended in 30 BC when the early Roman Empire conquered and absorbed Ptolemaic Egypt as a province. (Though this last did not represent the first period of foreign domination, the Roman period was to witness a marked, if gradual transformation in the political and religious life of the Nile Valley, effectively marking the termination of independent civilisational development).
The civilization of ancient Egypt was based on a finely balanced control, by ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, of natural and human resources, characterised primarily by controlled irrigation of the fertile Nile Valley; the mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions; the early development of an independent writing system and literature; the organisation of collective projects; trade with surrounding regions in east / central Africa and the eastern Mediterranean; finally, military ventures that exhibited strong characteristics of imperial hegemony and territorial domination of neighbouring cultures at different periods. Motivating and organizing these activities were a socio-political and economic elite that achieved social consensus by means of an elaborate system of religious belief under the figure of a (semi)-divine ruler (usually male) from a succession of ruling dynasties, Egyptian Pharaohs, and which related to the larger world by means of polytheistic beliefs channeled through the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs

King Akhenaten

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18th Dynasty
Perhaps the height of Egyptian wealth and power came between 1550 and 1290 BC. The dynasty began with the expulsion of the Palestinian Hyksos rulers from the north of Egypt by King Ahmose I - an event that may have inspired the Biblical story of the Exodus. Carrying forward the momentum of this act, subsequent rulers, in particular Thutmose III, established an empire of client states in Syria-Palestine, and dominions stretching towards the heart of Africa. War booty and lively international trade founded on Egypt's highly productive gold mines made Egypt a major world player.

Around 1350 BC, however, King Akhenaten (formerly known as Amenhotep IV - see above) turned Egypt on its head by abolishing all the nation's gods, and replacing them with a single sun-god, the Aten. The new faith was accompanied by a radical new art-style, as seen in the statuette above, currently owned by the Louvre.
The cult of Aten, however, barely survived the death of its patron. Within a few years, orthodoxy had been re-established and Akhenaten's very dynasty had died out, leaving the throne to a series of generals, the last of whom, Ramesses I, was the founder of a new 19th Dynasty.

The Temple of Edfu -5

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One of the most remarkable elements of the Temple is the existence of a Nilometer, as well as a chapel, which was dedicated to the Goddess Nut.
On various walls of the Temple, there are many battle scenes, as well as the famous scene of the ritual of the Temple foundation.
The northern wall of the court shows the divine marriage of Hathor and Horus of Behdet, which was celebrated twice every year; once at the Dendera Temple and the second time at the Edfu Temple. The Journey of Hathor, from Dendera to Edfu and the vice versa, can also be seen on this wall.
Another scene, on the inside of the outer corridor of the western side of the Temple, depicts the legend of the conflict between Horus and Seth, the victory of Horus over his uncle, and his coronation to rule the world.

The Temple of Edfu -4

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There are 2 consecutive vestibules; the outer one called the “hall of the offerings”, where the walls are decorated with various scenes representing the different deities and offering scenes of the different Ptolemaic Kings.
The inner vestibule was called the “rest house of the Gods”.
At the end of the Temple is the sanctuary, which includes a niche of grey granite where a statue of the God is supposed to be placed.
In front of the dais is a pedestal for the resting of the divine boat. The sanctuary is surrounded, on the outside, by 12 rooms, where many religious scenes were depicted on their walls.
Some of these rooms were used as storerooms, while the others were dedicated for different religious purposes.

The Temple of Edfu -3

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Next there is an open courtyard that contains columns with floral capitals on three sides.
This open court was open to the public and was known as the court of the offerings, being the place where people could give their offering to the statue of the God.
The Hypostyle Hall is rectangular and 12 columns support its roof. On both sides of the entrance to this hall stands a statue of Horus of Behdet, in the shape of a falcon.

This hall is also known as the outer Hypostyle Hall.
An entrance beyond the 1st Hypostyle Hall accesses the Inner Hypostyle Hall. 12 columns to the right support its roof, and on the left there are 2 rooms; one was used as a library that once contained a large number of manuscripts.

The other was used as a storeroom or magazine for the utensils and the tools of the Temple

The Temple of Edfu -2

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Edfu Temple consists of traditional elements of Egyptian Temples of the New Kingdom, together with a few Greek elements, such as the Mamisi, which is situated to the west of the main entrance of the Temple (Mamisi means “house of the divine birth”).
It consists of an entrance, a court and chapel.
The walls of the mamisi are decorated with scenes showing the story of the divine birth of Horus the child, in the presence of the Goddess Hathor, the God Khenoum and other deities who were concerned with pregnancy and birth.
The Temple has a Pylon that is considered the highest among surviving Temples in Egypt today.
It is 37m high and is decorated with battle scenes, representing King Ptolemy VIII smiting his enemies before the God Horus.
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The Temple of Edfu -1

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Edfu is located 60Km to the north of Aswan. It was the 2nd Nome of Upper Egypt and the centre of the cult of a triad of Gods, which consisted of Horus of Behdet, Hathor, and their son, Hor-Sama-Tawy.

In the old Greek documents, Edfu was known as “Apollopolis Magna” because the Greeks identified Horus with their God Apollo.
Edfu was a flourishing city in Ancient Times. Today, the most important monument in the city of Edfu is the Temple of Horus, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful and preserved Temples in Egypt.
The origins of the Temple probably date back to the Second Intermediate Period, but the actual Temple only dates back to Ptolemaic times.

The work of construction began during the reign of Ptolemy III (about 237 BC) and was finished during the reign of Ptolemy IV.

Some other additions were made by other Ptolemaic Kings, and Roman Emperor Augustus. The construction of this Temple and its additions, inscriptions, and relief’s took about 180 years!

Edfu Temple

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Between Aswan and Luxor is located the major Ptolemaic temple of Edfu - the best preserved major temple in Egypt. The temple is dedicated to the falcon god Horus and was built over a 180-year period from 237 BC to 57 BC
Most visitors to the temple arrive by cruise boat and then take a horse-drawn carriage to the temple where vendors are ready to sell you all manner of souvenirs.
Inside the temple's pylons is a large courtyard. Just before the entrance to the first of two hypostyle halls is a welcoming statue of Horus. Inside the hypostyle halls are dominated by a forest of towering columns.
The temple was excavated last century by Auguste Mariette. Its courtyard and surrounds were buried beneath sand and also houses built by local villagers. Deep within the temple is the sanctuary where a statue of Horus would have been cared for by priests.

a mummy

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A mummy from the Chachapoyas culture is displayed in the Museum of The Nation before an exhibition in Lima, Jan. 9, 2007.

A mummy from the Chachapoyas culture is displayed in the Museum of The Nation before an exhibition in Lima, Peru, January 9, 2007.

The Riddle of the Sphinx

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After 25 centuries the history of the great Sphinx at Giza was so forgotten that many believed it had been placed in its position, as guardian of the pyramids, by the Gods. Indeed, the Sphinx is such an impressive work one, even today, might easily believe it must have been created by supernatural means.
The statue, with a man's head and a lion's body, stands 66 feet high and 240 feet long. The head measures 19 feet from forehead to chin. Each paw extends 56 feet forward of the body. The face is over 6 yards wide.
The lion was a powerful symbol in ancient Egypt as it represented strength and courage. The great cat was also considered the supreme guardian and tamed lions sometimes accompanied kings into battle. Not just as a mascot, but as the physical presence of a god meant to protect troops.
The Sphinx was the combination of two symbols, a lion god, and the king pharaoh/god, into one icon. In fact, the Great Sphinx at Giza probably bears the face of the ruling pharaoh at the time of construction: Chephren.
The symbol wasn't limited to Egypt, but was also found in ancient Phoenician, Syrian, and Greek societies. In Greek legend, the Sphinx devoured all travelers who could not answer the riddle it posed: "What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening?"
The hero Oedipus gave the answer, "Man," causing the Sphinx's death.
The Great Sphinx at Giza started as a natural outcropping of rock. The ancient Egyptians carved the giant statue into the stone around 2500 B.C..
To make it even taller than the height of the outcrop they chipped out a depression around the base of the statue.
The paws were constructed from stone blocks.
The entire statue was painted in ancient times: red for the face and body, yellow with blue stripes on the headress. Finally, a temple was built in front of the statue as a place visitors could offer gifts to the "living image" of the creature the Egyptians sometimes referred to as "Horus-in-the-Horizon."
As time passed the statue was given less attention and, after a few centuries, desert sands covered the Great Sphinx up to its neck. Legends claim that visitors would press their ear to the statue's lips seeking wisdom. Around 1400 B.C. a Egyptian prince, on a hunt, came to rest in the shadow of the Sphinx.
While napping he heard the Sphinx tell him it would make him ruler of Egypt ahead of his older brothers if he promised to clear the sand away. On waking the prince vowed to keep the bargain. Sure enough, as the story goes, he ascended the throne as Pharaoh Thutmose IV and quickly had the statue uncovered.
Historians beleive that Thutmose IV concocted the dream to cover up murder. Thutmose had his brother killed so that he could gain the crown. While the Egyptian people might not have been able to forgive Thutmose the slaying for personal gain, they could overlook it if it seemed like it was the will of the gods.
By the 19th century, when European archaeologists started taking a close look at Egyptian monuments, the statue was again covered up to it's neck in sand. Efforts to uncover and repair the statue were undertaken early in the 20th century.
Preservation work continues even today.
There have been rumors of passageways and secret chambers surrounding the Sphinx and during recent restoration work several tunnels have been re-discovered.
One, near the rear of the statue extends down into it for about nine yards.
Another, behind the head, is a short dead-end shaft.

The third, located mid-way between the tail and the paws, was apparently opened during restoration work in the 1920's, then resealed. It is unknown whether these tunnels were constructed by the original Egyptian designers, or were cut into the statue at a later date. Many scientists speculate they are the result of ancient treasure hunting efforts.
Several attempts have been made to use non-invasive exploration techniques to ascertain if there are other hidden chambers or tunnels about the Sphinx. These include electromagnetic sounding, seismic refraction, seismic reflection, refraction tomography, electrical resistivity and acoustical survey tests.
Studies made by Florida State University, Waseda University (Japan), and Boston University, have found "anomalies" around the Sphinx. These could be interpreted as chambers or passageways, but they could also be such natural features as faults or changes in the density of the rock.
Egyptian archaeologists, charged with preserving the statue, are concerned about the danger of digging or drilling into the natural rock near the Sphinx to find out if cavities really exist.
Are these "anomalies" secret chambers? And is it worth risking damage to such a work as the Sphinx in order to find out? That's the modern riddle of the Sphinx the Egyptian authorities must solve.

Alexandria History-3

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Shortly after its capture Alexandria again fell into the hands of the Greeks, who took advantage of 'Amr's absence with the greater portion of his army. On hearing what had happened, however, 'Amr returned, and quickly regained possession of the city.
About the year 646 'Amr was deprived of his government by the caliph Othman. The Egyptians, by whom 'Amr was greatly beloved, were so much dissatisfied by this act, and even showed such a tendency to revolt, that the Greek emperor determined to make an effort to reduce Alexandria.
The attempt proved perfectly successful. The caliph, perceiving his mistake, immediately restored 'Amr, who, on his arrival in Egypt, drove the Greeks within the walls of Alexandria, but was only able to capture the city after a most obstinate resistance by the defenders.
This so exasperated him that he completely demolished its fortifications, although he seems to have spared the lives of the inhabitants as far as lay in his power.
Alexandria now rapidly declined in importance.
The building of Cairo in 969, and, above all, the discovery of the route to the East by the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, nearly ruined its commerce; the canal, which supplied it with Nile water, became blocked; and although it remained a principal Egyptian port, at which most European visitors in the Mameluke and Ottoman periods landed, we hear little of it until about the beginning of the 19th century.
Alexandria figured prominently in the military operations of Napoleon's Egyptian expedition of 1798. The French troops stormed the city on the 2nd of July 1798, and it remained in their hands until the arrival of the British expedition of 1801.
The battle of Alexandria, fought on the 21st of March of that year, between the French army under General Menou and the British expeditionary corps under Sir Ralph Abercromby, took place near the ruins of Nicopohs, on the narrow spit of land between the sea and Lake Aboukir, along which the British troops had advanced towards Alexandria after the actions of Aboukir on the 8th and Mandora on the 13th.
This document is part of an article on Alexandria from the 1911 edition of an encyclopedia that is out of copyright here in the U.S. The article is in the public domain, and you may copy, download, print and distribute this work as you see fit.
Every effort has been made to present this text accurately and cleanly, but no guarantees are made against errors. Neither Melissa Snell nor About may be held liable for any problems you experience with the text version or with any electronic form of this document

Alexandria History-2

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On the mainland life seems to have centred in the vicinity of the Serapeum and Caesareum, both become Christian churches: but the Pharos and Heptastadium quarters remained populous and intact.
In 616 it was taken by Chosroes, king of Persia; and in 640 by the Arabians, under 'Amr, after a siege that lasted fourteen months, during which Heraclius, the emperor of Constantinople, did not send a single ship to its assistance.
Notwithstanding the losses that the city had sustained, 'Amr was able to write to his master, the caliph Omar, that he had taken a city containing "4000 palaces, 4000 baths, 12,000 dealers in fresh oil, 12,000 gardeners, 40,000 Jews who pay tribute, 400 theatres or places of amusement."
The story of the destruction of the library by the Arabs is first told by Bar-hebraeus (Abulfaragius), a Christian writer who lived six centuries later; and it is of very doubtful authority.
It is highly improbable that many of the 700,000 volumes collected by the Ptolemies remained at the time of the Arab conquest, when the various calamities of Alexandria from the time of Caesar to that of Diocletian are considered, together with the disgraceful pillage of the library in A.D. 389 under the rule of the Christian bishop, Theophilus, acting on Theodosius' decree concerning pagan monumcnts (see LIBRARIES: Ancient History).
The story of Abulfaragius runs as follows:--
John the Grammarian, a famous Peripatetic philosopher, being in Alexandria at the time of its capture, and in high favour with 'Amr, begged that he would give him the royal library. 'Amr told him that it was not in his power to grant such a request, but promised to write to the caliph for his consent.
Omar, on hearing the request of his general, is said to have replied that if those books contained the same doctrine with the Koran, they could be of no use, since the Koran contained all necessary truths; but if they contained anything contrary to that book.
they ought to be destroyed; and therefore, whatever their contents were, he ordered them to be burnt. Pursuant to this order, they were distributed among the public baths, of which there was a large number in the city, where, for six months, they served to supply the fires.

Alexandria History-1

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Founded in 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, Alexandria was intended to supersede Naucratis (q.v.) as a Greek centre in Egypt, and to be the link between Macedonia and the rich Nile Valley. If such a city was to be on the Egyptian coast, there was only one possible site, behind the screen of the Pharos island and removed from the silt thrown out by Nile mouths.

An Egyptian townlet, Rhacotis, already stood on the shore and was a resort of fishermen and pirates.

Behind it (according to the Alexandrian treatise, known as pseudo-Callisthenes) were five native villages scattered along the strip between Lake Mareotis and the sea. Alexander occupied Pharos, and had a walled city marked out by Deinocrates on the mainland to include Rhacotis.

A few months later he left Egypt for the East and never returned to his city; but his corpse was ultimately entombed there. His viceroy, Cleomenes, continued the creation of Alexandria. The Heptastadium,

however, and the mainland quarters seem to have been mainly Ptolemaic work. Inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the centre of the new commerce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a century to be larger than Carthage; and for some centuries more it had to acknowledge no superior but Rome.

It was a centre not only of Hellenism but of Semitism, and the greatest Jewish city in the world. There the Septuagint was produced.

The early Ptolemies kept it in order and fostered the development of its museum into the leading Greek university; but they were careful to maintain the distinction of its population into three nations, "Macedonian" (i.e. Greek), Jew and Egyptian. From this division arose much of the later turbulence which began to manifest itself under Ptolemy Philopater.

Nominally a free Greek city, Alexandria retained its senate to Roman times; and indeed the judicial functions of that body were restored by Septimius Severus, after temporary abolition by Augustus.

The city passed formally under Roman jurisdiction in 80 B.C., according to the will of Ptolemy Alexander: but it had been under Roman influence for more than a hundred years previously.

There Julius Caesar dallied with Cleopatra in 47 B.C. and was mobbed by the rabble; there his example was followed by Antony, for whose favour the city paid dear to Octavian, who placed over it a prefect from the imperial household. Alexandria seems from this time to have regained its old prosperity, commanding, as it did, an important granary of Rome.

This latter fact, doubtless, was one of the chief reasons which induced Augustus to place it directly under the imperial power.

In A.D. 215 the emperor Caracalla visited the city; and, in order to repay some insulting satires that the inhabitants had made upon him, he commanded his troops to put to death all youths capable of bearing arms. This brutal order seems to have been carried out even beyond the letter, for a general massacre was the result.

Notwithstanding this terrible disaster, Alexandria soon recovered its former splendour, and for some time longer was esteemed the first city of the world after Rome. Even as its main historical importance had formerly sprung from pagan learning, so now it acquired fresh importance as a centre of Christian theology and church government.

There Arianism was formulated and there Athanasius, the great opponent of both heresy and pagan rcaction, worked and triumphed.

As native influences, however, began to reassert themselves in the Nile valley, Alexandria gradually became an alien city, more and more detached from Egypt; and, losing much of its commerce as the peace of the empire broke up during the 3rd century A.D., it declined fast in population and splendour.

The Brucheum, and Jewish quarters were desolate in the 5th century, and the central monuments, the Soma and Museum, fallen to ruin.

Alexandria

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The second largest city in Egypt, Alexandria, known as “The Pearl of the Mediterranean”, has an atmosphere that is more Mediterranean than Middle Eastern;

its ambience and cultural heritage distance it from the rest of the country although it is actually only 5 km. from Cairo.

The Great Sphinx -6

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In fact, the sand has been its savior, since, being built of soft sandstone, it would have disappeared long ago had it not been buried for much of its existence.
Nevertheless, the statue is crumbling today because of the wind, humidity and the smog from Cairo. The rock was of poor quality here from the start, already fissured along joint lines that went back to the formation of the limestone millions of years ago.
There is a particularly large fissure across the haunches, nowadays filled with cement, that also shows up in the walls of the enclosure in which the Sphinx sits.
Below the head, serious natural erosion begins.
The neck is badly weathered, evidently by wind-blown sand during those long periods when only the head was sticking up out of the desert and the wind could catapult the sand along the surface and scour the neck and the extensions of the headdress that are missing altogether now. The stone here is not quite of such good quality as that of the head above.
Erosion below the neck does not look like scouring by wind-blown sand.
In fact, so poor is the rock of the bulk of the body that it must have been deteriorating since the day it was carved out of the stone.
We know that it needed repairs on more than one occasion in antiquity.
It continues to erode before our very eyes, with spalls of limestone falling off the body during the heat of the day.
So, today
much of the work on the Great Sphinx at Giza is not directed at further explorations or excavations, but rather the preservation of this great wonder of Egypt.
This is the focus, and while some might even today have the antiquity authorities digging about the monument looking for hidden chambers holding the secrets of Atlantis, that is not likely to happen any time soon

The Great Sphinx -5

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In the more modern era, when Napoleon arrived in Egypt in 1798, the Sphinx was buried once more with sand up to its neck, at by this point,
we believe the nose had been missing for at least 400 years. Between 1816 and 1817, the Genoese merchant, Caviglia tried to clear away the sand, but he only managed to dig a trench down the chest of the statue and along the length of the forepaws.
Auguste Mariette, the founder of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, also attempted to excavate the Sphinx, but gave up in frustration over the enormous amount of sand.
He went on to explore the Khafre Valley Temple, but returned to the Great Sphinx to excavate in 1858. This time, he managed to clear the sand down to the rock floor of the ditch around the Sphinx, discovering in the process several sections of the protective walls around the ditch,
as well as odd masonry boxes along the body of the monument which might have served as small shrines. However, he apparently still did not clear all the sand.
In 1885, Gaston Maspero, then Director of the Antiquities Service,
once again tried to clear the Sphinx, but after exposing the earlier work of Caviglia and Mariette, he also was forced to abandon the project due to logistical problems.
Between 1925 and 1936,
French engineer Emile Baraize excavated the Sphinx on behalf of the Antiquities Service, and apparently for the first time since antiquity, the great beast once again became exposed to the elements.

The Great Sphinx -4

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This was, as far as we know, one of the very first of the Egyptian sphinxes, though there is at least one other, attributed to Djedefre, that predates it.
The rules of proportion commonly employed on later and smaller examples may not yet have been formulated at the time of the carving of the Great Sphinx of Giza.
In any case, the carving of sphinxes was always a flexible formula, to an unusual degree in the context of Egyptian artistic conservatism.
Then again, the Sphinx may have been sculpted to look its best when seen from fairly close by and more or less from the front.
There is also the possibility that there was simply insufficient good rock to make the head, where fine detail was required, any bigger.
Also, the fissure at the rear of the Great Sphinx may have dictated a longer body, rather than one much too short.
There remains the possibility that the head has been remodeled at some time and thereby reduced in size, but on stylistic grounds alone this is not likely to have been done after the Old Kingdom times in ancient Egypt.
There are three passages into or under the Sphinx, two of them of obscure origin. The one of known cause is a short dead-end shaft behind the head drilled in the nineteenth century. No other tunnels or chambers in or under the Sphinx are known to exist.
A number of small holes in the Sphinx body may relate to scaffolding at the time of carving.
The figure was buried for most of its life in the sand.
It was King Thutmose IV (1425 - 1417 BC) who placed a stela between the front paws of the figure. On it, Thutmose describes an event, while he was still a prince,
when he had gone hunting and fell asleep in the shade of the sphinx.

During a dream, the sphinx spoke to Thutmose and told him to clear away the sand.
The sphinx told him that if he did this, he would be rewarded with the kingship of Egypt. Thutmose carried out this request and the sphinx held up his end of the bargain. Of course, over time, the great statue, the only single instance of a colossal sculpture carved in the round directly out of the natural rock,
once again found itself buried beneath the sand.

The Great Sphinx -3

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There is a hole in the top of the head, now filled in, that once provided support for additional head decoration.
Depictions of the Sphinx from the latter days of ancient Egypt show a crown or plumes on the top of the head, but these were not necessarily part of the original design.
The top of the head is flatter, however, than later Egyptian sphinxes.
The body is 72.55 meters in length and 20.22 meters tall. The face of the sphinx is four meters wide and its eyes are two meters high.
The mouth is about two meters wide, while the nose would have been more than 1.5 meters long.
The ears are well over one meter high. Part of the uraeus (sacred cobra), the nose, the lower ear and the ritual beard are now missing, while the eyes have been pecked out. The beard from the sphinx is on displayed in the British Museum.
Below the neck, the Great Sphinx has the body of a lion, with paws, claws and tail (curled round the right haunch), sitting on the bedrock of the rocky enclosure out of which the monument has been carved. The enclosure has taller walls to the west and south of the monument, in keeping with the present lie of the land.
When viewed close-up, the head and body of the Sphinx look relatively well proportioned, but seen from further away and side-on the head looks small in relation to the long body (itself proportionally much longer than is seen in later sphinxes).
In its undamaged state, the body is likely to have appeared still larger all around in relation to the head, which has not been reduced as much by erosion.
The human head is on a scale of about 30:1, while the lion body is on the smaller scale of 22:1. There could be a number of explanations for this discrepancy.

The Great Sphinx -2

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The bedrock body of the Sphinx became a standing section of the deeper limestone layers of the Giza Plateau. The lowest stratum of the Sphinx is the hard, brittle rock of the ancient reef, referred to as Member I.

All of the geological layers slope about three degrees from northwest to southeast, so they are higher at the rump of the Sphinx and lower at the front paws. Hence, the surface of this area has not appreciably weathered compared to the layers above it.
Most of the Sphnix's lion body and the south wall and the upper part of the ditch were carved into the Member II, which consists of seven layers that are soft near the bottom, but become progressively harder near the top.

However, the rock actually alternates between hard and soft. The head and neck of the Great Sphinx are made of Member III, which is better stone, though it becomes harder further up.
The Sphinx faces the rising sun with a temple to the front which resembles the sun temples which were built later by the kings of the 5th Dynasty. The lion was a solar symbol in more than one ancient Near Eastern culture.

The royal human head on a lion's body symbolized power and might, controlled by the intelligence of the pharaoh, guarantor of the cosmic order, or ma'at. Its symbolism survived for two and a half millennia in the iconography of Egyptian civilization.
The head and face of the Sphinx certainly reflect a style that belongs to Egypt's Old Kingdom, and to the 4th Dynasty in particular.

The overall form of his face is broad, almost square, with a broad chin. The headdress (known as the 'nemes' head-cloth), with its fold over the top of the head and its triangular planes behind the ears, the presence of the royal 'uraeus' cobra on the brow, the treatment of the eyes and lips all evidence that the Sphinx was carved during this period.
The sculptures of kings Djedefre, Khafre and Menkaure and other Old Kingdom Pharaohs, all show the same configuration that we see on the Sphinx. Some scholars believe that the Great Sphinx was originally bearded with the sort of formally plaited beard. Pieces of the Sphinx's massive beard found by excavation adorn the British Museum in London and the Cairo Museum.

However, it seems to possibly, if not probably be dated to the New Kingdom, and so was likely added at a later date.

The rounded divine beard is an innovation of the New Kingdom, and according to Rainer Stadelmann, did not exist in the Old or Middle Kingdom. It may have been added to identify the god with Horemahket.

The Great Sphinx -1

2008-06-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

In a depression to the south of Khafre's pyramid at Giza near Cairo sits a huge creature with the head of a human and a lion's body. This monumental statue, the first truly colossal royal sculpture in Egypt, known as the Great Sphinx, is a national symbol of Egypt, both ancient and modern.

It has stirred the imagination of poets, scholars, adventurers and tourists for centuries and has also inspired a wealth of speculation about its age, its meaning, and the secrets that it might hold.
The word "sphinx", which means 'strangler', was first given by the Greeks to a fabulous creature which had the head of a woman, the body of a lion and the wings of a bird. In Egypt, there are numerous sphinxes, usually with the head of a king wearing his headdress and the body of a lion. There are, however, sphinxes with ram heads that are associated with the god Amun.
The Great Sphinx is to the northeast of Khafre's (Chephren) Valley Temple. Where it sits was once a quarry. We believe that Khafre's workers shaped the stone into the lion and gave it their king's face over 4,500 years ago. Khafre's name was also mentioned on the Dream Stele, which sits between the paws of the great beast.

However, no one is completely certain that it is in fact the face of Khafre, though indeed that is the preponderance of thought. Recently, however, it has been argued that Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid, may have also had the Great Sphinx built.
The Great Sphinx is believed to be the most immense stone sculpture in the round ever made by man. However, it must be noted that the Sphinx is not an isolated monument and that it must be examined in the context of its surroundings.

Specifically, like many of Egypt's monuments,

it is a complex which consists not only of the great statue itself, but also of its old temple, a New Kingdom temple and some other small structures. It is also closely related to Khafre's Valley Temple, which itself had four colossal sphinx statues each more than 26 feet long.
The material of the Sphinx is the limestone bedrock of what geologists call the Muqqatam Formation, which originated fifty million years ago from sediments deposited at the bottom of sea waters that engulfed northeast Africa during the Middle Eocene period

An embankment formed along what is now the north-northwest side of the plateau. Nummulites, which are small, disk-shaped fossils named after the Latin word for 'coin', pack the embankment.

These were once the shells of now extinct planktonic organisms. There was a shoal and coral reef that grew over the southern slope of the embankment. Carbonate mud deposited in the lagoon petrified into the layers from which the ancient builders, some fifty million years later, carved out the Great Sphinx.
To do so, they trenched out a deep, U-shaped ditch that isolated a huge rectangular bedrock block for carving the Sphinx.
This enclosure is deepest immediately around the body, with a shelf at the rear of the monument where it was left unfinished and a shallower extension to the north where important archaeological finds have been made.
The good, hard limestone that lay around the Sphinx's head was probably all quarried for blocks to build the pyramids.
The limestone removed to shape the body of the beast was evidently employed to build the two temples to the east of the Sphinx, on a terrace lower than the floor of the Sphinx enclosure, one almost directly in front of the paws, the other to the south of the first one.
It is generally thought that quarrying around the original knoll revealed rock that was too poor in quality for construction. Therefore, some visionary individual conceived of the plan to turn what was left of the knoll into the Sphinx.
However, the Sphinx may equally well have been planned from the start for this location, good rock or bad. The walls of the Sphinx enclosure are of the same characteristics as the strata of the Sphinx body and exhibit similar states of erosion.

The Giza

2008-06-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

Giza is, of course, the home of Egypt's best known pyramids, including the largest one in Egypt, that of Khufu, the only remaining wonder of the ancient world. This is were the Egyptian pyramids matured.
Giza is actually one of several necropolises that served the ancient city of the White Walls, otherwise known to the Greeks as Memphis.

In addition to the major pyramids, there are also at least six pyramids built for queens, together with even smaller cult pyramids

There are also many tombs, a number of temples, worker villages and the famous Great Sphinx.
This is one of the major tourist attractions for Egypt, and a monumental heritage site for the world.

Egyptian Pyramids

2008-06-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

There are no more famous ancient sites within Egypt, or for that matter elsewhere in the world, than the Great Pyramids at Giza. They are, without question, the icon most associated with the Egypt. They have been both the main destination for tourists, and a source of imaginative thought to the world for over three thousand years.
However, there are actually over 100 pyramids in Egypt, many of which are relatively unknown to anyone who is not an ancient Egypt enthusiast. All but a very few are grouped around and near the City of Cairo, just south of the Nile Delta. Otherwise, only one royal pyramid is known in southern Egypt (at Abydos), that being the one built by Ahmose, founder of the 18th Dynasty and Egypt's New Kingdom.
It may have also been the last royal pyramid built in Egypt.
Hence, major pyramids were not built throughout Egypt's ancient history. The Pyramid Age began with a burst of building, starting with the 3rd Dynasty reign of Djoser. Some of the early kings, most specifically Snefru, built more than one pyramid. Almost all of the kings added to their number through the end of the Middle Kingdom, with the possible exception of the First Intermediate Period between the Old and Middle Kingdoms.
After the first Pharaoh of Egypt's New Kingdom, Ahmose, royal pyramid building by Egyptians ceased entirely. Somewhat abruptly the kings of the New Kingdom chose, rather than making their tombs completely obvious, to hide them in the hills of the West Bank of Thebes (modern Luxor).
However, smaller pyramids were constructed, for example in the Deir el-Medina necropolis, by private individuals. The Late Period Nubians who ruled Egypt also built relatively small pyramids with much steeper sides, though these were in fact constructed in Nubia itself.
This tradition was carried on in Nubia after these southern rulers lost control of Egypt, and eventually, more pyramids were actually built in Nubia than Egypt, though on a much smaller scale.
Other pyramids in the world certainly exist, but their purpose, for the most part, was different than those of ancient Egypt.
The most famous outside Egypt are probably those located in Mexico and to the south of Mexico, but these appear to have been built more as temples. In Egypt, all but a select few of the pyramids were built as tombs, sometimes to hold the physical body of a pharaoh (as well as other individuals), or to hold the soul of the deceased (as in the case of the small cult pyramids built next to the larger ones).
Otherwise, the purpose of only a few small, regional stepped pyramids remains elusive.
While pyramids were, for the most part, tombs for the Pharaohs of Egypt, one must nevertheless question the reason that Egyptian rulers chose this particular shape, and for that matter, why they built them so large.
Today, we believe that they chose the shape in order to mimic the Benben, a pyramid shaped stone found in the earliest of temples, which itself is thought to symbolize the primeval mound from which the Egyptians believed life emerged.
This also connected the pyramid to Re, the Sun God, as it was he, according to some of the ancient Egypt mythology, who rose from the primeval mound to create life.
As far the great size of many of the pyramids in Egypt, we can really only surmise that the Pharaohs were making a statement about their own power and perhaps, about the glory and strength of their country.
However, it should also be remembered that many of the latter pyramids were not nearly as large as the Great Pyramids at Giza (and elsewhere).
Pyramids evolved. The first of them was not a perfectly formed pyramid. In fact, the first Pyramid we believe that was built in Egypt, that of Djoser, was not a true pyramid at all with smooth sides and a point at the top. Rather, its sides were stepped, and the top of the pyramid truncated with a flat surface (as best we know).
As the Egyptian pyramids evolved, there were failures as well glorious failures until finally, they got it right with what was probably the first smooth sided true pyramid built at Meidum. In fact, pyramids continued to evolve throughout their history, perhaps not always in outward appearances, but in the way that they were built and in the theology surrounding their construction. For example, towards the latter part of Egypt's Pyramid Age, Osirian beliefs seem to have had more and more impact on the arrangement and layout of the subterranean chambers.
However, soon after the first pyramids were built, their form became somewhat standardized. Royal pyramid complexes included the main pyramid, a courtyard surrounding the main pyramid, a much smaller cult pyramid for the king's soul, a mortuary temple situated next to the main pyramid, an enclosure wall and a causeway that led down to a valley temple. Some pyramid complexes included subsidiary, smaller pyramids for family members, and most were surrounded by some sort of tombs for family members.
Our thinking on pyramids has evolved considerably over the years. Many of us who are a bit older were taught that the pyramids were built using Jewish slave labor, which is a fabrication of immense proportions. Most of the pyramids were built long before the Jews made their appearance historically and currently, many if not most scholars believe they were not built using slave labor at all (or perhaps a nominal number of slaves).
Otherwise,
we can also dismiss offhand alternative theories related to aliens or some lost culture being responsible for pyramid building. There is just far too much evidence, including tools, drawings, evolutionary changes, and even worker villages that rule these farfetched ideas obsolete.
However, some mysteries remain, even in some of the best well known Pyramids.
The most famous of them all, the Great Pyramid of Khufu, continues, year after year, to give up a few more secrets, and there doubtless remains much to learn from these Egyptian treasures. There may even be one or more pyramids yet to be discovered.

Ancient Egypt

2008-06-18T13:32:00.000-07:00

For many, the scope of Egypt's history is difficult to comprehend. Its history covers some five thousand years, and encompasses the origin of civilization, the rise of the Greeks and Romans, the establishment of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions, the colonial era when first France and then the English ruled the country, and finally, a return to independence.

Egypt has played an important role through all of these eras, and today one can find monuments that evidence Egypt's role in most of the world's historic events, from the beginning of mankind until the present. More and more,

we are not only learning about the history of mankind in Egypt, but also about his prehistory, the way that he migrated and finally began to organize communities that eventually lead to a civilized world.
In Egypt, we find the earliest detailed records of warfare recorded thousands of years ago, but we also find the cemeteries and monuments of the world's last global war, World War II. In Egypt, we find some of the first written words of civilization, but we also find great thinkers and writers through the Greek period, into the Christian era, the archaic Islamic period and even modern Nobel Literates.

In Egypt, we find ancient pyramids and giant columns supporting massive temples, but we can now find these architectural elements spread throughout the world. Here, along with the first monumental buildings made of stone, we also find the first paved roads, the first wines and beer and even the first peace treaties between organized governments.

However, we also find the world's first scientists, doctors, architects and mathematicians.
Egypt is our window to humanity's distant past and in understanding its history, we find both mankind's greatest glories and achievements, as well as his often repeated mistakes.

We may follow along with the building of empires, only to see them collapse again and again. We find great men and rulers of renowned, but we often also see their ultimate demise.
And here, we learn about religion, its evolution and, as the world grows older, its replacement with newer religions.

Yet, the ancient Egyptian religion has never really completely died out. Even today, many Egyptians continue customs, including some aspects of religion, held over from thousands of years ago. In fact, throughout the world, aspects of the ancient Egyptian religion, particularly funerary, continue to effect our modern lives.
We hope you enjoy our efforts to bring Egyptian history and its monuments to your fingertips. Here one will find just about every aspect of ancient Egypt, from culture to people, from monuments to knowledge.

Take the time to understand ancient Egyptian history, and we feel certain you will find, within this knowledge, a better understanding of this modern world in which we live.

business links

2008-06-18T13:23:00.000-07:00

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Military Technology

2008-06-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

Throughout ancient Egyptian history its military underwent many significant changes. During the Old Kingdom, a standing army was not kept but if there was a conflict, an army would be called and organized, composed of older, untrained men. During the First Intermediate Period, the core of the army consisted of house troops. This core was made up of conscripts (men who were drafted into the army) and was supplemented by troops of an allied kingdom.
Mercenaries from Nubia with their bows and arrows were also used. The same type of army was used during the Middle Kingdom. During the Second Intermediate Period, the core of the army was made up of house troops, who were the personal troops of the king, .supplemented by conscripts. During the Late Period, the army was basically a Greek mercenary unit.
The most important thing that changed throughout Egypt's history was the technology of the military. During the Pre-dynastic Period, the army used weapons such as spears, cudgels, clubs, throwing sticks, daggers, bows, maces, and shields. During the Old Kingdom, the quiver was used and the battle-axe with a semi-circular head was invented. During the Middle Kingdom, the scalloped axe-head battle-axe was invented. During the Second Intermediate Period the chariots, composite bow, and narrow axe-headed battle-axe were invented. Most importantly, during the New Kingdom, the scimitar or sickle sword and body armor was invented.
The ancient Egyptian army was organized differently throughout time. From the Old Kingdom through the New Kingdom, the main fighting units of the Egyptian army were organized into battalions. During the New Kingdom, they were organized into divisions named after principal gods. The Egyptian infantry was divided into regiments, very similar to the Greeks; and these were formed and distinguished according to the army they bore. They consisted of bowmen, spearmen, swordsmen, clubmen, slingers, and other corps, disciplined according to the rules of regular tactics. The regiment was divided into battalions and companies, each officer had his particular rank and command.
When you consider all of ancient Egypt's great military, the most notable among the Pharaohs were Ramesses, Pepi, Thutmose, and Ahmose. The most notable soldiers were the composite bowmen, remembered even by the Romans. The composite bow was introduced by the Hyksos who came from Asia with the technology. The bow, nearly twice as strong as a regular bow, was invented by the Semites. It was of a long, slender strip of bullhorn, with a wood beam on either sides of the horn. This made a very springy yet sturdy bow. The horn and wood was covered with a strip of bark so the archer could have a firm grip on the weapon. Composite bowmen usually wore light clothes and little if any armor in order to give them greater flexibility. The Pharaoh had a war helmet that was made of leather with small metal rings. It bulged out in the front and there was a backside to protect the Pharaoh from a sweeping attack of a sword.
The Egyptian chariot charged the enemy in an orderly line. After the initial volley of enemy arrows, the enemy line disbanded. Given the broken line, the chariots dispensed over the battlefield, crushing the fugitives beneath their wheels and trampling them under their horse's feet. Another piece of military equipment that had a great impact was introduced by Thutmose III. It was wagons drawn by oxen to transport boats for the crossing of the Euphrates, and afterwards oxcarts formed part of the equipment of the Egyptian army.
Throughout Egyptian history, the battleship remained unchanged. They were built of bundles of reeds lashed together to form a narrow, sharp-ended hull and coated with pitch. These ships were fitted with a bipod mast and a single, large square sail. The ships had more than twenty oars on each side with two or more steering oars. Features were added to war galleys to make them more efficient for battle. Elevated decks were added for archers and spearmen. Planks were fitted to the gunwales to protect the rowers. Some galleys also had a projecting ram positioned well above the water line, which may have been designed to crash through the gunwale of an enemy or to ride upon deck.
The Egyptians had involuntarily become a war machine from the New Kingdom all the way through the Late Period. Ancient Egypt became a well trained, respected military force. They conquered many people and at one time their empire stretched all the way to the Euphrates River.

Mask of King Tutankhamun

2008-04-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

Egyptian Museum, Cairo Dynasty XVIII,
1347-1237 B।C.

This marvelous mask of excellent workmanship protected the head of the mummy of Tutankhamun. Further protection was assured by a magic formula engraved on the shoulders and the back of the mask. The usual Nemes headdress knotted back at the nape of the neck, is a striped blue-green imitating lapis lazuli. The Uraeus and vulture head in gold inlaid with semi-precious stones and colored glass, ornaments the brow. The mask's eyes are made of obsidian and quartz with a touch of red at the corners: the cosmetic lines and the lids are of inlaid blue glass. The divine beard, plaited and turned up at the end, is of cloisonné work (colored glass held in a framework of gold.) The wide necklace collar is formed of rows of lapis lazuli, quartz, amazonite and colored glass beads attached at each shoulder to a gold falcon's head ornamented with obsidian. This mask presents us with a beautiful albeit idealized portrait of the young King.

Bust of Ramses II

2008-04-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

The most celebrated of all Pharaohs, Ramses II, is well known for the length of his reign, the numerous temples he built and his military campaigns, such as the battle of Kadesh where Ramses II, facing the army of Muwattali, King of the Hittites found himself surrounded by 2500 Hittite Charioteers with only his personal bodyguard to help him. As the enemy closed in around him, Pharaoh leaped into his chariot, tied the reins around his waist to leave his hands free, sent forth a great cry for help to Amun and charged six times against the Hittites, finally breaking through and winning the battle. Ramses II was the son of Seti I and was crowned Pharaoh in 1290 b.c. when he was 18 years old. Ramses II had many wives but the first and favorite chief Queen was Nefertari. Ramses died at the age of 85 after ruling Egypt for 67 years. This bust from a seated statue of Ramses II is a portrait of the young King in which grace and grandeur are intermixed

Bust of Queen Nefertiti

2008-04-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

Dahlem Museum, Berlin। 1365 B.C.

She was the wife of King Akhenaton who ruled from 1379 to 1362 b.c. She was an influential Queen but she is principally remembered for her personal beauty and the lovely statue that was carved centuries ago. Details of the life of the beauteous Queen are veiled by the mist of time. One of her six daughters was Ankhesenamun, Tutankhamun's wife. Her tomb has never been discovered. Nefertiti's bust was taken out of Egypt under unclear circumstances to be taken to Berlin.

art links

2008-04-27T14:20:00.000-07:00

Ancient Egyptian History

2008-04-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

Before 4000 B.C. Prehistoric period
4000 - 3100 B.C. Predynastic Period.
3100 B.C. Early Dynastic Period, Dynasty I-II. Unification of Egypt, beginning of Dynastic Period.
2686 B.C. Old Kingdom, Dynasty III-VIII. Pyramid age, canons of art established, strong central state.
2160 B.C. First Intermediate Period, Dynasty IX-X. Collapse of central authority, period of civil war.
2040 B.C. Middle Kingdom, Dynasty IX-XIII. Egypt reunited, period of prosperity and stability.
1786 B.C. Second Intermediate Period, Dynasty XIV-XVII. Hyksos invaders from western Asia and Nubians from the south control large sections of Egypt.
1558 B.C. New Kingdom, Dynasty XVIII-XX. Invaders expelled, Egyptian military power and influence extend from Nubia in the south to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the northeast. The arts flourish.
1085 B.C. Third Intermediate Period, Dynasty XXI-XXIV. Egypt loses its foreign empire and splits into smaller sections.
760 B.C. Late Period, Dynasty XXV-XXXI. Egypt falls to conquering Nubians, Assyrians, and Persians, but also achieves final grandeur under native rulers of Dynasty XXVI and XXX.
332 B.C. Conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great.
304 B.C. Ptolemaic Dynasty rules Egypt for nearly three hundred years.
30 B.C. Cleopatra, last ruler of the Greek, Ptolemaic Dynasty dies, Egypt becomes part of the Roman Empire.
395 A.D. Coptic Period. Christianity becomes the major religion of Egypt.
640 A.D. Arab Conquest. Islam introduced

Houses of Nubia

2008-04-27T14:07:00.000-07:00

Written by Louis WernerPhotographed by Michael Nelson
he region of Upper Nubia in Sudan, lying between the Nile’s Second Cataract near the Egyptian border and the river’s distinctive S-bend some 350 kilometers (200 mi) to the south, is a land where the clock ticks to non-Arab time. Within Upper Nubia, north of the Third Cataract near Kerma, where the Mahas district begins and the asphalt and electricity end, Nubian villagers maintain their linguistic and cultural differences with great pride. To be Mahasi means to be a true Nubian, to speak a pure Nubian language and to live in the Nubian heartland.
But Mahas was recently spared a project whose benefits would surely have despoiled it, a project aimed dead center at the village of Kajbar at the Third Cataract and the Nubian fields and homesteads upstream. The government had planned a hydroelectric dam at Kajbar that would have flooded out tens of thousands of families and covered countless archeological sites in and around Kerma, the ancient Kushite capital. This, all agree, would have been a tragic reprise of the losses in Lower Nubia, on the Egyptian side of the border, with the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960’s.
Luckily, the Kajbar dam never got past the blueprint stage. An international campaign publicized the threat and successfully petitioned the Sudanese government to reconsider. A dam now under construction at an alternative site, at the Fourth Cataract of the Nile near Karima, will displace fewer non-Nubian farmers and will not disturb the archeological sites at Napata and Jebel Barkal.
If the Kajbar dam had been built, perhaps its saddest casualty would have been not a site but a type: the Nubian house, a mud-walled, stand-alone family compound centered on a courtyard and surrounded by an extensive layout of men’s and women’s quarters. The Sudanese novelist Tayyib Salih has compared such a house, often built on heights above the flood plain, to “a ship that has cast anchor in mid-ocean."

Even more distinctive than the floor plan of a Nubian house is the decoration of its exterior doorway, or bawaba, which mixes vivid color, adobe brick filigree, figurative and geometric images in mud and white lime-plaster relief, and wall-mounted objects like ceramic plates, automobile headlights, mirrors, cow horns and dried crocodiles. While the full range of these decorative materials has shrunk in recent years, the impulse to draw attention to one’s home, and to its doorway as a symbol of the family, remains strong.

Farther north, this homegrown architecture did not survive the displacement of the Egyptian Nubians. Relocated into concrete, common-walled shells in a new-lands development at Kom Ombo, north of Aswan, this change in architectural space, more than anything else that happened to them in their move, has been a main reason for their gradual “arabization” over the last 40 years. Something similar has happened to a smaller number of Sudanese Nubians relocated from Wadi Halfa, at the southern reaches of Lake Nasser, to Khashem al-Girba east of Khartoum on the Atbara River.
Because of the clear demarcation of cultivable and uncultivable land along the Nubian Nile, houses there can be built right at the edge of the green fields, taking advantage of the view and the cooling humidity. Unlike, say, in the Nile Delta or in a new agriculture development off-river, a Nubian house could be amply proportioned and comfortably situated because it did not occupy otherwise productive land.
Abdallah Salih Suleiman, age 75, lives in such a house near Kerma. He was born on Badeen Island in mid-channel and remembers his old home’s outer wall adorned with a white lime-plaster image of a lion holding a sword, surrounded by sunbursts. “Whenever a child in the family lost a tooth, he would throw it at the wall, and where it struck, in that place we would then paint a sunburst as a wish for a new tooth. Our doorway also had a plaster cattle egret, which we call here sadeeq al-mazreeq, or friend of the fields, because it is always a welcome guest.” Egrets eat insect pests and make the farmer’s job that much easier.

Coffin, Coffin Board and Mummy of Tahat

2008-04-27T14:02:00.000-07:00

Egypt. Twenty-first Dynasty, ca. 1070-946 B.C. Painted wood, linen, and human remains.1070-946 B.C.

This coffin is the most beautiful in the Niagara Collection and one of the finest to be found anywhere in the world। This exquisite coffin belonged to the Lady Tahat, a chantress in the temple of the god Amun at Karnak. Such women were usually of high rank, as this unusually fine coffin indicates. Women served in temples not as priests, but as chantresses, or singers, who presumably played instruments and recited hymns to the gods. On the coffin lid, the lady Tahat is bedecked in a full wig surrounded by protective gods and symbols and adorned with her finest jewelry. The breathtakingly lovely scenes delicately painted on the sides of the coffin depicted mythological scenes and Tahat being judged in the underworld and being reborn into eternal life. Over the mummy was placed a coffin board, that looked like and served as a secondary lid with more decorative elements to protect the mummy.

Shawabti of Neferibresaneith, Son of Shepenbastet

2008-04-27T13:59:00.000-07:00

Twenty-sixth Dynasty, c. 664-525 B.C. Faience. Gift of the Atlantes Society by exchange. 1998.11
The Egyptians believed that the afterlife was essentially the same as the present life, so that an individual might enjoy the same possessions, people, and privileges in both realms. By the same token, the individual was also subject to the same responsibilities and burdens, such as mandatory labor for the government. An Egyptian was periodically called upon to labor for the state, primarily maintaining the extensive system of irrigation canals. During life, this was expected, though no one wanted to spend eternity performing manual labor. The shawabti figurine provided a magical solution to this problem, acting as a substitute laborer in the afterlife.
The figurines, most commonly made of faience, were inscribed with a spell from the Book of the Dead and placed in the tomb. When the deceased was called upon to do labor, the spell magically animated the shawabti, who then answered the call in the place of the deceased. The numbers of shawabtis included in the tomb increased over the years, until there was a figurine provided for every day of the year, to insure an eternity of relaxation for the owner of the tomb.

Face from a Coffin

2008-04-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

Egypt. Early Third Intermediate Period, ca. 1070-712 B.C. Painted wood. 1999.1.145
Coffins of the Third Intermediate Period were made out of local soft wood with finer grained, imported wood reserved for carved faces that would be pegged onto the lid of the coffin. The face often survives when the rest of the coffin decays. This example is painted red to equate the deceased with the rising, reborn sun.

Wrapped Mummy with Cartonnage Trappings

2008-04-27T13:50:00.000-07:00

Late Ptolemaic Period, ca. 167-30 B.C. Human remains, linen, cartonnage, paint, gilt. Funded by John A. Manget, 1921.6

In order to enter the afterlife, it was important that the deceased have a proper burial with all the correct rituals and traditional funerary equipment. First, the body had to be preserved through mummification, a process by which it was artificially dehydrated and then wrapped in linen bandages. The invention of mummification may have resulted from the practice of burying bodies directly in the ground during the Predynastic Period. The preservative properties of the hot, desiccating sand may have suggested to the Egyptians that survival of the body was necessary for continued existence in the afterlife. Later, in the Early Dynastic Period, when the body was no longer directly surrounded by sand, but was placed in a specially constructed burial chamber, the natural processes of decay set in. When they observed this effect, the Egyptians developed a method for keeping the body intact using resins and natron, a naturally occurring salt.
The mummy here has been shown through x-rays and CAT scans to be that of a middle-aged man. His name is not known. The body, wrapped in bandages with arms at the sides, is enveloped in a linen shroud. Trappings of painted and gilded cartonnage, a material consisting of layers of linen stiffened with plaster, have been placed over the shroud. A mask with a gilded face, identifying the deceased with the sun god, covers the head. Across the chest lies a panel in the form of a broad collar. Below the collar, another panel depicts a winged scarab beetle and a kneeling figure of the sky goddess, Nut, with outstretched wings. The hieroglyphic sign for "sky" is painted in blue above the head of the goddess. A third panel, covering the legs, contains a scene showing the mummy on a lion-shaped bed, mourned by the sister-goddesses Isis and Nephthys. The lower portion of the third panel consists of a series of mummiform figures representing the different forms of the sun god in the underworld. Figures of the jackal god Anubis atop a shrine appear on the foot covering. The toes are depicted in the form of rearing cobras crowned with sun disks which represent the toenails.

Egyptian Gods, Goddesses and Mythology

2008-04-27T13:45:00.000-07:00

Isis:
Ancient Egyptian society treated men and women equally. Women participated in the political, economic, and judicial world of ancient Egypt on the same terms as men. This social system reflects Egyptian mythology, where Goddesses played an equal, if not chief, role. The primeval mother figures in the earliest prehistoric Egyptian myths are female. Female deities were kept separate from the males, with their own temples and followers. Egyptian goddesses are also creator deities, and the protectors of the pharaohs in the form of the cobra, vulture, or lioness.
In ancient Egyptian mythology, Egypt was created from the Watery Waste of Nun, a chaos god from whose body all things were born. The continuous mission of the daily temple services and strictly followed religious codes was to keep ordered Egyptian society from returning to the state of chaos in which it was born. Ma'at, the goddess in charge of law, balance and order, was one of the principal deities.
The two "protectors of the realm" of Egypt were originally Nekhbet, vulture goddess of Northern Egypt, and Wadjet, cobra goddess of Lower Egypt. The cobra and the vulture were chosen by the Egyptians as the royal symbols because they were thought to be self-producing and therefore creators, or divine.
Egyptian mythology is a complex collection of often-competing stories, traditions, and practices. This is partly because the culture is so ancient, and partly because each city had its own set of deities, whose unique personalities are lost as their cults age. Just as each city vied for supreme power before Egypt was a unified kingdom, the cities each tried to establish their gods as the supreme gods. Even after unification, each time the capital moved, the supreme god of the new city rose to be the supreme god of the kingdom.[2]
There are many versions of the stories about Egyptian gods and goddesses. Here's a myth which tells a story related to creation and will introduce you to many gods. You may either read, or listen to the story

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Directory:

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Geography of Ancient Egypt

2008-04-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

Life in ancient Egypt, “Gift of the Nile,” was centered largely on agriculture. The majority of the people were involved in farming, and the growing season lasted eight-nine months. Wheat, fruits and vegetables were the principal crops, although there was some pastoral farming of cattle, sheep, or goats. Farmers in ancient Egypt worked to reach a level of subsistence so that they could feed themselves and pay their taxes. During the annual flooding of the Nile, which typically lasted from July through November, farming was impossible. But when the waters receded, a thick layer of fertile silt over the farmlands remained to insure rich soil for their crops and thick grasses for their grazing animals.
The country of Egypt consisted of two narrow strips of arable land lining either bank of the river Nile, from Aswan to the northern Delta. Just beyond the farmlands lay enormous deserts. The Nile was the lifeblood of Egypt. Its cycle of flooding -- growth, death, and rebirth to new growth -- became the cycle of everyday life, and also of Egyptian religion and understanding of an afterlife. The people of Egypt were dependent on the river for more than their food. It insured a line of communication and transportation among the provinces of the kingdom. The pharaohs took advantage of the Nile as a means to transport their armies, thus maintaining a strong, unified nation.

Ancient Egypt

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Statue of Memi and Sabu,
Old Kingdom, Dynasty 4, ca. 2575–2465 B.C. E.

The Ancient Egyptians Egyptian irrigation created one of the first great civilizations

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2007-11-25T13:00:00.000-08:00

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2007-11-25T12:56:00.000-08:00

Egypt's highest ranking Old Kingdom civil servants were interred at Saqqara, close to Memphis and the temple of Re at Heliopolis.

Here the burial chambers were gradually cut deeper until they passed into the bedrock. Lined with wood, their ceilings were topped with a low mound and then surrounded by a low, rectangular mud-brick building known as a mastaba after the Arabic mastaba (low bench).

Most mastaba superstructures were filled with storage chambers for grave goods, but this made them vulnerable to thieves. By the end of the 1st Dynasty the superstructure was being reduced in favour of extensive subterranean storage, reached by a stairway. Eventually the mastaba would become a solid, rubble-filled block

Khaefre's pyramid and Sphinx

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Khaefre, Khufu's son, built beside his father's pyramid. His is the smaller pyramid, but as it is built on higher ground, and has a slightly steeper angle, it appears the larger. Today Khaefre's complex is the most complete of the Giza three, while his is the only pyramid to retain some of its upper casing stones.

The Great Sphinx crouches beside Khaefre's Valley Temple. This fabulous beast consists of the king's head, 22 times life-sized, perched on a massive lion's body. It is 236ft (72m) long and 65ft (19.8m) tall, making it Egypt's largest statue. As it is carved from a naturally occurring rocky outcrop, covered in places with a stone block veneer, the Sphinx shows differential weathering due to the three limestone strata included in its body.

Egypt Through Other Eyes:

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Egypt Through Other Eyes: The Popularization of Ancient Egypt, presenting more than thirty books from the Museum's Libraries, documents Western fascination with ancient Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Showcasing many works never before on public view, the exhibition includes rare material from the Museum's Wilbour Library of Egyptology, one of the world's most comprehensive Egyptological research collections.

During the nineteenth century, publications on Egypt multiplied as advances in printing technology allowed for the production of larger and cheaper editions of travel literature and history books, as well as newspapers and periodicals. Scholarly publications had an increasing impact on popular culture in Europe and America, especially on architecture, fashion, and literature. The exhibition covers the generation of explorers and scholars who were inspired by Description de l'Égypte, published from 1809 to 1827. The images on view demonstrate the allure that Egypt has long held for a Western audience.

Included is an illustrated plate from a rare book by Giovanni Belzoni, one of the first Europeans to excavate Egyptian temples and tombs. Other works include a catalogue and poster for the first major North American exhibition of Egyptian antiquities of the Abbott collection, now part of the Brooklyn Museum collection. Also on view are chromolithographs from books by Émile Presse D'Avennes, whose work provided the earliest reliable images of Egyptian architecture, and a book by Charles Dana Gibson, depicting the Temple of the goddess Mut, where the Brooklyn Museum and Johns Hopkins University currently maintain an excavation site.

Several of the items on view originally belonged to Charles Edwin Wilbour (1833–1896), the American Egyptologist for whom the Wilbour Library of Egyptology is named. Wilbour, who also collected many of the objects in the Museum's adjacent galleries of Egyptian art, made a significant contribution to the study of ancient Egypt in America.

Walt Whitman wrote about many of the Egyptian objects in the gallery. For a discussion of Walt Whitman's writings see Walt Whitman and the Arts in Brooklyn. For a review of this exhibition published in the online version of Archaeology magazine, click here.

The exhibition was organized by Deirdre E. Lawrence, Principal Librarian/Coordinator of Research Services, and Mary Gow, Assistant Librarian, in collaboration with the curators of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art.

photo

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some photo about ancient egyptian

Ancient Egyptian Military

Development of Pyramids

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Khufu, or Cheops, built his pyramid on the Giza plateau, where he found firm bedrock and a convenient limestone quarry. His pyramid is a work of astonishing size and precision, standing 481ft (146.6m) high, with a slope of 51 degrees 50'. Its sides vary by less than 1.9ft (58cm) and are orientated almost exactly true north. Its base is almost completely level. It has been calculated that the base of the Great Pyramid could accommodate both the UK Houses of Parliament and St Paul's Cathedral with room to spare.

The pyramid holds three chambers linked by a system of passageways: the unfinished 'Subterranean Chamber'; the ill-named 'Queen's Chamber'; and the 'King's Chamber', where Khufu was buried in an enormous, plain, red granite sarcophagus
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