Egyptian Civilization
Table of Contents
Egyptian Civilization
Egypt is said to be blessed with the Nile River.
There is a narrow green strip on both the banks of this river.
And this is the fertile area where the Egyptian civilization developed.
Historians divide the history of Egypt into three periods.
The ancient state is also called the age of the pyramids.
In this era, the city of Mamphus located near Cairo was the capital of this state.
This period (3000-2000 BC) and the medieval state (2000- 1750 BC) Egyptian civilization developed due to the advancement of art, religion and sciences.
Eighteenth century BC Hyksos invaders attacked Egypt.
They came from the east.
They were nomads and their civilization was much more developed than that of the Egyptians.
Their rule lasted only a short time and soon the Egyptian kings reconquered their country.
In this way a new state was established.
Social Classes of Egypt -From King to Slave:
The king of Egypt was called the Pharaoh.
He had complete power.
The Pharaoh was the owner of the entire earth.
Whatever he said became law.
He was considered a deity and his statues were installed in temples.
Details of his exploits and victories were engraved on the walls of temples.
After the pharaohs, there were priests,
royal servants, artists and artisans in the society, followed by farmers who lived outside the cities.
They were followed by slaves who were usually prisoners of war.
and the king was their master.
Business, Arts and Crafts in Ancient Egypt:
The most important business of the people was agriculture.
The rivers here made the land fertile every year.
The inhabitants there used to build canals so that they could get water to grow crops throughout the year.
It seems that in 3000 BC.
They used to plow with the help of oxen.
Like people of other early civilizations, Egyptians also practiced animal husbandry.
Generally they reared goats, dogs, donkeys, pigs and ducks.
It seems they also had camels.
The Hyksos people first brought horses to Egypt.
Horses used to pull their chariots during war.
Flax was cultivated extensively in Egypt.
The people of Mesopotamia used to wear woolen clothes but the people of Egypt used to wear flax clothes.
These clothes were very suitable for the climate of Egypt.
The people of Egypt used to make beautiful stone vases and send them to foreign countries.
Like the people of Mesopotamia, they also used to make glass vessels.
Art developed and they started making glass vessels with beautiful shapes.
Their carpenters used to make very beautiful furniture.
Ivory and precious gems were embedded in the furniture.
This type of furniture was kept very safely in the royal tombs.
Religion:
The people of Egypt believed that there was a great power behind every play of nature and the Sun was their most important god.
They considered him to be the creator of everything and worshiped him under many names.
Other famous gods of the Egyptians were the king of the afterlife,
the god of floods and the moon god.
The Egyptians had a strong belief in life after death.
The Egyptians believed that even after death, both body and soul remain alive,
only the life of dead people is somewhat different from the life of living humans,
hence they used to protect the dead body of the dead person with great care.
The dead body was smeared with spices and wrapped in fine clothes.
The body preserved in this way is called a mummy.
The mummy was kept in a wooden box, decorated with paintings and sealed in a stone box and buried in a tomb.
Inside the tomb, all those things were kept which the dead person liked and which he used while alive.
When kings and queens were buried, very expensive chests and tombs were built to contain the bodies.
But when ordinary people were buried, both those things were ordinary.
Clothes, food, beverages, precious furniture and jewelery were kept in these tombs.
The pyramids were the tombs of great kings.
Egyptian architecture and sculpture:
The pyramids were the finest of Egyptian buildings in early art.
Among the great achievements of that period, 30 large and very small pyramids still exist.
The grandest of them all is the Great Pyramid of Goza near Cairo, built in 2650 BC.
This large building was built by the pharaohs of the ancient kingdom of Seyof (Khafu) around 1000 AD.
This large building is made by joining very large pieces of stone.
The pyramids are counted among the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Since the pyramids were the tombs of the Egyptian kings,
they kept mummies and all kinds of valuable objects used in them.
It has been centuries since these pyramids were built.
During this long period, they were looted but in the third decade of the present century,
the tomb of Tritan Khaman was found in completely safe condition.
The valuable objects of this tomb can still be seen in the Cairo Museum.
There are many large and beautiful paintings on the walls of this tomb.
From them we get a lot of information about the life of the contemporary Egyptians.
Another curious specimen of Egyptian architecture is the Sphinx.
Sphinx is an animal described in mythology which has the body of a lion and the head of a human.
The statue of the Sphinx was carved out of a large solid rock.
hieroglyphic script:
The Egyptians probably developed the art of writing around 3000 BC.
Learn from the Sumerians even before the 1st century AD, but their script is not a copy of the cuneiform script.
The Egyptian script is called hieroglyphic, meaning sacred script.
It had 24 signs, each of which symbolized a consonant.
Vowel letters were not written in this script.
Later the Egyptians started using symbols for ideas.
Thus the number of symbols increased to 500. After a few days,
people came to know the importance of script and like Sumer, writing developed into a special art.
Scribes had a prominent place in the society.
They used to write with reed pens on the leaves of a tree called papyrus.
From this the English word paper was formed which means paper.
Science and Mathematics in Ancient Egypt The Egyptians made significant progress in many areas of knowledge.
A decimal system of numbers was developed.
To write the desired number, the same symbol of the digits 1 to 9 was repeated again and again.
There were different symbols for 10 and its multiplication numbers.
The Egyptians could calculate the area of a triangle and a rectangle.
The greatest achievement of the Egyptians was the solar calendar.
Almost all the ancient peoples, like the Sumerians,
had made their calendars on the basis of lunar months,
but this system is not sufficient for the farming people who need to know about the seasons,
rainfall and flood times before their work.
After careful observation for many years,
the Egyptians came to know that there is an average of 365 days between one rainy season and the next.
He also found that the rainy season floods reached Cairo
when the bright star Sirius appeared last on the horizon, and this happened every 365 days.
These two independent observations led the Egyptians to conclude that there are 365 days in the year.
After this the year was divided into 12 months and each month into 30 days.
The remaining 5 days were set aside for religious festivals.
The Egyptian solar calendar was a great achievement.
The Egyptians’ practice of preserving the bodies of their dead by coating them with medicines encouraged the development of science.
This increased the knowledge related to the structure of the human body and the skills of surgery.
Mainly priests performed medicine and surgery.
( Egyptian Civilization )
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