Ancient Egypt

Timeline

Edit

All dates are approximate

Late Paleolithic, from 40th millennium BC

Aterian tool-making[4]

Semi-permanent dwellings in Wadi Halfa[4]

Tools made from animal bones, hematite, and other stones[4]

Neolithic, from 11th millennium BC

c. 10,500 BC: Wild grain harvesting along the Nile, grain-grinding culture creates world's earliest stone
sickle blades[4] roughly at end of Pleistocene

c. 8000 BC: Migration of peoples to the Nile, developing a more centralized society and settled
agricultural economy

c. 7500 BC: Importing animals from Asia to Sahara

c. 7000 BC: Agriculture—animal and cereal—in East Sahara

c. 7000 BC: in Nabta Playa deep year-round water wells dug, and large organized settlements designed
in planned arrangements

c. 6000 BC: Rudimentary ships (rowed, single-sailed) depicted in Egyptian rock art

c. 5500 BC: Stone-roofed subterranean chambers and other subterranean complexes in Nabta Playa
containing buried sacrificed cattle

c. 5000 BC: Alleged archaeoastronomical stone megalith in Nabta Playa.[96][97]

c. 5000 BC: Badarian: furniture, tableware, models of rectangular houses, pots, dishes, cups, bowls,
vases, figurines, combs

c. 4400 BC: finely-woven linen fragment[98]

From 4th millennium BC, inventing has become prevalent

c. 4000 BC: early Naqadan trade[99]

4th millennium BC: Gerzean tomb-building, including underground rooms and burial of furniture and
amulets

4th millennium BC: Cedar imported from Lebanon[citation needed]

c. 3900 BC: An aridification event in the Sahara leads to human migration to the Nile Valley[100]

c. 3500 BC: Lapis lazuli imported from Badakshan and / or Mesopotamia

c. 3500 BC: Senet, world's oldest (confirmed) board game

c. 3500 BC: Faience, world's earliest-known glazed ceramic beads[citation needed]

c. 3400 BC: Cosmetics,[citation needed] donkey domestication,[citation needed] (meteoric) iron works,
[101] mortar (masonry)

c. 3300 BC: Double reed instruments and lyres (see Music of Egypt)

c. 3100 BC: Pharaoh Narmer, or Menes, or possibly Hor-Aha unified Upper and Lower Egypt

Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power in the New Kingdom, ruling much of Nubia and a sizable portion
of the Near East, after which it entered a period of slow decline. During the course of its history, Egypt
was invaded or conquered by a number of foreign powers, including the Hyksos, the Libyans, the
Nubians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, and the Macedonians under the command of
Alexander the Great. The Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom, formed in the aftermath of Alexander's death, ruled
Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province.[3]

The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the
Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley
produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture.
With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and
surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization
of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military
intended to assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of
elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of a pharaoh, who ensured the
cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.
[4]
The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying, and construction
techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of
mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems, and agricultural
production techniques, the first known planked boats,[5] Egyptian faience and glass technology, new
forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites.[6] Ancient Egypt has
left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities were carried off to far
corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for
millennia. A newfound respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans
and Egyptians has led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of
its cultural legacy.[7]

The pharaoh was the absolute monarch of the country and, at least in theory, wielded complete control
of the land and its resources. The king was the supreme military commander and head of the
government, who relied on a bureaucracy of officials to manage his affairs. In charge of the
administration was his second in command, the vizier, who acted as the king's representative and
coordinated land surveys, the treasury, building projects, the legal system, and the archives.[71] At a
regional level, the country was divided into as many as 42 administrative regions called nomes each
governed by a nomarch, who was accountable to the vizier for his jurisdiction. The temples formed the
backbone of the economy. Not only were they places of worship, but were also responsible for
collecting and storing the kingdom's wealth in a system of granaries and treasuries administered by
overseers, who redistributed grain and goods.[72]

Much of the economy was centrally organized and strictly controlled. Although the ancient Egyptians did
not use coinage until the Late period,[73] they did use a type of money-barter system,[74] with standard
sacks of grain and the deben, a weight of roughly 91 grams (3 oz) of copper or silver, forming a common
denominator.[75] Workers were paid in grain; a simple laborer might earn 5+1⁄2 sacks (200 kg or 400 lb)
of grain per month, while a foreman might earn 7+1⁄2 sacks (250 kg or 550 lb). Prices were fixed across
the country and recorded in lists to facilitate trading; for example a shirt cost five copper deben, while a
cow cost 140 deben.[75] Grain could be traded for other goods, according to the fixed price list.[75]
During the fifth century BC coined money was introduced into Egypt from abroad. At first the coins were
used as standardized pieces of precious metal rather than true money, but in the following centuries
international traders came to rely on coinage.[76]

Egyptian society was highly stratified, and social status was expressly displayed. Farmers made up the
bulk of the population, but agricultural produce was owned directly by the state, temple, or noble family
that owned the land.[77] Farmers were also subject to a labor tax and were required to work on
irrigation or construction projects in a corvée system.[78] Artists and craftsmen were of higher status
than farmers, but they were also under state control, working in the shops attached to the temples and
paid directly from the state treasury. Scribes and officials formed the upper class in ancient Egypt,
known as the "white kilt class" in reference to the bleached linen garments that served as a mark of
their rank.[79] The upper class prominently displayed their social status in art and literature. Below the
nobility were the priests, physicians, and engineers with specialized training in their field. It is unclear
whether slavery as understood today existed in ancient Egypt; there is difference of opinions among
authors.[80]

The ancient Egyptians viewed men and women, including people from all social classes, as essentially
equal under the law, and even the lowliest peasant was entitled to petition the vizier and his court for
redress.[81] Although slaves were mostly used as indentured servants, they were able to buy and sell
their servitude, work their way to freedom or nobility, and were usually treated by doctors in the
workplace.[82] Both men and women had the right to own and sell property, make contracts, marry and
divorce, receive inheritance, and pursue legal disputes in court. Married couples could own property
jointly and protect themselves from divorce by agreeing to marriage contracts, which stipulated the
financial obligations of the husband to his wife and children should the marriage end. Compared with
their counterparts in ancient Greece, Rome, and even more modern places around the world, ancient
Egyptian women had a greater range of personal choices, legal rights, and opportunities for
achievement. Women such as Hatshepsut and Cleopatra VII even became pharaohs, while others
wielded power as Divine Wives of Amun. Despite these freedoms, ancient Egyptian women did not often
take part in official roles in the administration, aside from the royal high priestesses, apparently served
only secondary roles in the temples (not much data for many dynasties), and were not so likely to be as
educated as men.[81]

Legal system

The head of the legal system was officially the pharaoh, who was responsible for enacting laws,
delivering justice, and maintaining law and order, a concept the ancient Egyptians referred to as Ma'at.
[71] Although no legal codes from ancient Egypt survive, court documents show that Egyptian law was
based on a common-sense view of right and wrong that emphasized reaching agreements and resolving
conflicts rather than strictly adhering to a complicated set of statutes.[81] Local councils of elders,
known as Kenbet in the New Kingdom, were responsible for ruling in court cases involving small claims
and minor disputes.[71] More serious cases involving murder, major land transactions, and tomb
robbery were referred to the Great Kenbet, over which the vizier or pharaoh presided. Plaintiffs and
defendants were expected to represent themselves and were required to swear an oath that they had
told the truth. In some cases, the state took on both the role of prosecutor and judge, and it could
torture the accused with beatings to obtain a confession and the names of any co-conspirators. Whether
the charges were trivial or serious, court scribes documented the complaint, testimony, and verdict of
the case for future reference.[83]

Punishment for minor crimes involved either imposition of fines, beatings, facial mutilation, or exile,
depending on the severity of the offense. Serious crimes such as murder and tomb robbery were
punished by execution, carried out by decapitation, drowning, or impaling the criminal on a stake.
Punishment could also be extended to the criminal's family.[71] Beginning in the New Kingdom, oracles
played a major role in the legal system, dispensing justice in both civil and criminal cases. The procedure
was to ask the god a "yes" or "no" question concerning the right or wrong of an issue. The god, carried
by a number of priests, rendered judgement by choosing one or the other, moving forward or backward,
or pointing to one of the answers written on a piece of papyrus or an ostracon.[84]

Agriculture

A combination of favorable geographical features contributed to the success of ancient Egyptian culture,
the most important of which was the rich fertile soil resulting from annual inundations of the Nile River.
The ancient Egyptians were thus able to produce an abundance of food, allowing the population to
devote more time and resources to cultural, technological, and artistic pursuits. Land management was
crucial in ancient Egypt because taxes were assessed based on the amount of land a person owned.[85]

Farming in Egypt was dependent on the cycle of the Nile River. The Egyptians recognized three seasons:
Akhet (flooding), Peret (planting), and Shemu (harvesting). The flooding season lasted from June to
September, depositing on the river's banks a layer of mineral-rich silt ideal for growing crops. After the
floodwaters had receded, the growing season lasted from October to February. Farmers plowed and
planted seeds in the fields, which were irrigated with ditches and canals. Egypt received little rainfall, so
farmers relied on the Nile to water their crops.[86] From March to May, farmers used sickles to harvest
their crops, which were then threshed with a flail to separate the straw from the grain. Winnowing
removed the chaff from the grain, and the grain was then ground into flour, brewed to make beer, or
stored for later use.[87]

The ancient Egyptians cultivated emmer and barley, and several other cereal grains, all of which were
used to make the two main food staples of bread and beer.[88] Flax plants, uprooted before they
started flowering, were grown for the fibers of their stems. These fibers were split along their length and
spun into thread, which was used to weave sheets of linen and to make clothing. Papyrus growing on
the banks of the Nile River was used to make paper. Vegetables and fruits were grown in garden plots,
close to habitations and on higher ground, and had to be watered by hand. Vegetables included leeks,
garlic, melons, squashes, pulses, lettuce, and other crops, in addition to grapes that were made into
wine.[89]

The Egyptians believed that a balanced relationship between people and animals was an essential
element of the cosmic order; thus humans, animals and plants were believed to be members of a single
whole.[90] Animals, both domesticated and wild, were therefore a critical source of spirituality,
companionship, and sustenance to the ancient Egyptians. Cattle were the most important livestock; the
administration collected taxes on livestock in regular censuses, and the size of a herd reflected the
prestige and importance of the estate or temple that owned them. In addition to cattle, the ancient
Egyptians kept sheep, goats, and pigs. Poultry, such as ducks, geese, and pigeons, were captured in nets
and bred on farms, where they were force-fed with dough to fatten them.[91] The Nile provided a
plentiful source of fish. Bees were also domesticated from at least the Old Kingdom, and provided both
honey and wax.[92]

The ancient Egyptians used donkeys and oxen as beasts of burden, and they were responsible for
plowing the fields and trampling seed into the soil. The slaughter of a fattened ox was also a central part
of an offering ritual. Horses were introduced by the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period. Camels,
although known from the New Kingdom, were not used as beasts of burden until the Late Period. There
is also evidence to suggest that elephants were briefly used in the Late Period but largely abandoned
due to lack of grazing land.[91] Cats, dogs, and monkeys were common family pets, while more exotic
pets imported from the heart of Africa, such as Sub-Saharan African lions,[93] were reserved for royalty.
Herodotus observed that the Egyptians were the only people to keep their animals with them in their
houses.[90] During the Late Period, the worship of the gods in their animal form was extremely popular,
such as the cat goddess Bastet and the ibis god Thoth, and these animals were kept in large numbers for
the purpose of ritual sacrifice.[94]

Natural resources

Egypt is rich in building and decorative stone, copper and lead ores, gold, and semiprecious stones.
These natural resources allowed the ancient Egyptians to build monuments, sculpt statues, make tools,
and fashion jewelry.[95] Embalmers used salts from the Wadi Natrun for mummification, which also
provided the gypsum needed to make plaster.[96] Ore-bearing rock formations were found in distant,
inhospitable wadis in the Eastern Desert and the Sinai, requiring large, state-controlled expeditions to
obtain natural resources found there. There were extensive gold mines in Nubia, and one of the first
maps known is of a gold mine in this region. The Wadi Hammamat was a notable source of granite,
greywacke, and gold. Flint was the first mineral collected and used to make tools, and flint handaxes are
the earliest pieces of evidence of habitation in the Nile valley. Nodules of the mineral were carefully
flaked to make blades and arrowheads of moderate hardness and durability even after copper was
adopted for this purpose.[97] Ancient Egyptians were among the first to use minerals such as sulfur as
cosmetic substances.[98]

The Egyptians worked deposits of the lead ore galena at Gebel Rosas to make net sinkers, plumb bobs,
and small figurines. Copper was the most important metal for toolmaking in ancient Egypt and was
smelted in furnaces from malachite ore mined in the Sinai.[99] Workers collected gold by washing the
nuggets out of sediment in alluvial deposits, or by the more labor-intensive process of grinding and
washing gold-bearing quartzite. Iron deposits found in upper Egypt were used in the Late Period.[100]
High-quality building stones were abundant in Egypt; the ancient Egyptians quarried limestone all along
the Nile valley, granite from Aswan, and basalt and sandstone from the wadis of the Eastern Desert.
Deposits of decorative stones such as porphyry, greywacke, alabaster, and carnelian dotted the Eastern
Desert and were collected even before the First Dynasty. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, miners
worked deposits of emeralds in Wadi Sikait and amethyst in Wadi el-Hudi.[101]

Trade

The ancient Egyptians engaged in trade with their foreign neighbors to obtain rare, exotic goods not
found in Egypt. In the Predynastic Period, they established trade with Nubia to obtain gold and incense.
They also established trade with Palestine, as evidenced by Palestinian-style oil jugs found in the burials
of the First Dynasty pharaohs.[102] An Egyptian colony stationed in southern Canaan dates to slightly
before the First Dynasty.[103] Narmer had Egyptian pottery produced in Canaan and exported back to
Egypt.[104][105]

By the Second Dynasty at latest, ancient Egyptian trade with Byblos yielded a critical source of quality
timber not found in Egypt. By the Fifth Dynasty, trade with Punt provided gold, aromatic resins, ebony,
ivory, and wild animals such as monkeys and baboons.[106] Egypt relied on trade with Anatolia for
essential quantities of tin as well as supplementary supplies of copper, both metals being necessary for
the manufacture of bronze. The ancient Egyptians prized the blue stone lapis lazuli, which had to be
imported from far-away Afghanistan. Egypt's Mediterranean trade partners also included Greece and
Crete, which provided, among other goods, supplies of olive oil.[107]

The Egyptian language is a northern Afro-Asiatic language closely related to the Berber and Semitic
languages.[108] It has the longest known history of any language having been written from c. 3200 BC to
the Middle Ages and remaining as a spoken language for longer. The phases of ancient Egyptian are Old
Egyptian, Middle Egyptian (Classical Egyptian), Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic.[109] Egyptian writings
do not show dialect differences before Coptic, but it was probably spoken in regional dialects around
Memphis and later Thebes.[110]

Ancient Egyptian was a synthetic language, but it became more analytic later on. Late Egyptian
developed prefixal definite and indefinite articles, which replaced the older inflectional suffixes. There
was a change from the older verb–subject–object word order to subject–verb–object.[111] The Egyptian
hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic scripts were eventually replaced by the more phonetic Coptic
alphabet. Coptic is still used in the liturgy of the Egyptian Orthodox Church, and traces of it are found in
modern Egyptian Arabic.[112]

Sounds and grammar

Ancient Egyptian has 25 consonants similar to those of other Afro-Asiatic languages. These include
pharyngeal and emphatic consonants, voiced and voiceless stops, voiceless fricatives and voiced and
voiceless affricates. It has three long and three short vowels, which expanded in Late Egyptian to about
nine.[113] The basic word in Egyptian, similar to Semitic and Berber, is a triliteral or biliteral root of
consonants and semiconsonants. Suffixes are added to form words. The verb conjugation corresponds
to the person. For example, the triconsonantal skeleton S-Ḏ-M is the semantic core of the word 'hear';
its basic conjugation is sḏm, 'he hears'. If the subject is a noun, suffixes are not added to the verb:[114]
sḏm ḥmt, 'the woman hears'.

Adjectives are derived from nouns through a process that Egyptologists call nisbation because of its
similarity with Arabic.[115] The word order is predicate–subject in verbal and adjectival sentences, and
subject–predicate in nominal and adverbial sentences.[116] The subject can be moved to the beginning
of sentences if it is long and is followed by a resumptive pronoun.[117] Verbs and nouns are negated by
the particle n, but nn is used for adverbial and adjectival sentences. Stress falls on the ultimate or
penultimate syllable, which can be open (CV) or closed (CVC).[118]

Writing

Hieroglyphic writing dates from c. 3000 BC, and is composed of hundreds of symbols. A hieroglyph can
represent a word, a sound, or a silent determinative; and the same symbol can serve different purposes
in different contexts. Hieroglyphs were a formal script, used on stone monuments and in tombs, that
could be as detailed as individual works of art. In day-to-day writing, scribes used a cursive form of
writing, called hieratic, which was quicker and easier. While formal hieroglyphs may be read in rows or
columns in either direction (though typically written from right to left), hieratic was always written from
right to left, usually in horizontal rows. A new form of writing, Demotic, became the prevalent writing
style, and it is this form of writing—along with formal hieroglyphs—that accompany the Greek text on
the Rosetta Stone.[120]

Around the first century AD, the Coptic alphabet started to be used alongside the Demotic script. Coptic
is a modified Greek alphabet with the addition of some Demotic signs.[121] Although formal hieroglyphs
were used in a ceremonial role until the fourth century, towards the end only a small handful of priests
could still read them. As the traditional religious establishments were disbanded, knowledge of
hieroglyphic writing was mostly lost. Attempts to decipher them date to the Byzantine[122] and Islamic
periods in Egypt,[123] but only in the 1820s, after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and years of
research by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion, were hieroglyphs substantially deciphered.
[124]
Literature

Main article: Ancient Egyptian literature

Writing first appeared in association with kingship on labels and tags for items found in royal tombs. It
was primarily an occupation of the scribes, who worked out of the Per Ankh institution or the House of
Life. The latter comprised offices, libraries (called House of Books), laboratories and observatories.[125]
Some of the best-known pieces of ancient Egyptian literature, such as the Pyramid and Coffin Texts,
were written in Classical Egyptian, which continued to be the language of writing until about 1300 BC.
Late Egyptian was spoken from the New Kingdom onward and is represented in Ramesside
administrative documents, love poetry and tales, as well as in Demotic and Coptic texts. During this
period, the tradition of writing had evolved into the tomb autobiography, such as those of Harkhuf and
Weni. The genre known as Sebayt ("instructions") was developed to communicate teachings and
guidance from famous nobles; the Ipuwer papyrus, a poem of lamentations describing natural disasters
and social upheaval, is a famous example.

The Story of Sinuhe, written in Middle Egyptian, might be the classic of Egyptian literature.[126] Also
written at this time was the Westcar Papyrus, a set of stories told to Khufu by his sons relating the
marvels performed by priests.[127] The Instruction of Amenemope is considered a masterpiece of Near
Eastern literature.[128] Towards the end of the New Kingdom, the vernacular language was more often
employed to write popular pieces like the Story of Wenamun and the Instruction of Any. The former tells
the story of a noble who is robbed on his way to buy cedar from Lebanon and of his struggle to return to
Egypt. From about 700 BC, narrative stories and instructions, such as the popular Instructions of
Onchsheshonqy, as well as personal and business documents were written in the demotic script and
phase of Egyptian. Many stories written in demotic during the Greco-Roman period were set in previous
historical eras, when Egypt was an independent nation ruled by great pharaohs such as Ramesses II.
[129]

Most ancient Egyptians were farmers tied to the land. Their dwellings were restricted to immediate
family members, and were constructed of mudbrick designed to remain cool in the heat of the day. Each
home had a kitchen with an open roof, which contained a grindstone for milling grain and a small oven
for baking the bread.[130] Ceramics served as household wares for the storage, preparation, transport,
and consumption of food, drink, and raw materials. Walls were painted white and could be covered with
dyed linen wall hangings. Floors were covered with reed mats, while wooden stools, beds raised from
the floor and individual tables comprised the furniture.[131]

The ancient Egyptians placed a great value on hygiene and appearance. Most bathed in the Nile and
used a pasty soap made from animal fat and chalk. Men shaved their entire bodies for cleanliness;
perfumes and aromatic ointments covered bad odors and soothed skin.[132] Clothing was made from
simple linen sheets that were bleached white, and both men and women of the upper classes wore
wigs, jewelry, and cosmetics. Children went without clothing until maturity, at about age 12, and at this
age males were circumcised and had their heads shaved. Mothers were responsible for taking care of
the children, while the father provided the family's income.[133]

Music and dance were popular entertainments for those who could afford them. Early instruments
included flutes and harps, while instruments similar to trumpets, oboes, and pipes developed later and
became popular. In the New Kingdom, the Egyptians played on bells, cymbals, tambourines, drums, and
imported lutes and lyres from Asia.[134] The sistrum was a rattle-like musical instrument that was
especially important in religious ceremonies.

The ancient Egyptians enjoyed a variety of leisure activities, including games and music. Senet, a board
game where pieces moved according to random chance, was particularly popular from the earliest
times; another similar game was mehen, which had a circular gaming board. "Hounds and Jackals" also
known as 58 holes is another example of board games played in ancient Egypt. The first complete set of
this game was discovered from a Theban tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhat IV that dates to the
13th Dynasty.[136] Juggling and ball games were popular with children, and wrestling is also
documented in a tomb at Beni Hasan.[137] The wealthy members of ancient Egyptian society enjoyed
hunting, fishing, and boating as well.

The excavation of the workers' village of Deir el-Medina has resulted in one of the most thoroughly
documented accounts of community life in the ancient world, which spans almost four hundred years.
There is no comparable site in which the organization, social interactions, and working and living
conditions of a community have been studied in such detail.[138]

Egyptian mythology is the collection of myths from ancient Egypt, which describe the actions of the
Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world around them. The beliefs that these myths express
are an important part of ancient Egyptian religion. Myths appear frequently in Egyptian writings and art,
particularly in short stories and in religious material such as hymns, ritual texts, funerary texts, and
temple decoration. These sources rarely contain a complete account of a myth and often describe only
brief fragments.

Inspired by the cycles of nature, the Egyptians saw time in the present as a series of recurring patterns,
whereas the earliest periods of time were linear. Myths are set in these earliest times, and myth sets the
pattern for the cycles of the present. Present events repeat the events of myth, and in doing so renew
maat, the fundamental order of the universe. Amongst the most important episodes from the mythic
past are the creation myths, in which the gods form the universe out of primordial chaos; the stories of
the reign of the sun god Ra upon the earth; and the Osiris myth, concerning the struggles of the gods
Osiris, Isis, and Horus against the disruptive god Set. Events from the present that might be regarded as
myths include Ra's daily journey through the world and its otherworldly counterpart, the Duat.
Recurring themes in these mythic episodes include the conflict between the upholders of maat and the
forces of disorder, the importance of the pharaoh in maintaining maat, and the continual death and
regeneration of the gods.

The details of these sacred events differ greatly from one text to another and often seem contradictory.
Egyptian myths are primarily metaphorical, translating the essence and behavior of deities into terms
that humans can understand. Each variant of a myth represents a different symbolic perspective,
enriching the Egyptians' understanding of the gods and the world.

Mythology profoundly influenced Egyptian culture. It inspired or influenced many religious rituals and
provided the ideological basis for kingship. Scenes and symbols from myth appeared in art in tombs,
temples, and amulets. In literature, myths or elements of them were used in stories that range from
humor to allegory, demonstrating that the Egyptians adapted mythology to serve a wide variety of
purposes.

The development of Egyptian myth is difficult to trace. Egyptologists must make educated guesses about
its earliest phases, based on written sources that appeared much later.[1] One obvious influence on
myth is the Egyptians' natural surroundings. Each day the sun rose and set, bringing light to the land and
regulating human activity; each year the Nile flooded, renewing the fertility of the soil and allowing the
highly productive farming that sustained Egyptian civilization. Thus the Egyptians saw water and the sun
as symbols of life and thought of time as a series of natural cycles. This orderly pattern was at constant
risk of disruption: unusually low floods resulted in famine, and high floods destroyed crops and
buildings.[2] The hospitable Nile valley was surrounded by harsh desert, populated by peoples the
Egyptians regarded as uncivilized enemies of order.[3] For these reasons, the Egyptians saw their land as
an isolated place of stability, or maat, surrounded and endangered by chaos. These themes—order,
chaos, and renewal—appear repeatedly in Egyptian religious thought.[4]

Another possible source for mythology is ritual. Many rituals make reference to myths and are
sometimes based directly on them.[5] But it is difficult to determine whether a culture's myths
developed before rituals or vice versa.[6] Questions about this relationship between myth and ritual
have spawned much discussion among Egyptologists and scholars of comparative religion in general. In
ancient Egypt, the earliest evidence of religious practices predates written myths.[5] Rituals early in
Egyptian history included only a few motifs from myth. For these reasons, some scholars have argued
that, in Egypt, rituals emerged before myths.[6] But because the early evidence is so sparse, the
question may never be resolved for certain.[5]

In private rituals, which are often called "magical", the myth and the ritual are particularly closely tied.
Many of the myth-like stories that appear in the rituals' texts are not found in other sources. Even the
widespread motif of the goddess Isis rescuing her poisoned son Horus appears only in this type of text.
The Egyptologist David Frankfurter argues that these rituals adapt basic mythic traditions to fit the
specific ritual, creating elaborate new stories (called historiolas) based on myth.[7] In contrast, J. F.
Borghouts says of magical texts that there is "not a shred of evidence that a specific kind of 'unorthodox'
mythology was coined... for this genre."[8]

Much of Egyptian mythology consists of origin myths, explaining the beginnings of various elements of
the world, including human institutions and natural phenomena. Kingship arises among the gods at the
beginning of time and later passed to the human pharaohs; warfare originates when humans begin
fighting each other after the sun god's withdrawal into the sky.[9] Myths also describe the supposed
beginnings of less fundamental traditions. In a minor mythic episode, Horus becomes angry with his
mother Isis and cuts off her head. Isis replaces her lost head with that of a cow. This event explains why
Isis was sometimes depicted with the horns of a cow as part of her headdress.[10]

Some myths may have been inspired by historical events. The unification of Egypt under the pharaohs,
at the end of the Predynastic Period around 3100 BC, made the king the focus of Egyptian religion, and
thus the ideology of kingship became an important part of mythology.[11] In the wake of unification,
gods that were once local patron deities gained national importance, forming new relationships that
linked the local deities into a unified national tradition. Geraldine Pinch suggests that early myths may
have formed from these relationships.[12] Egyptian sources link the mythical strife between the gods
Horus and Set with a conflict between the regions of Upper and Lower Egypt, which may have happened
in the late Predynastic era or in the Early Dynastic Period.[13][Note 1]

After these early times, most changes to mythology developed and adapted preexisting concepts rather
than creating new ones, although there were exceptions.[14] Many scholars have suggested that the
myth of the sun god withdrawing into the sky, leaving humans to fight among themselves, was inspired
by the breakdown of royal authority and national unity at the end of the Old Kingdom (c. 2686 BC – 2181
BC).[15] In the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC), minor myths developed around deities like Yam and
Anat who had been adopted from Canaanite religion. In contrast, during the Greek and Roman eras (332
BC–641 AD), Greco-Roman culture had little influence on Egyptian mythology.[16]

Scholars have difficulty defining which ancient Egyptian beliefs are myths. The basic definition of myth
suggested by the Egyptologist John Baines is "a sacred or culturally central narrative". In Egypt, the
narratives that are central to culture and religion are almost entirely about events among the gods.[17]
Actual narratives about the gods' actions are rare in Egyptian texts, particularly from early periods, and
most references to such events are mere mentions or allusions. Some Egyptologists, like Baines, argue
that narratives complete enough to be called "myths" existed in all periods, but that Egyptian tradition
did not favor writing them down. Others, like Jan Assmann, have said that true myths were rare in Egypt
and may only have emerged partway through its history, developing out of the fragments of narration
that appear in the earliest writings.[18] Recently, however, Vincent Arieh Tobin[19] and Susanne Bickel
have suggested that lengthy narration was not needed in Egyptian mythology because of its complex
and flexible nature.[20] Tobin argues that narrative is even alien to myth, because narratives tend to
form a simple and fixed perspective on the events they describe. If narration is not needed for myth, any
statement that conveys an idea about the nature or actions of a god can be called "mythic".[19

Like myths in many other cultures, Egyptian myths serve to justify human traditions and to address
fundamental questions about the world,[21] such as the nature of disorder and the ultimate fate of the
universe.[20] The Egyptians explained these profound issues through statements about the gods.[20]

Egyptian deities represent natural phenomena, from physical objects like the earth or the sun to
abstract forces like knowledge and creativity. The actions and interactions of the gods, the Egyptians
believed, govern the behavior of all of these forces and elements.[22] For the most part, the Egyptians
did not describe these mysterious processes in explicit theological writings. Instead, the relationships
and interactions of the gods illustrated such processes implicitly.[23]

Most of Egypt's gods, including many of the major ones, do not have significant roles in any mythic
narratives,[24] although their nature and relationships with other deities are often established in lists or
bare statements without narration.[25] For the gods who are deeply involved in narratives, mythic
events are very important expressions of their roles in the cosmos. Therefore, if only narratives are
myths, mythology is a major element in Egyptian religious understanding, but not as essential as it is in
many other cultures.[26]

The true realm of the gods is mysterious and inaccessible to humans. Mythological stories use
symbolism to make the events in this realm comprehensible.[28] Not every detail of a mythic account
has symbolic significance. Some images and incidents, even in religious texts, are meant simply as visual
or dramatic embellishments of broader, more meaningful myths.[29][30]

Few complete stories appear in Egyptian mythological sources. These sources often contain nothing
more than allusions to the events to which they relate, and texts that contain actual narratives tell only
portions of a larger story. Thus, for any given myth the Egyptians may have had only the general outlines
of a story, from which fragments describing particular incidents were drawn.[24] Moreover, the gods are
not well-defined characters, and the motivations for their sometimes inconsistent actions are rarely
given.[31] Egyptian myths are not, therefore, fully developed tales. Their importance lay in their
underlying meaning, not their characteristics as stories. Instead of coalescing into lengthy, fixed
narratives, they remained highly flexible and non-dogmatic.[28]
So flexible were Egyptian myths that they could seemingly conflict with each other. Many descriptions of
the creation of the world and the movements of the sun occur in Egyptian texts, some very different
from each other.[32] The relationships between gods were fluid, so that, for instance, the goddess
Hathor could be called the mother, wife, or daughter of the sun god Ra.[33] Separate deities could even
be syncretized, or linked, as a single being. Thus the creator god Atum was combined with Ra to form
Ra-Atum.[34]

One commonly suggested reason for inconsistencies in myth is that religious ideas differed over time
and in different regions.[35] The local cults of various deities developed theologies centered on their
own patron gods.[36] As the influence of different cults shifted, some mythological systems attained
national dominance. In the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BC) the most important of these systems was
the cults of Ra and Atum, centered at Heliopolis. They formed a mythical family, the Ennead, that was
said to have created the world. It included the most important deities of the time but gave primacy to
Atum and Ra.[37] The Egyptians also overlaid old religious ideas with new ones. For instance, the god
Ptah, whose cult was centered at Memphis, was also said to be the creator of the world. Ptah's creation
myth incorporates older myths by saying that it is the Ennead who carry out Ptah's creative commands.
[38] Thus, the myth makes Ptah older and greater than the Ennead. Many scholars have seen this myth
as a political attempt to assert the superiority of Memphis' god over those of Heliopolis.[39] By
combining concepts in this way, the Egyptians produced an immensely complicated set of deities and
myths.[40]

Egyptologists in the early twentieth century thought that politically motivated changes like these were
the principal reason for the contradictory imagery in Egyptian myth. However, in the 1940s, Henri
Frankfort, realizing the symbolic nature of Egyptian mythology, argued that apparently contradictory
ideas are part of the "multiplicity of approaches" that the Egyptians used to understand the divine
realm. Frankfort's arguments are the basis for much of the more recent analysis of Egyptian beliefs.[41]
Political changes affected Egyptian beliefs, but the ideas that emerged through those changes also have
deeper meaning. Multiple versions of the same myth express different aspects of the same
phenomenon; different gods that behave in a similar way reflect the close connections between natural
forces. The varying symbols of Egyptian mythology express ideas too complex to be seen through a
single lens.[28]

The sources that are available range from solemn hymns to entertaining stories. Without a single,
canonical version of any myth, the Egyptians adapted the broad traditions of myth to fit the varied
purposes of their writings.[42] Most Egyptians were illiterate and may therefore have had an elaborate
oral tradition that transmitted myths through spoken storytelling. Susanne Bickel suggests that the
existence of this tradition helps explain why many texts related to myth give little detail: the myths were
already known to every Egyptian.[43] Very little evidence of this oral tradition has survived, and modern
knowledge of Egyptian myths is drawn from written and pictorial sources. Only a small proportion of
these sources has survived to the present, so much of the mythological information that was once
written down has been lost.[25] This information is not equally abundant in all periods, so the beliefs
that Egyptians held in some eras of their history are more poorly understood than the beliefs in better
documented times.[44]

Religious sources

Edit

Many gods appear in artwork from the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt's history (c. 3100–2686 BC), but
little about the gods' actions can be gleaned from these sources because they include minimal writing.
The Egyptians began using writing more extensively in the Old Kingdom, in which appeared the first
major source of Egyptian mythology: the Pyramid Texts. These texts are a collection of several hundred
incantations inscribed in the interiors of pyramids beginning in the 24th century BC. They were the first
Egyptian funerary texts, intended to ensure that the kings buried in the pyramid would pass safely
through the afterlife. Many of the incantations allude to myths related to the afterlife, including creation
myths and the myth of Osiris. Many of the texts are likely much older than their first known written
copies, and they therefore provide clues about the early stages of Egyptian religious belief.[45]

During the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181–2055 BC), the Pyramid Texts developed into the Coffin
Texts, which contain similar material and were available to non-royals. Succeeding funerary texts, like
the Book of the Dead in the New Kingdom and the Books of Breathing from the Late Period (664–323
BC) and after, developed out of these earlier collections. The New Kingdom also saw the development of
another type of funerary text, containing detailed and cohesive descriptions of the nocturnal journey of
the sun god. Texts of this type include the Amduat, the Book of Gates, and the Book of Caverns.[42]

Temples, whose surviving remains date mostly from the New Kingdom and later, are another important
source of myth. Many temples had a per-ankh, or temple library, storing papyri for rituals and other
uses. Some of these papyri contain hymns, which, in praising a god for its actions, often refer to the
myths that define those actions. Other temple papyri describe rituals, many of which are based partly on
myth.[46] Scattered remnants of these papyrus collections have survived to the present. It is possible
that the collections included more systematic records of myths, but no evidence of such texts has
survived.[25] Mythological texts and illustrations, similar to those on temple papyri, also appear in the
decoration of the temple buildings. The elaborately decorated and well-preserved temples of the
Ptolemaic and Roman periods (305 BC–AD 380) are an especially rich source of myth.[47]

The Egyptians also performed rituals for personal goals such as protection from or healing of illness.
These rituals are often called "magical" rather than religious, but they were believed to work on the
same principles as temple ceremonies, evoking mythical events as the basis for the ritual.[48]
Information from religious sources is limited by a system of traditional restrictions on what they could
describe and depict. The murder of the god Osiris, for instance, is never explicitly described in Egyptian
writings.[25] The Egyptians believed that words and images could affect reality, so they avoided the risk
of making such negative events real.[49] The conventions of Egyptian art were also poorly suited for
portraying whole narratives, so most myth-related artwork consists of sparse individual scenes.[25]

Other sources

Edit

References to myth also appear in non-religious Egyptian literature, beginning in the Middle Kingdom.
Many of these references are mere allusions to mythic motifs, but several stories are based entirely on
mythic narratives. These more direct renderings of myth are particularly common in the Late and Greco-
Roman periods when, according to scholars such as Heike Sternberg, Egyptian myths reached their most
fully developed state.[50]

The attitudes toward myth in nonreligious Egyptian texts vary greatly. Some stories resemble the
narratives from magical texts, while others are more clearly meant as entertainment and even contain
humorous episodes.[50]

A final source of Egyptian myth is the writings of Greek and Roman writers like Herodotus and Diodorus
Siculus, who described Egyptian religion in the last centuries of its existence. Prominent among these
writers is Plutarch, whose work De Iside et Osiride contains, among other things, the longest ancient
account of the myth of Osiris.[51] These authors' knowledge of Egyptian religion was limited because
they were excluded from many religious practices, and their statements about Egyptian beliefs are
affected by their biases about Egypt's culture.[25]

Maat

Edit

Main article: Maat

The Egyptian word written m3ˁt, often rendered maat or ma'at, refers to the fundamental order of the
universe in Egyptian belief. Established at the creation of the world, maat distinguishes the world from
the chaos that preceded and surrounds it. Maat encompasses both the proper behavior of humans and
the normal functioning of the forces of nature, both of which make life and happiness possible. Because
the actions of the gods govern natural forces and myths express those actions, Egyptian mythology
represents the proper functioning of the world and the sustenance of life itself.[52]
To the Egyptians, the most important human maintainer of maat is the pharaoh. In myth the pharaoh is
the son of a variety of deities. As such, he is their designated representative, obligated to maintain order
in human society just as they do in nature, and to continue the rituals that sustain them and their
activities.[53]

Shape of the world

In Egyptian belief, the disorder that predates the ordered world exists beyond the world as an infinite
expanse of formless water, personified by the god Nun. The earth, personified by the god Geb, is a flat
piece of land over which arches the sky, usually represented by the goddess Nut. The two are separated
by the personification of air, Shu. The sun god Ra is said to travel through the sky, across the body of
Nut, enlivening the world with his light. At night Ra passes beyond the western horizon into the Duat, a
mysterious region that borders the formlessness of Nun. At dawn he emerges from the Duat in the
eastern horizon.[54]

The nature of the sky and the location of the Duat are uncertain. Egyptian texts variously describe the
nighttime sun as traveling beneath the earth and within the body of Nut. The Egyptologist James P. Allen
believes that these explanations of the sun's movements are dissimilar but coexisting ideas. In Allen's
view, Nut represents the visible surface of the waters of Nun, with the stars floating on this surface. The
sun, therefore, sails across the water in a circle, each night passing beyond the horizon to reach the skies
that arch beneath the inverted land of the Duat.[55] Leonard H. Lesko, however, believes that the
Egyptians saw the sky as a solid canopy and described the sun as traveling through the Duat above the
surface of the sky, from west to east, during the night.[56] Joanne Conman, modifying Lesko's model,
argues that this solid sky is a moving, concave dome overarching a deeply convex earth. The sun and the
stars move along with this dome, and their passage below the horizon is simply their movement over
areas of the earth that the Egyptians could not see. These regions would then be the Duat.[57]

The fertile lands of the Nile Valley (Upper Egypt) and Delta (Lower Egypt) lie at the center of the world in
Egyptian cosmology. Outside them are the infertile deserts, which are associated with the chaos that lies
beyond the world.[58] Somewhere beyond them is the horizon, the akhet. There, two mountains, in the
east and the west, mark the places where the sun enters and exits the Duat.[59]

Foreign nations are associated with the hostile deserts in Egyptian ideology. Foreign people, likewise,
are generally lumped in with the "nine bows", people who threaten pharaonic rule and the stability of
maat, although peoples allied with or subject to Egypt may be viewed more positively.[60] For these
reasons, events in Egyptian mythology rarely take place in foreign lands. While some stories pertain to
the sky or the Duat, Egypt itself is usually the scene for the actions of the gods. Often, even the myths
set in Egypt seem to take place on a plane of existence separate from that inhabited by living humans,
although in other stories, humans and gods interact. In either case, the Egyptian gods are deeply tied to
their home land.[58]

Time

Edit

The Egyptians' vision of time was influenced by their environment. Each day the sun rose and set,
bringing light to the land and regulating human activity; each year the Nile flooded, renewing the
fertility of the soil and allowing the highly productive agriculture that sustained Egyptian civilization.
These periodic events inspired the Egyptians to see all of time as a series of recurring patterns regulated
by maat, renewing the gods and the universe.[2] Although the Egyptians recognized that different
historical eras differ in their particulars, mythic patterns dominate the Egyptian perception of history.
[61]

Many Egyptian stories about the gods are characterized as having taken place in a primeval time when
the gods were manifest on the earth and ruled over it. After this time, the Egyptians believed, authority
on earth passed to human pharaohs.[62] This primeval era seems to predate the start of the sun's
journey and the recurring patterns of the present world. At the other end of time is the end of the cycles
and the dissolution of the world. Because these distant periods lend themselves to linear narrative
better than the cycles of the present, John Baines sees them as the only periods in which true myths
take place.[63] Yet, to some extent, the cyclical aspect of time was present in the mythic past as well.
Egyptians saw even stories that were set in that time as being perpetually true. The myths were made
real every time the events to which they were related occurred. These events were celebrated with
rituals, which often evoked myths.[64] Ritual allowed time to periodically return to the mythic past and
renew life in the universe.[65]

Major myths

Some of the most important categories of myths are described below. Because of the fragmentary
nature of Egyptian myths, there is little indication in Egyptian sources of a chronological sequence of
mythical events.[66] Nevertheless, the categories are arranged in a very loose chronological order.

Creation

Edit

Main article: Ancient Egyptian creation myths

Among the most important myths were those describing the creation of the world. The Egyptians
developed many accounts of the creation, which differ greatly in the events they describe. In particular,
the deities credited with creating the world vary in each account. This difference partly reflects the
desire of Egypt's cities and priesthoods to exalt their own patron gods by attributing creation to them.
Yet the differing accounts were not regarded as contradictory; instead, the Egyptians saw the creation
process as having many aspects and involving many divine forces.[67]

One common feature of the myths is the emergence of the world from the waters of chaos that
surround it. This event represents the establishment of maat and the origin of life. One fragmentary
tradition centers on the eight gods of the Ogdoad, who represent the characteristics of the primeval
water itself. Their actions give rise to the sun (represented in creation myths by various gods, especially
Ra), whose birth forms a space of light and dryness within the dark water.[68] The sun rises from the
first mound of dry land, another common motif in the creation myths, which was likely inspired by the
sight of mounds of earth emerging as the Nile flood receded. With the emergence of the sun god, the
establisher of maat, the world has its first ruler.[69] Accounts from the first millennium BC focus on the
actions of the creator god in subduing the forces of chaos that threaten the newly ordered world.[14]

Atum, a god closely connected with the sun and the primeval mound, is the focus of a creation myth
dating back at least to the Old Kingdom. Atum, who incorporates all the elements of the world, exists
within the waters as a potential being. At the time of creation he emerges to produce other gods,
resulting in a set of nine deities, the Ennead, which includes Geb, Nut, and other key elements of the
world. The Ennead can by extension stand for all the gods, so its creation represents the differentiation
of Atum's unified potential being into the multiplicity of elements present within the world.[70]

Over time, the Egyptians developed more abstract perspectives on the creation process. By the time of
the Coffin Texts, they described the formation of the world as the realization of a concept first
developed within the mind of the creator god. The force of heka, or magic, which links things in the
divine realm and things in the physical world, is the power that links the creator's original concept with
its physical realization. Heka itself can be personified as a god, but this intellectual process of creation is
not associated with that god alone. An inscription from the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1070–664 BC),
whose text may be much older, describes the process in detail and attributes it to the god Ptah, whose
close association with craftsmen makes him a suitable deity to give a physical form to the original
creative vision. Hymns from the New Kingdom describe the god Amun, a mysterious power that lies
behind even the other gods, as the ultimate source of this creative vision.[71]

The origin of humans is not a major feature of Egyptian creation stories. In some texts the first humans
spring from tears that Ra-Atum or his feminine aspect, the Eye of Ra, sheds in a moment of weakness
and distress, foreshadowing humans' flawed nature and sorrowful lives. Others say humans are molded
from clay by the god Khnum. But overall, the focus of the creation myths is the establishment of cosmic
order rather than the special place of humans within it.[72]
The reign of the sun god

Edit

In the period of the mythic past after the creation, Ra dwells on earth as king of the gods and of humans.
This period is the closest thing to a golden age in Egyptian tradition, the period of stability that the
Egyptians constantly sought to evoke and imitate. Yet the stories about Ra's reign focus on conflicts
between him and forces that disrupt his rule, reflecting the king's role in Egyptian ideology as enforcer
of maat.[73]

In an episode known in different versions from temple texts, some of the gods defy Ra's authority, and
he destroys them with the help and advice of other gods like Thoth and Horus the Elder.[74][Note 2] At
one point he faces dissent even from an extension of himself, the Eye of Ra, which can act
independently of him in the form of a goddess. The Eye goddess becomes angry with Ra and runs away
from him, wandering wild and dangerous in the lands outside Egypt. Weakened by her absence, Ra
sends one of the other gods—Shu, Thoth, or Anhur, in different accounts—to retrieve her, by force or
persuasion. Because the Eye of Ra is associated with the star Sothis, whose heliacal rising signaled the
start of the Nile flood, the return of the Eye goddess to Egypt coincides with the life-giving inundation.
Upon her return, the goddess becomes the consort of Ra or of the god who has retrieved her. Her
pacification restores order and renews life.[76]

As Ra grows older and weaker, humanity, too, turns against him. In an episode often called "The
Destruction of Mankind", related in The Book of the Heavenly Cow, Ra discovers that humanity is
plotting rebellion against him and sends his Eye to punish them. She slays many people, but Ra
apparently decides that he does not want her to destroy all of humanity. He has beer dyed red to
resemble blood and spreads it over the field. The Eye goddess drinks the beer, becomes drunk, and
ceases her rampage. Ra then withdraws into the sky, weary of ruling on earth, and begins his daily
journey through the heavens and the Duat. The surviving humans are dismayed, and they attack the
people among them who plotted against Ra. This event is the origin of warfare, death, and humans'
constant struggle to protect maat from the destructive actions of other people.[77]

The Book of the Heavenly Cow, the results of the destruction of mankind seem to mark the end of the
direct reign of the gods and of the linear time of myth. The beginning of Ra's journey is the beginning of
the cyclical time of the present.[63] Yet in other sources, mythic time continues after this change.
Egyptian accounts give sequences of divine rulers who take the place of the sun god as king on earth,
each reigning for many thousands of years.[78] Although accounts differ as to which gods reigned and in
what order, the succession from Ra-Atum to his descendants Shu and Geb—in which the kingship passes
to the male in each generation of the Ennead—is common. Both of them face revolts that parallel those
in the reign of the sun god, but the revolt that receives the most attention in Egyptian sources is the one
in the reign of Geb's heir Osiris.[79]
Osiris myth

Edit

Main article: Osiris myth

The collection of episodes surrounding Osiris' death and succession is the most elaborate of all Egyptian
myths, and it had the most widespread influence in Egyptian culture.[80] In the first portion of the myth,
Osiris, who is associated with both fertility and kingship, is killed and his position usurped by his brother
Set. In some versions of the myth, Osiris is actually dismembered and the pieces of his corpse scattered
across Egypt. Osiris' sister and wife, Isis, finds her husband's body and restores it to wholeness.[81] She
is assisted by funerary deities such as Nephthys and Anubis, and the process of Osiris' restoration
reflects Egyptian traditions of embalming and burial. Isis then briefly revives Osiris to conceive an heir
with him: the god Horus.[82]

The collection of episodes surrounding Osiris' death and succession is the most elaborate of all Egyptian
myths, and it had the most widespread influence in Egyptian culture.[80] In the first portion of the myth,
Osiris, who is associated with both fertility and kingship, is killed and his position usurped by his brother
Set. In some versions of the myth, Osiris is actually dismembered and the pieces of his corpse scattered
across Egypt. Osiris' sister and wife, Isis, finds her husband's body and restores it to wholeness.[81] She
is assisted by funerary deities such as Nephthys and Anubis, and the process of Osiris' restoration
reflects Egyptian traditions of embalming and burial. Isis then briefly revives Osiris to conceive an heir
with him: the god Horus.[82

The next portion of the myth concerns Horus' birth and childhood. Isis gives birth to and raises her son
in secluded places, hidden from the menace of Set. The episodes in this phase of the myth concern Isis'
efforts to protect her son from Set or other hostile beings, or to heal him from sickness or injury. In
these episodes Isis is the epitome of maternal devotion and a powerful practitioner of healing magic.
[83]

In the third phase of the story, Horus competes with Set for the kingship. Their struggle encompasses a
great number of separate episodes and ranges in character from violent conflict to a legal judgment by
the assembled gods.[84] In one important episode, Set tears out one or both of Horus' eyes, which are
later restored by the healing efforts of Thoth or Hathor. For this reason, the Eye of Horus is a prominent
symbol of life and well-being in Egyptian iconography. Because Horus is a sky god, with one eye equated
with the sun and the other with the moon, the destruction and restoration of the single eye explains
why the moon is less bright than the sun.[85]
Texts present two different resolutions for the divine contest: one in which Egypt is divided between the
two claimants, and another in which Horus becomes sole ruler. In the latter version, the ascension of
Horus, Osiris' rightful heir, symbolizes the reestablishment of maat after the unrighteous rule of Set.
With order restored, Horus can perform the funerary rites for his father that are his duty as son and
heir. Through this service Osiris is given new life in the Duat, whose ruler he becomes. The relationship
between Osiris as king of the dead and Horus as king of the living stands for the relationship between
every king and his deceased predecessors. Osiris, meanwhile, represents the regeneration of life. On
earth he is credited with the annual growth of crops, and in the Duat he is involved in the rebirth of the
sun and of deceased human souls.[86]

Although Horus to some extent represents any living pharaoh, he is not the end of the lineage of ruling
gods. He is succeeded first by gods and then by spirits that represent dim memories of Egypt's
Predynastic rulers, the souls of Nekhen and Pe. They link the entirely mythical rulers to the final part of
the sequence, the lineage of Egypt's historical kings.[62]

Birth of the royal child

Edit

Several disparate Egyptian texts address a similar theme: the birth of a divinely fathered child who is
heir to the kingship. The earliest known appearance of such a story does not appear to be a myth but an
entertaining folktale, found in the Middle Kingdom Westcar Papyrus, about the birth of the first three
kings of Egypt's Fifth Dynasty. In that story, the three kings are the offspring of Ra and a human woman.
The same theme appears in a firmly religious context in the New Kingdom, when the rulers Hatshepsut,
Amenhotep III, and Ramesses II depicted in temple reliefs their own conception and birth, in which the
god Amun is the father and the historical queen the mother. By stating that the king originated among
the gods and was deliberately created by the most important god of the period, the story gives a
mythical background to the king's coronation, which appears alongside the birth story. The divine
connection legitimizes the king's rule and provides a rationale for his role as intercessor between gods
and humans.[87]

Similar scenes appear in many post-New Kingdom temples, but this time the events they depict involve
the gods alone. In this period, most temples were dedicated to a mythical family of deities, usually a
father, mother, and son. In these versions of the story, the birth is that of the son in each triad.[88] Each
of these child gods is the heir to the throne, who will restore stability to the country. This shift in focus
from the human king to the gods who are associated with him reflects a decline in the status of the
pharaoh in the late stages of Egyptian history.[87]

The journey of the sun

Edit

Ra's movements through the sky and the Duat are not fully narrated in Egyptian sources,[89] although
funerary texts like the Amduat, Book of Gates, and Book of Caverns relate the nighttime half of the
journey in sequences of vignettes.[90] This journey is key to Ra's nature and to the sustenance of all life.
[30]

In traveling across the sky, Ra brings light to the earth, sustaining all things that live there. He reaches
the peak of his strength at noon and then ages and weakens as he moves toward sunset. In the evening,
Ra takes the form of Atum, the creator god, oldest of all things in the world. According to early Egyptian
texts, at the end of the day he spits out all the other deities, whom he devoured at sunrise. Here they
represent the stars, and the story explains why the stars are visible at night and seemingly absent during
the day.[91]

At sunset Ra passes through the akhet, the horizon, in the west. At times the horizon is described as a
gate or door that leads to the Duat. At others, the sky goddess Nut is said to swallow the sun god, so
that his journey through the Duat is likened to a journey through her body.[92] In funerary texts, the
Duat and the deities in it are portrayed in elaborate, detailed, and widely varying imagery. These images
are symbolic of the awesome and enigmatic nature of the Duat, where both the gods and the dead are
renewed by contact with the original powers of creation. Indeed, although Egyptian texts avoid saying it
explicitly, Ra's entry into the Duat is seen as his death.[93]

Certain themes appear repeatedly in depictions of the journey. Ra overcomes numerous obstacles in his
course, representative of the effort necessary to maintain maat. The greatest challenge is the opposition
of Apep, a serpent god who represents the destructive aspect of disorder, and who threatens to destroy
the sun god and plunge creation into chaos.[95] In many of the texts, Ra overcomes these obstacles with
the assistance of other deities who travel with him; they stand for various powers that are necessary to
uphold Ra's authority.[96] In his passage Ra also brings light to the Duat, enlivening the blessed dead
who dwell there. In contrast, his enemies—people who have undermined maat—are tormented and
thrown into dark pits or lakes of fire.[97]

The key event in the journey is the meeting of Ra and Osiris. In the New Kingdom, this event developed
into a complex symbol of the Egyptian conception of life and time. Osiris, relegated to the Duat, is like a
mummified body within its tomb. Ra, endlessly moving, is like the ba, or soul, of a deceased human,
which may travel during the day but must return to its body each night. When Ra and Osiris meet, they
merge into a single being. Their pairing reflects the Egyptian vision of time as a continuous repeating
pattern, with one member (Osiris) being always static and the other (Ra) living in a constant cycle. Once
he has united with Osiris' regenerative power, Ra continues on his journey with renewed vitality.[65]
This renewal makes possible Ra's emergence at dawn, which is seen as the rebirth of the sun—
expressed by a metaphor in which Nut gives birth to Ra after she has swallowed him—and the repetition
of the first sunrise at the moment of creation. At this moment, the rising sun god swallows the stars
once more, absorbing their power.[91] In this revitalized state, Ra is depicted as a child or as the scarab
beetle god Khepri, both of which represent rebirth in Egyptian iconography.[98]

End of the universe

End of the universe

Edit

Egyptian texts typically treat the dissolution of the world as a possibility to be avoided, and for that
reason they do not often describe it in detail. However, many texts allude to the idea that the world,
after countless cycles of renewal, is destined to end. This end is described in a passage in the Coffin
Texts and a more explicit one in the Book of the Dead, in which Atum says that he will one day dissolve
the ordered world and return to his primeval, inert state within the waters of chaos. All things other
than the creator will cease to exist, except Osiris, who will survive along with him.[99] Details about this
eschatological prospect are left unclear, including the fate of the dead who are associated with Osiris.
[100] Yet with the creator god and the god of renewal together in the waters that gave rise to the
orderly world, there is the potential for a new creation to arise in the same manner as the old.[101]

Because the Egyptians rarely described theological ideas explicitly, the implicit ideas of mythology
formed much of the basis for Egyptian religion. The purpose of Egyptian religion was the maintenance of
maat, and the concepts that myths express were believed to be essential to maat. The rituals of Egyptian
religion were meant to make the mythic events, and the concepts they represented, real once more,
thereby renewing maat.[64] The rituals were believed to achieve this effect through the force of heka,
the same connection between the physical and divine realms that enabled the original creation.[103]

For this reason, Egyptian rituals often included actions that symbolized mythical events.[64] Temple rites
included the destruction of models representing malign gods like Set or Apophis, private magical spells
called upon Isis to heal the sick as she did for Horus,[104] and funerary rites such as the Opening of the
mouth ceremony[105] and ritual offerings to the dead evoked the myth of Osiris' resurrection.[106] Yet
rituals rarely, if ever, involved dramatic reenactments of myths. There are borderline cases, like a
ceremony alluding to the Osiris myth in which two women took on the roles of Isis and Nephthys, but
scholars disagree about whether these performances formed sequences of events.[107] Much of
Egyptian ritual was focused on more basic activities like giving offerings to the gods, with mythic themes
serving as ideological background rather than as the focus of a rite.[108] Nevertheless, myth and ritual
strongly influenced each other. Myths could inspire rituals, like the ceremony with Isis and Nephthys;
and rituals that did not originally have a mythic meaning could be reinterpreted as having one, as in the
case of offering ceremonies, in which food and other items given to the gods or the dead were equated
with the Eye of Horus.[109]

Kingship was a key element of Egyptian religion, through the king's role as link between humanity and
the gods. Myths explain the background for this connection between royalty and divinity. The myths
about the Ennead establish the king as heir to the lineage of rulers reaching back to the creator; the
myth of divine birth states that the king is the son and heir of a god; and the myths about Osiris and
Horus emphasize that rightful succession to the throne is essential to the maintenance of maat. Thus,
mythology provided the rationale for the very nature of Egyptian government.[110]

Illustrations of gods and mythical events appear extensively alongside religious writing in tombs,
temples, and funerary texts.[42] Mythological scenes in Egyptian artwork are rarely placed in sequence
as a narrative, but individual scenes, particularly depicting the resurrection of Osiris, do sometimes
appear in religious artwork.[111]

Allusions to myth were very widespread in Egyptian art and architecture. In temple design, the central
path of the temple axis was likened to the sun god's path across the sky, and the sanctuary at the end of
the path represented the place of creation from which he rose. Temple decoration was filled with solar
emblems that underscored this relationship. Similarly, the corridors of tombs were linked with the god's
journey through the Duat, and the burial chamber with the tomb of Osiris.[112] The pyramid, the best-
known of all Egyptian architectural forms, may have been inspired by mythic symbolism, for it
represented the mound of creation and the original sunrise, appropriate for a monument intended to
assure the owner's rebirth after death.[113] Symbols in Egyptian tradition were frequently
reinterpreted, so that the meanings of mythical symbols could change and multiply over time like the
myths themselves.[114]

More ordinary works of art were also designed to evoke mythic themes, like the amulets that Egyptians
commonly wore to invoke divine powers. The Eye of Horus, for instance, was a very common shape for
protective amulets because it represented Horus' well-being after the restoration of his lost eye.[115]
Scarab-shaped amulets symbolized the regeneration of life, referring to the god Khepri, the form that
the sun god was said to take at dawn.[116]

In literature

Edit
Themes and motifs from mythology appear frequently in Egyptian literature, even outside of religious
writings. An early instruction text, the "Teaching for King Merykara" from the Middle Kingdom, contains
a brief reference to a myth of some kind, possibly the Destruction of Mankind; the earliest known
Egyptian short story, "Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor", incorporates ideas about the gods and the
eventual dissolution of the world into a story set in the past. Some later stories take much of their plot
from mythical events: "Tale of the Two Brothers" adapts parts of the Osiris myth into a fantastic story
about ordinary people, and "The Blinding of Truth by Falsehood" transforms the conflict between Horus
and Set into an allegory.[117]

A fragment of a text about the actions of Horus and Set dates to the Middle Kingdom, suggesting that
stories about the gods arose in that era. Several texts of this type are known from the New Kingdom,
and many more were written in the Late and Greco-Roman periods. Although these texts are more
clearly derived from myth than those mentioned above, they still adapt the myths for non-religious
purposes. "The Contendings of Horus and Seth", from the New Kingdom, tells the story of the conflict
between the two gods, often with a humorous and seemingly irreverent tone. The Roman-era "Myth of
the Eye of the Sun" incorporates fables into a framing story taken from myth. The goals of written fiction
could also affect the narratives in magical texts, as with the New Kingdom story "Isis, the Rich Woman's
Son, and the Fisherman's Wife", which conveys a moral message unconnected to its magical purpose.
The variety of ways that these stories treat mythology demonstrates the wide range of purposes that
myth could serve in Egyptian culture.[118

Cuisine

Main article: Ancient Egyptian cuisine

Egyptian cuisine remained remarkably stable over time; indeed, the cuisine of modern Egypt retains
some striking similarities to the cuisine of the ancients. The staple diet consisted of bread and beer,
supplemented with vegetables such as onions and garlic, and fruit such as dates and figs. Wine and meat
were enjoyed by all on feast days while the upper classes indulged on a more regular basis. Fish, meat,
and fowl could be salted or dried, and could be cooked in stews or roasted on a grill.[139]

Architecture

Main article: Ancient Egyptian architecture

The architecture of ancient Egypt includes some of the most famous structures in the world: the Great
Pyramids of Giza and the temples at Thebes. Building projects were organized and funded by the state
for religious and commemorative purposes, but also to reinforce the wide-ranging power of the
pharaoh. The ancient Egyptians were skilled builders; using only simple but effective tools and sighting
instruments, architects could build large stone structures with great accuracy and precision that is still
envied today.[140]

The domestic dwellings of elite and ordinary Egyptians alike were constructed from perishable materials
such as mudbricks and wood, and have not survived. Peasants lived in simple homes, while the palaces
of the elite and the pharaoh were more elaborate structures. A few surviving New Kingdom palaces,
such as those in Malkata and Amarna, show richly decorated walls and floors with scenes of people,
birds, water pools, deities and geometric designs.[141] Important structures such as temples and tombs
that were intended to last forever were constructed of stone instead of mudbricks. The architectural
elements used in the world's first large-scale stone building, Djoser's mortuary complex, include post
and lintel supports in the papyrus and lotus motif.

The earliest preserved ancient Egyptian temples, such as those at Giza, consist of single, enclosed halls
with roof slabs supported by columns. In the New Kingdom, architects added the pylon, the open
courtyard, and the enclosed hypostyle hall to the front of the temple's sanctuary, a style that was
standard until the Greco-Roman period.[142] The earliest and most popular tomb architecture in the
Old Kingdom was the mastaba, a flat-roofed rectangular structure of mudbrick or stone built over an
underground burial chamber. The step pyramid of Djoser is a series of stone mastabas stacked on top of
each other. Pyramids were built during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but most later rulers abandoned
them in favor of less conspicuous rock-cut tombs.[143] The use of the pyramid form continued in private
tomb chapels of the New Kingdom and in the royal pyramids of Nubia.[144]

Beliefs in the divine and in the afterlife were ingrained in ancient Egyptian civilization from its inception;
pharaonic rule was based on the divine right of kings. The Egyptian pantheon was populated by gods
who had supernatural powers and were called on for help or protection. However, the gods were not
always viewed as benevolent, and Egyptians believed they had to be appeased with offerings and
prayers. The structure of this pantheon changed continually as new deities were promoted in the
hierarchy, but priests made no effort to organize the diverse and sometimes conflicting myths and
stories into a coherent system.[154] These various conceptions of divinity were not considered
contradictory but rather layers in the multiple facets of reality.[155]

Gods were worshiped in cult temples administered by priests acting on the king's behalf. At the center
of the temple was the cult statue in a shrine. Temples were not places of public worship or
congregation, and only on select feast days and celebrations was a shrine carrying the statue of the god
brought out for public worship. Normally, the god's domain was sealed off from the outside world and
was only accessible to temple officials. Common citizens could worship private statues in their homes,
and amulets offered protection against the forces of chaos.[156] After the New Kingdom, the pharaoh's
role as a spiritual intermediary was de-emphasized as religious customs shifted to direct worship of the
gods. As a result, priests developed a system of oracles to communicate the will of the gods directly to
the people.[157]

The Egyptians believed that every human being was composed of physical and spiritual parts or aspects.
In addition to the body, each person had a šwt (shadow), a ba (personality or soul), a ka (life-force), and
a name.[158] The heart, rather than the brain, was considered the seat of thoughts and emotions. After
death, the spiritual aspects were released from the body and could move at will, but they required the
physical remains (or a substitute, such as a statue) as a permanent home. The ultimate goal of the
deceased was to rejoin his ka and ba and become one of the "blessed dead", living on as an akh, or
"effective one". For this to happen, the deceased had to be judged worthy in a trial, in which the heart
was weighed against a "feather of truth." If deemed worthy, the deceased could continue their
existence on earth in spiritual form.[159] If they were not deemed worthy, their heart was eaten by
Ammit the Devourer and they were erased from the Universe.

Burial customs

The ancient Egyptians maintained an elaborate set of burial customs that they believed were necessary
to ensure immortality after death. These customs involved preserving the body by mummification,
performing burial ceremonies, and interring with the body goods the deceased would use in the
afterlife.[149] Before the Old Kingdom, bodies buried in desert pits were naturally preserved by
desiccation. The arid, desert conditions were a boon throughout the history of ancient Egypt for burials
of the poor, who could not afford the elaborate burial preparations available to the elite. Wealthier
Egyptians began to bury their dead in stone tombs and use artificial mummification, which involved
removing the internal organs, wrapping the body in linen, and burying it in a rectangular stone
sarcophagus or wooden coffin. Beginning in the Fourth Dynasty, some parts were preserved separately
in canopic jars.[160]

By the New Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had perfected the art of mummification; the best technique
took 70 days and involved removing the internal organs, removing the brain through the nose, and
desiccating the body in a mixture of salts called natron. The body was then wrapped in linen with
protective amulets inserted between layers and placed in a decorated anthropoid coffin. Mummies of
the Late Period were also placed in painted cartonnage mummy cases. Actual preservation practices
declined during the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, while greater emphasis was placed on the outer
appearance of the mummy, which was decorated.[161]
Wealthy Egyptians were buried with larger quantities of luxury items, but all burials, regardless of social
status, included goods for the deceased. Funerary texts were often included in the grave, and, beginning
in the New Kingdom, so were shabti statues that were believed to perform manual labor for them in the
afterlife.[162] Rituals in which the deceased was magically re-animated accompanied burials. After
burial, living relatives were expected to occasionally bring food to the tomb and recite prayers on behalf
of the deceased.[163]

The ancient Egyptian military was responsible for defending Egypt against foreign invasion, and for
maintaining Egypt's domination in the ancient Near East. The military protected mining expeditions to
the Sinai during the Old Kingdom and fought civil wars during the First and Second Intermediate Periods.
The military was responsible for maintaining fortifications along important trade routes, such as those
found at the city of Buhen on the way to Nubia. Forts also were constructed to serve as military bases,
such as the fortress at Sile, which was a base of operations for expeditions to the Levant. In the New
Kingdom, a series of pharaohs used the standing Egyptian army to attack and conquer Kush and parts of
the Levant.[164]

Typical military equipment included bows and arrows, spears, and round-topped shields made by
stretching animal skin over a wooden frame. In the New Kingdom, the military began using chariots that
had earlier been introduced by the Hyksos invaders. Weapons and armor continued to improve after the
adoption of bronze: shields were now made from solid wood with a bronze buckle, spears were tipped
with a bronze point, and the khopesh was adopted from Asiatic soldiers.[165] The pharaoh was usually
depicted in art and literature riding at the head of the army; it has been suggested that at least a few
pharaohs, such as Seqenenre Tao II and his sons, did do so.[166] However, it has also been argued that
"kings of this period did not personally act as frontline war leaders, fighting alongside their troops."[167]
Soldiers were recruited from the general population, but during, and especially after, the New Kingdom,
mercenaries from Nubia, Kush, and Libya were hired to fight for Egypt.[168]

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of eastern North Africa, concentrated along the northern
reaches of the Nile River in Egypt. The civilization coalesced around 3150 BC[1] with the political
unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh, and it developed over the next three
millennia.[2] Its history occurred in a series of stable kingdoms, separated by periods of relative
instability known as intermediate periods. Ancient Egypt reached its pinnacle during the New Kingdom,
after which it entered a period of slow decline. Egypt was conquered by a succession of foreign powers
in the late period, and the rule of the pharaohs officially ended in 31 BC, when the early Roman Empire
conquered Egypt and made it a province.[3] Although the Egyptian military forces in the Old and Middle
kingdoms were well maintained, the new form that emerged in the New Kingdom showed the state
becoming more organized to serve its needs.[4]

For most parts of its long history, ancient Egypt was unified under one government. The main military
concern for the nation was to keep enemies out. The arid plains and deserts surrounding Egypt were
inhabited by nomadic tribes who occasionally tried to raid or settle in the fertile Nile River valley.
Nevertheless, the great expanses of the desert formed a barrier that protected the river valley and was
almost impossible for massive armies to cross. The Egyptians built fortresses and outposts along the
borders east and west of the Nile Delta, in the Eastern Desert, and in Nubia to the south. Small garrisons
could prevent minor incursions, but if a large force was detected a message was sent for the main army
corps. Most Egyptian cities lacked city walls and other defenses.

The history of ancient Egypt is divided into three kingdoms and two intermediate periods. During the
three kingdoms, Egypt was unified under one government. During the intermediate periods (the periods
of time between kingdoms) government control was in the hands of the various nomes (provinces
within Egypt) and various foreigners. The geography of Egypt served to isolate the country and allowed
it to thrive. This circumstance set the stage for many of Egypt's military conquests. They enfeebled their
enemies by using small projectile weapons, like bows and arrows. They also had chariots which they
used to charge at the enemy.

The Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BC)

Edit

The Old Kingdom was one of the greatest times in Egypt's history. Because of this affluence, it allowed
the government to stabilize and in turn organize a functioning military. During this period, most military
conflict was limited to the consolidation of power within Egypt.[5]

During the Old Kingdom, there was no professional army in Egypt; the governor of each nome
(administrative division) had to raise his own volunteer army.[6] Then, all the armies would come
together under the Pharaoh to battle. Because military service was not considered prestigious, the army
was mostly made up of lower-class men, who could not afford to train in other jobs.[7]

Old Kingdom soldiers were equipped with many types of weapons, including shields, spears, cudgels,
maces, daggers, and bows and arrows. The most common Egyptian weapon was the bow and arrow.
During the Old Kingdom, a single-arched bow was often used. This type of bow was difficult to draw, and
there was less draw length. After the composite bow was introduced by the Hyksos, Egyptian soldiers
used this weapon, as well.[8]

The pharaoh Mentuhotep II commanded military campaigns south as far as the Second Cataract in
Nubia, which had gained its independence during the First Intermediate Period. He also restored
Egyptian hegemony over the Sinai region, which had been lost to Egypt since the end of the Old
Kingdom.[9]
From the Twelfth Dynasty onwards, pharaohs often kept well-trained standing armies, which formed the
basis of larger forces raised for defense against invasion. Under the rule of Senusret I, Egyptian armies
built a border fort at Buhen and incorporated all of lower Nubia as an Egyptian colony.[10]

Before the New Kingdom, the Egyptian armies were composed of conscripted peasants and artisans,
who would then mass under the banner of the pharaoh.[6] During the Old and Middle Kingdom Egyptian
armies were very basic. The Egyptian soldiers carried a simple armament consisting of a spear with a
copper spearhead and a large wooden shield covered by leather hides. A stone mace was also carried in
the Archaic period, though later this weapon was probably only in ceremonial use, and was replaced
with the bronze battle axe. The spearmen were supported by archers carrying a simple curved bow and
arrows with arrowheads made of flint or copper. No armor was used during the 3rd and early 2nd
Millennium BC.[citation needed] Foreigners were also incorporated into the army, Nubians (Medjay),
entered Egyptian armies as mercenaries and formed the best archery units.[

After Merneferre Ay of the mid-13th dynasty fled his palace, a Canaanite tribe called the Hyksos sacked
Memphis (the Egyptians' capital city) and claimed dominion over Upper and Lower Egypt. After the
Hyksos took control, many Egyptians fled to Thebes, where they eventually began to oppose the Hyksos
rule.[11]

The Hyksos, Asiatics from the Northeast, set up a fortified capital at Avaris. The Egyptians were trapped
at this time; their government had collapsed. They were sandwiched between the Hyksos in the north
and the Kushite Nubians in the south. This period marked a great change for Egypt's military. The Hyksos
have been credited with bringing to Egypt the horse, the Ourarit (chariot), and the composite bow—
tools that drastically altered the way Egypt's military functioned. (Some evidence suggests that horses
and chariots were present earlier.)[12][13][14] The composite bow, which allowed for more accuracy
and greater kill distance with arrows, along with horses and chariots eventually assisted the Egyptian
military in ousting the Hyksos from Egypt, beginning when Seqenenre Tao became ruler of Thebes and
opened a struggle that claimed his own life in battle. Seqenenre was succeeded by Kamose, who
continued to battle the Hyksos before his brother Ahmose finally succeeded in driving them out.[11] This
marked the beginning of the New Kingdom.

In the New Kingdom new threats emerged. However, the military contributions of the Hyksos allowed
Egypt to defend themselves from these foreign invasions successfully. The Hittites hailed from further
northeast than had been previously encountered. They attempted to conquer Egypt, but were defeated
and a peace treaty was made. Also, the mysterious Sea Peoples invaded the entire ancient Near East
during this time. The Sea Peoples caused many problems, but ultimately the military was strong enough
at this time to prevent a collapse of the government. The Egyptians were strongly vested in their
infantry, unlike the Hittites who were dependent on their chariots. It is in this way the New Kingdom
army was different than its two preceding kingdoms.[15]
The major advance in weapons technology and warfare began around 1600 BC when the Egyptians
fought and finally defeated the Hyksos people who had made themselves lords of Lower Egypt.[6] It was
during this period the horse and chariot were introduced into Egypt, which the Egyptians had no answer
to until they introduced their own version of the war chariot at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty.[6]
The Egyptians then improved the design of the chariot to suit their own requirements. That made the
Egyptian chariots lighter and faster than those of other major powers in the Middle East. Egyptian war
chariots were manned by a driver holding a whip and the reins and a fighter, generally wielding a
composite bow or, after spending all his arrows, a short spear of which he had a few.[8] The charioteers
wore occasionally scale armor, but many preferred broad leather bands crossed over the chest or
carried a shield. Their torso was thus more or less protected, while the lower body was shielded by the
chariot itself. The pharaohs often wore scale armour with inlaid semi-precious stones, which offered
better protection, the stones being harder than the metal used for arrow tips.[16]

The principal weapon of the Egyptian army was the bow and arrow; it was transformed into a
formidable weapon with the introduction by the Hyksos of the composite bow. These bows, combined
with the war chariot, enabled the Egyptian army to attack quickly and from a distance.[citation needed]

Other new technologies included the khopesh,[citation needed] which temple scenes show being
presented to the king by the gods with a promise of victory, body armour and improved bronze casting;
in the 18th Dynasty soldiers began wearing helmets and leather or cloth tunics with metal scale
coverings].[17][citation needed]

These changes also caused changes in the role of the military in Egyptian society, and so during the New
Kingdom, the Egyptian military changed from levy troops into a firm organization of professional
soldiers.[6][18] Conquests of foreign territories, like Nubia, required a permanent force to be garrisoned
abroad. The encounter with other powerful Near Eastern kingdoms like the Mitanni, the Hittites, and
later the Assyrians and Babylonians, made it necessary for the Egyptians to conduct campaigns far from
home. Over 4,000 infantry of an army corps were organized into 20 companies between 200 and 250
men each.[19] The Egyptian army is estimated to have had over 100,000 soldiers at the time of
Ramesses II c. 1300 BC.[20] There were also companies of Libyans, Nubians, Canaanite and Sherdens
(Greeks) who served in the Egyptian army. They were often described as mercenaries but they were
most likely impressed prisoners who preferred the life of a soldier instead of slavery.[

The ancient Egyptian navy has a very extensive history almost as old as the nation itself. The best
sources over the type of ships they used and their purposes come from the reliefs from the various
religious temples that spread throughout the land. While the early ships that were used to sail the Nile
were often made out of reeds, the ocean and seagoing ships were then made out of cedar wood, most
probably from the woods of Byblos in present day Lebanon. While the use of navy was not as important
to the Egyptians as it may have been to the Greeks or Romans, it still proved its worth during the
Thutmoside campaigns and even in defending Egypt under Rameses III. Thutmose III understood the
importance in maintaining a fast and efficient communications and supply line that would connect his
bases in the Levantine region with Egypt. For this reason, he constructed his famous dockyard for the
royal fleet near Memphis, whose sole purpose was to constantly supply the campaigning Egyptian army
with additional troops as well as communication with Egypt and general supplies.[1]

During the Old Kingdom all the way until the beginning of the New Kingdom, the navy and vessels of the
ancient Egyptians were almost nonexistent other than to perform communication and transportation
duties. However, through the massive reorganization of the Egyptian military in the New Kingdom and
the aggressive foreign policy pursued by the Kings, the navy began to become ever more crucial in
maintaining Egyptian power and influence abroad.

Ships were first constructed in a very basic manner in which they used reeds. These ships were in no
way able to travel in the Red or Mediterranean Sea, and so their purpose was only to navigate through
the Nile. Whenever ships were required to endure longer travels, Egypt often imported cedar wood
from Byblos, with whom they had good trade relations.[2] At the same time, they would ask other states
that they traded with to supply them with a certain number of ships. This is exemplified in the Amarna
letters where we find a request to the King of Cyprus to construct ships for the Egyptian navy.[3] By the
time of the Battle of the Sea Peoples, the Egyptians had become experts in constructing ships. Their
ships had a single mast with a horizontal square sail on it. One bow was usually decorated with a human
skull being crushed by a lion’s head.[4] These ships often had two rudder oars, since built in rudders
were not invented at the time. At the same time, they could have been as heavy as 70 or 80 tonnes with
around 50 rowers.[5]

Egyptian navy had four main purposes:

the transportation of troops and supplies to certain areas that required them,

to use as a platform from which archers would fire their arrows upon the enemy that were land or sea-
based,

to destroy other enemy ships,

to carry prisoners.

Transportation

Edit
The Egyptian landscape is often considered harsh and very difficult to travel through except for the few
miles that surround the Nile Valley. For this reason, using ships as a means of communication and
transportation proved to be very effective. The Egyptians had used their navy for the first and most
important purpose in this manner. They would send soldiers to areas throughout Egypt whose jobs it
was to quell rebellions or to repel attackers.[6] This is very evident in the use of the ships to transport
food and supplies to the forts that were stationed in the south near Nubia. These forts often were
placed in difficult areas and so in order to feed themselves they relied heavily upon the rations that they
received from cities such as Thebes and Karnak. This purpose was always used by the Egyptian from the
very start of their civilization to the time of the New Kingdom where they would resupply their troops
based in the Levantine region via the sea.[7]

This purpose probably took place more during the New Kingdom when the situation arose for the
Egyptians to disable any threats to their sea. It is also most visible to us from the temple relief of
Medinat Habu in which it portrays the Egyptian Marines on board the ships attempting to board the
vessels of the Sea Peoples. Upon boarding them, most of the crew on the Egyptian ships would arm
themselves and fight in close quarter combat through the use of spears, shields, and battle axes. The
Egyptian never had a specific Marine unit, but rather it was known that anyone on board is equally
capable of both maintaining the ship and fighting at the same time. The Egyptians would board other
ships using the most common method of using grappling hooks to pull in a ship after peppering them
with arrows and sling shots.[9]

While naval battles are not often recounted since there was no distinction between the navy and the
army in ancient Egypt, we do gather some information every now and then of battles that were fought
through the use of ships.

The siege of Avaris

Edit

One such example is when Ahmose led a siege against the Hyksos city of Avaris at the end of the 17th
and beginning of the 18th Dynasty. One account of the siege comes from a soldier and sailor that fought
in the siege named Ahmose son of Ibana. In his accounts, he states how he was stationed on a ship
called the Northern in which he sailed with the Egyptian army towards Avaris. After fighting a battle,
they laid siege to the city and surrounded it. The siege of Avaris must have been a combined naval and
land based attack since Ahmose son of Ibana claimed to have "fought in the canal against Pezedku of
Avaris".[10]

The war against the Sea Peoples

Edit
This war is perhaps the most famous Egyptian war heavily involving the naval strength of the empire,
and it is the first to ever be well documented. During the reign of Rameses III which was in 1182 BCE to
1151 BCE, a new threat arose to challenge the Egyptians in a different way than what they were used to.
[11] A new people called the Sea Peoples were arriving in the Levantine region and destroying its cities.
Already the once mighty Hittites were destroyed by these people of mysterious origin and it soon
became obvious that Egypt with all of its wealth would be next.[12] Rameses III prepared a mighty fleet
and planned to repulse the Sea Peoples in the Nile. In the account from the temple relief of Medinat
Habu Ramises states, "I prepared the river-mouth like a strong wall with warships, galleys, and light
craft. They were completely equipped both fore and aft with brave fighters carrying their weapons, and
infantry of all the pick of Egypt."[13]

In that relief, it portrays the enemy with their tall ships all falling into the Nile and pierced by the arrows
that were being fired from the Egyptian ships. At the same time, Rameses claims that he lured the
enemy close to Nile shore where he unleashed upon them hundreds of thousands of arrows.[14] The
Egyptians on their fast and nimble riverine crafts won against the maritime vessels of the Sea People,
who are depicted by the Egyptians as ill equipped for ranged combat.

While the Egyptians were often a land based population, they quickly proved to master the art of
seafaring as they learned its benefits. The Egyptian navy continued to serve the military as a
transportation mechanism, an amphibious force, and at the same time an aggressive force with which to
wage war. It can be said that without the successful efficiency of the Egyptian navy, the Egyptian army
would not have been able to campaign as long as it wished, and therefore, Egypt's influence over the
Levantine region would have been drastically reduced. The navy enabled Egyptian civilization to
continue with its way of life until its ultimate slow decline.

Technology

In technology, medicine, and mathematics, ancient Egypt achieved a relatively high standard of
productivity and sophistication. Traditional empiricism, as evidenced by the Edwin Smith and Ebers
papyri (c. 1600 BC), is first credited to Egypt. The Egyptians created their own alphabet and decimal
system.

Faience and glass

Even before the Old Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had developed a glassy material known as faience,
which they treated as a type of artificial semi-precious stone. Faience is a non-clay ceramic made of
silica, small amounts of lime and soda, and a colorant, typically copper.[169] The material was used to
make beads, tiles, figurines, and small wares. Several methods can be used to create faience, but
typically production involved application of the powdered materials in the form of a paste over a clay
core, which was then fired. By a related technique, the ancient Egyptians produced a pigment known as
Egyptian blue, also called blue frit, which is produced by fusing (or sintering) silica, copper, lime, and an
alkali such as natron. The product can be ground up and used as a pigment.[170]

The ancient Egyptians could fabricate a wide variety of objects from glass with great skill, but it is not
clear whether they developed the process independently.[171] It is also unclear whether they made
their own raw glass or merely imported pre-made ingots, which they melted and finished. However,
they did have technical expertise in making objects, as well as adding trace elements to control the color
of the finished glass. A range of colors could be produced, including yellow, red, green, blue, purple, and
white, and the glass could be made either transparent or opaque.[172]

Medicine

Main article: Ancient Egyptian medicine

The medical problems of the ancient Egyptians stemmed directly from their environment. Living and
working close to the Nile brought hazards from malaria and debilitating schistosomiasis parasites, which
caused liver and intestinal damage. Dangerous wildlife such as crocodiles and hippos were also a
common threat. The lifelong labors of farming and building put stress on the spine and joints, and
traumatic injuries from construction and warfare all took a significant toll on the body. The grit and sand
from stone-ground flour abraded teeth, leaving them susceptible to abscesses (though caries were rare).
[173]

The diets of the wealthy were rich in sugars, which promoted periodontal disease.[174] Despite the
flattering physiques portrayed on tomb walls, the overweight mummies of many of the upper class show
the effects of a life of overindulgence.[175] Adult life expectancy was about 35 for men and 30 for
women, but reaching adulthood was difficult as about one-third of the population died in infancy.[c]

Ancient Egyptian physicians were renowned in the ancient Near East for their healing skills, and some,
such as Imhotep, remained famous long after their deaths.[176] Herodotus remarked that there was a
high degree of specialization among Egyptian physicians, with some treating only the head or the
stomach, while others were eye-doctors and dentists.[177] Training of physicians took place at the Per
Ankh or "House of Life" institution, most notably those headquartered in Per-Bastet during the New
Kingdom and at Abydos and Saïs in the Late period. Medical papyri show empirical knowledge of
anatomy, injuries, and practical treatments.[178]
Wounds were treated by bandaging with raw meat, white linen, sutures, nets, pads, and swabs soaked
with honey to prevent infection,[179] while opium, thyme, and belladona were used to relieve pain. The
earliest records of burn treatment describe burn dressings that use the milk from mothers of male
babies. Prayers were made to the goddess Isis. Moldy bread, honey, and copper salts were also used to
prevent infection from dirt in burns.[180] Garlic and onions were used regularly to promote good health
and were thought to relieve asthma symptoms. Ancient Egyptian surgeons stitched wounds, set broken
bones, and amputated diseased limbs, but they recognized that some injuries were so serious that they
could only make the patient comfortable until death occurred.[181]

Maritime technology

Early Egyptians knew how to assemble planks of wood into a ship hull and had mastered advanced
forms of shipbuilding as early as 3000 BC. The Archaeological Institute of America reports that the oldest
planked ships known are the Abydos boats.[5] A group of 14 discovered ships in Abydos were
constructed of wooden planks "sewn" together. Discovered by Egyptologist David O'Connor of New York
University,[182] woven straps were found to have been used to lash the planks together,[5] and reeds
or grass stuffed between the planks helped to seal the seams.[5] Because the ships are all buried
together and near a mortuary belonging to Pharaoh Khasekhemwy, originally they were all thought to
have belonged to him, but one of the 14 ships dates to 3000 BC, and the associated pottery jars buried
with the vessels also suggest earlier dating. The ship dating to 3000 BC was 75 feet (23 m) long and is
now thought to perhaps have belonged to an earlier pharaoh, perhaps one as early as Hor-Aha.[182]

Early Egyptians also knew how to assemble planks of wood with treenails to fasten them together, using
pitch for caulking the seams. The "Khufu ship", a 43.6-metre (143 ft) vessel sealed into a pit in the Giza
pyramid complex at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza in the Fourth Dynasty around 2500 BC, is a
full-size surviving example that may have filled the symbolic function of a solar barque. Early Egyptians
also knew how to fasten the planks of this ship together with mortise and tenon joints.[5]

Large seagoing ships are known to have been heavily used by the Egyptians in their trade with the city
states of the eastern Mediterranean, especially Byblos (on the coast of modern-day Lebanon), and in
several expeditions down the Red Sea to the Land of Punt. In fact one of the earliest Egyptian words for
a seagoing ship is a "Byblos Ship", which originally defined a class of Egyptian seagoing ships used on the
Byblos run; however, by the end of the Old Kingdom, the term had come to include large seagoing ships,
whatever their destination.[183]

In 1977, an ancient north–south canal was discovered extending from Lake Timsah to the Ballah Lakes.
[184] It was dated to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt by extrapolating dates of ancient sites constructed
along its course.[184][d]
In 2011, archaeologists from Italy, the United States, and Egypt excavating a dried-up lagoon known as
Mersa Gawasis have unearthed traces of an ancient harbor that once launched early voyages like
Hatshepsut's Punt expedition onto the open ocean. Some of the site's most evocative evidence for the
ancient Egyptians' seafaring prowess include large ship timbers and hundreds of feet of ropes, made
from papyrus, coiled in huge bundles.[185] In 2013, a team of Franco-Egyptian archaeologists discovered
what is believed to be the world's oldest port, dating back about 4500 years, from the time of King
Cheops on the Red Sea coast near Wadi el-Jarf (about 110 miles south of Suez).[186]

Mathematics

The earliest attested examples of mathematical calculations date to the predynastic Naqada period, and
show a fully developed numeral system.[e] The importance of mathematics to an educated Egyptian is
suggested by a New Kingdom fictional letter in which the writer proposes a scholarly competition
between himself and another scribe regarding everyday calculation tasks such as accounting of land,
labor, and grain.[188] Texts such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the Moscow Mathematical
Papyrus show that the ancient Egyptians could perform the four basic mathematical operations—
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division—use fractions, calculate the areas of rectangles,
triangles, and circles and compute the volumes of boxes, columns and pyramids. They understood basic
concepts of algebra and geometry, and could solve simple sets of simultaneous equations.[189]

Mathematical notation was decimal, and based on hieroglyphic signs for each power of ten up to one
million. Each of these could be written as many times as necessary to add up to the desired number; so
to write the number eighty or eight hundred, the symbol for ten or one hundred was written eight times
respectively.[190] Because their methods of calculation could not handle most fractions with a
numerator greater than one, they had to write fractions as the sum of several fractions. For example,
they resolved the fraction two-fifths into the sum of one-third + one-fifteenth. Standard tables of values
facilitated this.[191] Some common fractions, however, were written with a special glyph—the
equivalent of the modern two-thirds is shown on the right.[192]

Ancient Egyptian mathematicians knew the Pythagorean theorem as an empirical formula. They were
aware, for example, that a triangle had a right angle opposite the hypotenuse when its sides were in a
3–4–5 ratio.[193] They were able to estimate the area of a circle by subtracting one-ninth from its
diameter and squaring the result:

Area ≈ [(8⁄9)D]2 = (256⁄81)r2 ≈ 3.16r2,

a reasonable approximation of the formula πr2.[194]

The golden ratio seems to be reflected in many Egyptian constructions, including the pyramids, but its
use may have been an unintended consequence of the ancient Egyptian practice of combining the use of
knotted ropes with an intuitive sense of proportion and harmony.[195]

Prehistory

The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history.[8] The fertile floodplain of the Nile
gave humans the opportunity to develop a settled agricultural economy and a more sophisticated,
centralized society that became a cornerstone in the history of human civilization.[9] Nomadic modern
human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some
120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the arid climate of Northern Africa had become
increasingly hot and dry, forcing the populations of the area to concentrate along the river region.

Prehistoric Egypt and Predynastic Egypt span the period from the earliest human settlement to the
beginning of the Early Dynastic Period around 3100 BC, starting with the first Pharaoh, Narmer for some
Egyptologists, Hor-Aha for others, with the name Menes also possibly used for one of these kings.

At the end of prehistory, "Predynastic Egypt" is traditionally defined as the period from the final part of
the Neolithic period beginning c. 6000 BC to the end of the Naqada III period c. 3000 BC. The dates of
the Predynastic period were first defined before widespread archaeological excavation of Egypt took
place, and recent finds indicating very gradual Predynastic development have led to controversy over
when exactly the Predynastic period ended. Thus, various terms such as "Protodynastic period", "Zero
Dynasty" or "Dynasty 0"[1] are used to name the part of the period which might be characterized as
Predynastic by some and Early Dynastic by others.

The Predynastic period is generally divided into cultural eras, each named after the place where a
certain type of Egyptian settlement was first discovered. However, the same gradual development that
characterizes the Protodynastic period is present throughout the entire Predynastic period, and
individual "cultures" must not be interpreted as separate entities but as largely subjective divisions used
to facilitate study of the entire period.

The vast majority of Predynastic archaeological finds have been in Upper Egypt, because the silt of the
Nile River was more heavily deposited at the Delta region, completely burying most Delta sites long
before modern times.[2]

Paleolithic
Edit

Excavation of the Nile has exposed early stone tools from the last million or so years. The earliest of
these lithic industries were located within a 30-metre (100 ft) terrace, and were primitive Acheulean,
Abbevillian (Chellean) (c. 600,000 years ago), and an Egyptian form of the Clactonian (c. 400,000 years
ago). Within the 15-metre (50 ft) terrace was developed Acheulean. Originally reported as early
Mousterian (c. 160,000 years ago) but since changed to Levalloisean, other implements were located in
the 10-metre (30 ft) terrace. The 4.5- and 3-metre (15–10 ft) terraces saw a more developed version of
the Levalloisean, also initially reported as an Egyptian version of Mousterian. An Egyptian version of the
Aterian technology was also located.[3]

The Halfan and Kubbaniyan, two closely related industries, flourished along the Upper Nile Valley.
Halfan sites are found in the far north of Sudan, whereas Kubbaniyan sites are found in Upper Egypt. For
the Halfan, only four radiocarbon dates have been produced. Schild and Wendorf (2014) discard the
earliest and latest as erratic and conclude that the Halfan existed c. 22.5-22.0 ka cal BP.[8] People
survived on a diet of large herd animals and the Khormusan tradition of fishing. Greater concentrations
of artifacts indicate that they were not bound to seasonal wandering, but settled for longer periods.
[citation needed] The Halfan culture was derived in turn from the Khormusan,[a][10][page needed]
which depended on specialized hunting, fishing, and collecting techniques for survival. The primary
material remains of this culture are stone tools, flakes, and a multitude of rock paintings.

Sebilian culture

Edit

Main article: Sebilian

In Egypt, analyses of pollen found at archaeological sites indicate that the people of the Sebilian culture
(also known as the Esna culture) were gathering wheat and barley. The Sebilian culture began around
13,000 B.C and vanished around 10,000 B.C[citation needed] Domesticated seeds were not found.[11] It
has been hypothesized that the sedentary lifestyle used by farmers led to increased warfare, which was
detrimental to farming and brought this period to an end.[11]

Qadan culture

Edit

Main article: Qadan culture

The Qadan culture (13,000–9,000 BC) was a Mesolithic industry that, archaeological evidence suggests,
originated in Upper Egypt (present-day south Egypt) approximately 15,000 years ago.[12][13] The Qadan
subsistence mode is estimated to have persisted for approximately 4,000 years. It was characterized by
hunting, as well as a unique approach to food gathering that incorporated the preparation and
consumption of wild grasses and grains.[12][13] Systematic efforts were made by the Qadan people to
water, care for, and harvest local plant life, but grains were not planted in ordered rows.[14]

Around twenty archaeological sites in Upper Nubia give evidence for the existence of the Qadan
culture's grain-grinding culture. Its makers also practiced wild grain harvesting along the Nile during the
beginning of the Sahaba Daru Nile phase, when desiccation in the Sahara caused residents of the Libyan
oases to retreat into the Nile valley.[11] Among the Qadan culture sites is the Jebel Sahaba cemetery,
which has been dated to the Mesolithic.[15]

Qadan peoples were the first to develop sickles and they also developed grinding stones independently
to aid in the collecting and processing of these plant foods prior to consumption.[4] However, there are
no indications of the use of these tools after around 10,000 BC, when hunter-gatherers replaced them.
[4]

Harifian culture

Edit

Main article: Harifian

The Harifians (8,800 – 8,000 BC) are viewed as migrating out of the Fayyum[b] and the eastern deserts
of Egypt (including Sinai) during the late Mesolithic to merge with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB)[b]
culture, whose tool assemblage resembles that of the Harifian. This assimilation led to the Circum-
Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex, a group of cultures that invented nomadic pastoralism, and may
have been the original culture which spread Proto-Semitic languages throughout Mesopotamia.[18]

Neolithic

Continued expansion of the desert forced the early ancestors of the Egyptians to settle around the Nile
more permanently and adopt a more sedentary lifestyle during the Neolithic.

The period from 9000 to 6000 BC has left very little in the way of archaeological evidence. Around 6000
BC, Neolithic settlements appear all over Egypt.[19] Studies based on morphological,[20] genetic,[21]
[22][23][24][25] and archaeological data[16][26][27][28][29] have attributed these settlements to
migrants from the Fertile Crescent in the Near East returning during the Egyptian and North African
Neolithic, bringing agriculture to the region. Jared Diamond, in a non-scholarly work, proposes other
regions in Africa independently developed agriculture at about the same time: the Ethiopian highlands,
the Sahel, and West Africa.[30]

Copper was known, and some copper adzes have been found. The pottery is hand-made; it is simple and
undecorated. Presence of black-topped red pots indicate contact with the Naqada sites in the south.
Many imported vessels from Palestine have also been found. Black basalt stone vessels were also used.
[46]

People lived in small huts, partly dug into the ground. The dead were buried in cemeteries, but with few
burial goods. The Maadi culture was replaced by the Naqada III culture; whether this happened by
conquest or infiltration is still an open question.[49]

The developments in Lower Egypt in the times previous to the unification of the country have been the
subject of considerable disputes over the years. The recent excavations at Tell el-Farkha (de:Tell el-
Farcha), Sais, and Tell el-Iswid have clarified this picture to some extent. As a result, the Chalcolithic
Lower Egyptian culture is now emerging as an important subject of study.[50]

Gallery

Tasian culture was the next in Upper Egypt. This culture group is named for the burials found at Der
Tasa, on the east bank of the Nile between Asyut and Akhmim. The Tasian culture group is notable for
producing the earliest blacktop-ware, a type of red and brown pottery that is colored black on the top
portion and interior.[39] This pottery is vital to the dating of Predynastic Egypt. Because all dates for the
Predynastic period are tenuous at best, WMF Petrie developed a system called sequence dating by
which the relative date, if not the absolute date, of any given Predynastic site can be ascertained by
examining its pottery.

As the Predynastic period progressed, the handles on pottery evolved from functional to ornamental.
The degree to which any given archaeological site has functional or ornamental pottery can also be used
to determine the relative date of the site. Since there is little difference between Tasian ceramics and
Badarian pottery, the Tasian Culture overlaps the Badarian range significantly.[58] From the Tasian
period onward, it appears that Upper Egypt was influenced strongly by the culture of Lower Egypt.[59]
Archaeological evidence has suggested that the Tasian and Badarian Nile Valley sites were a peripheral
network of earlier African cultures that featured the movement of Badarian, Saharan, Nubian and Nilotic
populations.[60] Bruce Williams, Egyptologist, has argued that the Tasian culture was significantly
related to the Sudanese-Saharan traditions from the Neolithic era which extended from regions north of
Khartoum to locations near Dongola in Sudan.[61]
Badarian culture

Confederacy.

The Early Dynastic Period or Archaic Period, also known as the Thinite Period (from Thinis, the supposed
hometown of its rulers),[1] is the era of ancient Egypt that immediately follows the unification of Upper
and Lower Egypt in c. 3150 BC. It is generally taken to include the First Dynasty and the Second Dynasty,
lasting from the end of the archaeological culture of Naqada III until c. 2686 BC, or the beginning of the
Old Kingdom.[2] With the First Dynasty, the Egyptian capital moved from Thinis to Memphis, with the
unified land being ruled by an Egyptian god-king. In the south, Abydos remained the major centre of
ancient Egyptian religion; the hallmarks of ancient Egyptian civilization, such as Egyptian art, Egyptian
architecture, and many aspects of Egyptian religion, took shape during the Early Dynastic Period.

Early Dynastic Period of Egypt

c. 3150 BC–c. 2686 BC

First Pharaoh

Edit

Main article: First Dynasty of Egypt

According to Manetho, the first monarch of the unified Upper and Lower Egypt was Menes, who is now
identified with Narmer. Indeed, Narmer is the earliest recorded First Dynasty monarch: he appears first
on the necropolis seal impressions of Den and Qa'a.[9][10][11] This shows that Narmer was recognized
by the first dynasty kings as an important founding figure. Narmer is also the earliest king associated to
the symbols of power over the two lands (see in particular the Narmer Palette, a votive cosmetic palette
showing Narmer wearing the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt) and may therefore be the first king to
achieve the unification. Consequently, the current consensus is that "Menes" and "Narmer" refer to the
same person.[4] Alternative theories hold that Narmer was the final king of the Naqada III period[6] and
Hor-Aha is to be identified with "Menes".

Egyptians in Canaan and Nubia

Edit
Egyptian settlement and colonisation is attested from about 3200 BC onward all over the area of
southern Canaan with almost every type of artifact: architecture (fortifications, embankments and
buildings), pottery, vessels, tools, weapons, seals, etc.[12][13][14][15] 20 serekhs attributed to Narmer
— the first ruler of the Early Dynastic Period — have been found in Canaan.[16] There is also evidence of
Egyptian settlement and occupation in lower Nubia after the Nubian A-Group culture came to an end.
[17][18] By the Early Dynastic Period, the Egyptian state had likely imposed its authority as far north as
modern Tel Aviv and as far south as the second cataract in Nubia.[19]

The date of this period is subject to scholarly debate about the Egyptian chronology. It falls within the
early Bronze Age and is variously estimated to have begun anywhere between the 34th and the 30th
centuries BC. In a 2013 study based on radiocarbon dates, the beginning of the First Dynasty—the
accession of Narmer (commonly known as Menes)—was placed at 3100 BC give or take a century (3218–
3035, with 95% confidence).[3]

The dynasty

Edit

See also: First Dynasty of Egypt family tree

Information about this dynasty is derived from a few monuments and other objects bearing royal
names, the most important being the Narmer Palette and Narmer Macehead, as well as Den and Qa'a
king lists.[4][5][6] No detailed records of the first two dynasties have survived, except for the terse lists
on the Palermo Stone. The account in Manetho's Aegyptiaca contradicts both the archeological evidence
and the other historical records: Manetho names nine rulers of the First Dynasty, only one of whose
names matches the other sources, and offers information for only four of them.[7] Egyptian hieroglyphs
were fully developed by then, and their shapes would be used with little change for more than three
thousand years.

Large tombs of pharaohs at Abydos and Naqada, in addition to cemeteries at Saqqara and Helwan near
Memphis, reveal structures built largely of wood and mud bricks, with some small use of stone for walls
and floors. Stone was used in quantity for the manufacture of ornaments, vessels, and occasionally, for
statues. Tamarix ("tamarisk" or "salt cedar") was used to build boats such as the Abydos boats. One of
the most important indigenous woodworking techniques was the fixed mortise and tenon joint. A fixed
tenon was made by shaping the end of one timber to fit into a mortise (hole) that is cut into a second
timber. A variation of this joint using a free tenon eventually became one of the most important
features in Mediterranean and Egyptian shipbuilding. It creates a union between two planks or other
components by inserting a separate tenon into a cavity (mortise) of the corresponding size cut into each
component."[8]
Biological anthropologist, Shomarka Keita, conducted a study on 1st dynasty crania from the royal
tombs in Abydos and noted the predominant pattern was "Southern" or a “tropical African variant”
(though others were also observed), which had affinities with Kerma Kushites. The general results
demonstrate greater affinity with Upper Nile Valley groups, but also suggest clear change from earlier
craniometric trends. The gene flow and movement of northern officials to the important southern city
may explain the findings.[9]

In ancient Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom is the period spanning c. 2700–2200 BC. It is also known as
the "Age of the Pyramids" or the "Age of the Pyramid Builders", as it encompasses the reigns of the
great pyramid-builders of the Fourth Dynasty, such as King Sneferu, who perfected the art of pyramid-
building, and the kings Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, who constructed the pyramids at Giza.[3] Egypt
attained its first sustained peak of civilization during the Old Kingdom, the first of three so-called
"Kingdom" periods (followed by the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom), which mark the high points of
civilization in the lower Nile Valley.[4]
Old Kingdom is most commonly regarded as the period from the Third Dynasty to the Sixth Dynasty
(2686–2181 BC). Information from the Fourth to the Sixth Dynasties of Egypt is scarce, and historians
regard the history of the era as literally "written in stone" and largely architectural in that it is through
the monuments and their inscriptions that scholars have been able to construct a history.[3]
Egyptologists also include the Memphite Seventh and Eighth Dynasties in the Old Kingdom as a
continuation of the administration, centralized at Memphis. While the Old Kingdom was a period of
internal security and prosperity, it was followed by a period of disunity and relative cultural decline
referred to by Egyptologists as the First Intermediate Period.[6] During the Old Kingdom, the King of
Egypt (not called the Pharaoh until the New Kingdom) became a living god who ruled absolutely and
could demand the services and wealth of his subjects.[7]

Under King Djoser, the first king of the Third Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, the royal capital of Egypt was
moved to Memphis, where Djoser established his court. A new era of building was initiated at Saqqara
under his reign. King Djoser's architect, Imhotep, is credited with the development of building with
stone and with the conception of the new architectural form, the step pyramid.[7] The Old Kingdom is
perhaps best known for a large number of pyramids constructed at this time as burial places for Egypt's
kings.

It was in this era that formerly independent ancient Egyptian states became known as nomes, under the
rule of the king. The former rulers were forced to assume the role of governors or otherwise work in tax
collection. Egyptians in this era believed the king to be the incarnation of Horus, linking the human and
spiritual worlds. Egyptian views on the nature of time during this period held that the universe worked
in cycles, and the Pharaoh on earth worked to ensure the stability of those cycles. They also perceived
themselves as specially selected people.[9]

Fifth Dynasty

Edit

Main article: Fifth Dynasty of Egypt

The Fifth Dynasty (2494–2345 BC) began with Userkaf (2494–2487 BC) and was marked by the growing
importance of the cult of sun god Ra. Consequently, fewer efforts were devoted to the construction of
pyramid complexes than during the Fourth Dynasty and more to the construction of sun temples in
Abusir. Userkaf was succeeded by his son Sahure (2487–2475 BC), who commanded an expedition to
Punt. Sahure was in turn succeeded by Neferirkare Kakai (2475–2455 BC), who was Sahure's son.
Neferirkare introduced the prenomen in the royal titulary. He was followed by two short-lived kings, his
son Neferefre (2455–2453 BC) and Shepseskare, the latter of uncertain parentage.[15] Shepseskare may
have been deposed by Neferefre's brother Nyuserre Ini (2445–2421 BC), a long-lived pharaoh who built
extensively in Abusir and restarted royal activity in Giza.

The last pharaohs of the dynasty were Menkauhor Kaiu (2421–2414 BC), Djedkare Isesi (2414–2375 BC),
and Unas (2375–2345), the earliest ruler to have the Pyramid Texts inscribed in his pyramid.
Egypt's expanding interests in trade goods such as ebony, incense such as myrrh and frankincense, gold,
copper, and other useful metals inspired the ancient Egyptians to build suitable ships for navigation of
the open sea. They traded with Lebanon for cedar and travelled the length of the Red Sea to the
Kingdom of Punt—possibly modern-day Somalia—for ebony, ivory, and aromatic resins. Shipbuilders of
that era did not use pegs (treenails) or metal fasteners, but relied on the rope to keep their ships
assembled. Planks and the superstructure were tightly tied and bound together. This period also
witnessed direct trade between Egypt and its Aegean neighbors and Anatolia.[16]

The rulers of the dynasty sent expeditions to the stone quarries and gold mines of Nubia and the mines
of Sinai.[17][18][19][20] there are references and depictions of military campaigns in Nubia and Asia.
[21][22][23]

Decline into the First Intermediate Period

Edit

Main articles: Sixth Dynasty of Egypt and First Intermediate Period

The sixth dynasty peaked during the reigns of Pepi I and Merenre I with flourishing trade, several mining
and quarrying expeditions and major military campaigns. Militarily, aggressive expansion into Nubia
marked Pepi I's reign.[24][25] At least five military expeditions were sent into Canaan.[26]

There is evidence that Merenre was not only active in Nubia like Pepi I but also sent officials to maintain
Egyptian rule over Nubia from the northern border to the area south of the third cataract.[26]

During the Sixth Dynasty (2345–2181 BC) the power of the pharaoh gradually weakened in favor of
powerful nomarchs (regional governors). These no longer belonged to the royal family and their charge
became hereditary, thus creating local dynasties largely independent from the central authority of the
Pharaoh. However, Nile flood control was still the subject of very large works, including especially the
canal to Lake Moeris around 2300 BC, which was likely also the source of water to the Giza pyramid
complex centuries earlier.

Es

Internal disorders set in during the incredibly long reign of Pepi II (2278–2184 BC) towards the end of
the dynasty. His death, certainly well past that of his intended heirs, might have created succession
struggles. The country slipped into civil wars mere decades after the close of Pepi II's reign.
The final blow was the 22nd century BC drought in the region that resulted in a drastic drop in
precipitation. For at least some years between 2200 and 2150 BC, this prevented the normal flooding of
the Nile.[27]

Whatever its cause, the collapse of the Old Kingdom was followed by decades of famine and strife. An
important inscription on the tomb of Ankhtifi, a nomarch during the early First Intermediate Period,
describes the pitiful state of the country when famine stalked the land.