Ch. 5 Ancient Egypt and Kush5000 BC – AD 350

• While the empires are rising and falling in Mesopotamia, two other civilizations developed along the Nile river in northeastern Africa.

1.Egypt

2.Kush

• P.99 Map• Draw this map under

your title• Include major landforms

from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Kush

5.1 The Nile River Valley

• With an astounding length of 4,145 miles, the Nile River is the longest river in the world, and the only major river that flows south to north.

• The Nile River is often called the “lifeblood” or “The Gift” of Egypt.

• EQ: How does geography influence the way people live?

Upper and Lower Egypt

• Ancient Egypt includes two regions, upper (southern) and lower (Northern) Egypt

Blue and White Nile

• At its source, The Nile is 2 separate rivers: the Blue Nile flows out of the mountains and meets with the White Nile.

Cataracts

• Along the Nile there are locations called cataracts. Steep cliffs and large boulders form these dangerous, fast-moving waters. The cataracts prevented invasions from the South along the Nile River. The rushing and swirling water was too difficult to travel along.

• The Nile River is divided into parts based on each cataract ( 1st cataract, 2nd cataract, 3rd cataract, and 4th cataract

Geography of Egypt• Harsh deserts surrounded the Nile river. The Sahara and Western and

Eastern deserts acted as a natural barrier against invasions. • The Nile River flooded each year to create a long narrow corridor about 12

miles wide of very fertile soil. • Every year in the Summer the River Nile rose and all the land along its banks

was covered with water for three months. When the water eventually went down everywhere it had been was covered with a thick layer of black mud.

• The Ancient Egyptians farmed this very fertile strip of mud-covered land, which they called Kemmet, translated into English as Black Land. Beyond the Black Land was the Red Land which was not flooded every year, so nothing could grow in it; this was where the people built their houses.

• The Black Land was so called because of its color. Similarly for the Red Land: the Egyptian word we translate as Red Land is Desert - one of the very few words of Ancient Egyptian which has passed into other languages.

To Sum up:

• When the land was covered in silt ,it looked black. They called this the black land or Kemmet.

• The dry area or desert area looked red so they called it the red land.

• http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/geography/home.html

Delta• Before the Nile reaches the

Mediterranean Sea, it splits into many branches. These waterways form a fan-shaped area of fertile land called a delta.

Flood season

• The “Inundation” was the time from June to September. This was the time of the flood. During this time, Egyptians were paid to work for the Pharaoh on building projects.

Flood season

• The “Emergence” of the land from the water covering was from October to February. During this time, Egyptians planted and captured as much water as possible in irrigation ditches.

• The last of the three seasons was the “drought” season. During the drought, the harvest took place.

A protected land• To the west and east of the

Nile were large desert area not suitable for humans or animals

• Far south , the Nile’s dangerous cataracts prevented enemy ships from attacking

• In the north delta marshes stopped ins who sailed from the Mediterranean Sea.

• These physical features gave the Egyptians advantages that Mesopotamians lacked.

Assignment: Lesson 1 The Nile River Worksheet

Due Wednesday, Oct. 1

Papyrus

• Papyrus was one of the most versatile plants growing along the Nile. The plant was used to make paper, sandals, boats, ropes, and even paintbrushes.

Hieroglyphics• The Egyptians came up with a writing

system called hieroglyphics. It was a combination of pictures and sound

symbols.• The ancient Egyptians called their script

mdju netjer, or "words of the gods.“

• Hieroglyphs were the earliest form of Egyptian script, and also the longest-lived. It is the most familiar to the modern observer, when staring in awe at the columned halls at Karnak, the beautiful tomb paintings in the Valley of the Kings and Queens, and on sarcophagi and coffins.

• Scribes wrote on papyrus.

• Horrible Histories Hieroglyphics video

Everyday Egyptian Life

• The Ancient Egyptians grew cereals such as wheat and barley and many sorts of trees and other plants, and kept cattle, sheep, goats, ducks, geese and pigs.

• They also kept bees, fished in the River Nile and hunted the wild animals living in the delta and desert.

• The only trees and plants they needed but could not grow along the River Nile were those which produced spices and incense. Spices were used for flavoring their food and many other purposes, and incense was used in the Temples. These had to be imported from other countries.

• Much if not most of what we know about Ancient Egyptian farming, food and drink comes from wall-paintings and models in tombs, many of which show everyday people doing everyday things like fishing, hunting, and drinking.

Hunters, Fishers, and FarmersBread The Ancient Egyptians, both rich and poor, ate so much bread that the people who lived in the

lands around Egypt called them “bread eaters”. The bread was usually made from emmer wheat, although they also grew and used two other types of

wheat, einkorn and spelt. Bread is made from flour, obtained by grinding the wheat to a fine powder. The Egyptians did not have windmills or watermills to do this, so the grinding was done by hand, using special grinding stones called querns, and the way it was done allowed some of the stone worn away from the querns to become mixed with the flour. This meant that the bread was very gritty and chewing it gradually wore away your teeth, so many older Egyptians had very poor teeth and lots of dental problems.

Pharaoh himself controlled the production of wheat and barley. In years when the harvest was very good the surplus grain was stored in huge mud-brick containers called granaries, and then in years when the harvest was poor the stored grain was distributed to prevent the people from starving. This is why cats were so important in Ancient Egypt: they were needed to control the rats and mice who would otherwise eat the grain in the granaries.

Meat Rich people ate mainly beef, with some sheep and goat. They would not usually eat pig if other meat was available. They also hunted and ate many of the wild animals that lived in the delta and Red Land (desert), including deer and antelope. The poor people ate less beef and more goat and sheep and they also kept and ate pigs. People working on building projects were provided with food and beer, and those working on Royal projects, for example the pyramids or the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, seem to have had a meat allowance containing a much higher proportion of beef than other workers.

Poultry There were no chickens or turkeys in Ancient Egypt, but the Egyptians kept geese and ducks and these were eaten by both rich and poor. They also hunted and ate wild ducks and geese and many other birds such as quails and cranes. The only birds they did not eat were those they considered sacred, such as the ibis.

Hunters, Fishers, and FarmersFish There were many different sorts of fish in the River Nile, but rich people did not eat a

lot of fish (except salted fish) if meat was available. Poor people ate more fish, and they also preserved it by drying it in the sun or salting it. Salted fish was a great delicacy with both rich and poor, and was also one of Ancient Egypt's main exports. They ate most sorts of fish except one species, which was sacred because it was associated with the god Osiris.

Vegetables grew peas and beans, lentils, onions, garlic, radishes, turnips, peppers, leeks, lettuces and cucumbers, and also many herbs such as aniseed, fennel, mustard, thyme, coriander, cumin and dill. They could not grow spices as most spices need much hotter conditions.

Fruit grew grapes, figs, water melons, dates, pomegranates, pumpkins, plums and many other fruits, and also walnuts and almonds and other nuts. Grapes could be eaten as they were, made into wine or sun-dried to make raisins, and dates, figs and plums could also be eaten fresh or dried in the sun. Poor people also used dates and other fruits to sweeten their food - we now think that the hieroglyph for date could also mean any sort of sweetener except honey. Rich people sweetened their food with honey but this was very expensive.

Eggs There were no chickens as we know them in Ancient Egypt, but the Ancient Egyptians kept ducks and geese and ate their eggs - we know this because there are wall-paintings showing baskets of eggs. But we do not know much about how they cooked them because we have not found very many recipes containing eggs.

Butter and cheese milked cows, goats and sheep. They drank some of the milk and turned some of it into butter and cheese.

Honey kept bees for honey and beeswax and also collected wild honey. Sugar, like the potato, was unknown in Egypt and the Near East and Europe until the discovery of the Americas, so rich people used honey to sweeten their food and to make cakes and puddings. Honey keeps almost for ever and provided the jars have not been broken honey put into tombs is still eatable more than three thousand years later. However honey is also a very good preservative and the Ancient Egyptians used it for preserving small pets etc as a less expensive alternative to mummification. So if you happen to come across a jar of Ancient Egyptian honey it is always advisable to check what else is in the jar before you start to eat it!

Fats and oils in food and cooking, for skin care and in perfumes and cosmetics, in medicines, and to burn in lamps to provide light at night and inside the temples and tombs. Solid fats were usually animal fat or butter; liquid vegetable oils were obtained from the seeds of plants such as castor, sesame and flax. Olive trees did not grow in Ancient Egypt although an attempt was made to introduce them during the 18th Dynasty, about the time of Tutankhamen. Fragrances can be captured in waxes and fats, which is why candles and soaps can be scented. In wall paintings Egyptian ladies are shown with wax cones on their wigs and it is thought that these were scented and that the wax would melt and run down over the wig releasing the fragrance.

SaltSalt is not a food but we cannot live without it: if we were to go completely without any salt at all

for more than three or four days we would die (in considerable pain). Also, most foods taste horrible if cooked without any salt whatever. But too much salt is bad for you, particularly for very young and very old people and people who are very fat or have heart disease.

Today most take-away and prepared foods (beefburgers and fries etc, pizzas and hot-dogs, pre-cooked foods and foods in packets, jars, tins etc ) contain so much added salt that many people living in towns in Europe and North America are taking in far too much salt.

But in Ancient Egypt, mediaeval Europe and even many poor countries today, it was far from easy for most people to obtain enough salt. We lose salt when we sweat, and the Ancient Egyptians workers, laboring out of doors all day under the hot Egyptian Sun, would have needed much more salt than we do. Most workers (not only in Egypt but also in many other countries) received a daily salt allowance as a part of their wages. (Hence of course the expression “not worth his salt” for a worker who is not pulling his weight.)

If you lived near the sea you could make salt by collecting sea water in shallow pots and then leaving the pots in the Sun so the water evaporated leaving the salt behind, but if you lived a long way from the sea you needed to obtain your salt from a salt mine, and sometimes the nearest salt mine might be hundreds of kilometres away.

Most of Egypt's salt had to be brought from a place called Siwa, involving a journey of more than two hundred kilometres across the Western (Sahara) Desert. Not only in Ancient Egypt but throughout the whole of the ancient and mediaeval world the people who controlled the salt mines and the merchants who transported and sold the salt were often very rich and powerful.

Pharaoh Food

• Egyptian people ate fish from the river, but the Pharaoh never ate fish because it was considered “unclean” and “bad luck” from the Nile waters.

• There were many types of food a pharaoh could eat. Some of them are: onion, sycamore fig, coconuts, grapes, beef, olives, dates, milk, apple, pomegranates, leek, honey, beer, duck, meat, fish and bread.

• Most Egyptians were farmers. They lived in mud-brick one story houses on small rented plots of land.

Advances in farming• Canals were dug from

the Nile to the farms for irrigation.

• Egyptians also used a shadoof (bucket attached to a long pole) to get water from the river.

• Draw a diagram of the shaddof, how the shadoof works and label its parts

Uniting Egypt• At first Upper and Lower Egypt were not united.• Upper Egypt was symbolized by a white cone-shaped

crown.• Lower Egypt was symbolized by a red crown.• Around 3100BC, Narmer (Menes) from Upper Egypt

conquered Lower Egypt and married one of their princesses, uniting both kingdoms.

Pharaoh comes from the words that mean “great house”

• Menes is the first ruler of Ancient Egypt to leave a written record.

• The people of ancient Egypt believed their kings were also gods.

• Modern people refer to ancient Egyptian rulers as pharaohs, but pharaoh originally referred to the palace where the king lived.

• Pharaoh was not used as a title for the Egyptian ruler until the later part of ancient Egyptian history, but today we use the term to describe all of the rulers of ancient Egypt.

• They were believed to be descended from the sun god Re and held absolute power

Fact and Fiction

• Menes wore a double crown of red and white that symbolized the unification of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt.

• The Egyptians believed the crown had magic powers; it was the single item an Egyptian ruler could not take with him to the afterlife.

• A historian named Manetho reported that Menes ruled Egypt for 62 years and was killed by a hippopotamus.

• We cannot be certain of Manetho’s account because he lived almost 2,000 years after Menes.

Dynasties

• Menes is considered Egypt’s first Pharaoh.• He also created the first dynasty (line of rulers

from the same family) in Egypt. • He also built a new capital city that was later

called Memphis.• Ancient Egyptian History is divided into time

periods known as the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom.

• Within these time periods, from 3100 BC to 332 BC, a series of 32 dynasties ruled Egypt.

To sum up…3 – 2 - 1

• Write: What are 3 ways geography influenced the way Egyptians lived?

• Tell your shoulder partner 2 of those things your learned today.

• Raise your hand: What is 1 thing you didn’t understand from today’s lesson?

History Mystery

Monday, September 29, 2014You are a time traveler. Frustrated, you shove your hands in your pocket where you find a crumpled piece of paper. It looks like a map. The map is similar to the one on p. 101. You realize you might be in the city of Thebes in Ancient Egypt. You inquire with a man that is walking in the city as to where you are. He replies, “in upper Egypt, dah!” As you walk down the street taking in the beauty that is surrounding you, you realize with sudden alarm that something isn’t right. The river seems to be flowing backwards. You check your compass rose and realize that the Nile River is indeed flowing backwards. Solve this mystery. How can the Nile River be flowing backwards? Explain with details.

Assignment: Lesson 1 The Nile River Worksheet Due Wednesday, Oct. 1

History Mystery