Overview and Timeline

8/16/2019 Overview and Timeline

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Overview and Timeline

The civilization of Ancient Egypt was one of the earliest in world history. It is usually held to

have begun around 3000 BC when the lower !ile "alley beca#e unified under a single

ruler. By this date the only other people in the world to have a a literate urban civilization

were the $u#erians in %esopota#ia.

Ti#eline of Ancient Egyptian civilization&

c.5000

332: Egypt is conquered by Alexander the Great

305: Ptolemy one o! Alexander the Great"s generals !ounds a Gree#$spea#ing dynasty

30: %leopatra the last queen o! independent Egypt in ancient times dies and Egypt is annexed by the

&oman Empire

c.5000 '%: (he coming o! !arming to the )ile *alley

c. 3500$3000: (he Pre$dynastic period leading to the uni!ication o! Egypt

c. 2+50: (he beginning o! the ,ld -ingdom

c.255$2/+5: (he Great Pyramids o! Gia built

c. 2150: (he !all o! the ,ld -ingdom leads to the 1st ntermediate period begins

20/: (he iddle -ingdom begins4 Egypt is united and poer!ul again

156: (he !all o! the iddle -ingdom leads to the 2nd ntermediate period and the occupation o! norhern

Egypt by the 7y#sos

1536: (he reuni!ication o! Egypt and the expulsion o! the 7y#sos begins the )e -ingdom a period hen

Egypt became a leading poer in the iddle East

13//$1328: (he pharaoh A#henaton carries out a short$li9ed religious re!ormation

133+$132: (utan#hamen reigns

126$1213: (he reign o! &amses brings Egypt to the height o! its poer

c. 1150 onards: (he )e -ingdom !alls into decline

28: Egypt is conquered by )ubian #ings

+5+: Egypt is occupied by the Assyrians

+36: (he Egyptians expel the Assyrians and begin a period o! re9i9al

http://www.timemaps.com/history/iraq-3500bchttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-3500bchttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-3500bc#2http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-2500bc#21http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-2500bc#3http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bchttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bchttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bc#middlehttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bc#middlehttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bc#middlehttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bc#secondhttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bc#secondhttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bc#reunionhttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bc#reunionhttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1000bc#5http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1000bc#5http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1000bc#hittiteshttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1000bc#7http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-500bc#1http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-500bc#1http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-500bc#2http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-500bc#2http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-500bc#3http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-3500bchttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-3500bc#2http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-2500bc#21http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-2500bc#3http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bchttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bc#middlehttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bc#secondhttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1500bc#reunionhttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1000bc#5http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1000bc#hittiteshttp://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-1000bc#7http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-500bc#1http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-500bc#2http://www.timemaps.com/ancient-egyptian-history-500bc#3http://www.timemaps.com/history/iraq-3500bc


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525: Egypt is conquered by the Persians

332: Egypt is conquered by Alexander the Great

305: Ptolemy one o! Alexander the Great"s generals !ounds a Gree#$spea#ing dynasty

30: %leopatra the last queen o! independent Egypt in ancient times dies and Egypt is annexed by the

&oman Empire

Town planning

Location

The reasons for the foundation of a new settlement could be varied: security, often combined

with economics, as in the case of the southern fortress towns (Buhen); cultic and administrativeneeds (Kahun); political motives seem to have led Akhenaten to found Akhetaten The main

consideration where to build was !enerally pro"imity to a waterway and hei!ht above the

floodplains Adobe buildin!s are very vulnerable when brou!ht in prolon!ed contact with water,

be it seepin! !roundwater or the risin! #ile But even stone edifices are in dan!er of collapsin!,

above all when their foundations are as flimsy as those the $!yptians built

$levations, as lon! as they were inhabited, kept above the slowly risin! plains, where the river

deposited its silt %hen old houses crumbled, new ones were built on top of the debris This has

been !oin! on until recent times, when the yearly inundations were stopped by the Aswan dam

The continuity of settlement durin! the millennia is one of the reasons for the scarcity of data

about ancient villa!es and cities, as e"cavation is virtually impossible

&erodotus noticed the elevated position of $!yptian cities and e"plained it as follows

Whenever any man of the Egyptians committed any transgression, he (the Kushite king Shabaka)

would never put him to death, but he gave sentence upon each man according to the greatness of

the wrong-doing, appointing them to work at throwing up an embankment before that city from

whence each man came of those who committed wrong !hus the cities were made higher still

than before" for they were embanked first by those who dug the channels in the reign of

Sesostris, and then secondly in the reign of the Ethiopian, and thus they were made very high#

and while other cities in Egypt also stood high, $ think in the town at %ubastis especially the

earth was piled up

By their very nature military settlements are more organized than civilian towns

which have grown organically from villages. Buhen, a walled frontier town in Lower

Nubia was built during the joint reign of Amenemhet and his son !enusret . t was

probably erected at the site of an e"isting trading post and its purpose was to house

the troops who controlled the tra#c from Nubia into $gypt. The ramparts

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surrounding it may have been built before the

fortress at the centre was constructed. The

planned town covered an area of %.& ha,

including the fort and was surrounded on three

sides by a '() metre long, * metre thic+ bric+

wall with thirtytwo round bastions. -nly a singlegate opening towards the western desert has

been found. The eastern side by the Nile was not

fortied. t may have held (/00 to )000

inhabitants. The town was e"panded under

!enusret and further fortied

1ity 2uarters

3enerally there was little town planning, and

what little there was loo+ed a bit li+e the

hieroglyph for 4city4 with houses arranged ratherhaphazardly around the crossing of two major

roads. But in a number of cases attempts at

planning seem to have been made, above all in

walled cities.

The town serving the pyramid temple

comple" 5otepsenusret 65a7sertesen

hotep as 8etrie called it near modern 9ahun or

more correctly Lahun: in the ;ayum was founded by !enusret and remained

inhabited for about a century. The outlay of the city itself was rectangular with an

orthogonal street grid, covering an area of &/0 by *00 metres. t was surrounded bya bric+ wall and divided into two parts by another wall. 3enerally di


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'espite the love $!yptians had for !ardens, there was no space left for them inside the

walls at &otepsenusret The whole area was covered with streets and onestoreyed mud

brick buildin!s n this 5otepsenusret was very di


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esidential areas

The $gyptians rarely planned much furtherthan +eeping a few spaces free for theimportant roads of access, setting templedistricts apart and erecting an adobe wall

around it all. $ven =planned= cities li+e much of A+hetaten were at times a jumble of houses,alleys and courtyards in what loo+s li+e a caseof buildasbuildcan?G*H and where originallythere had been a street grid the rebuilding of the houses changed the regular layout over thecenturies. But plot owners were not free to do as theyli+ed. They had to ta+e into account theirneighbours= rights and wishes and reach anunderstanding with them.

$ven if they li+ed living on ground level, $gyptian city dwellers had at times little

choice about adding further storeys. Land suitable for building had to be above the

@oodlevel of the Nile and still reasonably close to the river, and this was relatively

rare. Dany $gyptians either preferred or were forced to live in these crowded

conditions. At A+hetaten where there was no lac+ of suitable land, some private

homes were still built in the same warrenli+e fashion.

Temple districts

Temple districts on the other hand were better planned. The outlay of individual

temples was basically symmetrical. Ialls surrounded them. At 5otepsenusret the

bric+ wall on three sides of the temple was () metres thic+ and lined with

limestone.

Avenues leading through the city to the temple district were wide, suitable for

processions. Curing recent e"cavations near the great pyramids a paved street ve

metres wide was discovered. 8avement of streets was rare, generally restricted to

the temple comple"es themselves.

-riginally most temples were surrounded by an empty space, but over time

houses were built right up to the outer temple walls. These houses decayed and

were rebuilt many times over the millennia, with the result that the ground level of

the residential area rose and the temples which, being built of stone, were not

periodically rebuilt, seemingly san+ into the ground.

The temenos G)H wall, the temple enclosure, could also have strategic value. At

el9ab the temple was built at the centre of the town, and its ramparts could furnish

a last shelter for the garrison in case the town itself were ta+en by an enemy. At

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other places 6-mbos, $dfu etc: the whole population lived inside the temple

enclosure.

Bigger towns li+e Demphis or Thebes had a number of temples which at rst

were separate, but were interconnected by sphin" avenues from the (Jth dynasty

onwards.

8alaces

oyal palaces housed apart from the pharaoh=s main family, his secondary wives,

concubines, and their o


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Building in ancient $gypt

ost of the ancient $!yptian buildin!s have disappeared leavin! no trace Built of sun baked

bricks made of #ile mud and straw, houses, palaces and city walls crumbled when they stopped

bein! looked after *tone structures like temples and tombs fared better, but even they fell victim

to the rava!es of time, the !reed of men, to earth+uakes and subsidence ne shouldn-t be

surprised by what has disappeared but by how much is left

8lanning

The planning of $gyptian architects and stonemasons was meticulous. tincluded groundplans, sections and contours drawn on surfaces covered with grid

lines. 8etrie who investigated the 3reat 8yramids wrote

168. From several indications it seems that the masons planned the casing, and

some at least of the core masonry also, course by course on the ground. For on all

the casing, and on the core on which the casing tted, there are lines drawn on the

horizontal surfaces, showing where each stone was to be placed on those below it.


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f the stones were merely trimmed to t each other as the building went on, there

would be no need to have so carefully mar!ed the place of each bloc! in this

particular way" and it shows that they were probably planned and tted together on

the ground below. #nother indication of very careful and elaborate planning on the

ground is in the topmost space over the $ing%s &hamber" there the roong-beams

were numbered, and mar!ed for the north or south sides" and though it might bethought that it could be of no conse'uence in what order they were placed, yet all

their details were evidently schemed before they were delivered to the builders%

hands. (his care in arranging all the wor! agrees stri!ingly with the great

employment of uns!illed labourers during two or three months at a time, as they

would then raise all the stones which the masons had wor!ed and stored ready for

use since the preceding season.

The drawings on the left were found by the ;rench at the 2uarries of 3ebel Abu

;eida in ('J. These pillar capitals, destined for a temple at Cenderah being built

by 1leopatra, were s+etched with red ochre on the roc+ face in half the natural size.

The groundplan of the tomb of amses M is e"tant. t was drawn on papyrus at a

)JF( scale.Ihen a 8tolemaic temple at alabasha in Nubia was moved bloc+ by bloc+ from

(%( to (%& and rebuilt elsewhere, the groundplan of the building was discovered.

The architect had again used grid lines and the laying of the bloc+s was accurate to

' mm according to 9.3.!iegler who chec+ed it out. The foundations were laid down

straight with the help of strings, then they scratched the groundplan into the

surface of these foundations according to the grid lines. A list of the re2uired bloc+s

with their measurements were sent to the 2uarry where they were trimmed with

great precision.

The administrators had to plan too. Ihile

they interfered little in the way residentialdistricts of towns grew, they were

responsible for the erection of public

buildings, among them temples built of

stone. $"peditions to the 2uarries were

complicated enterprises.
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Overview and Timeline

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