River Valley Civilizations - Nile - Egypt

1. Ancient Egypt

2. Location
• Nile River Valley down to the first cataract

3. Geographic Influences
• Isolation – flat land, protective deserts
• Nile River
– “lifeline” or “gift from the gods”
– Transportation, communication, and good
agriculture despite the surrounding deserts
• Adaptations
– Predictable floods
– Used “basin irrigation” to retain water for
farming when the flooding ended

4. • When?
• 3200 BCE – 1000 BCE
• Three time periods:
• Old Kingdom – 2700-2200
• Middle Kingdom – 2050 - 1800
• New Kingdom – 1550 - 1100

5. Government
• Originally 3 kingdoms
governed by an absolute
monarch
• Later, Egypt unifies into
one great kingdom ruled
by a Pharaoh or “God-
King”
– Theocracy – government
ruled by a divine figure or
by religious law

6. • Polytheistic
Religion • Priests held spiritual and
political power
– And shaved all hair from their
bodies
• Aton – Sun god
• Amon – god of Egypt
Nefirtiti worshipping Aton • Osiris – god of the Dead
– Weighs all human hearts on a
scale. If lighter than a feather
they are pure and will live
forever. If heavier, the impure
heart will be destroyed and
eaten by the Devourer of
Souls
• Book of the Dead
– Collection of prayers and
meditations, seen as holy
scriptures
• Pure heart involved “Maat”
Picture from the Book of the Dead – Virtues of good life, truth,
justice, and order

7. View of Life, Death, and Change
• Egyptians believed:
– Life should be traditional and enjoyed
– Mummification – preserving the body for life
after death
• Ka – eternal spirit that lives on in Pharaohs
• Pyramids were designed to provide a comfortable
place in which to live (including drawings, jewelry
and clothing)
– Imagined the future life for pure souls to be
much like the present

13. Cultural Accomplishments
• An advanced, progressive culture
– Hieroglyphics
• “sacred carving,” used clay and papyrus
– The best ancient calendar (6 hours
short of a true solar calendar year
– Geometry
• Used to survey lands
– Medicine
• Understood heart rates/pulses
• Broken bones, fevers, treating wounds
• Even used electric fish in pools for
healing and therapy

14. • Women were respected, shared many rights
with men
– Including divorce and marriage
• Complex number system
– Kept financial and tax records
• Very stratified society
– Literacy a significant factor
– Social mobility, even for slaves (esp. through service
in the army or to the Pharaoh)
• Pyramids

15. • Pyramids
– Tombs for the Pharaohs
– Perfectly symmetrical structures
– Required over 2 million stones
• Some stones weighed 200 tons
• Some poured in molds like concrete
– 80 pyramids in Egypt
• Largest at Giza
– Most treasures and mummies stolen by thieves
– Probably willingly built by peasants

17. Significant People and Events
• King Menes – unified the 3 separate empires
into the “Old Kingdom”
– Capital at Memphis ~3100 BCE
• 3100-1600 BCE – “ups and downs”
– Middle Kingdom emerges during high point
– Pyramids built
– Art and Architecture flourished
• New Kingdom 1570-1075 – True, great Egyptian
empire and civilization
– Desert not enough, Egyptians create buffer zone

18. Queen Hatshepsut
• Ancestor of King Tut
• Declares herself
Pharoah
– First female ruler of a
civilization/empire
• 22 yr reign
• Killed (probably by
her stepson
Thutmose III)

19. Thutmose III
• Conquers Syria and
Palestine
– Height of the Egyptian
empire
• Hebrews who had
come willingly to
Egypt are forced into
slavery
– (this sets up the LMPG
thing)

20. • ~1375 he tried to force Egypt to be
monotheistic
– “Aton is the only God” Akenaton
• Moved the capital
– Thebes to Akhetaton
• Changed is name
– From Amonhotep to Akenaton (not much better)
• Replaced by King Tut

21. King Tut
• About 8 or 9 yrs old
• Restores the old
capital and belief
system
– So Egyptians liked him

22. • The 3,300-year-old mummy of the
ancient King Tutankhamun lies
exposed on a CT machine in Luxor,
Egypt on Wednesday as Egyptian
antiquities chief Zahi Hawass, left,
looks on.

24. Ramses II
• The last great Pharaoh
• Was in charge when
Moses led Hebrews out
of Egypt (Exodus)
• 67 yr reign
• Est. peace w/ Hittites
• Built many temples and
statues of himself
• Fathered over 150
children before dying at
age 99

27. • Luxor Album:
• https://picasaweb.google.com/1150515006931

28. New Kingdom Accomplishments
• Built the Valley of the Kings
– Great temples and tombs beneath desert cliffs (less
conspicuous than pyramids)
– Near Thebes
– King Tut, Ramses II, and others were inside

30. Success and Decline
• Desert protection helped
• Weren’t by outsiders challenged like
Mesopotamia was
• Used Nile ingeniously
• Empire collapses due to
– ineffective Pharaohs
– Strengthening Assyrians and Persians
• Who conquer Egypt c.1000 BCE

31. Rosetta Stone
• Slab of black stone
with Greek,
Hieroglyphics, and
Demotic writing
• Discovered by Jean
Champollion in 1799
• Code broken in 1822
– **first time
hieroglyphics were
read and understood