2. The first dam in history :
• Memphis Dam is the first recorded dam in
history , It did not survive antiquity.
• The historian Herodotus attributed this
construction to Menes, the first king of the initial
Egyptian dynasty (about 3000 B.C. )
• It is reported was composed of cut-stone masonry
to have reached a height of about 50 feet and a
crest length of 1475 feet.
• Elsewhere in Egypt, well-preserved remains of
other ancient dam , The Sadd el-Kafara
Dam , about 20 miles south of Cairo.
• It was built about 2900-2877 B.C
3. Giza The Great Pyramids:
• The Great Pyramid, built by Khufu in 2550
B.C ., stands an impressive 481ft high.
• the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-
made structure in the world for over 3,800
years , It towers over monuments like the
Statue of Liberty and Big Ben.
• It is the oldest of the seven wonders of
the world , and the only one to remain
largely intact .
• Its sides have a slope of 51 degrees, with
an average length of 754ft ,vary by less
than 2in !
• The sides of the pyramid along the four
Cardinal Points with extreme accuracy !
4. The Great Giza Pyramids(cont.):
• A total of over 2.3 million blocks of limestone and
granite were used in its construction with the
average block weighing 2.5 tons and none
weighing less than 2 tons.
• The blocks used in the ceiling of the King's
Chamber weigh as much as 9 tons.
• The estimated total weight of the structure is 6.5
million tons ! And The base of the pyramid covers
13 acres .
• The first Step of the pyramid rests on a platform
of finely finished limestone blocks, This platform
is so flat that the official survey of the Egyptian
Government found that it was less than ½ of an
inch from being level !
5. The first writing system in history :
• Drawings and paintings wouldn't evolve into the first written language for
thousands of years, when the first writing systems arose out of Egypt and
Mesopotamia.
• The Egyptian writing system began with pictograms,
the first of which date back to 6000 B.C.
• The pictograms were simple depictions of the words
they represented, but they had limitations. Over time, Egyptians added other
elements to their writing system.
• Today, everyone knows the Egyptians for the creation of hieroglyphics, which
contained a mixture of alphabetic, syllabic symbols , as well as ideograms.
• No one will deny that the Chinese changed the
world with the invention of paper around 140 B.C.,
but what many people don't know is that the
Egyptians had developed an admirable substitute
thousands of years earlier from the papyrus plant.
6. Egyptian Mathematics :
• It is thought that the Egyptians introduced the earliest fully-developed base
10 numeration system at least as early as 2700 BC (and probably much early).
• The Rhind Papyrus, dating from around 1650 BC, it demonstrations how
multiplication and division was carried out at that time. It also contains
evidence of other mathematical knowledge, including unit fractions,
composite and prime numbers, arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means,
and how to solve first order linear equations as well as arithmetic and
geometric series
• The Berlin Papyrus, which dates from around 1300 BC, shows that ancient
Egyptians could solve second-order algebraic (quadratic) equations.
8. Measurement of time :
• Earliest recorded date in Egyptian calendar (4241
B.C.), The Egyptians divided their year into 365 days
.The Egyptian Calendar had 12 months of 30 day
each, plus 5 additional days , between the harvest
and inundation seasons.
• The measurement of time began with the invention
of sundials in ancient Egypt some time prior to 1500
B.C.
• the Egyptians where first to divide the day (and
(Ancient Calender)
night) into 24 temporal hours , 12 for the day and 12
for the night. Each hour was
named instead of numbered
like we do today.
(Sundial)
9. The world's oldest, continuous weather
record (The Nilometer):
• Egyptians have been measuring the height of the
river for more than 5,000 years.
• A simple example of it is a vertical column
submerged in the waters of the river, with
marked intervals indicating the depth of the
water , like the one on the island of Rhoda in
central Cairo ,it is relatively new 715 AD.
• Another Nilometer design comprises a flight of
stairs leading down into the water, with depth
markings along the walls like the one
in Elephantine Island , Aswan.
10. The First non-human operated lifting
device ( Noria ):
• The Noria 700-600 BC (Egyptian Water Wheel) is A wheel
with buckets or clay pots along its circumference , it is
different from the Persian “Sakia” , that it was powered by
an external force (animals).
• the Noria wheel was turned by the current of the river.
• The flow filled buckets by immersion and as it rotated the
upper buckets are emptied by gravity into a
trough or aqueduct, the empty buckets then
returned to be refilled.
• The Noria provided the ancient world with
its first non-human operated lifting device.
11. The first Civilization to manufacture ropes :
• The ancient Egyptians were probably the first civilization to
develop special tools to make rope.
• Egyptian rope dates back to 4000 to 3500 B.C. and was
generally made of water reed fibres.
• The use of such ropes allowed
the Egyptians to move the heavy
stones required to build their
monuments.
12. The first Door Lock in History :
• The first Door Lock , he earliest such device, created around
4000 B.C.
• It was basically a Pin- tumber lock, in which a hollowed-out bolt
in the door was connected to pins that could be manipulated
by insertion of a key. When the key pushed upward on the
pins, they slipped away from the bolt shaft, allowing it to be
withdrawn.
13. The first Surgical suture :
• The earliest reports of Surgical suture date back to 3000 BC
in ancient Egypt.
• Needles were made of bone or metals.
• Sutures were made of plant materials (flax, hemp and
cotton) or animal material (hair, tendons , arteries
, muscle strips and nerves, silk, catgut)
(Ancient Egyptians
Surgical tools)
14. The First to use cosmotics :
• Ancient Egyptians were the first to invent eye makeup as far
back as 4000 B.C.
• Even more impressive, some cosmetically-minded cultures
still create makeup using the same techniques pioneered by
the Egyptians thousands of years ago
• They combined soot with a mineral called galena to
create a black ointment known as kohl,
which is still popular today.
(Kohl was kept in these
pots.)
15. Some other Achievements :
• According to the Guinness Book of
Records, the oldest known measure is the
beqa , used in ancient Egypt as far back as
3800 B.C.
• The oldest dress in the world ,The linen
dress dates from c. 2800 BC, making it
almost 5,000 years old – arguably the
oldest surviving garment in the world.
• Egyptians invented the first mints ,
thousands of years ago which were a
combination of frankincense, myrrh and
cinnamon boiled with honey and shaped
into pellets.