Ancient Egypt evolved between 5500 and 7th century B.C. along the middle and lower channel of the Nile River.
It ruled vast swaths of land from the western and eastern deserts to the Red Sea and the Sinai Peninsula during its peak growth.
With a millennial historical development and an advanced civilization that reached three epochs of splendor (Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Empire) extended for almost 3000 years.
The Egyptian people bequeathed innumerable contributions in the most different areas of knowledge to the history of humanity.
Egypt’s names from the past
Ancient Egypt was called many different things over time, both by the people who lived there and near it.
kmt (Kemet), which means “black earth” in the Egyptian language, was the most common name in ancient times.
It’s because of the color of the slime rich in minerals and other nutrients brought by the river every year.
Other names that come from Egypt are twj (Taui), “the Two Lands,” bqt (Baqet), “dazzling eye,” and t-mrt (Ta-mert), “the beloved land.”
As the Babylonians and Greeks changed it, the word Egypt became hut-ka-ptah (hut-ka-Ptah), which is how the term came to be used in most modern languages, but it changed a lot over time.
Geography of Ancient Egypt
The Predynastic divide of Egypt into Upper and Lower Egypt refers to the valley region in the south and the delta in the north.
Duality is a common theme in Egyptian culture. The Nile runs from the East African highlands (upstream) to the Mediterranean Sea (downstream).
Upper Egypt
It ran from the Nile’s first waterfall (at Aswan) to Memphis, right before the delta’s arms opened.
This area was called t-mw (Ta-shemau) in Egyptian (lit.: “land of the barley or the reed”). Its heraldic plants were the lotus and reed.
Predynastic southern kings used white crowns (hedyet) to demonstrate sovereignty over Upper Egypt.
In the Pyramid Texts, the mother goddess Nejbet affiliated with the Pharaoh’s protective deity Seth.
Lower Egypt
Lower Egypt was known as t-mw (Ta-mehu), or “country of the north.”
Heraldic plants include papyrus and a bee (see Pharaoh’s royal title or nisut-biti). Uadyet, the patroness of Lower Egypt, is linked to Horus in the Pyramid Texts.
History of Ancient Egypt
The absence of a systematic date system in Ancient Egypt and comprehensive or consistent references from multiple sources is a significant issue in contemporary Egyptology.
As a result, certain scholarly publications have various chronologies for different historical eras based on other dating standards.
Predynastic
The Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) civilization originated during the sixth millennium B.C. when the first inhabitants of the Fayum,
Tasian and Merimde civilizations settled.
Since the Pleistocene, when nomadic hunter-gatherers started dwelling on the Nile’s banks, artifacts and symbols have been found etched on rocks across the Nilotic valley and oases.
Later, the Badariense, Amratiense, and Greens civilizations emerged.
The latter gained cultural unity of the several clans via protracted battles and alliances until the foundation of the two kingdoms: High and Low Egypt.
Periodic Period
In Arabic, the Protodynastic Period is the penultimate stage of the Predynastic Period.
Tinis, Pe, and Nejen were the first towns built by the Upper Egyptian monarchs, known as the “followers of Horus.”
Hierapolis (Nejen) (Upper Egypt) and Buto (Pe) (Lower Egypt) struggled for dominance throughout this period. The First Dynasty founded by Menes, the first king of Hierapolis.
Archaic Age
The Archaic Period includes the first two dynasties of united Egypt, with Tinis as their capital. The era royal lists ascribe the union to Menes, who Gardiner believes is King Narmer.
Old Kingdom
Dynasties III and VI During this period, Egypt’s culture blossomed. It was the era of the giant pyramids and the first complete hieroglyphic inscriptions.
The central authority diminished towards the conclusion of this era, and Egypt entered the First Intermediate Period.
First Intermediate Period
It covers dynasties VII-XI. Manetho’s VII dynasty does not match any known historical ruler.
The X dynasty, centered in Heracleopolis to the north, and the XI dynasty, centered in Thebes to the south, dominated Egypt.
King Mentuhotep II of the 11th Dynasty took control of the whole kingdom about 2040 B.C.
Middle Kingdom
The XI-XII Dynasties (2040-1780 B.C.) The XII Dynasty began the second era of Egyptian cultural prosperity.
During his reign, the language developed into Middle Egyptian, which produced the first significant works of Egyptian literature.
After the XIIth Dynasty, the country’s centralized authority crumbled, ushering in the Second Intermediate Period.
The second Middle Kingdom
13th-17th Dynasties, 1780-1550 B.C. During this period, the delta ruled by local rulers (14th Dynasty). An Asian colony in the delta ruled much of the nation about 1650 BC.
From the 15th Dynasty, these monarchs known as Hyksos, or “foreign rulers.” In the Theban region in the south, the 16th and 17th native dynasties converged.
After a two-decade fight, the seventeenth Dynasty’s final monarch expelled the Hyksos and reunified the land.
The victory of the Hyksos ushered in the 18th Dynasty and the New Empire.
New Kingdom
The 18th – 20th Dynasties (1550-1070 B.C.) saw the resurgence of Egyptian civilization, with the 18th Dynasty pharaohs gaining power across the Near East and launching major building projects.
Towards the conclusion of the 18th Dynasty, heretic pharaoh Akhenaton and his successors, notably Tutanjamon, ruled. This time is known as the Amarna period (c. 1350-1323 BC).
Horemheb (1323-1295 B.C.) restored the internal strife caused by the Akhenaton experiment, and his successors ruled in a peaceful atmosphere.
The Ramses Period included the reigns of most of the following two dynasties’ monarchs (19th – 20th dynasties, c. 1295-1070 BC).
Ramses II’s (1279-1213 BC) rule saw a peace deal with the Hittites (the Middle East’s second-largest power), substantial intellectual and religious achievements, and the creation of the most significant architectural undertakings since the pyramids 1300 years earlier.
DESPITE SHARING A NAME, Ramses II’s successors had to live up to his legacy. Egypt reverted to decentralization after the death of Ramses XI.
Third Intermediate Period
400 years after Rameses’ reign (c. 1070-650 B.C.), when the land divided between local dynasties (XXI and XXIV) and Libyan and Nubian rulers (XXII and XXIII) (XXV).
Egypt would not thrive again until 650 B.C., when a single dynasty of native monarchs reunited the country.
In the northern city of Sais, the Saite dynasty (XXVI, 672-525 B.C.) reigned, reviving the classical arts of the ancient and middle kingdoms.
In 525 B.C., a Persian army conquered Egypt, ending the Saite Period. Egypt controlled as a province of a foreign empire for the first time in its dynastic history.
Late Period
c. 525-332 B.C.) in which Egypt alternated between Persian authority (XXVII dynasty) and brief periods of local pharaoh power (XXX dynasty) (XXVIII – XXX dynasties). The Persians invaded Egypt for the final time in 343 BC, ending Nectanebo II’s reign, the last native Egyptian ruler until the 1952 revolution.
Hellenistic Period
A.D. 332 BC, Alexander the Great conquers Egypt. His death in 323 B.C. leaves Egypt to one of his generals, Ptolemy. Ptolemy and his descendants ruled Egypt as pharaohs.
In the 300 years of Ptolemaic rule (323-30 B.C.), the kingdom thrived, with a strong centralized administration and a massive restoration effort.
Octavian, later Caesar Augustus, overthrew Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII’s alliance in 30 B.C., ending Ptolemy’s rule. Egypt becomes a Roman province.
Although ancient rituals remained for 400 years under Roman authority, Egypt progressively lost its identity, first to Christianity, then to Islam in 641.
The Roman invasion in 30 B.C. is considered the end of Egyptian civilization.
Ancient Egypt Civilization
Art
Temples and tombs and the sculptures and paintings they contain nearly invariably complement the architecture.
Architecture
Tombs are the earliest monuments. During the early Memphite dynasties, the royal tomb was the pyramid, while the courtiers and rich buried in the mastaba.
The most significant are Giza, erected by the fourth Dynasty’s pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaura.
The mastaba was a smaller structure shaped like a pyramidal trunk with a rectangular layout.
It featured a burial chapel inside, a walled enclosure for the deceased sculptures, and a sand moat leading to the mummy’s cave.
This period’s temples only found in the pyramids as funerary chapels. The later Thebans left spectacular remains at Karnak and Luxor, the ancient Thebes.
While the symbolism found in funeral structures (pyramids, mastaba, and rock tombs) is not fully understood, the subject is apparent in temples. Both instances used similar reasoning.
An idealized universe, pure and detached from the everyday world, with the opposition rather than a direct representation of the terrestrial reality.
The temple (or tomb) resident was to symbolically participate in the process of creation or cosmic cycles, particularly those of the sun.
You reflected this emblem in temple architecture and wall and ceiling decorations.
It may see in the Hellenistic temples, which presumably meant nothing more than their New Empire forefathers.
Sculpture in Ancient Egypt
The art’s attributes include sculpting (lack of expression) and painting (lack of perspective).
Egyptian sculpture has the same style and method as building.
While the skull is well-preserved and realistic, the body is inflexible and motionless; the arms and knees glued together, and the muscle is hardly apparent.
Since the Memphite era, the statue looks alive, the stiffness is gone, the limbs freed from the body, and the sculptor has changed the character’s expression.
These antique sculptures are wonders of realism, like the Louvre’s sitting scribe.
Theban statues are softer and more traditional. A huge taste expanded from the Middle Kingdom, yet the previous period’s style was maintained, striving for elegance while conventionalism steadily blamed.
A new era of art begins, yet honesty and realism fade in sculpture, which becomes an art of imitation.
Literature in Ancient Egypt
Writing evolution:
Writing in ancient Egypt evolved from pictorial signs to calligraphy with various symbols.
The Egyptians found a better writing medium than the Mesopotamian clay tablets: papyrus.
The papyrus pith was cut into strips and laid flat next to one other to form smooth sheets on which the scribes wrote ink. Papyrus is the root of “paper.”
Hieroglyphic writing:
The Egyptians’ henotheistic and naturalistic religion influenced their literary, political, social, economic, and aesthetic lives.
Predynastic Egyptians utilized pictographic signs to convey concepts or words.
They dubbed hieroglyphics (“sacred carving”) inscriptions because they primarily utilized them in religious texts.
The hieratic, which was just a reduction of the hieroglyphic, was still too complicated for ordinary people to use.
The demotic, which replaced the previous one from the 17th century B.C., and used by scribes to carry out their more quickly task of recording the many activities o
Initially, the Old Empire used just 24 syllabic signs. In the next stage, you would keep the complete separation of syllabic symbols into vowel and consonantal characters for Phoenician ingenuity 1500 years later.
It took millennia to interpret hieroglyphic lettering. Egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion (1790-1832) meticulously examined the Rosetta stone more minor than a century ago.
The inscription included the hieratic and demotic texts in Greek. Champollion discovered the secret to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs by comparing them.
Pyramids Texts:
The roots of Egyptian literature are obscure, and the pyramid writings were old and holy when recorded.
Inscriptions discovered in graves before 300 BC have little literary significance; they list the deceased’s names or describe the container’s contents.
Pyramid writings are extensive hieroglyphic inscriptions on the walls of chambers and passageways of Sakkarah’s five pyramids.
The last monarch of the Fifth Dynasty erected the first, followed by Tepi I, Meren-Ra, and Pepi II of the Sixth Dynasty.
“Nisut Bity” or “the one who belongs to the reed” symbol of the south, and “to the bee” sign of the delta, hence “lord of the two lands”; Zozer, who commissioned the stepped pyramid as a mausoleum.
It was the first Dynasty to use the oval coat of arms taken from the royal seals.
Saracen Texts:
This term alludes to a magical-religious sequence of poetry and formulae attributed to P. Lacau and De Buck.
It is unknown how many found written on the walls of Egyptian sarcophagi during the Middle Kingdom (37th century B.C.).
Depending on the casket’s surface, the deceased’s social class, temple trends, text popularity, or even collector whim.
The formulae and poetry are the “bridge” between the pyramid writings and the “book of the dead.”
They are valuable because they include information on divinities, the afterlife, the lives of the dead, and fresh interpretations of the earlier pyramid writings.
For the time being, only Re, the Sun God, reigns as king of heaven, and the departed are dependents or followers.
We hear a lot about Osiris, his tale, and the gods surrounding him.
The dead resemble Osiris and personify his passion and resurrection. When the tomb’s surface became insufficient for formulae and poetry, the habit of replicating them, ideally in papyrus, was expanded.
It was put in the tomb, close to the departed; it is a magical-religious document known as the “Book of the Dead.”
Egyptian lyricism:
In Egyptian lyric poetry, death and absence are often mentioned, along with the delight of living in the present.
This fusion of opposing components enables the poet to express himself, as demonstrated in the “Canto del Artista” carved on Pharaoh Antef’s tomb and the “Canción” produced approximately 2500 BC.
The Egyptians’ fascination with death did not imply sadness or pessimism; instead, it indicated a desire to live fully.
The Egyptians’ enthusiasm for life was expressed in practically all creative manifestations: temple paintings and sculptures, everyday things, and poetry.
The Book of the Dead provides a set of prayers and formulae that the soul must repeat before gods and devils to reach Osiris’ throne.
Painting, relief, and decorative arts:
Egyptian painting shares flaws and features with sculpture. A fantastic depiction of color harmony adds to the bas-relief model’s impact.
It ignores perspective and chiaroscuro; the shades are nearly invariably traditional, as does the artwork.
In any event, the stroke is masterful, and Egyptian art is a veritable treasure trove of historical data.
Relief uses modeling, light, and shadows to create its impact, whereas painting uses line and color; both employ representational methods and color. It may be elevated or hollowed.
In raised relief, the surface around the figures is dug to a depth of five millimeters to make them stand out.
The figurines’ profiles are carved on the concave surface, recessed, or incised relief.
Interiors employed raised relief, while exteriors used hollow comfort, which catches the light better.
The sunken relief was also inexpensive and came in a variety of styles.
Reliefs adorned the principal religious structures and the finest private graves.
As with adobe private residences and royal palaces, the painting was utilized in private tombs when poor quality rock made relief difficult, to save money, or where the work was not permanent and the area to be covered was not appropriate for relief work.
Despite this, many excellent paintings approaches inspired painters to work more freely in relief.
Sculptures:
Egyptian sculpture evolved rapidly from predynastic clay, bone, and ivory figures. Zoser (2737-2717 B.C.) sculpted giant statues of pharaohs and kings on which to lay the souls of the deceased.
Egyptian sculpture characterized by hieratic, rigidity, cubic shapes, and frontality. After being cut, the image was drawn on the stone’s front, back, and two side sides.
The outcome was a statute that could only view from the front (law of frontalidad). There was no need to sculpt the figure from all angles as the goal was to produce an immortal picture embodying the person portrayed’s soul and character.
The Egyptian artist wasn’t seeking movement. Human anatomy was perfected early in the dynasty era, although romanticized.
An architect of the second tallest pyramid in the Giza burial complex, Pharaoh Kephren’s sitting statue (c. 2530 BC, Cairo Archaeological Museum) embodies everything that made Egyptian royal sculpture distinctive.
It said that the Pharaoh’s gaze stares into the infinite while his hands are on his knees.
The falcon of Horus appears behind Kephren’s head, signifying that he is the Pharaoh, the “living Horus.”
The diorite statue depicts heavenly grandeur in a striking vision of unity and balance.
Individuals and personalities represented in numerous ways.
Others were coupled together and made sculptural ensembles in which the dead appeared alongside family members.
Stone, wood, and, to a lesser degree, metal employed. They painted the statue’s surfaces, and the eyes were inlaid with different materials, such as rock crystal, to improve the illusion of realism.
But another form of work represented workers in their different industries and women involved in domestic chores. They were all going to the same place: the grave.
The scribe sitting on the floor with his legs crossed established towards the end of the Fourth Dynasty, as an unbalanced and immobile posture like the preceding two (standing and sitting). The Old Empire also invented the bust portrait.
ِAncient Egyptian Economy
Egypt’s economy based on natural resources: the Nile Valley’s lush and highly dark soil, mountains, domestic animals, and cultivable vegetation. The Egyptians exploited all their resources to trade for other commodities.
Egypt’s livelihood depends on the crops grown in the rich fields inundated by the Nile.
Even when the rains were low, the yearly flooding of the Nile made irrigation agriculture possible.
So dikes, ponds, and canals were built to irrigate the whole area. The chaduf used to boost the Nile’s water.
They raised plants for food, such as:
- Wheat, spelled, and barley
- Lentils with chickpeas
- Lettuce, Cucumber, Garlic, Onion
- Sesame and flax are oil plants.
- Flax, Papyrus, Palms, etc.
Grain was stored in barns and used to create beer and bread.
During the floods, many farmers worked on Egypt’s Temples and Pyramids.
Livestock such as cattle and sheep, reared for their flesh.
The peasants used to bring their animals to the scribe to pay taxes.
In addition to these activities, The Nile had a considerable fish population.
Men hunted and fished using baskets from little papyrus rafts, harpoon, and rod fishing.
Trade:
Ancient Egypt was the world’s wealthiest nation for a long time.
Internal commerce relied on barter or products exchange. The first economic transaction occurred when the state traded labor material.
People swapped needs, as was done all around the nation.
Copper, silver, and gold coins made for more considerable commerce. In the Ancient Empire, gold utilized as a convertible currency, and silver was the New Empire’s currency. And life was costly under the Empire.
The Nile was the principal commercial and transit route from north to south. They created canals along the road to help with irrigation and transportation.
