Ch. 5 Ancient Egypt and Kush 5000 BC

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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.
• Egypt
• Kush

• P.99 Map
• Draw this map under your title
• Include major landforms from Mesopotamia, Egypt,
  and Kush

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5.1 The Nile River Valley

• EQ How does geography influence the way people
  live?

• 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.

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Upper and Lower Egypt

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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A protected land

• To the west and east of the Nile were large
  desert area not suitable for humans or animals
• Far south , the Niles 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

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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.

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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

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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.

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Hunters, Fishers, and Farmers

• Bread 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.

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Hunters, Fishers, and Farmers

• Fish 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.

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• 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.

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• Salt
• Salt 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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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 Manethos account because
  he lived almost 2,000 years after Menes.

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Dynasties

• Menes is considered Egypts 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.

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To sum up3 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 didnt
  understand from todays lesson?

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History Mystery
Monday, September 29, 2014 You 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 isnt 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
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History Mystery