Exploring Egypt What do you think of when you think about Egypt?

Location in Africa? How does geography play a role in Egypt’s history? Egypt connects Africa to Asia Most of Egypt is Sahara desert The Nile River runs through it

The Nile River is 4, 145 miles long. It is the longest river on earth Its is one of the few rivers that flows north to south (instead of the reverse)

The Nile overflows its banks annually between July & October depositing a fresh earth over its floodplain. This process is called inundation.

The Nile is the birth place of one of the oldest civilization on earth… the Egyptian. Can you guess why ancient Egyptians formed their civilization on the banks of the Nile?

Nomes City-States The fast cataracts of the Nile protected Egyptians from invaders. The fertile land/water also helped them to thrive!

The Nile delta is often said to resemble papyrus.

Papyrus was used to create paper. Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to invent paper!

Hieroglyphs were a form of written language to the Egyptians. But instead of letter, they used pictures. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone helped scientists crack the code, and enabled them to read hieroglyphs.

pyramids The Pyramids of Giza The Great Pyramid, at right, tomb of King Khufu, towers some 450 feet (140 meters) over the desert. Built from 2.3 million blocks of stone, it is the oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world and the only one that survives.

Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure Three kings—father, son, and grandson—wrote their names on the Giza horizon with the silhouettes of their pyramid tombs: Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure (left, from right).

Pyramids of Giza: Man fears Time,” says an Arab proverb, “but Time fears the Pyramids.” The bases of the three together cover more than a million ft 2. They were ancient before the Romans had a word for ancient. The Great Pyramid of Khufu, far right, already stood for 1,800 years before the Chinese first started laying the Great Wall.

The Sphinx greets the morning sun at Giza with regal poise—though without a nose, which was destroyed in antiquity. Crouching in front of Khafre’s pyramid, this monumental sculpture pairs the ruler’s head with a lion’s body— wisdom and strength in timeless symmetry..

Like the Greeks and Romans… Ancient Egyptians were polytheistic. They believed in many gods and goddesses. Ra was their supreme god – a god of the sun

Egyptians believed in the afterlife. They believed the spirit was split into two parts… The ba (the personality of the spirit) The ka (humans life force) Sdf

Mummification In order to travel to the next life, Egyptians believed that their bodies needed to stay preserved. This is one reason they began to mummify nobles and priests.

Mummies were placed in a sarcophagus – similar to a coffin, but adorned to look like the person inside. Sarcophagus means “flesh eater”

They even believed that their organs would be needed in the next life, so they preserved their organs in canopic jars, seen below.

King Tutankhamun’s organs were laid reverentially in four miniature coffins placed in an alabaster chest topped with the same carved face The sacred cobra and vulture on the headdresses speak of royalty. For kings, supervising preparations for their death was every bit as important as ruling the country day to day.

Valley of the Kings True sun worshipers, New Kingdom rulers built their tombs in the rugged Valley of the Kings on the Nile’s west bank, hoping to join the sun on its evening journey toward resurrection the next morning. Egyptians believed the sun entered the underworld—realm of the dead—as it sank on the western horizon.

Egyptians believed that once you died, your spirit went to a “weighing of the heart” ceremony… If your heart was heavier than a feather, that meant you had too many bad deeds. But if it was lighter than a feather, you would be allowed a plot of land in “the field of reeds.”

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