Bell Work Like other cultures the Egyptians developed many innovations, name one and describe its importance today
The Gift of the Nile Chapter 4 Section 1
The Gift of the Nile Near the Mediterranean Sea the Nile River divides into several branches and spreads out over a wide area
The Gift of the Nile There it drops the soil that it has carried from far upriver
The Gift of the Nile Every year the Nile flooded, depositing a fresh strip of rich, black soil along each bank
The Gift of the Nile Farmers would sprinkle seeds on top of the soil They would produce a huge amount of food by doing this
The Gift of the Nile The Nile was Egypt’s main transportation route The Egyptians developed sails and began to rely on wind for power
A Source of New Ideas Without the Nile River, people in Egypt would not have been able to survive
A Source of New Ideas The Nile also took life away When too much rain fell upstream, the Nile would flood and drown people, livestock, and crops
A Source of New Ideas Over the centuries, the ancient Egyptians worked out ways to predict, or tell ahead of time, when the river would flood
A Source of New Ideas By studying the skies, they observed that the yearly flooding, or inundation, began soon after the star Sirius reappeared after month of being out of sight
A Source of New Ideas Using careful observations such as this, the Egyptians developed a calendar with 365 days in a year
A Source of New Ideas The Egyptians created seasons based on the Nile River: Inundation, Emergence, and Harvest
A Source of Religion The ancient Egyptians believed in many different deities, or gods, each with a different responsibility
A Source of New Ideas The people of ancient Egypt used stories about their gods to explain why flooding, drought, and other acts of nature took place
A Source of New Ideas Most Egyptians prayed to their gods and believed in a life after death, or afterlife A book of the dead was placed in a tomb when someone died
A Source of New Ideas The ancient Egyptians believed that they would need their bodies in the afterlife Because of this, they developed ways to preserve dead bodies
A Source of New Ideas Making a mummy, or a preserved body, took about 70 days
A Source of Unity Most of the small farming settlements in ancient Egypt developed on the Nile Delta and along the Nile River between the delta and the first six cataracts, or waterfalls
A Source of Unity The settlements on the Nile Delta became part of a kingdom known as Lower Egypt The South of Nile was Upper Egypt
A Source of Unity Stories passed down from generation to generation say that Kind Menes of Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt in about 3100 B.C.
A Source of Unity He then united the two kingdoms and formed the world’s first nation-state A nation-state is a region with a united group of people and a single government
A Source of Unity Some experts believe that a king named Narmer may have been the one who brought the two regions together
A Source of Unity Many experts also believe that it was Narmer who began the first Egyptian dynasty A dynasty is a series of rulers who belong to the same family