1. Land of the Pharaohs Miss Lynch 6th Grade Social Studies
Chapter 4 Lesson 2 in the World text

2. The Big Picture

3. The Big Picture Farming towns grew into small cities.
These communities created rules to promote peace and fairness. These rules were created and enforced by the village leaders.
Along the Nile River in Egypt, groups of villages joined together under the leadership of kings.

4. Union of Two Crowns
Egypt Joins Together

5. Union of Two Crowns
Along the Nile, farmers were producing surplus crops and developing new technology to make tools, pottery, and jewelry. This led to an increase in trade.
Egyptians Join Together
There was also terror and fear. Ruins of walls around early towns and paintings of bloody battle scenes that there were many wars between villages.
To protect themselves, the people banded together into two separate kingdoms.

6. Union of Two Crowns- Egyptians Join Together
Towns in Upper Egypt (which were located in the south) supported a king who wore a white crown.
Towns in Lower Egypt (which were located in the north) followed a king who wore a red crown.
In 3100 BC, Menes (King of Upper Egypt) lead forces and they swept north into the Nile Delta.
Here his army overthrew the king of Lower Egypt.
To show his victory, he wore a double crown.
This crown stood for the unification which is the joining
of separate parts into one.

7. Union of Two Crowns- Egyptians Join Together
Menes became the 1st pharaoh of Egypt.
The word pharaoh means “great palace” which is where the rulers lived.
It later became the name of all rulers of Egypt.

8. Life in the Old Kingdom Government Under the Pharaohs
Religion in Egypt
Egypt’s Economy

9. Life in the Old Kingdom
At first, Egypt’s pharaoh did not greatly change the civilization that they ruled. Over time, though, the pharaoh became the center of the civilization.
Government Under the Pharaohs
After unification, the most powerful leaders were made area governors. They were in charge of collecting taxes and served as local judges. They also made sure that flood waters were shared among farmers through the use of canals and storage pools.
The governors reported to the pharaoh’s headquarters in Memphis, Egypt’s capital. Memphis was located between Upper and Lower Egypt, near present-day Cairo.

10. Life in the Old Kingdom- Religion in Egypt
The pharaoh had great political and religious powers.
Egyptians believed that the pharaoh was a child of their sun god, Ra.
They believed that Ra gave life to Earth and that the pharaoh gave life to Egypt and its people.
Egyptians worshipped both Ra and the pharaoh.
Ra was the most important god to the Egyptians. They had more than one god and believed each one had a different role.
Osiris was the god of the dead. He was important because the belief in afterlife was central to the religion of Egypt.

11. Life in the Old Kingdom- Religion in Egypt
Egyptians believed that after a person died, he or she would go to the “Next World.”
They also believed that the dead could take food and objects to the “Next World.
This is why food and belongings were buried with the dead
The Egyptians preserved the bodies of the dead royalty with a process called mummification.
The bodies were dried and wrapped with strips of cloth.

12. Life in the Old Kingdom- Egypt’s Economy
Since the pharaoh was considered a god, all things in Egypt belonged to the pharaoh. This put the pharaoh at the center of the economy.
The economy of a country is the way its people manage money and resources for the production of goods and services.
Egypt’s economy was based on agriculture. Farmers produced a surplus of food which fed the whole country.
The pharaoh collected a large part of every family’s crops each year as taxes.
The crops collected were used to feed the pharaoh’s family and servants.

13. Life in the Old Kingdom- Egypt’s Economy
The pharaoh also took taxes on everything else made in Egypt, such as leather goods, linen cloth and baskets.
The pharaoh also taxed people’s time.
During the flood season, Egyptians were called upon to build canals or buildings for the government.
Craftworkers and artists depended on the pharaoh for jobs.
Their job was to make things for the temples.
Egyptians “paid” for things by:
Trading things
Government paid for supplies

14. A System of Writing Life of a Scribe Writing on Paper
A Key to a Lost Language

15. A System of Writing
A system of writing, hieroglyphics, was developed to allow the pharaoh’s government to keep track of all its business details.
Government would report back to the pharaoh if people were not paying taxes.
System of writing was developed sometime before unification.
This system was called hieroglyphics and was made up of approx – 1000 pictures or symbols called hieroglyphs.
Some hieroglyphics stood for objects and some stood for sounds, such as “s”
Hieroglyphics are the reason we know so much about the lives of ancient Egyptians.

16. A System of Writing- Life of a Scribe
Pharaohs depended on written records to keep their government in order.
The writers were called scribes.
They traveled throughout Egypt to keep records of details great and small.
They went out into the fields to record how much grain a farmer harvested.
They also determined how much farmers would owe the government.
Scribes also drafted letters and marriage contracts.

17. A System of Writing- Life of a Scribe
Writing was only taught to a few people which meant that scribes were highly respected.
Only boys could become scribes and began their training at 10 years old.
In school they chanted passages to improve their reading skills and spent hours writing out stories over and over.
If their attention wandered, they ran the risk of being beaten.
Junior scribes used broken pottery as their “scrap paper.”

18. A System of Writing- Writing on Paper
After the boys mastered a simple type of hieroglyphics, they were allowed to write on papyrus, which is a reed plant that grows along the Nile.
Ancient Egyptians used these reeds to make papyrus, which is a type of paper.
The English word “paper” comes from papyrus.
They used sharpened reeds as pens. They dipped their pens in red or black ink.
Two skills that a scribe had to have were:
Good penmanship and good at math

19. A System of Writing- A Key to a Lost Language
By AD 400, hieroglyphics fell out of use and their meaning was lost.
The ancient symbols that were found were a mystery to the people who found them.
In 1799 a French soldier was digging in the town of Rosetta. There, he found a large, black, stone with writing on it. It contained a passage written three times, in hieroglyphics, Greek, and demotic.
By comparing these languages, the mystery of the hieroglyphics was solved.

20. Building the Pyramids

21. Building the Pyramids
The most challenging thing for the scribes to keep track of was the building of pyramids.
These stone structures were built as tombs, or burial places for pharaohs.
The Great Pyramid is the Old Kingdom's most spectacular monument.
It’s the biggest of all pyramids built in Egypt’s history.
Pharaoh Khufu ordered its construction and was buried inside with his belongings that he would take into the afterlife.

22. Building the Pyramids
The project took 20 years and many people (100,000) were forced to help build it.
A lot of taxes were used to feed and clothe the workers.
The landscapes of the Nile River was changed too.
Entire cliffs of stone were cut into blocks to build this monument.

23. Why it Matters?

24. Why it Matters?
Khufu was not the only pharaoh who demanded building projects.
These projects caused the following things to happen:
Took a toll on the economy.
Angered people.
Egypt’s unity started to break down. Local governments began resisting the orders of the pharaoh.

25. Why it Matters?
Leaders in Upper Egypt revolted and set up a new pharaoh.
They created a new capital located in Thebes.
This division in Egypt brought an end to the Old Kingdom.
This breakdown led to a rise in greater civilization.
The pharaohs learned from their mistakes and stopped building pyramids.

26. Main Ideas

27. Main Ideas
Menes united the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt to form the largest government in the world at that time.
The pharaoh was central to Egypt’s government, economy, and religion.
The writing system of Egypt, called hieroglyphics, provided a way for government workers to communicate over long distances.
Ordinary people worked to build huge, government building projects like the Great Pyramid.
This strained both Egypt's economy and its people.