TET - Age of the Pharaohs (Lesson)

Age of the Pharaohs

Map of EgyptMesopotamia is given credit for being the birthplace of civilization; but as a collection of city-states, it was not the birthplace of a unified political structure that dominated the entire region. That distinction belongs to a civilization that emerged around the same time and to the southwest—the Nile River Valley Civilization. By 3200 BCE, Egypt was unified as one political state.

As mentioned before, ancient civilizations formed in areas where nature took care of its needs. For some North Africans- the valley along the Nile River was just what they needed. Take a look at the picture below- what do you notice about the land around the Nile River versus the land farther away from the river?

Satellite Image of the Nile

That's right- the land around the Nile River is fertile and green whereas the rest is not. So it won't take much imagination to figure out where our next civilization settled in this part of the world. Over 2,500 years ago, a Greek Historian described the land of Egypt as a "gift of the Nile." Ancient Egyptians settled on the fertile lands found in the Nile River Valley. Almost every year, the Nile River would flood over its banks on the flat lands beside it. As the flooding subsided, the river would leave behind silt creating the fertile areas you saw in the picture above. And on those fertile lands, the ancient Egyptian civilization sprung forth- hence, "the gift of the Nile."

As you can imagine, though, living along a river that tends to flood every year could be difficult. What if the flooding was too much and destroyed their homes? What if it was too little and they couldn't grow enough food? In order to address these uncertainties, the ancient Egyptians dug canals to spread the water's influence into drier areas and they reinforced the banks of the river to prevent destruction. In so doing, they were able to tame their environment and grow as a civilization, just as the Sumerians did. By 2000 BCE, ancient Egyptians had established a strong tradition of a monarchy in a unified political state. Their kings were known as pharaohs and they built their capital in the city of Thebes. Pharaohs were considered to be the descendants of the Egyptian gods (particularly the sun god Ra) and served as the civilization's commander in chief, judge and main religious figure—basically, they were responsible for keeping order or Ma'at (as they called it.) During the time of the pharaohs, Egyptian scribes wrote on papyrus; Egyptian sailors navigated the Nile in large cargo boats; Egyptian architects and laborers built elaborate pyramids to serve as palaces, temples and monuments; Egyptian families mummified their deceased loved ones; and Egyptian priests honored Egyptian gods in temples.

The age of the pharaohs lasted over three thousand years and is marked with periods of great development as well as destruction. Scroll through the timeline below to learn more.

Rosetta Stone - Ancient Egyptians used a style of writing known as hieroglyphics that included both ideograms and phonograms. Ideograms are symbols that represent a thing or idea directly. For example if you wanted to write a hieroglyphic that meant "eye" you would draw an eye. Phonograms are symbols that represent sounds. For example if you wanted to write a hieroglyph that meant make or do, you would draw an eye because in the ancient Egyptian language make or do sounded like the word for eye. This combination of ideograms and phonograms made reading hieroglyphics impossible to read for later humans trying to understand the writing of Ancient Egypt since one symbol could have so many different meanings. For thousands of years the hieroglyphs found in pyramids and temples remained an unsolvable mystery for historians and archeologists. Then in 1799 near the city of Rosetta, Egypt, a large slab of granite with multiple styles of writing was found by a French soldier. This slab of granite came to be known as the Rosetta Stone and it contained the key to deciphering the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt. Chiseled into the Rosette Stone were three different hieroglyphic versions of the same text. Two versions came from different time periods of ancient Egypt, and the last version was in Greek. Beginning with the Greek version and working his way back in time through the other two versions of hieroglyphs, a French scholar deciphered or translated the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822. Since that time, historians and archeologists have been able to read ancient Egyptian and that is why we are able to learn the stories of Ancient Egypt thousands of years later and decipher the elaborate record of their pharaohs.

But the ancient Egyptians weren't the only civilization living along the Nile River. To the south, the Kingdom of Kush emerged in an area we now know as Sudan. The Kush and the Egyptians took turns ruling over one another until 1070 BCE when the Kingdom of Kush is said to have officially started. But don't get the wrong idea- in many ways the Kush and the Egyptians were very friendly with each other. This was only natural since before the Kush became the Kush Empire, they were just a group of people living south of Egypt and in the middle of the Egyptian trading route with southern Africa. At various times during Egypt's ancient history, the Egyptian pharaohs ruled over the people who would one day create the Kush Empire. Of course, as history often points out- "what comes around, goes around." The many centuries between the end of the New Kingdom and the beginning of the Ptolemaic Dynasty (a dynasty where the pharaohs came from the Greek ruling family) in ancient Egypt were filled with conquests of outsiders. One foreign people to take a turn at running Egypt were the Kush. For some time, a Kush pharaoh sat on the Egyptian throne. Thus, it would have been impossible to avoid Egyptian influences on Kush culture and vice versa. In many cases, the Kush adopted the same gods as the Egyptians, they replicated Egyptian architecture and, at least for a while, they used the Egyptian system of writing (until they invented their own.) But the Kingdom of Kush emerged just as the power of the ancient Egyptians began to decline and the Kush persevered on until the time of the Roman Empire.

 

 

 

Recap Section

Watch the presentation below to review what you've learned.

 

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