History Term 3

Vocabulary
Nile Valley: The area on either side of the Nile River.
Flood watermark: The highest level the water reaches when a river floods.
Shaduf: A pulley system to lift water out of the river.

Egypt is a country in North Africa. The Nile River is the longest river in Africa and flows
through Egypt. The Nile River is about 1 545km and drains to the Mediterranean Sea. The
ancient Egyptians lived along the banks of the River Nile. In the past the River Nile would
flood each year leaving thick black mud which would coat the land on either side of the
river. This area of Egypt the “Black Land” because the thick mud was very rich in nutrients
and the land very fertile and ideal for growing crops.

The Nile River

Farmers dug water channels to carry water to their plots during long dry months to water
their crops. Water was also used to drink, wash and fishing used nets and spears to catch
fish from the Nile River. They also kept animals such as wild goats, cattle and sheep for
their meat.
People used the mud from the river to make pottery.The Egyptians built flat-roofed houses
made with mud bricks, from the Nile River, which was baked hard in the sun.
Stones were only used to build tombs, palaces and temples.
They made boats which were sailed on the Nile River for transport and trade. Boats
carried people, food and goods to trade from one end of Egypt to the other.
The Egyptians invented a pulley system to lift large buckets of water from the river. This
was called a shaduf.

Crops of the ancient Egyptian

They grew wheat for bread and barley for beer. A variety of fruits and vegetables were
grown such as melons, onions, cabbages, leeks, beans and grapes (used for wine).
They grew flax - they spun flax into linen to make clothes, bedding and material used to
wrap up the bodies of the dead.
Papyrus is a type of reed which grew wild on the banks of the Nile was used to make a
type of paper.

The process of making papyrus paper (parchment)

The Egyptians cut the fibrous papyrus stems into strips.
They laid out the sticky stems and put another layer at right angles on top.
The papyrus was then placed under a heavy object to make it flat.
The dried papyrus formed a stiff parchment which could be written on.

Seasons in ancient Egypt

There were three seasons in the ancient Egyptian year.
Akhet: The flooding season, from June to September.
Peret: The planting season, from October to February.
Shemu: The harvesting season, from March to May.
Social Structure of Ancient Egypt
Egypt had a very strict social system.
Slaves
Slaves were at the very bottom of the hierarchy. Slaves were captured and sold members
into slavery. It is thought that slaves built the ancient pyramids of Giza.

Farmers
Most of the people were farmers who worked hard to provide food and other things to the
people of Egypt. Farms were owned by the Nobility. Farmers had to pay taxes to the
Pharaoh in the form of crops or animals according to the size of their farm.

Artists and Craftsmen

Above the farmers, they made jewelry, statues, paintings, masks. They painted the houses
of the rich, made their furniture and did the interior decorations.

Scribes and Administrators

A scribe is a skilled writer and not everyone could read and write. Due to the work of the
scribes that we know so much about ancient Egypt The administrators went up and down
the Nile by boat, measuring land and collecting taxes for the Pharaoh. Administrators
helped the Pharaoh run Egypt.

Priests, Doctors and Engineers

Priests were religious leaders, doctors healed people and worked on new medicines. The
engineers designed buildings, roads and machines and were very important and highly
respected.

The Nobility
Only a few rich men and women who were members of the royal family and the Pharaoh.

The Pharaoh
He/She had all power in Egypt at the top. They were worshipped as gods. Pharaoh is the
Egyptian name for a King.

The beliefs and religion of ancient Egyptians

Ancient Egyptian religion involved the worship of animals as it symbolized their ancestors.
There were 2 000 different gods in Ancient Egypt including the Pharaoh.The gods were
drawn with animal heads wearing crowns - with symbols in their hands. A common symbol
was the ankh - represented life and the joy of living.

Some Egyptian gods

Anubis: The god of the dead and embalming.
Ba: An element of the soul, the ba was able to leave the tomb and travel about the earth
during the day.
Isis: Seen as a protector of the dead and healer of the sick and weak, she is the ideal
mother and woman.
Osiris a god of fertility and the embodiment of the dead and resurrected kings.
Thoth: The ibis-headed god of the moon, learning, and wisdom, Thoth was believed to
have invented writing and language.
Mut: A sky goddess and great divine mother.
Ra (Re) was the primary name of the sun god of Ancient Egypt.
Beliefs about Death
The Egyptians believed when you die you are taken down into the underworld - the dead
had to answer about their behaviour on earth and are judged by the god, Osiris. He would
weigh your heart to see if it was heavy from sin or not then the person was granted a plot
of land in the afterlife. The dead person could grow crops for eternity in heaven. If the
person had lot of sin, their heart was eaten by the beast Ammut making them restless and
homeless forever.

The Pharaohs
Pharaoh was the king or ruler of ancient Egypt. A man or a woman could be a Pharaoh
because they were born into a royal family. They had power and controlled the people of
Egypt, all the food and any minerals mined, such as gold.
The Pharaoh sent out people to trade with the neighbouring lands selling vases and pots,
from clay, and woven baskets, from reeds. Traders also made glass beads and beautiful
silver and gold jewelry in exchange for slaves, horses, cattle and cedar wood.
Women could also become Pharaohs. Cleopatra was the last Pharaoh of ancient Egypt.
She ruled Egypt from 69BCE to 30BCE. She was said to have been very beautiful. She
was defeated and she committed suicide by allowing a poisonous snake to bite her.
After a Pharaoh died, his/her body was embalmed and mummified. The Pharaohs were
buried with all their possessions because it was believed that they would need their things
in the afterlife, even food! Some of the Pharaohs were buried in pyramids while others
were buried in stone tombs in an area called the Valley of the Kings.

Embalming and mummification

Mummification was practiced by the ancient Egyptians used to preserve dead bodies so
that they would not rot. Rich people would have their bodies professionally embalmed
while the poor people were left in the hot desert sun to dry out.
The process of preserving a dead body is called embalming. The body was treated with
salt, oil and spices to prevent it from decaying. The yellow gum of the myrrh tree has a
very strong smell was used for perfume to hide any unpleasant smells.
Embalmed bodies were wrapped in strips of clean linen cloth and laid in a coffin called a
sarcophagus.

Important structures of Ancient Egypt

Vocabulary
Quarry: A place where stone is cut out of a mountain side.
Barge: A flat boat used to carry goods.
Ramps: Angled pieces of wood which help move heavy items.
Pulleys: A system of ropes to lift heavy items.

The Sphinx
The Sphinx is the largest statue in the world curved from a single block of limestone in
about 2500BCE in Giza. Its nose was lost in 1378 CE. Muhammed Saim al-dahr, a very
religious Muslim man was executed for vandalism as he chiseled off the nose after
peasants were giving offerings to the statue in order to help with the harvests. The Sphinx
has the body of a lion and the head of a Pharaoh and it known as a guardian.

The Pyramids
The pyramids are the stone tombs of the Pharaohs. The ancient Egyptians believed that if
the Pharaoh’s body was mummified after death, the Pharaoh would live forever. The
pyramids were designed to protect the buried Pharaoh’s body and his/her belongings. The
three biggest and most famous pyramids are at Giza. The great pyramid is the largest and
most famous pyramid in the world. It was built for King Khufu in about 2560BCE. It is over
140m high and took over 20 years to build. It took nearly 23 million limestone blocks to
build - each block weighed about 2 300 kg. Historians think that they were probably built
by slave labour. The stone was transported on a type of sledge from the quarry where it
was cut from a rock face. Some stone was carried to Giza, by barge, on the Nile River.
Other stone came from close by.

Temples
The Egyptians also built temples with columns to honour their gods. The temple of Luxor
was built for the god Amun-Ra, Mut and Choms. Inside the temple there are colourful
pictures of the Pharaoh and the gods. Ordinary Egyptians could only look at the temples
from the outside. Only priests and the Pharaohs were allowed inside the temples to
worship the gods and perform rituals and ceremonies in their honour. Some temples were
built to line up with a star that either rose or set at harvest or sowing time. GM

Hieroglyphics, Astronomy & Medicine

Vocabulary
Decipher: To work out what something means – to decode it.
Constellation: A group of stars in the night sky.
Physician: Another word for doctor.
Symptoms: Signs of illness, for example, a cough.
Remedies: Medicine given to heal people

Hieroglyphics is a form of writing where pictures or symbols represent sounds or words.

The word hieroglyphics means “holy writing”. The Egyptians used hieroglyphics for
important and religious writing. In 1799, a piece of stone was discovered near a place
called Rosetta in Northern Egypt. The stone is 114,4cm high, 72,3cm wide and 27.9cm
thick. It weighs approximately 760kg. The stone was created in about 196 BCE. The
Rosetta stone is important because the same piece of text is written in three different
languages, Greek and two Egyptian languages.

Mathematics in Ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptians could perform the four basic mathematical operations: addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division. It was used to count crops and paying of taxes.
Able to understand complex mathematics like algebra and geometry. This knowledge was
to help them build the pyramids.

Astronomy
Astronomy is the study of the stars and planets. There is proof that the ancient Egyptians
also studied the stars in the night sky and watched how they changed during the year.
The ancient Egyptian temples were built in relation to the position of the stars and the
movement of the sun. They also saw certain gods in the stars. The constellation Orion, for
instance, represented the god of death, rebirth and afterlife - Osiris. The Milky Way
represented the sky goddess Nut giving birth to the sun god Ra.

Doctors and Medicine

We know about Egyptian medicine from the scrolls of papyrus paper which have been
found that, when translated it was found to be prayers and recipes for medicine.

In ancient Egypt, there were two types of doctors:

The priest-magicians:
Many people believed that illness was caused by evil spirits.
The master-physicians:
The master physicians were expert doctors who examined their patients by looking
carefully at their symptoms. They used herbs, and roots with healing properties, to make
medicines. They gave names to some of the organs like the kidneys, liver and lungs. They
also discovered the importance of the heart and blood.
King Tutankhamen - Case Study
Tutankhamun or “King Tut” is probably the best known Egyptian pharaoh. One of the
reasons is that his burial tomb is one of the few that was discovered with everything still in
it. It was common for tomb raiders to steel all of the treasures that were buried with the
pharaohs and so very little has ever been found. The tomb raiders didn’t locate King Tut’s
tomb and we can use the contents of the tomb to learn about the culture and people of
ancient Egypt. King Tut lived around 1343 to 1323 BC. Because he was only ten years old
when he became a pharaoh, he was called the ‘boy king’. King Tut’s father was the
pharaoh Akhenaten. This pharaoh made complete changes to the religion of Egypt, getting
rid of their belief that there were many gods and changing their worship to one god: Aten,
the sun god. He became unpopular with the people of Egypt and the priests of the many
temples, especially when he destroyed the images of all of the other gods. When he died,
many people removed his image and name, hoping everyone would forget about him.

King Tut’s original name was Tutankhaten which means ‘the living image of Aten”. After
the death of his unpopular father, he changed his name to Tutankhamun which means ‘the
living image of Amun”. His father had paid so much attention to making changes that he
had moved the centre of government from Thebes to another city and ignored all of the
foreign policies. King Tut relocated the government centre back to Thebes and rebuilt
some of the temples for the gods. His hope was to restore popularity of the pharaoh and
try to fix the damage that his father had done.

King Tut did get married but he and his wife did not have any children that survived. Many
people have tried to study King Tut’s mummy to find the reason that he died, but no one
has come up with anything definite. King Tut died at the age of 19 and, after he was
buried, there was very little information in the usual records for pharaohs. His tomb was
never touched and so the people that study history didn’t even know that it existed before
the discovery of his tomb. In 1922, British archeologist, Howard Carter, discovered the
burial tomb of King Tut. This was the first tomb discovered that had everything in it and
was untouched.

Ancient Egyptians believed that when a person died they would enter an ‘afterlife’ where
they would live in the same way that they did when they were alive. In order to do that,
they would need to take everything they needed with them. The burial tombs of pharaohs
were piled with all of their possessions: beds, chariots, games, art work, walking sticks,
weapons and even food. Pharaohs had the most highly crafted items - many were made of
gold, imported wood, inlaid gems and ivory.

When Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb, he found a huge chamber with four
rooms filled with everything King Tut would need in the afterlife. The most prized item was
a ‘sarcophagus’ which is usually the burial box for the mummy. For King Tut, they had
placed the mummy in one sarcophagus and then that sarcophagus was placed in two
additional sarcophaguses. The third or last sarcophagus was made of gold and that is the
famous ‘gold’ image that has become the symbol of King Tut that we know today.

It took seventeen years to go through all of the things in the tomb and catalogue (write
down) each item. One of the things that Carter noticed when he first looked into the tomb
was that many of the things appeared to have been tossed into the tomb, rather than
organized. Another thing that was noticed later was that one of the sarcophaguses may
have been originally allocated to someone else and they used it for King Tut. It has been
thought that the reason for this is that King Tut died so suddenly and unexpectedly that
they didn’t have time to make a sarcophagus for him

The treasures from King Tut’s tomb became so popular that the Egyptians allowed them to
go on a world tour and be shown at museums in many cities.
Activity 1
1. What did people in Egypt use to build their houses?
2. What was used to make tombs, palaces and temples?
3. What foods did the Egyptians eat?
4. What was the name for the flooding season?
5. In which month/s did the Egyptians harvest their crops?
6. Why did the farmers plant their crops on the banks of the Nile?
7. Write the heading ‘Reasons people lived next to the Nile River’.
Draw a mind map to show the reasons why people lived next to the Nile River.
8. Group discussion: Consider the following facts and study the illustrations. Then,
answer the question.
There was very little rain in Egypt. The flooding of the Nile River was not caused by
rain. The Nile River flooded in summer – the warmest time of the year.
Where do you think the water that caused the floods came from?

Activity 2
1. Why were the farmers so important in ancient Egyptian society?
2. Who were the laborers that built the pyramids?
3. What is the Egyptian name for a king?
4. List two jobs administrators would do.
5. Which people wrote down the events and details about the Egyptian life?
6. What did they write the records on?
7. Which group of people was very rich and powerful in ancient Egypt?

Activity 3

1. Compare the different Egyptian gods by completing the table below: (8)

Name God of ……… Purpose

the moon, learning and
wisdom
Ideal mother and woman. A
friend to seamen, slaves
and rulers.
Anubis

sun god

2. Why was Osiris probably the most important Egyptian god? (3)
3. What was so special about the Egyptian god ‘Ba’ ? (2)
4. Who was the Egyptian sky goddess and the great divine mother? What does her name
mean? (2)
 Total: 15

GM 2020Activity 4

Write a paragraph about Pharaohs. Use the following questions to guide you:
1. Who were the Pharaohs?
2. How did someone become a Pharaoh?
3. Were Pharaohs men or woman?
4. How did Pharaohs become rich?
5. What happened to Pharaohs after they died?

Activity 5

Use the hieroglyphics key to write your own message. Then, give it to your partner
to decipher.

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