Ancient Egypt was located in the fertile Nile River valley. The predictable flooding of the Nile allowed for reliable agriculture and helped the civilization thrive. Ancient Egypt was divided into three kingdoms that later unified under a single ruler known as the Pharaoh. Egyptians followed a polytheistic religion and had an advanced culture with accomplishments in architecture, mathematics, medicine and more. Significant figures included Queen Hatshepsut, the first female pharaoh, and King Tut who restored Egyptian religion after Akhenaten's attempt at monotheism. The Egyptian empire declined after 1000 BCE due to ineffective leadership and foreign invaders like the Assyrians and Persians.

1. Ancient Egypt

2. Location
• Nile River Valley down to the first cataract

3. Geographic Influences
• Isolation – flat land, protective deserts
• Nile River
– “lifeline” or “gift from the gods”
– Transportation, communication, and good
agriculture despite the surrounding deserts
• Adaptations
– Predictable floods
– Used “basin irrigation” to retain water for
farming when the flooding ended

4. • When?
• 3200 BCE – 1000 BCE
• Three time periods:
• Old Kingdom – 2700-2200
• Middle Kingdom – 2050 - 1800
• New Kingdom – 1550 - 1100

5. Government
• Originally 3 kingdoms
governed by an absolute
monarch
• Later, Egypt unifies into
one great kingdom ruled
by a Pharaoh or “God-
King”
– Theocracy – government
ruled by a divine figure or
by religious law

6. • Polytheistic
Religion • Priests held spiritual and
political power
– And shaved all hair from their
bodies
• Aton – Sun god
• Amon – god of Egypt
Nefirtiti worshipping Aton • Osiris – god of the Dead
– Weighs all human hearts on a
scale. If lighter than a feather
they are pure and will live
forever. If heavier, the impure
heart will be destroyed and
eaten by the Devourer of
Souls
• Book of the Dead
– Collection of prayers and
meditations, seen as holy
scriptures
• Pure heart involved “Maat”
Picture from the Book of the Dead – Virtues of good life, truth,
justice, and order

7. View of Life, Death, and Change
• Egyptians believed:
– Life should be traditional and enjoyed
– Mummification – preserving the body for life
after death
• Ka – eternal spirit that lives on in Pharaohs
• Pyramids were designed to provide a comfortable
place in which to live (including drawings, jewelry
and clothing)
– Imagined the future life for pure souls to be
much like the present

13. Cultural Accomplishments
• An advanced, progressive culture
– Hieroglyphics
• “sacred carving,” used clay and papyrus
– The best ancient calendar (6 hours
short of a true solar calendar year
– Geometry
• Used to survey lands
– Medicine
• Understood heart rates/pulses
• Broken bones, fevers, treating wounds
• Even used electric fish in pools for
healing and therapy

14. • Women were respected, shared many rights
with men
– Including divorce and marriage
• Complex number system
– Kept financial and tax records
• Very stratified society
– Literacy a significant factor
– Social mobility, even for slaves (esp. through service
in the army or to the Pharaoh)
• Pyramids

15. • Pyramids
– Tombs for the Pharaohs
– Perfectly symmetrical structures
– Required over 2 million stones
• Some stones weighed 200 tons
• Some poured in molds like concrete
– 80 pyramids in Egypt
• Largest at Giza
– Most treasures and mummies stolen by thieves
– Probably willingly built by peasants

17. Significant People and Events
• King Menes – unified the 3 separate empires
into the “Old Kingdom”
– Capital at Memphis ~3100 BCE
• 3100-1600 BCE – “ups and downs”
– Middle Kingdom emerges during high point
– Pyramids built
– Art and Architecture flourished
• New Kingdom 1570-1075 – True, great Egyptian
empire and civilization
– Desert not enough, Egyptians create buffer zone

18. Queen Hatshepsut
• Ancestor of King Tut
• Declares herself
Pharoah
– First female ruler of a
civilization/empire
• 22 yr reign
• Killed (probably by
her stepson
Thutmose III)

19. Thutmose III
• Conquers Syria and
Palestine
– Height of the Egyptian
empire
• Hebrews who had
come willingly to
Egypt are forced into
slavery
– (this sets up the LMPG
thing)

20. • ~1375 he tried to force Egypt to be
monotheistic
– “Aton is the only God” Akenaton
• Moved the capital
– Thebes to Akhetaton
• Changed is name
– From Amonhotep to Akenaton (not much better)
• Replaced by King Tut

21. King Tut
• About 8 or 9 yrs old
• Restores the old
capital and belief
system
– So Egyptians liked him

22. • The 3,300-year-old mummy of the
ancient King Tutankhamun lies
exposed on a CT machine in Luxor,
Egypt on Wednesday as Egyptian
antiquities chief Zahi Hawass, left,
looks on.

24. Ramses II
• The last great Pharaoh
• Was in charge when
Moses led Hebrews out
of Egypt (Exodus)
• 67 yr reign
• Est. peace w/ Hittites
• Built many temples and
statues of himself
• Fathered over 150
children before dying at
age 99

27. • Luxor Album:
• https://picasaweb.google.com/1150515006931

28. New Kingdom Accomplishments
• Built the Valley of the Kings
– Great temples and tombs beneath desert cliffs (less
conspicuous than pyramids)
– Near Thebes
– King Tut, Ramses II, and others were inside

30. Success and Decline
• Desert protection helped
• Weren’t by outsiders challenged like
Mesopotamia was
• Used Nile ingeniously
• Empire collapses due to
– ineffective Pharaohs
– Strengthening Assyrians and Persians
• Who conquer Egypt c.1000 BCE

31. Rosetta Stone
• Slab of black stone
with Greek,
Hieroglyphics, and
Demotic writing
• Discovered by Jean
Champollion in 1799
• Code broken in 1822
– **first time
hieroglyphics were
read and understood