Ancient

Egypt
• A country of Africa
•
Ancient Egypt
• Map of Ancient Egypt
• The country of the Nile

•
Historical periods
• The Pharaohs

• Some Important Pharaohs

• Egyptian Gods and Goddesses
Ancient
•

•
Ra the God of the Sun
Gods and Goddesses
Egypt
•
The temples
• A life after the life

• Pyramids

•
The most famous Pyramids
• Inside a pyramid
•
The Egyptian hieroglyphs
• The alphabet
• Papyrus
•
The Rosetta Stone
 A country of
Africa
Situated in the North-East
Africa
Area of about 1 million km2
83 million estimated
inhabitants
Capital city: Cairo
Official language: Arabic
Map of Africa

Flag of Egypt
 Ancient Egypt
●
Egypt is famous for its ancient civilization
●
It is widely regarded as an important
political and cultural nation
●
We can find some of the world's most
famous monuments:
 The Giza pyramid complex and its Great Sphinx
 The city of Luxor
 The Karnak Temple
 The Valley of the Kings
Map of Ancient Egypt
Important places:
 Cairo
 Alexandria

 Luxor

 Aswan

 River Nile

 Lake Nasser

 Al Fayoum Oasis

 Abu Simbel

 Thebes

 Nubian Desert

 Western Desert (Lybian Desert)

 Eastern Desert (Arabian Desert)

 The country of the Nile
The annual flood of the Nile
River was important in Egypt
because it rained so little. In
ancient times the flood
happened between July and
September when the snow
melted on the mountains in
Africa and flowed to the
Mediterranean sea, through
Egypt. The mud that the
passing water left helped the
harvests to grow.
 Historical Periods
●
The Old Kingdom (2700-2200 B.C.)
●
First Intermediate Period (2200-
2000 B.C.)
●
The Middle Kingdom (2000-1800
B.C.)
●
Second Intermediate Period (1800-
1500 B.C.)
●
The New Kingdom
(1500-1100 B.C.?)
The Pharaohs
●
Were the head of the
government and high priest
of every temple
●
Considered half-human and
half-god
●
Assumed the eternal and
unchangeable divine status
●
Became the embodiment of
the Gods
●
Led a unified Egyptian state
●
Ruled the whole country and
decided what was right or
wrong
●
Old Kingdom:
●
Menes
●

●
Kheops
Kefren
Some Important
●
Middle Kingdom: Pharaohs
●
Mentuhotep II
●
New Kingdom:
●
Thutmose III
●
Akhenaton
●
Tutankhamun
●
Hatsepsut
●
Seti I
●
Ramesses II the Great
●
Cleopatra VIII
Egyptian Gods and Goddesses
Religion was a very important part of Egyptian life. The ancient
egyptian worshipped many gods and goddesses. They where
often shown with animal heads to represent their their magical
powers.

Ra the God of the Sun

Ra was the most important God. He was the lord of
all the gods. He was usually shown in human form
with a falcon head, crowned with the sun disc
encircled by the a sacred cobra.

Ra sailed across the heavens in a boat called the

'Barque of Millions of Years'. At the end of each day
Ra was thought to die and sailed on his night
voyage through the Underworld, leaving the Moon
to light the world above.
 Gods and
Goddesses
Amun: King of the Gods (Head of a ram), when Amun was combined with the
sun god Ra he was even more powerful. He was then called Amun-Ra.
Anubis: God of of Mummification and Death (Head of a jackal). Priests often
wore a mask of Anubis during mummification ceremonies.
Bast (Bastet) : Goddess of Protection (Head of a cat)
Geb: Earth God. The ancient Egyptians believed that earthquakes were Geb's
laughter.
Hathor: Goddess of love and joy (Head of a cow)
Sekmet: Goddess of war and battle (Head of a lioness)
Horus: God of the sky (Head of a falcon)
Thoth: God of wisdom. writing and knowledge (Head of an ibis bird)
Sobek: God of Nile (Head of a crocodile)
 The temple was a special building
considered to be the home of Gods
The and Goddesses.

Temples Each God had a temple where

people could come to worship and
ask for favours. Egyptians used to
bring Gods and Goddesses
offerings, that were often food and
drink.

There always was one or several

statues of the god in the temple.

Luxor, the most famous

Egyptian temple
A life after the
life
Egyptians believed that people lived another
life after death. The body of a dead person
was preserved by a process called
mummification. The mummy was placed in a
coffin made of wood, clay or stone. Some
animals were mummified too and placed in
the tomb in coffins next to their masters'.
This happened specially in the case of the
pharaohs and important and rich people.
 Despite of being the most known type of
Egyptian burial, it was only during the time

Pyramid of the Old Kingdom that the ancient

Egyptians built pyramids to hold the royal
tombs of their kings. Pyramids were huge

s structures that had storage rooms,

courtyards and secret passageways.

The ancient Egyptians did not simply build a pyramid and bury the
pharaoh. A whole city, called pyramid city, grew up around a pyramid
during its construction. The pharaoh provided homes for everyone
who worked on the pyramid construction. People were paid for their
work in goods, food and homes.

After a pyramid was finished, the

pyramid city continued to exist. Some of
the people who stayed had jobs
maintaining and guarding the pyramid.
 The first pyramid, the Step Pyramid, was
built around 2700 BC.

The most famous

Pyramids
Giza is the location of the Pyramid of
Cheops (also known as the "Great
Pyramid"), the somewhat smaller
Pyramid of Kephren, the relatively
modest-sized Pyramid of Mykerinus,
along with a number of smaller satellite
edifices known as "Queen's pyramids",
and the Great Sphinx.
Inside a
Pryramid
 The Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Scribes where the few Egyptians who
knew how to read and write. Being a
scribe was a extremely difficult job
because there were over 700 different
signs to be remembered.

The Egyptians wrote with signs called

hieroglyphs, written in lines straight
across or up and down without
spaces or punctuation marks. Many
hieroglyphs were a kind of picture of
what they represented. For example,
a bird would be represented by a
picture of a bird or the verb "to
answer" would be represented by a
man with his hand near his mouth.
 The
Papyrus
Alphabet Papyrus used to be a common plant
in the Nile Valley but is now
becoming rare. They were used for
religious documents and texts.

Papyrus reeds were used for scribes

to write on.

A papyrus sheet
The Rosetta
Stone
The discovery of the
Rosetta Stone in 1799 was
an extremely important clue
for our understanding of
hieroglyphs. It is a slab of
black granite with the same
inscription written in three
different scripts:
Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and
Greek, which helped to
translate the hieroglyphs.