Transcript File - Mr. Butts World History

Chapter Two
Ancient Middle East and Egypt
3200 B.C.-500 B.C.
Section Four
Egyptian Civilization
The ancient
Egyptian
civilization
had an
organized
religion.
Ancient Egyptians
believed that many gods
and goddesses ruled the
world and the afterlife.
Amon-Re was the most
important Egyptian god.
Most pharaohs
received their
right to rule
from Amon-Re,
but this belief
evolved.
This is the pharaoh Hatshepsut
kneeling before Amon-Re.
The pharaoh was believed to
be a god and a monarch.
This is a relief on a wall at the
Temple of Edfu. In it, the goddesses
of the Lower Nile and the Upper
Nile, each wearing the crown of
their respective kingdoms, are
crowning the Pharaoh with the new
combined crown.
Ancient Egyptian
pharaohs were thought
to be incarnations of
the god Horus.
This is Horus
in a relief,
also from
the Temple
of Edfu.
Ancient Egyptians believed that a new life that
was eternal would begin after death in this world.
The gods Osiris and Isis
symbolized the union of
the male and female.
They promised ancient
Egyptians eternal life.
Ancient Egyptians believed that after their
deaths their souls would be carried across a
lake of fire to the hall of Osiris.
This is the Lake of Fire, painted red,
with burning braziers and baboons,
from the Book of the Dead.
The photograph at
the right is of a
papyrus from the 21st
dynasty. It shows the
darkened bodies of
the damned floating
in the Lake of Fire in
the underworld,
which is fed by flames
from braziers along
the lake’s edges.
Once across the Lake of Fire, ancient Egyptians
believed they would be judged in the Hall of Osiris.
In the Hall
of Osiris,
the dead
person’s
heart
would be
weighed
against the
feather of
truth.
The souls of the dead were sentenced to eternal
paradise or hell in the Hall of Osiris.
Sinners were fed to the Eater
of the Dead which had the
head of a crocodile, the torso
of a lion and the girth of a
hippopotamus.
Worthy souls then had to
complete a dangerous
journey through the
underworld.
The Book of the Dead gave guidance for the
dangerous journey to the afterlife.
The Book
of the
Dead is a
series of
spells
written
on long
sheets of
papyrus.
Ancient
Egyptians
relied upon
the spells to
get them
safely to the
Fields of
Rushes
where they
would live
forever.
The Fields of Rushes
was a reflection of
the real world they
had just left.
The Fields of Rushes are described as having
blue skies, rivers and boats for travel, gods
and goddesses to worship, and fields and
crops to tend and harvest.
The dead were granted a plot of land in the Fields of
Rushes and were expected to maintain it.
To an ancient Egyptian, to live in a
field of rushes was to always be near
to the life-giving waters of the Nile.
Amenhotep IV changed ancient Egyptian
religious beliefs. He also changed his name.
Amenhotep IV was a pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt.
Nefertiti was
his queen.
Tutankhamen
was his son.
Nefertiti was not Tutankhamen’s
mother. His mother is at the right.
She is known only as
“The Younger Lady.”
Amenhotep IV abandoned polytheism and
introduced worship centered on the Aten.
Amenhotep IV took the name
Akhenaten, which means “He
who is of service to the Aten.”
This new belief was an early form
of monotheism.
At left, Akhenaten and his family
worship the Aten.
Aten is the disk of the sun in ancient
Egyptian mythology.
This is a
papyrus
depicting
Akhenaten,
Nefertiti and
their family
under the
Aten.
In his poem
“Great Hymn
to the Aten,”
Akhenaten
praises Aten
as the creator,
giver of life,
and nurturing
spirit of the
world.
Akhenaten
forbid the
worship other
gods.
While Akhenaten
worshiped Aten, his
subjects worshipped him.
After Akhenaten’s death, later
pharaohs discredited him and
Egypt returned to polytheism.
This is an
artist’s
recreation of
Amarna, the
ancient
Egyptian
capital city
built by
Akhenaten in
honor of the
Aten.
Champollion’s translation of the Rosetta Stone
allowed Egyptologists to decipher the meanings of
thousands of surviving ancient Egyptian records.
The Rosetta Stone is a text
written by a group of priests in
Egypt to honor the Egyptian
pharaoh. It lists all of the things
that the pharaoh has done that
are good for the priests and the
people of Egypt.
Egyptologists used the Rosetta Stone to
decipher hieroglyphics.
The Rosetta stone has three
different alphabets;
Egyptian hieroglyphs,
Demotic (a Northern
Egyptian script), and
classical Greek. These were
the languages commonly in
use in Egypt when the
stone was created.
The Rosetta Stone
was carved in 196
B.C. It was found in
1799 by French
soldiers in a small
village in the Delta
called Rosetta.
Many people worked on deciphering hieroglyphs over several
hundred years. After many years of studying the Rosetta Stone,
Jean-François Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs in 1822.
Champollion recognized the
Greek text, then deciphered
the Demotic signs, and used
those two translations to make
educated guesses about what
the hieroglyphs stood for.
and now…
some more final exam
questions…
Which is a characteristic shared by the Ancient
Egyptian Civilization, Ancient Mesopotamian
civilizations, Ancient Indus Valley Civilization,
and Ancient Chinese Civilization?
a)
Anyone who wasn’t wealthy was a slave.
b)
Each had an organized religion.
c)
They used the same coins for money.
d)
They spoke the same language.
Which is a characteristic shared by the Ancient
Egyptian Civilization, Ancient Mesopotamian
civilizations, Ancient Indus Valley Civilization,
and Ancient Chinese Civilization?
a)
Anyone who wasn’t wealthy was a slave.
b)
Each had an organized religion.
c)
They used the same coins for money.
d)
They spoke the same language.
The Egyptian system of writing is referred to as
a)
cuneiform.
b)
hieroglyphs.
c)
Linear B script.
d)
characters.
The Egyptian system of writing is referred to as
a)
cuneiform.
b)
hieroglyphs.
c)
Linear B script.
d)
characters.