Transcript or wall paintings, showed daily activities, historical events

Paintings
Much of the early art of ancient Egypt was created within tombs. Their
murals, or wall paintings, showed daily activities, historical events, and
afterlife scenes of the individual buried in the tomb.
The main purpose of tomb murals was to express important values and
beliefs.
Eygptians didn’t use realism when painting peoples bodies.Faces were
shown in profile, but both eyes could be seen. Bodies were shown from
the front, making both arms and both legs visible. Finally, artists used
scale to show social standing and importance—they depicted the
pharaoh as larger than his servants.
Sculptures
• Eygptians also created sculptures that were found in tombs to honor
rulers.
• Unlike the paintings, these royal sculptures achieved a high degree of
realism. Egyptian sculptures and carvings of ordinary people and
animals were also lifelike.
Jewelry and Make up
• Egyptian men and women wore a lot of jewelry. They turned gold and
silver into necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.
• They also used makeup similar to today’s cosmetics. They applied
rouge and blush to their cheeks, favored bright red lipstick, and used
thick eyeliner, called kohl. They ground up a stone called malachite to
make a green eye shadow. They probably did not realize it, but the
malachite helped protect their eyes from damage from the sun.
Medicine
Like many early civilizations, ancient Egyptians believed that illness was
caused by evil spirits. They often used rituals to try to cure the sick. But
Egyptian doctors also used herbal remedies and scientific treatments to
treat specific symptoms.
They used medicinal plants and herbs, made people drink teas made
with insect parts, and rubbed animal dung on wounds.
Some doctors were also surgeons. They specialized in treating eyes and
stomach diseases. Because Egypt is in a desert, the food had a lot of
sand in it. That meant many Egyptians had very poor teeth, so there
were also doctors who specialized in treating teeth.
Medicine Continued
• Doctors mummified bodies, preserving them for the afterlife. To do
this, they needed to remove the heart, lungs, kidney, and brain. For
this reason, the physicians’ knowledge of anatomy, the inside of the
human body, was very good. The drawings Egyptian physicians made
are as detailed and accurate as those in some modern-day medical
textbooks. Recent X-rays of some mummies show that ancient
Egyptian doctors set broken bones as well as doctors in modern
emergency rooms.
• Egyptian doctors were so highly respected, sometimes they were
sent to other countries to help them with medical needs
Writing and Reading Part I
• The Egyptians began using pictures as a form of writing. Each picture
represented an idea or a word. For example, a picture of a vulture
was the symbol for the word "mother." These are called logograms.
Logo is the Greek word for "word," and gram is the Greek word for
"sign.“
• Other pictures were used to represent a sound. A lion represented
the sound “r.” These are called phonograms. Phono is the Greek word
for "sound." Using the logograms and phonograms together, the
Egyptians created hieroglyphics, a form of writing. The word
hieroglyphics means “sacred carving.” The hieroglyphics allowed
Egyptians to track their business transactions, praise their rulers, and
record their history.
Writing and Reading Part II
• At first Egyptians used stone or clay to write hieroglyphics
• Egyptians learned how to make a kind of paper from papyrus, a reed that
grows in the Nile River. They also developed ink and a type of pen called a
stylus; these were used by scribes, or official government recorders, to
write on the papyrus. For the first time, information could be permanently
written, transported, and stored.
• Egyptians used writing only for important matters, such as recording
business transactions, writing treaties, setting taxes, and documenting
important events, only the scribes and a few members of the royal family
and upper classes knew how to read or write. The upper classes did not
want the ordinary Egyptian workers, citizens, and enslaved people to have
this ability.
Writing and Reading Part III
• In 1799, French soldiers found a large rock near the city of Rashid,
which was also known as Rosetta. It was inscribed with one message
written in three different scripts. One form of the message was
written in hieroglyphics, one was written in demotic script (another
form of Egyptian writing), and one was written in Greek. Scholars
realized the message was the same in all three scripts and were finally
able to decipher the hieroglyphics by using the Greek translation. The
rock, called the Rosetta Stone, is on display at the British Museum in
London.
• Hieroglyphics and Papyrus made it possible for beliefs and ideas to
passed down from generation to generation.
Mathematics
• The Egyptian numeric system was similar to that used by the Romans.
Individual symbols were used for 1, 10, 100, and so on. Numbers
were created by repeating the number of symbols for each place
value. For example, Egyptians wrote “21” by writing the symbol for 10
twice and the symbol for 1 one time.
• Documents show examples of addition, subtraction, multiplication,
and division problems. Egyptians also could solve more complex
problems using fractions and basic concepts of geometry.
• The Egyptian system of mathematics was centered on common
problems they faced and was mostly used in surveying farmland and
the construction of buildings. Later this was passed on to the Greeks.
Measurements
• Egyptians bartered, or traded goods. If you are trading two fish for a
loaf of bread, it is easy to keep track of what you are trading. But how
would you know if one pile of wheat is the same as another?
• A standard set of weights is important when you are trading goods.
Merchants agreed on how valuable something was based on its
weight. Egyptians used rings, called debens, to weigh goods on a
balance scale. Every deben weighed the same amount, about 12
grams, so a deben in one market weighed the same as a deben in
another market.
• They also agreed on a standard size of container. Jars and chests of
the same size were used to measure out grain, honey, and gold dust.
Measurements Part II
• Travelers and farmers needed a way to measure distances. Because
the Nile River flooded every year, farmers needed a way to determine
where their fields had been before the flooding.
• The Egyptians measured distances and lengths by cubits. One cubit
was the length of a person’s arm from his elbow to the tips of his
fingers. It was not completely accurate, as everyone’s arms are
different. The architects building the pyramids used rods that were all
the same length to make sure no variations affected the construction.
They also measured with long lengths of rope that featured evenly
spaced knots tied a cubit apart from one another.