ALL ABOUT THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

Hazem Ahmed
ALL ABOUT THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS
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Welcome to my page. Here is how you can get in touch with me. - Heiroglyphics - In AD 391 the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I closed all pagan temples throughout the empire. This action terminated a four thousand year old tradition and the message of the ancient Egyptian language was lost for 1500 years. It was not until the discovery of the Rosetta stone and the work of Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832) that the Ancient Egyptians awoke from their long slumber. Today, by virtue of the vast quantity of their literature, we know more about Egyptian society than most other ancient cultures. The script was developed about four thousand years before Christ and there was also a decimal system of numeration up to a million. Unlike other cultures the early picture forms were never discarded or simplified probably because they are so very lovely to look at. Hieroglyphs were called by the Egyptians "the words of God" and were used mainly by the priests. These painstakingly drawn symbols were great for decorating the walls of temples but for conducting day to day business there was another script, known as hieratic This was a handwriting in which the picture signs were abbreviated to the point of abstraction Hieroglyphs are written in rows or columns and can be read from left to right or from right to left. You can distinguish the direction in which the text is to be read because the human or animal figures always face towards the beginning of the line. Also the upper symbols are read before lower. Hieroglyphic signs are divided into four categories: 1. Alphabetic signs represent a single sound. Unfortunately the Egyptians took most vowels for granted and did not represent them. So we may never know how the words were formed. 2. Syllabic signs represent a combination of two or three consonants. 3. Word-signs are pictures of objects used as the words for those objects. they are followed by an upright stroke, to indicate that the word is complete in one sign. 4. A determinative is a picture of an object which helps the reader. For example; if a word expressed an abstract idea, a picture of a roll of papyrus tied up and sealed was included to show that the meaning of the word could be expressed in writing although not pictorially. - JEAN FRANCOIS CHAMPILLION - In 1797, a precocious 7-year-old French boy named Jean Francois Champollion became fascinated by the culture of ancient Egypt. Champollion's father, a bookseller, encouraged his son's scholarly interests. Jean Francois consumed every book his father could find for him that had anything to do with ancient Egypt. These scattered references were limited to the works of ancient Greek and Roman writers who had described Egypt, and to the Bible, which offered glimpses of the powerful Egyptian pharaohs. Ironically, the Egyptians' own historical records of their civilization could no longer be read or interpreted. The picture-writing of Egypt, called hieroglyphic script, had not been used since the first century A.D., when the descendents of the ancient Egyptians were converted to Christianity. The skills of writing and reading hieroglyphics were forgotten as the last scribes of the old religion died off. Even though the temples and pyramids of the Nile Valley remained as evidence of a great civilization, the history of that civilization, written in hieroglyphics, seemed to have been lost to the modern world. In 1798, young Jean Francois Champollion read newspapers in his father's bookshop that brought exciting news. French general Napoleon Bonaparte had invaded Egypt with a force of over 50,000 soldiers, sailors and marines. The young Champollion soon became an avid reader of the Courier de l'Egypte, a newspaper established by Napoleon to report news of the invasion back to France. In the autumn of 1799, Champollion read the news of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. Some French soldiers had found the large stone embedded in the ruins of a makeshift wall near the town of Rosetta, on the Nile delta. Into its polished surface was carved a series of three inscriptions: one in classic Egyptian hieroglyphics, one in an unknown hieroglyphic-like script, and one in Greek. The nine-year-old provincial scholar shared in the excitement and pride of the French discovery, realizing that it might now be possible to decipher the Egyptian writing by comparing it directly to the easily translated Greek inscription. From transcripts of the Greek text, Champollion learned that the Rosetta Stone had been carved by order of the Egyptian priesthood in 196 B.C. The inscription praised the good works performed by the Greek king Ptolemy V, who ruled over Egypt from 205-180 B.C. The carved stone was intended to address both the native Egyptian population and the dominant minority led by the Greek king. French ownership of the Rosetta Stone ended in 1801, when Napoleon's generals lost Egypt to an invading British Army. Having heard of the Rosetta Stone, the British took possession of it "by the fortune of war" and sent it to be placed on display at the British Museum in London. Fortunately, French scholars had made prints of the stone's inscriptions and sent them back to France. Also in 1801, at the age of eleven, Jean Francois Champollion gained admittance to a government-sponsored school in the French city of Grenoble, where he studied Greek, Latin, Arabic, Syrian, Persian, Sanskrit, Chinese and Hebrew. Champollion amazed his professors by the ease with which he learned languages. He also began to teach himself the modern Egyptian language, known as Coptic. Although Coptic contained many Greek elements, it was believed to have been derived from ancient Egyptian. On the school's campus and in its libraries, Champollion became known by the nickname "the Egyptian." For six years, while Champollion single-mindedly studied ancient language and history in Grenoble, many scholars tried to decode the inscriptions found on the Rosetta Stone. Early progress in understanding part of the hieroglyphic text came from the frequent appearance of the royal Greek name "Ptolemy" which could be found in corresponding sections of Greek and Egyptian. The hieroglyphic equivalents of other common words in the inscriptions, such as "temples," "Egypt," and "Greeks" were soon located. In between these isolated names and words, however, there were long passages of hieroglyphic text that did not seem to correlate with the Greek translation in any way. As progress stalled, Jean Francois Champollion grew determined to apply himself exclusively to solving the riddle of the mysterious Egyptian picture-writing. Champollion's dedication entailed a high personal price when he left the sanctuary of school and moved to Paris at the age of 17. Because of his extremely specialized skills and interests, as well as his youth, he was unable to find employment, and lived in poverty in a small Paris apartment for a year. Although his obsession brought him into contact with many of the greatest minds in the French capital, he was barely able to survive. "I am beside myself, and don't know where to turn next," he wrote in desperation to his older brother. "My shoes are worn through, my shirts are in rags. I am ashamed to appear in public, I appear so ragged." In the libraries of the French capital Champollion continued to teach himself the Coptic language. He also received permission to study the copies of the Rosetta Stone inscriptions that were kept in the Louvre museum. Encouraged in his work, he noted "Every day my Coptic dictionary is growing fatter. The author, meanwhile, is getting thinner." By reading Coptic meanings into the hieroglyphic pictures, Champollion gradually taught himself to read the subtle Egyptian symbols in ways that the ancient Egyptians understood them. Within a passage of hieroglyphic text, for example, the drawing of an eagle could obviously be used to stand for the word "eagle." In certain contexts, however, the same symbol could also sometimes stand only for the sound of the letter "A" - the first letter in the Egyptian word for "eagle." In a third instance, the same hieroglyph might also be read as the Egyptian word for "swift," one of the attributes of the eagle. Similarly, instead of using the word "king," the Egyptians sometimes drew a series of hieroglyphics that literally meant "He of the reed and bee," which was one of the ceremonial titles of the king. Elsewhere, the word "Pharoah," meaning "He of the Great House," might also be used to describe the king. Gradually, Champollion began to knit the various meanings of these and many other Coptic Egyptian words and phrases into an understandable system. By the end of the year, he had managed to translate one complete row of hieroglyphic text from the Rosetta Stone, and felt confident of the various meanings of a dozen different hieroglyphic symbols. Aware of the risks of announcing his interpretations prematurely, he kept the results of this work to himself. The next year, Champollion was rescued from his life of destitute scholarship when he was appointed professor of ancient history at the Lyceum of Grenoble. There, he was able to continue his studies of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and complete his mastery of the Coptic language. In 1814, when Champollion was twenty-four, he published some of the results of his investigations. Egypt Under the Pharaohs was published in two volumes. The book's popularity provided Champollion with much needed extra income in the form of publisher's royalties. Finally, after seven years of research, Champollion published his complete interpretation of the hieroglyphics, based on the key passages found on the Rosetta Stone. In 1822 he presented his results to the French Academy, outlining his system for the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphic script. At first, his ideas were challenged by other scholars, but as more and more hieroglyphic inscriptions were translated using his methods, it became clear that he had succeeded in breaking the 1,800-year silence of the hieroglyphs. Champollion's expertise in Egyptian studies led French King Charles X to sponsor him on a residency at the museum of Turin, Italy, where he deciphered the many Egyptian texts and carvings collected there. Leading a joint French-Italian expedition to Egypt in 1828-29, Champollion copied and collected hundreds of hieroglyphic inscriptions and documents. On his return to France, Champollion was appointed director of the Egyptian Museum of the Louvre, in Paris. In 1831, the College de France created a special position, the Chair of Egyptian Antiquities, in Champollion's honor. The next year, Champollion died of a stroke at the age of forty-one. - THE PHAROAHS - Ancient Egypt was ruled by pharaohs, whom the Egyptians believed was both a god and a monarch. A monarch is a king or a queen. The Egyptians built the pyramids to provide for the pharaohs in their afterlives. Egypt was ruled by many pharaohs, but a few stand out. Menes (pronounced MEE-nes) is the first pharaoh we know about. Menes united two kingdoms, called Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt and established what we now call the “Old Kingdom” about 3100BC. Menes’ tomb wasn’t discovered until 1897. Royal families often intermarried because they did not want to produce children with common people. This was the case for Thutmose II, an Egyptian pharaoh who lived around 1500BC. Thutmose married his half-sister Hatshepsut. Thutmose II had a son, Thutmose III, by a minor wife. When Thutmose II died his son, Thutmose III became Phaorah. However, Hatshepsut was appointed regent because of the boy’s young age. A regent is someone who rules for a monarch if they are too young to rule. Hatshepsut and Thutmose III ruled jointly until Hatshepsut declared herself pharaoh. Dressed in men’s attire, Hatshepsut administered affairs of the nation. Hatshepsut disappeared shortly after Thutmose III led a revolt to reclaim the throne. Thutmose then destroyed Hatshepsut’s shrines and statues. Akhenaten was a monotheistic pharaoh who ruled with his queen, Nefertiti from 1352BC to 1336BC. They worshipped on Aten, the god of the sun. Akhenaten and Nefrititi forbade their subjects to worship of any other gods. They built great statues to Aten and ordered that statues honoring any other god be destroyed. Most Egyptians did not take the faith of their leaders, and after their death, statues of Aten were destroyed. Tutankhamen became pharaoh shortly after Akhenaten’s death. He was only nine years old, but was married to the daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. The “boy king” never became a “man king” because he died of a head injury only nine years into his rule. Most of the treasures of the pyramids were plundered, but by accident Tutankhamen’s tomb remained intact because it was buried by rock chips dumped from the cutting of a tomb of a later pharaoh. The tomb lay hidden for more than three thousand years until British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered it in 1922. Carter’s discovery made “King Tut” and his buried treasures famous. - THE RIVER NILE - - The Nile provides a steady supply of water to a region that receives very little rain. - The river brings tons of silt to its banks. Silt is fine particles of soil that are carried off and deposited by water and wind. - The silt provides excellent farmland. - Egyptians can travel more easily on the river than on land. -Ancient Egypt was protected from invaders by natural borders : - The land beyond the Nile River Valley is a desert. - There are several cataracts (or large waterfalls) along the Nile River south of the ancient civilization. -Not many people ventured into the sea before 1500BC, so the Mediterranean Sea formed a natural border. (Egypt was not invaded by the sea until Napoleon in the nineteenth century) - Enemies could only invade Egypt by crossing the narrow Isthmus of Suez. - THE ROSETTA STONE - The ancient Egyptians were a great mystery to scientists until they deciphered hieroglyphics, the writing of the ancient people. The ancient civilization was mentionedin the Bible, but we didn’t know much about the Egyptians until a troop of French soldiers found a stone near the city of Rosetta in1799. That stone eventually made it possible for Jean Champollion to decode the ancient text. We can read hieroglyphics today because of the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone was inscribed with a law made in 196BC, written in two forms of hieroglyphics and in ancient Greek. Scientists decided that they could learn hieroglypics if they could decipher the code. A French scholar named Jean Francois Champollion translated the Egyptian writing into Greek after more than twenty years of work. Champollion concluded that hieroglyphics had originally been pictographs, but they stood for sounds in later times. Champollion made it possible to understand hieroglyphics, and unlocked many of the mysteries of ancient Egyptian civilization. The Rosetta stone measured 3ft 9in (114cm) long and 2ft 4*in (71cm) wide. - PAPYRUS - The papyrus plant grows in the Nile fresh water. It has long roots and stems. The ancient Egyptians used its stems for making mats, baskets, sandals, and for recording history. We take off the outer green skin and then slice the internal part into strips. The slices are hammered to squeeze the water out and to break the fibres. Then we put the strips in ordinary water for 6 days until it becomes transparent and flexible. We cut strips of papyrus to required length and then place them between 2 pieces of cotton horizontally and vertically press them. We change the cardboard every 8 hours until it is completely dried. It takes about six days. Now it is ready to be used for painting with all kinds of inks, oil color, gouache color, writing, and drawing. Some papyrus at museums in Cairo date back 4000 years. Also interesting to note is that the word paper comes from papyrus.