Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt is the oldest civilization of the world, running from around 3100 B.C.E. to 30 B.C.E.. Egypt is located in northern Africa along the Nile River. There are several time frames that divides Egyptian history into smaller chunks. The first, prehistoric Egypt, is completely unknown to the modern world. The rest fall under Ancient Egypt: Early Dynastic Period, Old Kingdom, First Intermediate Period, Middle Kingdom, Second Intermediate Period, New Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period, Late Period, and Achaemenid Egypt. The Ptolemaic Egypt, or the end of the Egyptian empire, falls under the Classical Antiquity division. The peak of Egyptian reign and power was during the New Kingdom, and after its end began a slow decline. The Third Intermediate Period and Late Period saw the conquerings of several empires over the Egyptians, the final conquerer being Alexander the Great, after whose death Ptolemy Soter ruled and saw the death of Cleopatra, officially ending the Egyptian Empire.
The Egyptian language is similar to Semitic language, being that it is Afro-Asiatic, and is the second longest history of a language right behind Sumerian. They wrote in hieroglyphics, a series of hundreds of symbols. Each symbol could be a word, sound, or silent determinative, and could mean a different word when written in a different context. Hieroglyphs were a primarily formal text used in tombs and on obelisks, and could be read either right to left in rows or up to down in columns, but most commonly right to left. A simpler, less formal script, hieratic, was used by scribes because it was faster, and was always written right to left. Later, another form of writing, Demotic, became the dominant writing style alongside hieroglyphs, and it was these two writings together with Greek writing that was on the Rosetta Stone. The best known stories of Egyptian writing are those in the Pyramids and the Tombs, but the classic story of Egypt was the Story of Sinuhe, a narrative set after the death of Pharaoh Amenemhat I.
Writings from ancient Egypt show that they had a fully developed numeral system. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus show that Egyptians knew many things about what is now modern mathematics; they could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as well as use fractions, compute volumes of boxes and pyramids, and calculate the surface area of triangular prisms, rectangular prisms, and spheres. They also understood basic algebra and geometry. They wrote numbers decimally, or in powers of ten up to one million. For example, to write the number 60, the hieroglyph for ten was written six times. Not only this, but Egyptians understood the underlyings for the Pythagorean Theorem.
Egyptian religious belief centered around divinity and the afterlife. It was believed that the Pharaohs were Gods in a mortal form, and after their death they would become full Gods in their divine forms. Egyptian Gods had great powers over different things, and were often called upon in times of need. However, not all Egyptian Gods were believed to be benevolent, so there were offerings made consistantly to keep their wrath at bay. Myths and stories of the Gods were not considered highly important in proving their existence, and new deities were constantly rising due to the deaths of Pharaohs, so they were never organized or placed into an ordered system. Gods were kept in sealed off temples that were only accessable to temple officials. They were not open for public worship, but would be brought out in shrines on select feasts and celebratory days for the people. During other days of the year, citizens would pray to statues or amulets at their homes. Egyptians believed that humans were both spiritual and physical beings. Their bodies were the physical aspect, while the šwt (shadow), ba (soul), ka (life-force), and names were spiritual. After death, your spiritual aspects could move at will, but it was the goal of the afterlife to join your ka and ba to become a blessed dead, as well as find some form of statue as a home. In order to join your spiritual pieces, you had to be judged worthy. Because the heart was considered the holder of thoughts and emotions, you heart would be weighed on a scale with a "feather of truth". If your heart was worthy, you were allowed to join and keep a home on Earth in spiritual form.
The true end of Egypt came when Marcus Antonius (Marc Anthony) fled with his army to Egypt in fear of Octavian's coming army. There, he fell in love with Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh of Egypt. The day of the battle with Octavian's army, Marcus knew he would lose, and so instead of die valiantly in battle, he killed himself with his own sword, believing that Cleopatra had already killed herself. When he learned she had not, he was carried to her hiding spot and died beside her, to which she later killed herself with a deadly snake bite to her breast. The last Pharaoh of Egypt was dead, and so died the Egyptian Empire.
The Egyptian language is similar to Semitic language, being that it is Afro-Asiatic, and is the second longest history of a language right behind Sumerian. They wrote in hieroglyphics, a series of hundreds of symbols. Each symbol could be a word, sound, or silent determinative, and could mean a different word when written in a different context. Hieroglyphs were a primarily formal text used in tombs and on obelisks, and could be read either right to left in rows or up to down in columns, but most commonly right to left. A simpler, less formal script, hieratic, was used by scribes because it was faster, and was always written right to left. Later, another form of writing, Demotic, became the dominant writing style alongside hieroglyphs, and it was these two writings together with Greek writing that was on the Rosetta Stone. The best known stories of Egyptian writing are those in the Pyramids and the Tombs, but the classic story of Egypt was the Story of Sinuhe, a narrative set after the death of Pharaoh Amenemhat I.
Writings from ancient Egypt show that they had a fully developed numeral system. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus show that Egyptians knew many things about what is now modern mathematics; they could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as well as use fractions, compute volumes of boxes and pyramids, and calculate the surface area of triangular prisms, rectangular prisms, and spheres. They also understood basic algebra and geometry. They wrote numbers decimally, or in powers of ten up to one million. For example, to write the number 60, the hieroglyph for ten was written six times. Not only this, but Egyptians understood the underlyings for the Pythagorean Theorem.
Egyptian religious belief centered around divinity and the afterlife. It was believed that the Pharaohs were Gods in a mortal form, and after their death they would become full Gods in their divine forms. Egyptian Gods had great powers over different things, and were often called upon in times of need. However, not all Egyptian Gods were believed to be benevolent, so there were offerings made consistantly to keep their wrath at bay. Myths and stories of the Gods were not considered highly important in proving their existence, and new deities were constantly rising due to the deaths of Pharaohs, so they were never organized or placed into an ordered system. Gods were kept in sealed off temples that were only accessable to temple officials. They were not open for public worship, but would be brought out in shrines on select feasts and celebratory days for the people. During other days of the year, citizens would pray to statues or amulets at their homes. Egyptians believed that humans were both spiritual and physical beings. Their bodies were the physical aspect, while the šwt (shadow), ba (soul), ka (life-force), and names were spiritual. After death, your spiritual aspects could move at will, but it was the goal of the afterlife to join your ka and ba to become a blessed dead, as well as find some form of statue as a home. In order to join your spiritual pieces, you had to be judged worthy. Because the heart was considered the holder of thoughts and emotions, you heart would be weighed on a scale with a "feather of truth". If your heart was worthy, you were allowed to join and keep a home on Earth in spiritual form.
The true end of Egypt came when Marcus Antonius (Marc Anthony) fled with his army to Egypt in fear of Octavian's coming army. There, he fell in love with Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh of Egypt. The day of the battle with Octavian's army, Marcus knew he would lose, and so instead of die valiantly in battle, he killed himself with his own sword, believing that Cleopatra had already killed herself. When he learned she had not, he was carried to her hiding spot and died beside her, to which she later killed herself with a deadly snake bite to her breast. The last Pharaoh of Egypt was dead, and so died the Egyptian Empire.