Egyptians And Aryans example essay topic
This essay focuses on comparisons of economic, social, and cultural diversities and similarities. Firstly, the economics of these two early civilizations had both similar and different. Agriculture played an extremely important role in the lives of the Egyptians. Farming was developed along the Nile in 5000 B.C.E. Around 3200 B.C.E., economic developments accelerated. This was the main cause of the agricultural growth. The Aryans, on the other hand, were warriors.
They took over the desired lands, people, and items. When they conquered the Ganges River Valley, the land was so lust that they slowed down on conquering lands and developed agriculture. The merchants, or traders, of the Egyptians had a very important role. The Egyptian traders helped in making economic developments speed up; they were the cause of turning Egypt from a precivilization to a large government unit in a short period of time. The Aryan traders were thought of as near outcasts. They thought that merchants were the second to last rank in their social system, which basically meant that they were not respected.
Both of these classes had some sort of a social system. The Egyptians had mostly peasant farmers who were heavily taxed. They would build shrines for pharaohs and do all the labor, while being heavily taxed. The last social class, besides the outcastes and the untouchables, were the farmers. The farmers and the merchants used to be the enslaved. Now, they were just looked down upon.
They did not have any major taxes put on them. The landlords, or higher classes, had some advantages in each society. The Egyptians had governors who were appointed for key regions to make sure the peasants work, so they could guide them. They did not do the labor but they were still treated better.
The class system got rid of landlord, per say, but some were thought to be higher ranked or more respected. The Brahmans, priests, were at the top of the social classes, and the warriors right beneath them. These were the two strongly respected groups of people. All of the buildings that the Egyptians constructed were temples, monuments, and shrines for pharaohs. They were not that advanced technology-wise. The Aryans were not that advance technology-wise either, and they had even fewer structure.
The structures they had were also for the Gods, like the God of war, Indra. The Egyptians had a very strong trade. Their merchants helped them advance economically and government wise. Their trade was mostly with nearby neighbors, around the Nile River. The Aryans, on the other hand, had merchants, but did not do a whole lot of trading.
Being warrior-like, they probably took over the lands, which had things that they thought they had need for or wanted. These two had similar ideas on gender division. The top Egyptians, kings and pharaohs, were all men. They also mummified only the top ranked men, which also puts women lower than the social class.
Still, do not look at the Aryans like they are much better. They had elder men monopolize the authority in the household because, once the wife got married, she left her house and went to live with husband; he took complete control of her life. The social features of these two civilizations were also similar yet different. The Aryans like stated earlier, had a social class division. They had three main groups: warriors, priests, and commoner. The warriors and priest were high ranked and the commoner, who made up most of the civilization, was a poor group.
This changed into four groups and some very low groups who were not even considered groups. They were Brahmans (priests), warriors, merchants, and farmers. The others were the outcastes and the untouchables. Now the priests and warriors were thought of as great. The lower classes, merchants and farmers, could not even marry them or be unkind to them.
The outcastes and untouchable were just there; they were not even considered human. The Egyptians, on the other hand, were just split into two, or you could say three. There were the pharaohs (they may be counted), the governors, and the peasants. The pharaohs were all respected and considered to be near God or even God. The governors would guide the peasants to work (like slave drivers). The peasants worked to build shrines for the pharaohs, do farming, or any other kind of labor that there was.
The Aryans were always on the move. As warriors they kept taking over land, so they knew how to get up and move if they must. The Egyptians have always lived near the Nile and depended upon it for their life. They did not have much, if any, mobility. The Aryans have most of the focus on the male figure. The man ran the family and made the decisions for the household whether good or bad.
The wife tried to persuade him against it if she wanted to, but the final say goes to the man of the house. The Aryans allowed the men marry more than one woman (polygamy) and women could even marry more than one husband (polyandry). The men in the Egyptian families did all the work and were all that are talked about. The top people (pharaohs and governors) were men so it showed males were the dominant figures. The Aryans were more urbanized than the Egyptians because they were not completely dependent on farming.
Being warriors, they hunted, which does not completely show urbanization but is the strongest form of urbanization in these early civilizations. For the Aryans, the elites were basically on a whole different level. The lower levels did not communicate with the classes above and vice-versa. They were basically all in there own little groups, and they stuck to those groups.
They did not marry anyone above or anything like that. The Egyptians were different. The lowest classes, or peasants, were told what to do by the group above (the governors). They were saying what to do for the elites, or pharaohs. Therefore, they had some more communication in a way.
In both of these civilizations the densest location was around the rivers, as the people got further away the population grew less and less dense. In both groups, the leisure was dependent on the height of the rank. The higher the rank, the more leisure time there was. Finally, the cultural side of both of these civilizations had many differences. The dominant religious figures in Egyptian societies were the pharaohs. They were thought of, at first, as close to God, and they needed to be praised to keep the land around the Nile fertile.
As time progressed, they were thought to be Gods. They had temples and shrines built for them. Without fail, they would be mummified and put into a casket and then into a pyramid or shrine. They were very important figures. The Aryans had some Gods, like the God of war Indra. He was considered to be king in the early times and later devotees of Hinduism gave him a lower status.
The Aryans praised him as the ruler of the skies. The Egyptians had a great deal of art. Their alphabet was "artsy" because they used pictures, not letters, to write the alphabet (Hieroglyphs). Their temples and pyramids had definite arts inside and outside. The outside would have a shape or a picture. While in the insides there were pictures to tell a story.
The Aryans' art was in their structures of Gods. They were not like the "artsy" Egyptians but when they made their sculpture, they had a lot of detail and hard work put into them. The Egyptians had more tolerance of other cultures than the Aryans. The Egyptian trades made them look like they could handle other cultures and get along with one another. They also had to have interest in other foreign cultures and ideas to trade with them. There was no reason to trade unless you wanted something.
The Aryans believed if you migrated into the Aryan land and you were not Aryan, you were lower than the outcastes and untouchables. This shows that they probably had no interest in foreign cultures or ideas. The culture was the same throughout these nations even when looking at the different gender and social classes. These two, as stated earlier, had strong beliefs in religion. The Egyptians and Aryans were quite similar when looking at the broadest kinds of comparison.
They all had strong beliefs in the same basic things, and they both had class systems. When looking deeper into each category there are quite a lot of differences in the way they were made up and how they came to be. Egyptian and Aryan societies have many kinds of similarities and differences as early civilizations.