King Of Lower Egypt example essay topic

Setting the Stage: To the west of the Fertile Cresent in Africa, another river makes its way to the sea. While Sumerian civilization was on the rise, a similar process took place along the banks of this river, the Nile in Egypt. Yet the Egyptian civilization turned out to be very different from the collection of city-states in Mesopotamia. Early on, Egypt was united into a single kingdom, which allowed it to enjoy a high degree of unity, stability, and cultural continuity over a period of 3,000 years. The Geography of Egypt: From the highlands of east-central Africa to the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile River flows northward for over 4,100 miles, making it the longest river in the world. A thin ribbon of water in a parched desert land, the great river brings its water to Egypt from distant mountains, plateaus, and lakes in present-day Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia.

Egypt's settlements arose along the Nile on a narrow strip of land made fertile by the river. The change from fertile soil to desert - from the black Land to the Red Land - was so abrupt that a person could stand with one foot in each. The Gift of the Nile: As in Mesopotamia, yearly flooding brought the water and rich soil that allowed settlements to grow. Every year in July, rains and melting snow from the mountains of east-central Africa caused the Nile River to rise and spill over its banks. When the river receded in October, it left behind a rich deposit of fertile black mud.

Before the scorching sun could dry out the soil, the peasants would hitch their cattle to plows and prepare their fields for planting. All fall and winter, they tended the wheat and barley plants. They watered their crops from an intricate network of irrigation ditches. At last came the welcome harvest. This cycle repeated itself year after year - flood, plant, harvest; flood, plant, harvest. In an otherwise parched land, the abundance brought by the Nile was so great that the Egyptians worshiped it as a god who gave life and seldom turned against them.

As the ancient Greek historian Herodotus remarked in the fifth century B.C., Egypt was the "gift of the Nile". Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt: For most of their history, ancient Egyptians knew only the lower part of the Nile - the last 750 miles before the river empties north into the Mediterranean Sea. Their domain ended at a point where jagged granite cliffs and boulders turn the river into churning rapids called a cataract. Riverboats could not pass this spot, known as the First Cataract, to continue upstream to the south.

Between the First Cataract and the Mediterranean lay two very different regions. Upper Egypt (to the south) was a skinny strip of land from the First Cataract to the point where the river starts to fan out into many branches. Lower Egypt (to the north, near the sea) consisted of the Nile delta region, which begins about 100 miles before the river enters the Mediterranean. The delta is a broad, marshy, triangular area of land formed by deposits of silt at the mouth of the river.

This rich land provided a home for many birds and wild animals. The Nile provided a reliable system of transportation between Upper and Lower Egypt. The Nile flows north, so northbound boats simply drifted with the current. Southbound boats hoisted a wide sail. The prevailing winds of Egypt blow from north to south, carrying sailboats against the river current. The ease of contact made possible by this watery highway helped unify Egypt's villages and promote trade.

Enviormental Changes: Egyptian farmers were much more fortunate than the villagers of Mesopotamia. Compared to the unpredictable Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Nile was as regular as clockwork. Even so, life in Egypt had its risks. If the Nile's floodwaters were just a few feet lower than normal, the amount of fresh silt and water for crops was greatly reduced. Thousands of people might starve. If the floodwaters were a few feet higher than usual, the water would spread beyond the fields to the mud-brick villages nearby.

The unwanted water might destroy houses, granaries, and the precious seeds that farmers needed for planting. The vast and forbidding deserts on either side of the Nile acted as natural barriers between Egypt and other lands. They forced Egyptians to stay close to the river, their lifeline, which reduced their interaction with other peoples. At the same time, the deserts also shut out invaders. For much of its early history, Egypt was spared the constant warfare that plagued the Fertile Cresent. Movement of Goods and Ideas: By 3200 B.C., Egyptians were coming into contact with the people of Mesopotamia.

Caravans loaded with goods for trade were traveling between the two regions. By about 2000 B.C., Egyptian traders were also traveling between the Nile on barges to the lands of Nubia and Kush to the south. They were in search of such goods as gold, ivory, cattle, and granite blocks for their massive temples and tombs. Whole groups of people seem to have moved freely from one region to another in search of better land for farming or grazing. The early Egyptians may have borrowed some ideas from the Mesopotamians in the early development of their cities and in their system of writing. However, the period of Mesopotamian influence ended quickly.

From then on, Egypt blended the cultures of the Nile Valley peoples with the cultures of peoples who migrated into the valley from other parts of Africa and from the Fertile Cresent. Egypt thus was a land of cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity throughout its 3,000-years history. Egypt Unites into a Kingdom: Egyptians lived in farming villages as far back as 5000 B.C., perhaps even earlier. Each village had its own rituals gods, and chieftain. By 3200 B.C., the villages of Egypt were under the rules of two separate kingdoms, Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt. According to legend, the king of Lower Egypt wore a red crown, and the king of Upper Egypt wore a tall white crown shaped like a bowling pin.

About 3100 B.C., a strong-willed king of Upper Egypt named Menes united all of Egypt. As a symbol of his united kingdom, Menes created a double crown from the red and white crowns. Menes shrewdly established his capital, Memphis, near the spot where Upper and Lower Egypt met, and established the first Egyptian dynasty. Eventually, the history of ancient Egypt would consist of 31 dynasties, spanning 2,600 years. Little is known of Egypt's first two dynasties, but records improve with the Third Dynasty. The Third Dynasty begins the period historians call the Old Kingdom, which lasted from 2660 to 2180 B.C. The Old Kingdom set the pattern for Egypt's great civilization.

Pharaohs Rule as Gods: The role of the king was one striking difference between Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Mesopotamia, kings were considered to be representatives of the gods. To the Egyptians, kings were gods, almost as splendid and powerful as the gods of the heavens. The Egyptians god-kins came to be called pharaohs. The pharaoh stood at the center of Egypt's religion as well as its government and army.

This type of government in which the ruler is a divine figure is called a theocracy. Egyptians believed that the pharaoh bore full responsibility for the kingdom's well-being. It was the pharaoh who caused the sun to rise, the Nile to flood, and the crops to grow. It was the pharaoh's duty to promote truth and justice. Builders of the Pyramids: Egyptians believed that their king ruled even after his death. He had an eternal spirit, or ka, which continued to take part in the governing of Egypt.

In the Egyptian's mind, the ka remained much like a living king in its needs and pleasures. Since kings expected to reign forever, their tombs were even more important than their palaces. For the kings of the Old Kingdom, the resting place after death was an immense structure called a pyramid. The Old Kingdom was the great age of pyramid building in ancient Egypt. These magnificent monuments were remarkable engineering achievements, built by people who had even begun to use the wheel. Unlike the Sumerians, however, the Egyptians did have a good supply of stone, both granite and limestone.

For the Great Pyramid of Giza, for example, the limestone facing was quarried 400 miles upriver. Each perfectly cut stone block weighed at least 2 1/2 tons. Some weighed 15 tons. More than 2 million of these blocks were stacked with precision to a height of 481 feet. The entire structure covered more than 13 acres.

The pyramids also reflect the strength of the Egyptian civilization. They show that Old Kingdom dynasties had developed the economic strength to support massive public works projects, as well as the leadership and government organization to carry them out. Egyptian Culture: With nature so much in their favor, Egyptians tended to approach life more confidently and optimistically than their neighbors in the Fertile Cresent. Religion and Life: Like the Mesopotamians, the early Egyptians were polytheistic, believing in many gods. The most important gods were Ra, the sun god, and Horus, the god of light.

The most important goddess was Isis, who represented the ideal mother and wife. In all, Egyptians worshiped more than 2,000 gods and goddesses. They built huge temples to honor the major deities. In contrast to the Mesopotamians, with their bleak view of death, Egyptians believed in an afterlife, a life that contained after death.

Egyptians believed they would be judged for their deeds when they died. Osiris, the powerful god of the dead, would weigh each dead person's heart. To win eternal life, the heart could be no heavier than a feather. If the heart tipped the scale, showing that it was heavy with sin, a fierce beast known as the Devourer of Souls would pounce on the impure heart and go bbl it up.

But if the soul passed this test for purity and truth, it would live forever in the beautiful Other World. People of all classes planned for their burials, so that they might safely reach the Other World. Kings and queens built great tombs, such as the pyramids, and other Egyptians built smaller tombs. Egyptians preserved a dead person's body by mummification - embalming and drying the corpse to prevent it from decaying. Scholars still accept Herodotus' description of the process of mummification. Attendants placed the mummy in a coffin inside a tomb.

Then they filled the tomb with items the dead person could use in the afterlife, such as clothing, food, cosmetics, and jewelry. Many Egyptians purchased scrolls that contained hymns, prayers, and magic spells intended to guide the soul in the after life. This collection of texts is known as the Book of the Dead. These texts often contained declarations intended to prove the soul was worthy of eternal life. Life in Egyptian Society: Like the grand monuments to the kings, Egyptian Society formed a pyramid.

The king, queen, and the royal family stood at the top. Below them were the other members of the upper class, which included wealthy landowners, government officials, priests, and army commanders. The next tier of the pyramid was the middle class, which included merchants and artisans. At the base of the pyramid was the lower class, by far the largest class. It consisted of peasant farmers and unskilled laborers. In the later periods of Egyptian history, slavery became w widespread source of labor.

Slaves, usually captives from foreign wars, served in the homes of the rich or titled endlessly in the gold mines of Upper Egypt. The Egyptians were not locked into their social classes. Lower-and middle-class Egyptians could gain higher status through marriage or success in their jobs. Even some slaves could hope to earn their freedom as a reward for their loyal service.

To win the highest positions, people had to be able to read and write. Once a person had these skills, many careers were open in the army, the royal treasury, the priesthood, and the king's court. Women in Egypt held many of the same rights as men. For example, a wealthy or middle-class could own and trade property. She could propose marriage or seek divorce. If she were granted a divorce, she would be entitled to one-third of the couple's property.

Egyptian Writing: As in Mesopotamia, the development of writing was one of the keys to the growth of Egyptian civilization. Crude pictographs were the earliest form of writing in Egypt, but scribes quickly developed a more flexible writing system called hieroglyphics. This term comes from the Greek words hi eros and glu phe, meaning "sacred carving". As with Sumerian cuniform writing, in the earliest form of hieroglyphics a picture stood for an idea. For instance, a picture of a man stood for an idea of a man; a picture of a bird stood for an idea of a bird. In time, the system changed so that pictures stood for sounds as well as ideas.

The owl, for example, stood for an m sound. Hieroglyphics could be used almost like letters of the alphabet. Although hieroglyphics were first written on stone and clay, as in Mesopotamia, the Egyptians soon invented a better writing surface. They used another gift of the Nile, the tall stalks of the papyrus reeds that grew in the marshy delta.

The Egyptians split the reeds into narrow strips, dampened them, and then pressed them. As the papyrus dried, the plant's sap glued the strips together into a paper like sheet. Egyptian Science and Technology: Practical needs led to many Egyptian inventions. In order to assess and collect taxes, the Egyptians developed a system of written numbers for counting, adding, and subtracting.

Farmers used an early form of geometry to survey and reset property boundaries after the annual floods. Mathematical knowledge helped Egypt's skillful engineers and architects as well. Builders needed to make accurate calculations and measurements to construct their remarkable pyramids and palaces. Egyptian architects were also the first to use stone columns in homes, palaces, and temples. To help them keep track of the time between floods and plan th.