2. Houses. 1. Farming

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1 1. Farming The Nile River is essential to life in Egypt. Agriculture would not have been possible without the annual flooding (inundation). The level of the inundation was crucial. If there was not enough water, the ground could not produce sufficient crops for the next season. If there was too much water, severe damage could be caused and land would be too wet to plant crops. Ancient Egyptians built Nilometers, buildings which recorded water levels along the river. Priests used the previous year s records to estimate the level of flood. All land was owned by the Pharaoh. Staple crops grown were barley, wheat, and flax. Gardens produced fruits, green vegetables, beans, and grapes. Meat was a luxury, but cattle, pigs, goats, ducks, and geese were raised. The photograph shows a painted wooden shabti from about 2000 BCE. In the afterlife Ancient Egyptians believed it was possible that Osiris might expect a person to do manual work. Pharaohs, priests, and priestesses had small shabtis buried with them in their tombs. These were believed to jump to life at the command of Osiris and would do the work. Some people were buried with hundreds of shabtis. 2. Houses This picture painted on papyrus, from ca BCE, shows a prosperous house belonging to Nakht, a scribe - an important man in the bureaucracy of Ancient Egypt. He is in his garden, with his wife, worshipping Osiris. This is from his Book of the Dead, once in his tomb but now in the British Museum. Scenes like this from Books of the Dead and from tomb paintings provide us with interesting historical sources about domestic life in Ancient Egypt. However, art of this kind was not simple historical record and so care must be taken with interpretation, e.g. Books of the Dead gave advice for the afterlife and so tried to show the characters in their best light. We do know that houses were mostly built from mud brick and so little has survived. There was also a great variety of housing. The workmen s village at El-Amarna consisted of seventy-two small units, measuring 5m by 10m. Animals lived in one of the two rooms, the other was a living and sleeping area. In the tiny kitchen area of this room was a stairway to the flat roof, also used for sleeping and cooking.

2 3. Change The giant statues of Akhenaten were discovered accidentally in 1925 while a drainage ditch was being dug east of the enclosure wall of the Great Temple of Amun. The sandstone statues were inscribed with the name Amenophis IV, and were found fallen to the ground. They are seen as example of radical change in Egyptian art, representing what the people really look like instead of a perfect ideal. This statue is of Amenhotep IV, better known as Akhenaten. He ruled from ca BCE to 1336 BCE. His reign was one of the most controversial of any of the Pharaohs. He thought the priests were too powerful and rich, so he rejected the idea of many gods. He declared belief in only one god, Aten, the disk of the sun. He built a great new capital city, Amarna, dedicated to Aten. 4. Women This painting is on one wall from the tomb of Nefertari, who lived from 1290 BCE to 1224 BCE. She was one of the Great Royal Wives of Ramesses II, and this painting shows her playing senet, an early board game. Her tomb complex is large and contains many rooms. Some of the paintings, such as this one, concern her life. Others depict her journey to the afterlife. Ramesses obvious affection for his wife, as written on her tomb walls, shows clearly that Egyptian queens were not simple marriages of convenience or marriages designed to accumulate greater power and alliances, but in some cases at least were actually based around some kind of emotional attachment. Also, poetry written by Ramesses about his dead wife is featured on some of the walls of her burial chamber. ( My love is unique - no one can rival her, for she is the most beautiful woman alive. Just by passing, she has stolen away my heart. ) Nefertari s origins are unknown except that it is thought she was a member of the nobility. While she was queen, her brother Amenmose held the position of Mayor of Thebes.

3 5. Tutankhamen One of the most famous Pharaohs is a Pharaoh known as Tutankhamen, or King tut. He ruled for a short time from around 1347 to 1338 BCE. Historians believe that he was originally known as Tutankhaten, and was the son of Akhenaten. King Akhenaten moved the capital from the city of Themes to the city of el-amarna. He introduced his people to the idea of worshipping one god, Aten. He closed temples to all other gods and erased names of other gods off all monuments. Tutankhaten was known as a puppet Pharaoh, meaning that he didn t really rule, but only acted like a ruler for other people who really had the power. Tutankhaten married his half-sister, Ankhesanaten. She was the daughter of Nefertiti. He took over the throne when he was 9 years old. His tomb was found in 1922 by an anthropologist named Howard Carter. Even though grave robbers had been inside the tomb, most of the contents were untouched. The famous mask is made of gold and lapis lazuli (a blue stone) and was found on the mummy inside three golden coffins. The mask is in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt. 6. Tombs This tomb wall painting is from about 2800 BCE. The setting is the mythical Fields of Ialu where Sennedjem, an Egyptian artisan, and his wife Iyneferti are shown reaping grain, plowing with a pair of cattle, and harvesting flax, a type of grain. The heads of the grain, or the top, was cut off with a short-handled wooden sickle. The sickle blade is made with sharp flakes of flint. The remaining straw in the ground was pulled up later. Tombs were houses for the dead. They were decorated and furnished to create a proper environment for the person who died to pass eternity. Tombs have paintings and reliefs. A relief is a sculpting technique that makes the image look raised. These paintings and reliefs provide a lot of information about the lives of ordinary people. Even though only the top people in society were buried in tombs, the decorated walls show scenes from different parts of life. To make sure that the person has immortality, or endless life, Ancient Egyptians believed that all the different elements of life had to survive. That is why they show many different parts of life in the paintings and reliefs.

4 7. Monuments What remains of Ancient Egypt tends to be the magnificent monuments built by the Pharaohs for their gods to dwell and be worshipped in. The general rule was that temples and tombs were built of stone and houses and palaces were built of sundried mud brick. For this reason there is little evidence remaining of the places people lived. Major buildings like the Temple of Luxor in this picture (from ca BCE) were constructed from Aswan granite and sandstone. The photograph gives some indication of the grandeur of the entrance, showing status of Ramesses II and one remaining obelisk. Pillars were used extensively in temple building. The Hypostyle Hall at Karnak has 134 enormous columns very close together rising to 22 meters. Labor was conscripted during the inundation when land could not be worked. People saw it as their duty to work for their Pharaoh. 8. Kings The Pharaoh was a god, a divine force, the center of the country. He ruled in the place of Ra, the sun. All peoples were subject to the King; everything was owned by the King. He was the keeper of divine and temporal order, the warrior, and the builder of temples to the gods. These four seated giants statues of Ramesses II (each 20 meters high) each wear the double crown that signifies the unity of Upper and Lower Egypt. The size and scale of the Temple of Abu Simbel, built by Ramesses II, shows the power of the Pharaohs. Cut out of solid rock, it tells of the aspirations of a King who built more monuments to himself than any other. In modern times, when the rising waters of Lake Nasser threatened the temple, it was decided to move it to a new location. In 1964, engineers from West Germany, Italy, France, and Sweden, working for UNESCO, began work. The whole temple was dismantled and rebuilt inside a concrete shell. It was reopened in 1968 and cost $40 million.

5 9. Leisure Ancient Egypt was not just a civilization concerned with death, religion, and building monuments. Evidence from tombs, papyrus, and from workmen s villages indicates how Ancient Egyptians spent their leisure time. Tomb paintings depict the Egyptian s concept of the afterlife. This was a continuation of the positive and enjoyable aspects of life on earth. It can be said that it was the enjoyment that they found in their ordinary lives which made them want to continue it after death. Pictures of hunting abound; games, sports, dining, and music were popular. The picture here shows a popular wooden board game called senet. The artifact can be found in the British Museum, London. The calendar of the ordinary person consisted of an eight day working week broken by two or three day holidays. Sixty five days every year were allowed for festivals. These were religious in nature but celebration was joyous and frenzied. At Themes the most important was the Festival of Opet, in which the gods (as statues) of Amun, Isis, and Horus sailed down the Nile from the Temple of Karnak to Thebes. 10. Religion This picture shows the weighing of the heart ceremony from the Papyrus Book of the Dead of Ani (ca BCE) which is in the British Museum in London. Anubis, the guardian of the land of the dead, is weighing the person s heart against a feather. If the heart is heavier than the feather it means he is not fit to join Osiris, who is the god of the afterlife. Religion and religious beliefs were very important to life in Ancient Egypt. There seem to be a lot of different kinds of gods, but this is because the role of the gods changed over time. The most important part of the belief was that the Sun, (also known as Atum-th All) is the creator. The Pharaoh, or leader, represents the Sun god and his function is to keep the divine order and keep chaos away.

6 11. Crown Canopic jars, or vessels that hold the mummy s embalmed vital organs, are usually found in royal tombs. The lungs, liver, stomach, and lower intestines were each held in a separate jar. The four jars were placed into a chest that was inscribed with spells to protect the deceased. This canopic stopper represents the head of a king and would have been the lid of a canopic jar. Facial details, such as the eyebrows, nostrils, eyes, and mouth have been painted in red and black onto the white calcite stone. The figure, found in King Tut s tomb, and possibly representing Tutankhamen, wears the folded cloth nemes headdress with a hooded cobra and vulture on his forehead. The combination of cobra and vulture is a symbol specifically associated with King Tutankhamen. While it is uncertain if the carved head of this stopper represents King Tutankhamen or another ruler of Egypt, the carved head shows a figure of power and royalty. 12. Families This small painted limestone stele, probably used as a home altar, gives an seldom opportunity to view a scene from the private live of the king and queen. Akhenaton and Nefertiti are shown with the three oldest of their five daughters. While the daughters are being held and caressed by their parents the placement of the god Aten in the centre of the scene reminds of the official monotheistic religion in the Amarna period. Aten is represented as a sundisc with sunrays ending in hands proffering 'ankh'-signs (life-signs) to the royal couple. The body forms shown on the relief, the overlong proportions, wide hips, thin legs and the forward curved necks, are typical of the early Amarna artistic style. Like his father before him, Amenhotep IV marries a commoner, Nefertiti, whose preserved portraits do justice in every respect to her name "the beautiful one has come". Before long they decide to build a new residence in Middle Egypt and there Amenhotep IV changes his name to Akhenaten ("Aten is pleased") and gives homage together with his wife to the single god Aten, depicted as a sun disc with hands dangling at the ends of sunrays, holding symbols of life to the noses of the royal couple. A large number of craftsmen and artists settled in the new town in order to implement the new style of art propounded by the king. After a regency of just 17 years Akhenaten died, his town was abandoned and Egypt returned to its former gods.