03 Egypt of the pharaohs

The kingdom of Egypt was one of the oldest and certainly the longest lived of the ancient civilizations, enduring for over three millennia. This long period was not without disruptions and upheavals, but Egyptian culture was so firmly rooted that even foreign conquerors were absorbed by it, and adopted the ways of Egypt’s hereditary rulers, the pharaohs, who were regarded as sons of the supreme god Ra, the god of the sun.

Although evidence of the civilization of the ancient Egyptians was everywhere apparent, in the form of giant pyramids, vast statues and spectacular ruined temples, little was known of its detailed history, its society and its beliefs until its mysterious hieroglyphic (picture) writing was deciphered in the early 19th century, following the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone

The meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing was finally cracked following the discovery in 1799 of an inscribed stone at Rosetta (Arabic Rashid), near Alexandria. Dating from 196 BC, the stone carries a decree from Pharaoh Ptolemy V in Egyptian in both hieroglyphic and demotic (cursive) script, and also in ancient Greek. This gave interpreters the key they needed. The work of decipherment was begun by the English polymath Thomas Young, and was completed by the French scholar Jean-François Champollion in 1822. The Rosetta Stone is now in the British Museum in London, although the Egyptian government has requested its return.

Society and culture The lifeline of the ancient Egyptians was the River Nile, whose annual flood watered their fields and guaranteed bountiful harvests. Human settlement in ancient Egypt was confined to a strip either side of the river (Upper Egypt), and across its extensive delta (Lower Egypt). Apart from these areas, and the occasional oasis, the land was desert. The Nile valley was one of the first places in the world where agriculture developed, followed by some of the world’s first towns and cities.

“God is three of all gods Amun, Ra, Ptah, without any others … Their cities on earth endure to eternity—Thebes, Heliopolis, Memphis, forever.”

A hymn from c.1220 BC, praising the three aspects of the state god of the New Kingdom. The Egyptians in fact worshipped many other gods, including Isis, Osiris, Anubis and Horus.

Around 3100 BC Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt were united by a king called Menes, who became the first pharaoh. A new capital, Memphis, was built at the junction of Upper and Lower Egypt, and this became the center of a highly centralized state, with the pharaoh at the top of an efficient administrative hierarchy. Such organization enabled great building projects to be undertaken, and the first pyramid—the Step Pyramid at Saqqara—was built around 2630 BC as the burial place of Pharaoh Djoser. By tradition it was designed by the architect and physician Imhotep, and provided the model for the famous pyramids at Giza, built shortly afterward. The Great Pyramid at Giza, with a height of 138 m (453 ft) was for four millennia the tallest structure in the world.

The pyramids were tombs for the pharaohs, and the bodies of the dead were surrounded by all the objects that might be required in the afterlife—which was imagined to be a world very much like Egypt. In order that the dead might enjoy the afterlife, it was crucialthat their bodies were preserved, and to this end the Egyptians developed sophisticated techniques of mummification. Although initially such elaborate burials were confined to the upper echelons of society, over the centuries even the poor were provided with modest grave goods to provision their needs in the life to come.

Trade, empire and conquest Although Egypt was rich in agricultural and mineral resources, it lacked such things as timber, wine, oil, ivory and precious stones. In order to fulfill demand, great trading expeditions were mounted to Sinai and the Levant in the northeast, to Libya in the west, and to Nubia and Punt (the Horn of Africa) in the south. In the wake of these commercial contacts, the Egyptians sought to expand their power as well as their horizons, and between 1500 and 1000 BC they built an empire extending from Syria to the Sudan. Huge amounts of wealth poured into Egypt from the new provinces in the form of tribute, enabling the building of a great new religious center at Thebes, and the huge temple at Karnak.

Akhenaten’s religious revolution

In 1379 BC Pharaoh Amenophis IV came to the throne and instigated a religious revolution. He replaced the worship of the state god Amun-Ra and the pantheon of other gods with that of a single god, the Aten, the sun’s disc. He himself took the name Akhenaten (meaning “favorable to the sun disc”), built a new capital, Akhetaton (modern el Amarna), and initiated a naturalistic style of royal portraiture in place of the tradition of highly stylized depictions. Akhenaten neglected his empire in western Asia, and lost northern Syria to the Hittites. At home he met with considerable opposition from the powerful priests of Amun, and after his death in 1362 BC he was succeeded by the young Tutankhamun, and traditional religious practices were restored.

This expansion brought the Egyptians into contact with powerful neighboring empires, and diplomatic relations were established with the Hittites of Anatolia, the Babylonians and the Assyrians. Contact brought competition and conflict: in 1285 BC the powerful Pharaoh Rameses II fought a mighty battle against the Hittites at Kadesh in Syria, and subsequently Egypt faced attacks from the mysterious “Sea Peoples” of the eastern Mediterranean.

“I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies …”

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias,” 1819. The poem alludes to the numerous giant statues of the Pharaoh Rameses II that lie in ruins in the deserts of Egypt and the Near East.

Around 700 BC the Assyrians invaded Egypt and sacked Thebes. Another invasion, this time by the Persians, came in 525 BC, and Egypt became a Persian province until it surrendered without a fight to Alexander the Great in 332 BC. Alexander made a journey across the desert to the Oracle of Amun at the Siwa Oasis, and here he was endorsed by the priests as the new pharaoh. After Alexander’s death, one of his generals, Ptolemy, established a dynasty of pharaohs who similarly gained the support of the people and the priesthood by honoring the gods of Egypt. Even after Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC, its Graeco-Egyptian culture thrived until finally extinguished by the Muslim Arab conquest of the 7th century AD.

the condensed idea

A magnificent civilization that endured for over 3,000 years