Egypt

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  What's up with the new toilet paper shortage, and what does it have to do with the Suez Canal?

  Can you still find any at your local stores?

  5 Answers1 month ago
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  Are mummies a genuine problem for visitors to ancient Egypt?

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  Daddies cause quite a few problems as well

  4 Answers2 months ago
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  What do you know about Egypt ?

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  They did not ride camels

  The camel was not used regularly in Egypt until the very end of the dynastic age. Instead, the Egyptians used donkeys as beasts of burden, and boats as a highly convenient means of transport.

  The River Nile flowed through the centre of their fertile land, creating a natural highway (and sewer!). The current helped those who needed to row from south to north, while the wind made life easy for those who wished to sail in the opposite direction. The river was linked to settlements, quarries and building sites by canals. Huge wooden barges were used to transport grain and heavy stone blocks; light papyrus boats ferried people about their daily business. And every day, high above the river, the sun god Ra was believed to sail across the sky in his solar boat.

  Not everyone was mummified

  The mummy – an eviscerated, dried and bandaged corpse – has become a defining Egyptian artefact. Yet mummification was an expensive and time-consuming process, reserved for the wealthier members of society. The vast majority of Egypt’s dead were buried in simple pits in the desert.

  So why did the elite feel the need to mummify their dead? They believed that it was possible to live again after death, but only if the body retained a recognizable human form. Ironically, this could have been achieved quite easily by burying the dead in direct contact with the hot and sterile desert sand; natural desiccation would then have occurred. But the elite wanted to be buried in coffins within tombs, and this meant that their corpses, no longer in direct contact with the sand, started to rot. The twin requirements of elaborate burial equipment plus a recognizable body led to the science of artificial mummification.

  The living shared food with the dead

  The tomb was designed as an eternal home for the mummified body and the ka spirit that lived beside it. An accessible tomb-chapel allowed families, well-wishers and priests to visit the deceased and leave the regular offerings that the ka required, while a hidden burial chamber protected the mummy from harm.

  Within the tomb-chapel, food and drink were offered on a regular basis. Having been spiritually consumed by the ka, they were then physically consumed by the living. During the feast of the valley’, an annual festival of death and renewal, many families spent the night in the tomb-chapels of their ancestors. The hours of darkness were spent drinking and feasting by torchlight as the living celebrated their reunion with the dead.

  Egyptian women had equal rights with men

  In Egypt, men and women of equivalent social status were treated as equals in the eyes of the law. This meant that women could own, earn, buy, sell and inherit property. They could live unprotected by male guardians and, if widowed or divorced, could raise their own children. They could bring cases before, and be punished by, the law courts. And they were expected to deputies for an absent husband in matters of business.

  Everyone in ancient Egypt was expected to marry, with husbands and wives being allocated complimentary but opposite roles within the marriage. The wife, the mistress of the house’, was responsible for all internal, domestic matters. She raised the children and ran the household while her husband, the dominant partner in the marriage, played the external, wage-earning role.

  Scribes rarely wrote in hieroglyphs

  Hieroglyphic writing – a script consisting of many hundreds of intricate images – was beautiful to look at, but time-consuming to create. It was therefore reserved for the most important texts; the writings decorating tomb and temple walls, and texts recording royal achievements.

  As they went about their daily business, Egypt’s scribes routinely used hieratic – a simplified or shorthand form of hieroglyphic writing. Towards the end of the dynastic period, they used demotic, an even more simplified version of hieratic. All three scripts were used to write the same ancient Egyptian language.

  Few of the ancients would have been able to read either hieroglyphs or hieratic: it is estimated that no more than 10 per cent (and perhaps considerably less) of the population was literate.

  The king of Egypt could be a woman

  Ideally, the king of Egypt would be the son of the previous king. But this was not always possible, and the coronation ceremony had the power to convert the most unlikely candidate into an unassailable king.

  On at least three occasions women took the throne, ruling in their own right as female kings and using the full king’s titular. The most successful of these female rulers, Hatshepsut, ruled Egypt for more than 20 prosperous years.

  In the English language, where ‘king’ is gender-specific, we might classify Sobeknefru, Hatshepsut and Tausret as queens regnant. In Egyptian, however, the phrase that we conventionally translate as ‘queen’ literally means ‘king’s wife’, and is entirely inappropriate for these women.

  Few Egyptian men married their sisters

  Some of Egypt’s kings married their sisters or half-sisters. These incestuous marriages ensured that the queen was trained in her duties from birth and that she remained entirely loyal to her husband and their children. They provided appropriate husbands for princesses who might otherwise remain unwed while restricting the number of potential claimants for the throne. They even provided a link with the gods, several of whom (like Isis and Osiris) enjoyed incestuous unions. However, brother-sister marriages were never compulsory, and some of Egypt’s most prominent queens – including Nefertiti – were of non-royal birth.

  Incestuous marriages were not common outside the royal family until the very end of the dynastic age. The restricted Egyptian kingship terminology (‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’, ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ being the only terms used), and the tendency to apply these words loosely so that ‘sister’ could with equal validity describe an actual sister, a wife or a lover, has led to a lot of confusion over this issue.

  Not all pharaohs built pyramids

  Almost all the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (c2686–2125 BC) and Middle Kingdom (c2055–1650 BC) built pyramid-tombs in Egypt’s northern deserts. These highly conspicuous monuments linked the kings with the sun god Ra while replicating the mound of creation that emerged from the waters of chaos at the beginning of time.

  But by the start of the New Kingdom (c1550 BC) pyramid building was out of fashion. Kings would now build two entirely separate funerary monuments. Their mummies would be buried in hidden rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile at the southern city of Thebes, while a highly visible memorial temple, situated on the border between the cultivated land (home of the living), and the sterile desert (home of the dead), would serve as the focus of the royal mortuary cult.

  Following the collapse of the New Kingdom, subsequent kings were buried in tombs in northern Egypt: some of their burials have never been discovered.

  The Great Pyramid was not built by slaves

  The classical historian Herodotus believed that the Great Pyramid had been built by 100,000 slaves. His image of men, women and children desperately toiling in the harshest of conditions has proved remarkably popular with modern film producers. It is, however, wrong.

  Archaeological evidence indicates that the Great Pyramid was in fact built by a workforce of 5,000 permanents, salaried employees and up to 20,000 temporary workers. These workers were free men, summoned under the corvée system of national service to put in a three- or four-month shift on the building site before returning home. They were housed in a temporary camp near the pyramid, where they received payment in the form of food, drink, medical attention and, for those who died on duty, burial in the nearby cemetery.

  Cleopatra may not have been beautiful

  Cleopatra VII, the last queen of ancient Egypt, won the hearts of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of Rome’s most important men. Surely, then, she must have been an outstanding beauty?

  Her coins suggest that this was probably not the case. All show her in profile with a prominent nose, pronounced chin and deep-set eyes. Of course, Cleopatra’s coins reflect the skills of their makers, and it is entirely possible that the queen did not want to appear too feminine on the tokens that represented her sovereignty within and outside Egypt.

  Unfortunately, we have no eyewitness description of the queen. However, the classical historian Plutarch – who never actually met Cleopatra – tells us that her charm lay in her demeanour, and in her beautiful voice.

  7 Answers2 months ago
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  Me and my girlfriend are planning a trip to Egypt after COVID. As a white man and woman, are we going to face racism by the locals?

  Me and my girlfriend will both stand out there becouse of our skin color, and travelling to a third world country begs the question if we should be prepared for any kind of harassment or discrimination by the egyptians.

  12 Answers6 months ago
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  Would you like to live in Ancient Egypt?

  11 Answers10 months ago
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  How do Egyptians in Egypt feel about black people in America who say they stole their land and history?

  6 Answers12 months ago
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  How would you tell time if you lived in ancient Egypt?

  9 Answers1 year ago
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  Did you ever date anyone from Egypt?

  7 Answers1 year ago
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  Do you think Egyptian artifacts should be returned to Egypt? ?

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  Yes  they belong to Egypt

  5 Answers1 year ago
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  Assuming the Egyptians were Black. Does that mean Blacks enslaved Jews in Egypt?

  6 Answers1 year ago
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  Did living in Egypt for 400 years make the Israelites darker?

  8 Answers2 years ago
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  I’m Egyptian can I say the n word?

  I’m brown but Egypt is in North Africa, is it okay

  10 Answers2 years ago
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  why do whites claim they built Egypt?

  they can't even go out in the sun for an hour with getting sunburned. how did they withstand the hot Egyptian sun all day building pyramids? oh because it didn't happen. everyone know it was black people that build them

  8 Answers2 years ago
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  what is the correct answer.We had a great time ------------------- the pyramids in Egypt?

  8 Answers2 years ago
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  How is it that pyramids were built in Egypt and South America at around the same time? Coincidence or something more to it?

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  They were not built at anything like the same time. Is it any more puzzling that two civilizations decided on the shape of a pyramid than that they decided on a square or a rectangle?

  It is perfectly possible that the natives in South America knew about the Egyptian pyramids, which had been around for 1000 years. People DID travel, including crossing oceans.

  6 Answers2 years ago
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  What is the best city in Egypt where most tourists like to visit?

  5 Answers2 years ago
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  Why were English kings so fond of lopping of their wives heads?

  8 Answers2 years ago
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  The royals fret their kingdom is divided vs united because of Brexit. When will the queen make the final decree for us to remain or leave?

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  Whether the UK leaves the EU or remains has nothing to do with the Queen. It's not her decision.

  8 Answers2 years ago