Ancient Egypt

• 1. Introduction

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  Ancient Egypt grew up along the lower reaches of the Nile River, in the eastern corner of North Africa. Around 3150 BC, by the conventional chronology, two lands became one when Menes united Upper and Lower Egypt. Most Egyptologists think Menes was the same king as Narmer, the figure shown wearing royal regalia on a ceremonial palette. From that union came a civilization that lasted thousands of years, outlasting invasion after invasion. The Hyksos came, then the Kushites, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, and finally the Romans. Some date its end to 332 BC and the wars of Alexander the Great. Others place it in 30 BC, when Rome conquered the Greek-ruled Ptolemaic Kingdom. How did a society survive that long, and what made it run? The answers lie in a river that flooded on schedule, in a bureaucracy of scribes who counted everything, in a religion that weighed a dead person's heart against a feather, and in builders who raised stone with little more than simple tools. This is the story of how those pieces fit together.

• 2. The River's Gift

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  The fertile floodplain of the Nile let humans settle, farm, and build a centralized society. Egyptians recognized three seasons tied to the water: Akhet, the flooding; Peret, the planting; and Shemu, the harvest. The flood ran from June to September, laying down a layer of mineral-rich silt ideal for crops. Once the water receded, the growing season lasted from October to February, with fields irrigated through ditches and canals. From March to May, farmers cut their crops with sickles, then threshed them with a flail to separate straw from grain. Winnowing removed the chaff. The grain was ground into flour, brewed into beer, or stored away. Egypt got little rainfall, so the Nile did the watering. The land yielded emmer and barley along with other cereals, which became the two staples of every table: bread and beer. Flax was pulled up before flowering, its stem fibers split and spun into thread for linen. Papyrus from the riverbanks became paper. Vegetables and fruit, leeks, garlic, melons, lettuce, and grapes for wine, grew in garden plots watered by hand. With surplus food, the population could spend time and resources on culture, technology, and art. Land mattered so much that taxes were assessed on how much of it a person owned.

• 3. Scribes And Granaries

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  The pharaoh was the absolute monarch, supreme military commander and head of government, at least in theory controlling all land and resources. His second in command was the vizier, who coordinated land surveys, the treasury, building projects, the legal system, and the archives. At a regional level the country was split into as many as 42 administrative regions called nomes, each run by a nomarch accountable to the vizier. The temples formed the backbone of the economy. They collected and stored the kingdom's wealth in granaries and treasuries, where overseers redistributed grain and goods. Much of the economy was centrally organized and strictly controlled. Egyptians did not use coinage until the Late Period, relying instead on a money-barter system. Standard sacks of grain and the deben, a weight of roughly 91 grams of copper or silver, served as common denominators. Workers were paid in grain. A simple laborer might earn about 200 kilograms a month, a foreman roughly 250. Prices were fixed across the country and written into lists. A shirt cost five copper deben; a cow cost 140. Coined money arrived from abroad during the fifth century BC. At first the coins were treated as standardized pieces of precious metal rather than true money, but over the following centuries international traders came to depend on them.

• 4. A Stratified Society

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  Farmers made up the bulk of the population, yet the produce they grew was owned directly by the state, temple, or noble family that held the land. They also paid a labor tax, working on irrigation or construction projects under a corvée system. Artists and craftsmen ranked higher than farmers but still answered to the state, working in shops attached to the temples and paid from the treasury. Scribes and officials formed the upper class, called the white kilt class for the bleached linen garments that marked their rank. Below the nobility came priests, physicians, and engineers with specialized training. The ancient Egyptians viewed men and women across all social classes as essentially equal under the law. Even the lowliest peasant could petition the vizier and his court for redress. Both men and women had the right to own and sell property, make contracts, marry and divorce, receive inheritance, and pursue legal disputes. Married couples could own property jointly and sign marriage contracts spelling out a husband's financial obligations should the marriage end. Compared with their counterparts in ancient Greece and Rome, Egyptian women had a wider range of personal choices and legal rights. Women such as Hatshepsut and Cleopatra VII even became pharaohs, while others wielded power as Divine Wives of Amun.

• 5. Ma'at And The Courts

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  Ma'at was the concept of law, order, and justice that the pharaoh was sworn to uphold. No legal codes survive, but court documents show a system built on a common-sense view of right and wrong, one that favored reaching agreements over strict statutes. Local councils of elders, known in the New Kingdom as the Kenbet, handled small claims and minor disputes. More serious matters, murder, major land deals, and tomb robbery, went to the Great Kenbet, presided over by the vizier or the pharaoh. Plaintiffs and defendants represented themselves and swore an oath that they had told the truth. In some cases the state acted as both prosecutor and judge, and could torture the accused with beatings to force a confession and the names of accomplices. Court scribes documented every complaint, testimony, and verdict for future reference. Minor crimes brought fines, beatings, facial mutilation, or exile. Murder and tomb robbery were punished by execution, carried out by decapitation, drowning, or impaling the criminal on a stake. Punishment could be extended to a criminal's family. Beginning in the New Kingdom, oracles took on a major role. A god, carried by priests, answered a yes-or-no question by moving forward or backward, or by pointing to an answer written on papyrus or an ostracon.

• 6. Gods And The Weighing Of The Heart

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  Belief in the divine and the afterlife was woven into Egyptian civilization from its start, and pharaonic rule rested on the divine right of kings. The pantheon was full of gods with supernatural powers, called on for help and protection, though not always seen as benevolent. They had to be appeased with offerings and prayers. Priests made no effort to reconcile the diverse and sometimes conflicting myths into a single system. Gods were worshiped in cult temples run by priests acting on the king's behalf, with a cult statue housed in a shrine at the center. Temples were not places of public worship. Only on select feast days was the shrine carrying the god's statue brought out for the public. The rest of the time the god's domain stayed sealed off, open only to temple officials. Common citizens worshiped private statues at home, and amulets guarded against the forces of chaos. The Egyptians believed every person was made of physical and spiritual parts. Beyond the body there was the shadow, the ba or soul, the ka or life-force, and the name. The heart, not the brain, was the seat of thought and emotion. After death, the spiritual parts were freed but still needed the physical remains as a home. To become one of the blessed dead, an akh, the deceased had to be judged in a trial where the heart was weighed against a feather of truth. If found worthy, the dead lived on in spirit. If not, the heart was eaten by Ammit the Devourer, and the person was erased from the universe.

• 7. Mummies And The Tomb

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  Before the Old Kingdom, bodies were buried in desert pits and naturally preserved by desiccation, a boon for the poor throughout Egyptian history. Wealthier Egyptians moved their dead into stone tombs and turned to artificial mummification, removing the internal organs, wrapping the body in linen, and laying it in a stone sarcophagus or wooden coffin. Starting in the Fourth Dynasty, some organs were preserved separately in canopic jars. By the New Kingdom the craft was perfected. The best technique took 70 days. Embalmers removed the internal organs, drew the brain out through the nose, and dried the body in a mixture of salts called natron. They wrapped it in linen with protective amulets tucked between the layers, then placed it in a decorated anthropoid coffin. Mummies of the Late Period went into painted cartonnage cases. During the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, actual preservation declined while more attention went to the mummy's decorated outer appearance. Every burial, whatever the social status, included goods for the deceased, with the wealthy buried among larger quantities of luxury items. From the New Kingdom on, ushabti statues were included, believed to perform manual labor for the dead in the afterlife. After burial, living relatives were expected to bring food to the tomb and recite prayers.

• 8. Builders And Healers

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  Djoser's mortuary complex was the world's first large-scale stone building, its step pyramid a series of stone mastabas stacked atop one another. Using only simple tools and sighting instruments, architects raised stone structures with an accuracy still envied today. The Great Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx rose during the Old Kingdom, while the Karnak temple grew into the largest Egyptian temple ever built. Homes of ordinary and elite Egyptians alike were made of perishable mudbrick and wood and have not survived, but temples and tombs meant to last forever were built in stone. The ancient Egyptians reached a high standard in technology, medicine, and mathematics, creating their own alphabet and a decimal system. Their physicians were renowned across the Near East, and some, such as Imhotep, stayed famous long after death. Herodotus noted how specialized they were, with some treating only the head or the stomach while others worked as eye-doctors and dentists. Wounds were bandaged with raw meat, white linen, and swabs soaked in honey to fight infection, while opium, thyme, and belladonna eased pain. Surgeons stitched wounds, set broken bones, and amputated diseased limbs, while recognizing that some injuries they could only make comfortable until death. Adult life expectancy was about 35 for men and 30 for women, and roughly one-third of the population died in infancy. The earliest known peace treaty came around 1258 BC, after Ramesses II fought the Hittites to a stalemate at the Battle of Kadesh.