EGYPT ppt 4

• Ancient Egyptian Literature

  • Inscriptions on tombs
  • Stele
  • Obelisks
  • Temples
  • Myths, stories, and legends
  • Religious writings
  • Philosophical works
  • Wisdom literature
  • Autobiographies
  • Biographies
  • Histories
• BC and BCE both refer to years before the birth of Jesus Christ.
• AD and CE both refer to years after the birth of Jesus Christ.
• BC and AD reference Christ's birth directly.
• BCE and CE are more secular ways to tell time.
• The birth of Jesus Christ is the beginning of AD or CE; His birth is the beginning of year 0.
• Three Major Periods of Egypt

  • Old Kingdom
  • Middle Kingdom
  • New Kingdom
  • Intermediate Kingdoms
• Those without strong ruling families

  Intermediate Kingdoms
• First dynasty

  Early Dynasty Period
• Early Dynasty Period's famous pharaohs:

  1. Cleopatra
  2. Tutankhamun
  3. Djoser
  4. Hatshepsut
  5. Amenhotep
  6. Ramesses
  7. Nefertiti
• About 300 years after Menes united Egypt, its rulers formed a central government in which they held supreme power. This was the beginning of the Old Kingdom.
• During the Old Kingdom, pyramid building flourished. Cheops had the six-million-ton Great Pyramid of Giza constructed as his tomb.
• Under Chephren, a Fourth Dynasty ruler, the Great Sphinx was built.
• The end of the Old Kingdom was marked by civil wars between pharaohs and nobles.
• King Tut was only nine years old when he became pharaoh (king of Egypt).
• The tomb of King Tutankhamen is one of the most famous because of its well-known discovery by Howard Carter, a British archaeologist.
• Carter excavated in the Valley of the Kings for eleven years before he discovered Tut's tomb in 1922.
• Old Kingdom's three pyramids


  1. Khufu 2. Khafre 3. Menkaure
• Menkaure

  213 feet
• Khafre


  471 feet
• Khufu 


  • 481 feet high

  • sometimes called Cheops or the Great Pyramid
• Most of Egyptian literature was written in hieroglyphics or hieratic script; hieroglyphics were used on monuments such as tombs, obelisks, stele, and temples while hieratic script was used in writing on papyrus scrolls and ceramic pots.
• Hieroglyphics ("sacred carvings") a writing system combining phonograms (symbols which represent sound), logograms (symbols representing words), (symbols which represent and ideograms meaning or sense).
• Through most of its long history, hieratic was used for writing administrative documents, accounts, legal texts, and letters, as well as mathematical, medical, literary, and religious texts.
• The Rosetta Stone is a large block of black granite, over 2,000 years old, that was rediscovered in Egypt in 1799. It was a remarkable find as it contains inscriptions that enabled scholars to learn how to read hieroglyphs that were previously indecipherable.
• Book of the Dead" is a modern term to describe a series of ancient Egyptian ritual spells (instructions and Incantations). These helped the deceased find their way to the afterlife and become united with the sun god Re and the netherworld god Osiris in a continual cycle of renewal and rebirth.
• Other Famous Ancient Egyptian Literature

  • The Legend of Isis and Osiris
  • Great Hymn to the Aten
  • The Maxims of Ptahhotep
  • The Westcar Papyrus
• In ancient Egypt, long poems, or hymens, were written to the God of Aten, and were attributed to King Akhenaten. This king changed the traditional forms of Egyptian religions, in which they worshipped many Gods, and replaced it with Atenism. This hymen shows the brilliance and artistry of the era. The hymen was said to be "one of the most significant and splendid pieces of poetry to survive from the pre-Homeric world" according to English Egyptologist, Toby Wilkinson. It was also turned to a musical by American composer, Philip Glass, in his opera Akhnaten.


  Great Hymen to the Aten
• One of the best known myths in ancient Egypt. It's the murder of God Osiris by his brother, Set aka Seth, in order for him to take over the throne. Isis, Osiris's wife, later collects her husband's body and revives it in order to have a son with him. The rest of the story focuses on how Horus, Isis and Osiris's son, becomes his uncle's competitor to the throne and how he takes it back. 


  The Legend of Isis and Osiris
• The story is one of the most important in ancient Egypt for its religious symbolism, and "strong sense of family loyalty and devotion", as J. Gwyn Griffiths, Egyptologist, says. Some parts of the story appear on ancient Egyptian texts such as short stories, magical spells, and funeral texts.


  The Legend of Isis and Osiris
• This is one of Ancient Egypt's texts that contains five stories narrated at the royal court of King Khufu (Cheops) by his sons about priests and magicians and their miracles, and is also known as "King Cheops and Magocians." The papyrus is now located at the Egyptian Museum of Berlin and it is exhibited there under low-light conditions.


  The Westcar Papyrus
• Maxims of Ptahhotep, also called the Instructions of Ptahhotep, is a collection of teaching advice about social virtues, kindness, modesty, and justice. The literary work remains currently in many papyrus texts, including two manuscripts housed at the British Museum, as well as the Prisse Papyrus that goes back to the Middle Kingdom, housed at Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
• Cleopatra actively influenced Roman politics at a crucial period and was especially known for her relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.
• Cleopatra-used her beauty to tempt some pharaoh. She took her life when she was 39-yr. old.
• Middle Kingdom Montuhotep II (2,007-1,956 B.C.E.), an Eleventh dynasty pharaoh, was the last ruler of the Old Kingdom and the first ruler of the Middie Kingdom. He and his successors restored political order.
• The Middle Kingdom is remembered as a time of flourishing arts, particularly in jewelry making. Egypt became a great trading power during this period and continued massive construction projects
• Amenemhet III (1817-1772 B.C.E.), of the Twelfth Dynasty. was responsible for the construction of two great projects. He completed the building of the giant waterwheels of the Faiyum region that diverted the floodwaters of the Nile. Amenemhet also constructed the Pyramid of Hawara, which became known as the Labyrinth. It contained about 3,000 rooms.
• Aten, also spelled Aton, is the ancient Egyptian deity associated with the sun and the sun's disk. The word "Aten" means "sun disk" in ancient Egyptian.
• In Egyptian mythology, Aten was initially considered to be a manifestation of the sun god Ra, who was one of the most important deities in the Egyptian pantheon.
• The New Kingdom A famed pharaoh of the new period was Amenhotep IV, who triggered a religious revolution. Before Amenhotep's rule, Egypt was a polytheistic society that believed in many gods. But, Amenhotep believed only in Aton, the sun god. Belief in only one god (monotheism) was a radical notion. To show his devotion to Aton, the pharaoh changed his name to Akenhaton ("he who is loyal to Aton").