The Pharaohs 2

Hieroglyphics and Writing, Who invented the first form of paper?
Being able to read and write was essential for a career in the Egyptian civil service. Not much is known about Egyptian schools. Some temples ran schools but many boys seem to have studied with local scribes (trained writers). Reading, writing and mathematics were the basic subjects. Pupils learned by copying out texts in the two main scripts, hieroglyphic and hieratic. They wrote with pens made from reeds on wooden tablets, pieces of pottery, or scraps of papyrus. Surviving school texts show pupils' spelling mistakes and teachers' corrections. Discipline was strict: "A boy's ear is on his back, he listens when he is beaten." Scribes were employed to write official or private letters and to draw up legal documents. Other common tasks were recording the progress of all kinds of work and making lists of goods. Educated people read for pleasure so scribes wrote or copied out literature such as proverbs, stories and love poems. The Egyptians invented writing paper. This paper was made from the pith of papyrus, a common marsh plant. The tall stems were cut down and carried off in bundles. Each stem was stripped of it's rind and cut into short pieces. These pieces were then cut lengthwise into narrow strips. It was essential to keep the papyrus pith moist. Two layers of strips at right angles were put on a hard surface and beaten until they fused. The papyrus sheets were polished and then glued together to make scrolls. The hieroglyphic script was mainly for royal or religious texts carved in stone. Simplified (cursive) hieroglyphs were used for writing religious texts on papyrus. Letters, records, textbooks and literature were written in hieratic, a kind of shorthand hieroglyphic. In the 7th century BC an even more abbreviated script called demotic was introduced. The hieroglyphic script has about 750 signs. Most are pictures of people, animals, plants or objects. To emphasize and protect royal or holy names, the Egyptians wrote then in a frame called a cartouche. The Rosetta Stone is what some scholars call the key that unlocked the mystery of hieroglyphics. It dates to 196 BC. It is inscribed with royal decree written in two different scripts, hieroglyphic and demonic and Greek. This helped the French scholar J.F.Champollion to decipher the hieroglyphic script.


Where did the Egyptians believe that they went when they died?
The ancient Egyptians took many precautions to make sure that the spirits of the dead could enjoy life after death. Those who could afford them had elaborate family tombs. People visited these tombs to make regular food offerings to their dead relations. In case the family neglected this duty, stone stele were placed in the outer area of the tombs. These often show the dead person sitting next to a table of food offerings. They are inscribed with a magical formula. The idea was that when this was spoken aloud the dead got everything they needed to live on. One spell collection known as The Book of the Dead stresses that all spirits were judged before Osiris. The dead person's heart was weighed against a feather representing maat-- truth. If their heart was heavier than truth because they had lead a wicked life they would be eaten by a monster and die a second death. Those who passed the judgment became blessed spirits who lived with gods. Such spirits were still believed to want intact bodies to return to. Before the dead could reach the paradise known as the Field of Reeds they had to pass through an underworld full of monsters and demons. In the Middle Kingdom some coffins were painted with maps of the underworld and with spells against it's dangers. In the New Kingdom the spells were written on papyrus scrolls and placed in the tomb. In early times burial in hot dry sand preserved bodies naturally. When coffins came into use some artificial way of stopping decay was needed. At some periods the process of mummification was used to preserve bodies. The exact treatment depended on what the family could afford. The most elaborate method took about 70 days. First the embalmers took out the brain through the nose. The vital organs were removed and treated separately, though the heart might be left in the chest. The inside of the body was cleaned and packed with scented resins. Natron, a natural drying agent, was put inside and all around the body. After about 40 days the body would have been completely dried out. The next stage was to put a packing material under the skin to imitate flesh and to refill the main cavity with scented materials. Finally the mummy was treated with perfumed oils and molten resin before being wrapped for burial.\


Why was preservation so important?
The ancient Egyptians believed that after death their bodies would travel to another world during the day, and at night they would return to their bodies. In order for the person's spirit to live forever, it had to be able to recognize and return to the body. If a spirit could not recognize the body it belonged to, it would die. This is why the Egyptians wanted to preserve the bodies of the dead in as lifelike a state as possible. Mummification guaranteed eternal life for the spirit.



The Pyramids and the Sphinx, What was Napoleon doing in Egypt?
Throughout history, people have tried to understand the pyramids. Early Christians thought that they were places where priests watched the stars. In the 19th century, some people believed that the measurements of the Great Pyramid were devised by God, and that from them they could predict the future! But by then, scholars could read ancient Egyptian writing and they had started to dig up ancient sites. They pyramids were finally known as the last resting places of Egypt's ancient kings. Napoleon Bonaparte, the Emperor of France, led an invasion of Egypt in 1798. Legend has it that he ventured into the Great Pyramid alone, only to emerge pale, shaken, and gasping for air. What secrets did he encounter in the darkness? We may never know . . . Building the Old Kingdom pyramids was a gigantic task. The Great Pyramid at Giza contains about 625 million tons of stone. The individual blocks weigh between 2 and 15 tons. To complete this pyramid during Khufu's Reign, the blocks must have been produced at a rate of one every two minutes each day for 23 years! Some scholars believe this theory to be untrue, while others argue at its possibility. The stonemasons who quarried, shaped and smoothed the blocks must have formed a highly skilled workforce. Many of the blocks were quarried close to the pyramid site. Granite from Aswan and fine limestone from Tura were brought by barge to the edge of the desert. The blocks were then lashed on to sledges. They were dragged over wooden rollers, which had to be kept damp to prevent friction. Mud-brick ramps were probably used to get the stones up to where they were needed. Some believe that his pyramid at Giza was built by slaves, but this is not true. One hundred thousand people worked on it for three months of each year. This was the time of the Nile's annual flood which made it impossible to farm the land and most of the population was unemployed. Pharaoh provided food and clothing for his workers and was kindly remembered in folk tails for many centuries. Inside each Old Kingdom pyramid is a series of stepped buttress walls around a central core. Packing blocks were used to fill in the steps. Then the casting stones were added. These walls were fitted closely to form the smooth outer walls. The casing stones were mainly pale Tura limestone so the pyramids would originally have looked white. The capstones at the very top of a pyramid was covered in gold. With the construction projects as large as the Giza Pyramids, two questions are often asked: How many years did it take to build each pyramid, and how many workers were required? The answeres to these two questions are not easy ones. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing two thousand years after the Great pyramid was constructed, claimed that the Great Pyramid of Khufu was built in twenty years. As to the number of workers, Herodotus writes that the Great Pyramid was built for by hundred was build by four hundred thousand men, each for a "period of three months." That means that one hundered thousand workers were at work on the Great Pyramid duting every monthe of each year. However, many Egyptologists believe that work on the pyramids took place only during the three-month period each year when the Nile River was at its highest stages. These were the months when the fields could not be worked, freeing up farmers for pyramid construction, and when transporting stones was the easiest. Experimental field research has helped archaeologists gain a clearer picture in estimating how many workers were needed to build the monuments at Giza. While modern archaeology has managed to shed light on the logistics of how and why the Egyptian pyramids were built, much work remains to be done. As these highly trained experts sift through the remnants of constuction scattered across the Giza Plaue, theories come and go, replaced by new interpretations and fresh evidence. Yet despite the various modern explainations concerning how the pyramids were built, the experts still agree on one thing: Construction of the pyramids of Giza were a monumental task requireing exacting detail work, thousands of workers exerting themselves to Hurculean efforts, and an extraordinary dedication of people of that ancient land. The King's burial chamber was usually under the center of the pyramid. In the Great Pyramid the granite burial chamber is reached by a steeply ascending corridor known as the Grand Gallery. After Khufu's funeral huge granite blocks were slid down to seal off the burial chamber. These impressive precautions failed to stop tomb robbers. No bodies or grave goods have been found in any of the Old Kingdom Pyramids. The Buried Sphinx In Egyptian legend, the Sphinx (the statue that guards the Pyramids) appeared to a young prince in a dream. It promised to make him king if he cleared away the sand covering its body. He did so, and became Thutmose IV. Chephren, the same king who built the second pyramid at Giza, also built the Sphinx at Giza. While building his pyramids, a laborer noticed that the limestone lump near by looked like a lion. Unless they could find another use for it, it would have to be leveled since it was so close to the pyramid. Since the king was often represented by a lion, they decided to make a statue with the head of king Chephren and the body of a lion. The body is 66 feet high and 240 feet long. The nose was the height of an average Egyptian and the lips stretched seven feet across. Almost as soon as it was built, the king it resembled was forgotten and the Sphinx became a god by itself. Presents and prayers were brought to a temple built near by. It was popularly thought to have been created by the gods. Other sphinxes were also made. At Abu Roash, a female sphinx associated with Chephren's older half brother has been discovered. Probably representing a Fourth Dynasty queen, it might be older than the one in Giza. Later variations on the sphinx included leaving the lion's ears and mane and only humanizing the face, and the criosphinx, with the head of a ram.


Who was the first female Pharaoh?
Hatshepsut Long excluded from the top rung of power, women have pressed hungrily into history's leadership vacancies when circumstances have been ripe. Few have been as successful as the great ruler Hatshepsut, whose reign brought Egypt 22 years of peace and prosperity and some of its finest monuments. The pharaoh of Egypt was an icon, much as the Queen of England or even the president of the United States sometimes appears to be. But, how far can icons be stretched? Pharaoh could have been anything: he could be old, lazy, incompetent, boring, alcoholic or insane, but he would still be pharaoh. Examples of all these types are known, or hinted of in many text and records. So naturally this question arose: could he be female? The answer to this question just may be yes. Female rulers are indicated in the long history of dynastic Egypt, and later tradition puts the names of queens near both the ends of the Old Kingdom and surprisingly the middle kingdom, some five centuries later. Egyptian society gave many remarkable freedoms and legal rights to women--far more than the rest of the Near East or in the classical world--but limits were limits. . .even by the Nile. Deir el-Bahri, opposite Luxor on the west bank of the Nile River, is the site of two ancient temples of Upper Egypt. The site's name is derived from the Coptic monastery built there in the 7th century but long since dismantled in the course of modern excavations. Cliffs at the site form a natural semicircle into which Mentuhotep II of the Middle Kingdom built his mortuary temple. Elaborate colonnade terraces and ramps were erected at the entrance to the chamber tomb, which is sunk deep into the side of the cliffs. During the New Kingdom the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, designed by the architect Senenmut that includes the famous series of reliefs of Hatshepsut's trading expedition to the land of Punt. After her death her memory was execrated by Tutmose III, who caused her name to be erased from the monuments wherever it could be found. The bodies of the New Kingdom Pharoahs survive, and are now on display at the Cario Museum. As far as we know, hers is not among them. But what we do know about her has been gained by excavation and careful research over the past 100 years. Perhaps this is how it should be, since the late 20th century is a better time than most to think about the importance and meaning of her reign.