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ring him. He was ultimately replaced, for the film's Japanese sequences, with two directors, Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda.
Tora! Tora! Tora!, finally released to unenthusiastic reviews in September 1970, was, as Donald Richie put it, an "almost unmitigated tragedy" in Kurosawa's career. He had spent years of his life on a logistically nightmarish project to which he ultimately did not contribute a foot of film shot by himself. He had his name removed from the credits, though the script used for the Japanese half was still his and his cowriters'. He became estranged from his longtime collaborator, writer Ryuzo Kikushima, and never worked with him again. The project had inadvertently exposed corruption in his own production company a situation reminiscent of his own movie, The Bad Sleep Well. His very sanity had been called into question. Worst of all, the Japanese film industryand perhaps the man himselfbegan to suspect that he would never make another film.
A difficult decade 196977
Knowing that his re
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putation was at stake following the much publicised Tora! Tora! Tora! debacle, Kurosawa moved quickly to a new project to prove he was still viable. To his aid came friends and famed directors Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi and Kon Ichikawa, who together with Kurosawa established in July 1969 a production company called the Club of the Four Knights Yonki no kai. Although the plan was for the four directors to create a film each, it has been suggested that the real motivation for the other three directors was to make it easier for Kurosawa to successfully complete a film, and therefore find his way back into the business.
The first project proposed and worked on was a period film to be called Doraheita, but when this was deemed too expensive, attention shifted to Dodesukaden, an adaptation of yet another Shgor Yamamoto work, again about the poor and destitute. The film was shot quickly by Kurosawa's standards in about nine weeks, with Kurosawa determined to show he was still capable of working quickly an
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d efficiently within a limited budget. For his first work in color, the dynamic editing and complex compositions of his earlier pictures were set aside, with the artist focusing on the creation of a bold, almost surreal palette of primary colors, in order to reveal the toxic environment in which the characters live. It was released in Japan in October 1970, but though a minor critical success, it was greeted with audience indifference. The picture lost money and caused the Club of the Four Knights to dissolve. Initial reception abroad was somewhat more favorable, but Dodesukaden has since been typically considered an interesting experiment not comparable to the director's best work.
After struggling through the production of Dodesukaden, Kurosawa turned to television work the following year for the only time in his career with Song of the Horse, a documentary about thoroughbred race horses. It featured a voiceover narrated by a fictional man and a child voiced by the same actors as the beggar and his son i
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n Dodesukaden. It is the only documentary in Kurosawa's filmography; the small crew included his frequent collaborator Masaru Sato, who composed the music. Song of the Horse is also unique in Kurosawa's oeuvre in that it includes an editor's credit, suggesting that it is the only Kurosawa film that he did not cut himself.
Unable to secure funding for further work and allegedly suffering from health problems, Kurosawa apparently reached the breaking point on December 22, 1971, he slit his wrists and throat multiple times. The suicide attempt proved unsuccessful and the director's health recovered fairly quickly, with Kurosawa now taking refuge in domestic life, uncertain if he would ever direct another film.
In early 1973, the Soviet studio Mosfilm approached the filmmaker to ask if he would be interested in working with them. Kurosawa proposed an adaptation of Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev's autobiographical work Dersu Uzala. The book, about a Goldi hunter who lives in harmony with nature until destroy
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ed by encroaching civilization, was one that he had wanted to make since the 1930s. In December 1973, the 63yearold Kurosawa set off for the Soviet Union with four of his closest aides, beginning a yearandahalf stay in the country. Shooting began in May 1974 in Siberia, with filming in exceedingly harsh natural conditions proving very difficult and demanding. The picture wrapped in April 1975, with a thoroughly exhausted and homesick Kurosawa returning to Japan and his family in June. Dersu Uzala had its world premiere in Japan on August 2, 1975, and did well at the box office. While critical reception in Japan was muted, the film was better reviewed abroad, winning the Golden Prize at the 9th Moscow International Film Festival, as well as an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Today, critics remain divided over the film some see it as an example of Kurosawa's alleged artistic decline, while others count it among his finest works.
Although proposals for television projects were submitted to him, he
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had no interest in working outside the film world. Nevertheless, the harddrinking director did agree to appear in a series of television ads for Suntory whiskey, which aired in 1976. While fearing that he might never be able to make another film, the director nevertheless continued working on various projects, writing scripts and creating detailed illustrations, intending to leave behind a visual record of his plans in case he would never be able to film his stories.
Two epics 197886
In 1977, American director George Lucas released Star Wars, a wildly successful science fiction film influenced by Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, among other works. Lucas, like many other New Hollywood directors, revered Kurosawa and considered him a role model, and was shocked to discover that the Japanese filmmaker was unable to secure financing for any new work. The two met in San Francisco in July 1978 to discuss the project Kurosawa considered most financially viable Kagemusha, the epic story of a thief hired as the doub
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le of a medieval Japanese lord of a great clan. Lucas, enthralled by the screenplay and Kurosawa's illustrations, leveraged his influence over 20th Century Fox to coerce the studio that had fired Kurosawa just ten years earlier to produce Kagemusha, then recruited fellow fan Francis Ford Coppola as coproducer.
Production began the following April, with Kurosawa in high spirits. Shooting lasted from June 1979 through March 1980 and was plagued with problems, not the least of which was the firing of the original lead actor, Shintaro Katsucreator of the very popular Zatoichi characterdue to an incident in which the actor insisted, against the director's wishes, on videotaping his own performance. He was replaced by Tatsuya Nakadai, in his first of two consecutive leading roles in a Kurosawa movie. The film was completed only a few weeks behind schedule and opened in Tokyo in April 1980. It quickly became a massive hit in Japan. The film was also a critical and box office success abroad, winning the coveted Palm
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e d'Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival in May, though some critics, then and now, have faulted the film for its alleged coldness. Kurosawa spent much of the rest of the year in Europe and America promoting Kagemusha, collecting awards and accolades, and exhibiting as art the drawings he had made to serve as storyboards for the film.
The international success of Kagemusha allowed Kurosawa to proceed with his next project, Ran, another epic in a similar vein. The script, partly based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, depicted a ruthless, bloodthirsty daimy warlord, played by Tatsuya Nakadai, who, after foolishly banishing his one loyal son, surrenders his kingdom to his other two sons, who then betray him, thus plunging the entire kingdom into war. As Japanese studios still felt wary about producing another film that would rank among the most expensive ever made in the country, international help was again needed. This time it came from French producer Serge Silberman, who had produced Luis Buuel's final mo
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vies. Filming did not begin until December 1983 and lasted more than a year.
In January 1985, production of Ran was halted as Kurosawa's 64yearold wife Yko fell ill. She died on February 1. Kurosawa returned to finish his film and Ran premiered at the Tokyo Film Festival on May 31, with a wide release the next day. The film was a moderate financial success in Japan, but a larger one abroad and, as he had done with Kagemusha, Kurosawa embarked on a trip to Europe and America, where he attended the film's premieres in September and October.
Ran won several awards in Japan, but was not quite as honored there as many of the director's best films of the 1950s and 1960s had been. The film world was surprised, however, when Japan passed over the selection of Ran in favor of another film as its official entry to compete for an Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign Film category, which was ultimately rejected for competition at the 58th Academy Awards. Both the producer and Kurosawa himself attributed the failure to
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even submit Ran for competition to a misunderstanding because of the Academy's arcane rules, no one was sure whether Ran qualified as a Japanese film, a French film due to its financing, or both, so it was not submitted at all. In response to what at least appeared to be a blatant snub by his own countrymen, the director Sidney Lumet led a successful campaign to have Kurosawa receive an Oscar nomination for Best Director that year Sydney Pollack ultimately won the award for directing Out of Africa. Rans costume designer, Emi Wada, won the movie's only Oscar.
Kagemusha and Ran, particularly the latter, are often considered to be among Kurosawa's finest works. After Rans release, Kurosawa would point to it as his best film, a major change of attitude for the director who, when asked which of his works was his best, had always previously answered "my next one".
Final works and last years 198798
For his next movie, Kurosawa chose a subject very different from any that he had ever filmed before. While some of h
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is previous pictures for example, Drunken Angel and Kagemusha had included brief dream sequences, Dreams was to be entirely based upon the director's own dreams. Significantly, for the first time in over forty years, Kurosawa, for this deeply personal project, wrote the screenplay alone. Although its estimated budget was lower than the films immediately preceding it, Japanese studios were still unwilling to back one of his productions, so Kurosawa turned to another famous American fan, Steven Spielberg, who convinced Warner Bros. to buy the international rights to the completed film. This made it easier for Kurosawa's son, Hisao, as coproducer and soontobe head of Kurosawa Production, to negotiate a loan in Japan that would cover the film's production costs. Shooting took more than eight months to complete, and Dreams premiered at Cannes in May 1990 to a polite but muted reception, similar to the reaction the picture would generate elsewhere in the world. In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Ac
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hievement. In his acceptance speech, he famously said "I'm a little worried because I don't feel that I understand cinema yet."
Kurosawa now turned to a more conventional story with Rhapsody in Augustthe director's first film fully produced in Japan since Dodeskaden over twenty years beforewhich explored the scars of the nuclear bombing which destroyed Nagasaki at the very end of World War II. It was adapted from a Kiyoko Murata novel, but the film's references to the Nagasaki bombing came from the director rather than from the book. This was his only movie to include a role for an American movie star Richard Gere, who plays a small role as the nephew of the elderly heroine. Shooting took place in early 1991, with the film opening on May 25 that year to a largely negative critical reaction, especially in the United States, where the director was accused of promulgating navely antiAmerican sentiments, though Kurosawa rejected these accusations.
Kurosawa wasted no time moving onto his next project Madadayo, o
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r Not Yet. Based on autobiographical essays by Hyakken Uchida, the film follows the life of a Japanese professor of German through the Second World War and beyond. The narrative centers on yearly birthday celebrations with his former students, during which the protagonist declares his unwillingness to die just yeta theme that was becoming increasingly relevant for the film's 81yearold creator. Filming began in February 1992 and wrapped by the end of September. Its release on April 17, 1993, was greeted by an even more disappointed reaction than had been the case with his two preceding works.
Kurosawa nevertheless continued to work. He wrote the original screenplays The Sea is Watching in 1993 and After the Rain in 1995. While putting finishing touches on the latter work in 1995, Kurosawa slipped and broke the base of his spine. Following the accident, he would use a wheelchair for the rest of his life, putting an end to any hopes of him directing another film. His longtime wishto die on the set while shootin
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g a moviewas never to be fulfilled.
After his accident, Kurosawa's health began to deteriorate. While his mind remained sharp and lively, his body was giving up, and for the last halfyear of his life, the director was largely confined to bed, listening to music and watching television at home. On September 6, 1998, Kurosawa died of a stroke in Setagaya, Tokyo, at the age of 88. At the time of his death, Kurosawa had two children, his son Hisao Kurosawa who married Hiroko Hayashi and his daughter Kazuko Kurosawa who married Harayuki Kato, along with several grandchildren. One of his grandchildren, the actor Takayuki Kato and grandson by Kazuko, became a supporting actor in two films posthumously developed from screenplays written by Kurosawa which remained unproduced during his own lifetime, Takashi Koizumi's After the Rain 1999 and Kei Kumai's The Sea is Watching 2002.
Creative worksfilmography
Although Kurosawa is primarily known as a filmmaker, he also worked in theater and television, and wrote books.
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A detailed list, including his complete filmography, can be found in the list of creative works by Akira Kurosawa.
Style and main themes
Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production. He was a gifted screenwriter and worked closely with his cowriters from the film's development onward to ensure a highquality script, which he considered the firm foundation of a good film. He frequently served as editor of his own films. His team, known as the "Kurosawagumi" Kurosawa group, which included the cinematographer Asakazu Nakai, the production assistant Teruyo Nogami and the actor Takashi Shimura, was notable for its loyalty and dependability.
Kurosawa's style is marked by a number of devices and techniques. In his films of the 1940s and 1950s, he frequently employs the "axial cut", in which the camera moves toward or away from the subject through a series of matched jump cuts rather than tracking shots or
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dissolves. Another stylistic trait is "cut on motion", which displays the motion on the screen in two or more shots instead of one uninterrupted one. A form of cinematic punctuation strongly identified with Kurosawa is the wipe, an effect created through an optical printer a line or bar appears to move across the screen, wiping away the end of a scene and revealing the first image of the next. As a transitional device, it is used as a substitute for the straight cut or the dissolve; in his mature work, the wipe became Kurosawa's signature.
In the film's soundtrack, Kurosawa favored the soundimage counterpoint, in which the music or sound effects appeared to comment ironically on the image rather than emphasizing it. Teruyo Nogami's memoir gives several such examples from Drunken Angel and Stray Dog. Kurosawa was also involved with several of Japan's outstanding contemporary composers, including Fumio Hayasaka and Tru Takemitsu.
Kurosawa employed a number of recurring themes in his films the masterdisciple
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relationship between a usually older mentor and one or more novices, which often involves spiritual as well as technical mastery and selfmastery; the heroic champion, the exceptional individual who emerges from the mass of people to produce something or right some wrong; the depiction of extremes of weather as both dramatic devices and symbols of human passion; and the recurrence of cycles of savage violence within history. According to Stephen Prince, the last theme, which he calls, "the countertradition to the committed, heroic mode of Kurosawa's cinema," began with Throne of Blood 1957, and recurred in the films of the 1980s.
Legacy
Legacy of general criticism
Kenji Mizoguchi, the acclaimed director of Ugetsu 1953 and Sansho the Bailiff 1954 was eleven years Kurosawa's senior. After the mid1950s, some critics of the French New Wave began to favor Mizoguchi to Kurosawa. New Wave critic and filmmaker Jacques Rivette, in particular, thought Mizoguchi to be the only Japanese director whose work was at on
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ce entirely Japanese and truly universal; Kurosawa, by contrast was thought to be more influenced by Western cinema and culture, a view that has been disputed.
In Japan, some critics and filmmakers considered Kurosawa to be elitist. They viewed him to center his effort and attention on exceptional or heroic characters. In her D.V.D. commentary on Seven Samurai, Joan Mellen argued that certain shots of the samurai characters Kambei and Kyuzo, which show Kurosawa to have accorded higher status or validity to them, constitutes evidence for this point of view. These Japanese critics argued that Kurosawa was not sufficiently progressive because the peasants were unable to find leaders from within their ranks. In an interview with Mellen, Kurosawa defended himself, saying, I wanted to say that after everything the peasants were the stronger, closely clinging to the earth ... It was the samurai who were weak because they were being blown by the winds of time.
From the early 1950s, Kurosawa was also charged with
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catering to Western tastes due to his popularity in Europe and America. In the 1970s, the leftwing director Nagisa Oshima, who was noted for his critical reaction to Kurosawa's work, accused Kurosawa of pandering to Western beliefs and ideologies. Author Audie Block, however, assessed Kurosawa to have never played up to a nonJapanese viewing public and to have denounced those directors who did.
Reputation among filmmakers
Many filmmakers have been influenced by Kurosawa's work. Ingmar Bergman called his own film The Virgin Spring a "touristic... lousy imitation of Kurosawa", and added, "At that time my admiration for the Japanese cinema was at its height. I was almost a samurai myself!" Federico Fellini considered Kurosawa to be "the greatest living example of all that an author of the cinema should be". Satyajit Ray, who was posthumously awarded the Akira Kurosawa Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1992, had said earlier of Rashomon "The effect
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of the film on me upon first seeing it in Calcutta in 1952 was electric. I saw it three times on consecutive days, and wondered each time if there was another film anywhere which gave such sustained and dazzling proof of a director's command over every aspect of film making."
Roman Polanski considered Kurosawa to be among the three filmmakers he favored most, along with Fellini and Orson Welles, and picked Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood and The Hidden Fortress for praise. Bernardo Bertolucci considered Kurosawa's influence to be seminal "Kurosawa's movies and La Dolce Vita of Fellini are the things that pushed me, sucked me into being a film director." Andrei Tarkovsky cited Kurosawa as one of his favorites and named Seven Samurai as one of his ten favorite films. Sidney Lumet called Kurosawa the "Beethoven of movie directors". Werner Herzog reflected on filmmakers with whom he feels kinship and the movies that he admires Griffith especially his Birth of a Nation and Broken Blossoms Murnau, Buuel, Kurosa
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wa and Eisensteins Ivan the Terrible, ... all come to mind. ... I like Dreyers The Passion of Joan of Arc, Pudovkins Storm Over Asia and Dovzhenkos Earth, ... Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari, Satyajit Ray's The Music Room ... I have always wondered how Kurosawa made something as good as Rashomon; the equilibrium and flow are perfect, and he uses space in such a wellbalanced way. It is one of the best films ever made.
According to an assistant, Stanley Kubrick considered Kurosawa to be "one of the great film directors" and spoke of him "consistently and admiringly", to the point that a letter from him "meant more than any Oscar" and caused him to agonize for months over drafting a reply. Robert Altman upon first seeing Rashomon was so impressed by the sequence of frames of the sun that he began to shoot the same sequences in his work the very next day, he claimed. Kurosawa was ranked 3rd in the directors' poll and 5th in the critics' poll in Sight Sound's 2002 list of the greatest directors of all time.
Posth
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umous screenplays
Following Kurosawa's death, several posthumous works based on his unfilmed screenplays have been produced. After the Rain, directed by Takashi Koizumi, was released in 1999, and The Sea Is Watching, directed by Kei Kumai, premiered in 2002. A script created by the Yonki no Kai "Club of the Four Knights" Kurosawa, Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi, and Kon Ichikawa, around the time that Dodeskaden was made, finally was filmed and released in 2000 as Doraheita, by the only surviving founding member of the club, Kon Ichikawa. Huayi Brothers Media and CKF Pictures in China announced in 2017 plans to produce a film of Kurosawa's posthumous screenplay of The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe for 2020, to be entitled The Mask of the Black Death. Patrick Frater writing for Variety magazine in May 2017 stated that another two unfinished films by Kurosawa were planned, with Silvering Spear to start filming in 2018.
Kurosawa Production Company
In September 2011, it was reported that rema
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ke rights to most of Kurosawa's movies and unproduced screenplays were assigned by the Akira Kurosawa 100 Project to the L.A.based company Splendent. Splendent's chief Sakiko Yamada, stated that he aimed to "help contemporary filmmakers introduce a new generation of moviegoers to these unforgettable stories".
Kurosawa Production Co., established in 1959, continues to oversee many of the aspects of Kurosawa's legacy. The director's son, Hisao Kurosawa, is the current head of the company. Its American subsidiary, Kurosawa Enterprises, is located in Los Angeles. Rights to Kurosawa's works were then held by Kurosawa Production and the film studios under which he worked, most notably Toho. These rights were then assigned to the Akira Kurosawa 100 Project before being reassigned in 2011 to the L.A. based company Splendent. Kurosawa Production works closely with the Akira Kurosawa Foundation, established in December 2003 and also run by Hisao Kurosawa. The foundation organizes an annual short film competition and s
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pearheads Kurosawarelated projects, including a recently shelved one to build a memorial museum for the director.
Film studios and awards
In 1981, the Kurosawa Film Studio was opened in Yokohama; two additional locations have since been launched in Japan. A large collection of archive material, including scanned screenplays, photos and news articles, has been made available through the Akira Kurosawa Digital Archive, a Japanese proprietary website maintained by Ryukoku University Digital Archives Research Center in collaboration with Kurosawa Production. Anaheim University's Akira Kurosawa School of Film was launched in spring 2009 with the backing of Kurosawa Production. It offers online programs in digital film making, with headquarters in Anaheim and a learning center in Tokyo.
Two film awards have also been named in Kurosawa's honor. The Akira Kurosawa Award for Lifetime Achievement in Film Directing is awarded during the San Francisco International Film Festival, while the Akira Kurosawa Award is giv
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en during the Tokyo International Film Festival.
Kurosawa is often cited as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. In 1999, he was named "Asian of the Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN, cited as "one of the five people who contributed most to the betterment of Asia in the past 100 years". In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Kurosawa's birth in 2010, a project called AK100 was launched in 2008. The AK100 Project aims to "expose young people who are the representatives of the next generation, and all people everywhere, to the light and spirit of Akira Kurosawa and the wonderful world he created".
Anaheim University in cooperation with the Kurosawa Family established the Anaheim University Akira Kurosawa School of Film to offer online and blended learning programs on Akira Kurosawa and filmmaking. The animated Wes Anderson film Isle of Dogs is partially inspired by Kurosawa's filming techniques. At the 64th Sydney Film Festival, there was a re
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trospective of Akira Kurosawa where films of his were screened to remember the great legacy he has created from his work.
Documentaries
A significant number of short and fulllength documentaries concerning the life and work of Kurosawa were made both during his artistic heyday and after his death. AK, by French video essay director Chris Marker, was filmed while Kurosawa was working on Ran; however, the documentary is more concerned about Kurosawa's distant yet polite personality than on the making of the film. Other documentaries concerning Kurosawa's life and works produced posthumously include
Kurosawa The Last Emperor Alex Cox, 1999
A Message from Akira Kurosawa For Beautiful Movies Hisao Kurosawa, 2000
Kurosawa Adam Low, 2001
Akira Kurosawa It Is Wonderful to Create Toho Masterworks, 2002
Akira Kurosawa The Epic and the Intimate 2010
Kurosawa's Way Catherine Cadou, 2011
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
Buchanan, Judith 2005. Shakespeare on Film. Pearson Longman. .
Burch, Nel 1979.
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To the Distant Observer Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema. University of California Press. .
Cowie, Peter 2010. Akira Kurosawa Master of Cinema. Rizzoli Publications. .
Davies, Anthony 1990. Filming Shakespeare's Plays The Adaptions of Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa. Cambridge University Press. .
Desser, David 1983. The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa Studies in Cinema No. 23. UMI Research Press. .
Leonard, Kendra Preston 2009. Shakespeare, Madness, and Music Scoring Insanity in Cinematic Adaptations. Plymouth The Scarecrow Press. .
Sorensen, LarsMartin 2009. Censorship of Japanese Films During the U.S. Occupation of Japan The Cases of Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa. Edwin Mellen Press. .
Wild, Peter. 2014 Akira Kurosawa Reaktion Books
External links
Akira Kurosawa at the Criterion Collection
Akira Kurosawa News, Information and Discussion
Senses of Cinema Great Directors Critical Database
Akira Kurosawa at Japanese celebrity'
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s grave guide
Several trailers
Anaheim University Akira Kurosawa School of Film
1910 births
1998 deaths
20thcentury Japanese writers
20thcentury male writers
Academy Honorary Award recipients
Akira Kurosawa Award winners
Best Director BAFTA Award winners
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Directors Guild of America Award winners
Directors of Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winners
Directors of Palme d'Or winners
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Filmmakers who won the Best Foreign Language Film BAFTA Award
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Japanese film directors
Japanese film editors
Japanese film producers
Japanese male writers
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Kyoto laureates in Arts and Philosophy
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Male screenwriters
People from Shinagawa
People of the Empire of Japan
People's Honour Award winners
Persons of Cultural Merit
Propaganda film directors
Ramon Magsaysay Award winners
Recipients of the Order of Culture
Recipients of the Order
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of Friendship of Peoples
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Google Doodles
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Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River, situated in the place that is now the country Egypt. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3100BC according to conventional Egyptian chronology with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes often identified with Narmer. The history of ancient Egypt occurred as a series of stable kingdoms, separated by periods of relative instability known as Intermediate Periods the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age and the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.
Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power in the New Kingdom, ruling much of Nubia and a sizable portion of the Near East, after which it entered a period of slow decline. During the course of its history Egypt was invaded or conquered by a number of foreign powers, including the Hyksos, the Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, and th
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e Macedonians under the command of Alexander the Great. The Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom, formed in the aftermath of Alexander's death, ruled Egypt until 30BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province.
The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military intended to assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of
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a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.
The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems and agricultural production techniques, the first known planked boats, Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites. Ancient Egypt has left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for millennia. A newfound respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and Egyptians led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater ap
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preciation of its cultural legacy.
History
The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history. The fertile floodplain of the Nile gave humans the opportunity to develop a settled agricultural economy and a more sophisticated, centralized society that became a cornerstone in the history of human civilization. Nomadic modern human huntergatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the arid climate of Northern Africa became increasingly hot and dry, forcing the populations of the area to concentrate along the river region.
Predynastic period
In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was much less arid than it is today. Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazing ungulates. Foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians
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, and this is also the period when many animals were first domesticated.
By about 5500 BC, small tribes living in the Nile valley had developed into a series of cultures demonstrating firm control of agriculture and animal husbandry, and identifiable by their pottery and personal items, such as combs, bracelets, and beads. The largest of these early cultures in upper Southern Egypt was the Badarian culture, which probably originated in the Western Desert; it was known for its highquality ceramics, stone tools, and its use of copper.
The Badari was followed by the Naqada culture the Amratian Naqada I, the Gerzeh Naqada II, and Semainean Naqada III. These brought a number of technological improvements. As early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes. In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan and the Byblos coast. Over a period of about 1,000 years, the Naqada culture de
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veloped from a few small farming communities into a powerful civilization whose leaders were in complete control of the people and resources of the Nile valley. Establishing a power center at Nekhen in Greek, Hierakonpolis, and later at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile. They also traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the western desert to the west, and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East to the east, initiating a period of EgyptMesopotamia relations.
The Naqada culture manufactured a diverse selection of material goods, reflective of the increasing power and wealth of the elite, as well as societal personaluse items, which included combs, small statuary, painted pottery, high quality decorative stone vases, cosmetic palettes, and jewelry made of gold, lapis, and ivory. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines. During the last predynasti
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c phase, the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a full system of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language.
Early Dynastic Period c. 31502686 BC
The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early SumerianAkkadian civilisation of Mesopotamia and of ancient Elam. The thirdcenturyBC Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the long line of kings from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a system still used today. He began his official history with the king named "Meni" or Menes in Greek, who was believed to have united the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt.
The transition to a unified state happened more gradually than ancient Egyptian writers represented, and there is no contemporary record of Menes. Some scholars now believe, however, that the mythical Menes may have been the king Narmer, who is depicted wearing royal regalia on the ceremonial Narmer Palette, in a symbolic act of unification. In the Early Dynastic Period, which began
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about 3000BC, the first of the Dynastic kings solidified control over lower Egypt by establishing a capital at Memphis, from which he could control the labour force and agriculture of the fertile delta region, as well as the lucrative and critical trade routes to the Levant. The increasing power and wealth of the kings during the early dynastic period was reflected in their elaborate mastaba tombs and mortuary cult structures at Abydos, which were used to celebrate the deified king after his death. The strong institution of kingship developed by the kings served to legitimize state control over the land, labour, and resources that were essential to the survival and growth of ancient Egyptian civilization.
Old Kingdom 26862181 BC
Major advances in architecture, art, and technology were made during the Old Kingdom, fueled by the increased agricultural productivity and resulting population, made possible by a welldeveloped central administration. Some of ancient Egypt's crowning achievements, the Giza pyramids
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and Great Sphinx, were constructed during the Old Kingdom. Under the direction of the vizier, state officials collected taxes, coordinated irrigation projects to improve crop yield, drafted peasants to work on construction projects, and established a justice system to maintain peace and order.
With the rising importance of central administration in Egypt, a new class of educated scribes and officials arose who were granted estates by the king in payment for their services. Kings also made land grants to their mortuary cults and local temples, to ensure that these institutions had the resources to worship the king after his death. Scholars believe that five centuries of these practices slowly eroded the economic vitality of Egypt, and that the economy could no longer afford to support a large centralized administration. As the power of the kings diminished, regional governors called nomarchs began to challenge the supremacy of the office of king. This, coupled with severe droughts between 2200 and 2150BC, i
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s believed to have caused the country to enter the 140year period of famine and strife known as the First Intermediate Period.
First Intermediate Period 21812055 BC
After Egypt's central government collapsed at the end of the Old Kingdom, the administration could no longer support or stabilize the country's economy. Regional governors could not rely on the king for help in times of crisis, and the ensuing food shortages and political disputes escalated into famines and smallscale civil wars. Yet despite difficult problems, local leaders, owing no tribute to the king, used their newfound independence to establish a thriving culture in the provinces. Once in control of their own resources, the provinces became economically richerwhich was demonstrated by larger and better burials among all social classes. In bursts of creativity, provincial artisans adopted and adapted cultural motifs formerly restricted to the royalty of the Old Kingdom, and scribes developed literary styles that expressed the optimism and o
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riginality of the period.
Free from their loyalties to the king, local rulers began competing with each other for territorial control and political power. By 2160BC, rulers in Herakleopolis controlled Lower Egypt in the north, while a rival clan based in Thebes, the Intef family, took control of Upper Egypt in the south. As the Intefs grew in power and expanded their control northward, a clash between the two rival dynasties became inevitable. Around 2055BC the northern Theban forces under Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II finally defeated the Herakleopolitan rulers, reuniting the Two Lands. They inaugurated a period of economic and cultural renaissance known as the Middle Kingdom.
Middle Kingdom 21341690 BC
The kings of the Middle Kingdom restored the country's stability and prosperity, thereby stimulating a resurgence of art, literature, and monumental building projects. Mentuhotep II and his Eleventh Dynasty successors ruled from Thebes, but the vizier Amenemhat I, upon assuming the kingship at the beginning of
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the Twelfth Dynasty around 1985BC, shifted the kingdom's capital to the city of Itjtawy, located in Faiyum. From Itjtawy, the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty undertook a farsighted land reclamation and irrigation scheme to increase agricultural output in the region. Moreover, the military reconquered territory in Nubia that was rich in quarries and gold mines, while laborers built a defensive structure in the Eastern Delta, called the "Walls of the Ruler", to defend against foreign attack.
With the kings having secured the country militarily and politically and with vast agricultural and mineral wealth at their disposal, the nation's population, arts, and religion flourished. In contrast to elitist Old Kingdom attitudes towards the gods, the Middle Kingdom displayed an increase in expressions of personal piety. Middle Kingdom literature featured sophisticated themes and characters written in a confident, eloquent style. The relief and portrait sculpture of the period captured subtle, individual details that rea
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ched new heights of technical sophistication.
The last great ruler of the Middle Kingdom, Amenemhat III, allowed Semiticspeaking Canaanite settlers from the Near East into the Delta region to provide a sufficient labour force for his especially active mining and building campaigns. These ambitious building and mining activities, however, combined with severe Nile floods later in his reign, strained the economy and precipitated the slow decline into the Second Intermediate Period during the later Thirteenth and Fourteenth dynasties. During this decline, the Canaanite settlers began to assume greater control of the Delta region, eventually coming to power in Egypt as the Hyksos.
Second Intermediate Period 16741549 BC and the Hyksos
Around 1785BC, as the power of the Middle Kingdom kings weakened, a Western Asian people called the Hyksos, who had already settled in the Delta, seized control of Egypt and established their capital at Avaris, forcing the former central government to retreat to Thebes. The king w
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as treated as a vassal and expected to pay tribute. The Hyksos "foreign rulers" retained Egyptian models of government and identified as kings, thereby integrating Egyptian elements into their culture. They and other invaders introduced new tools of warfare into Egypt, most notably the composite bow and the horsedrawn chariot.
After retreating south, the native Theban kings found themselves trapped between the Canaanite Hyksos ruling the north and the Hyksos' Nubian allies, the Kushites, to the south. After years of vassalage, Thebes gathered enough strength to challenge the Hyksos in a conflict that lasted more than 30 years, until 1555BC. The kings Seqenenre Tao II and Kamose were ultimately able to defeat the Nubians to the south of Egypt, but failed to defeat the Hyksos. That task fell to Kamose's successor, Ahmose I, who successfully waged a series of campaigns that permanently eradicated the Hyksos' presence in Egypt. He established a new dynasty and, in the New Kingdom that followed, the military beca
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me a central priority for the kings, who sought to expand Egypt's borders and attempted to gain mastery of the Near East.
New Kingdom 15491069 BC
The New Kingdom pharaohs established a period of unprecedented prosperity by securing their borders and strengthening diplomatic ties with their neighbours, including the Mitanni Empire, Assyria, and Canaan. Military campaigns waged under Tuthmosis I and his grandson Tuthmosis III extended the influence of the pharaohs to the largest empire Egypt had ever seen. Beginning with Merneptah the rulers of Egypt adopted the title of pharaoh.
Between their reigns, Hatshepsut, a queen who established herself as pharaoh, launched many building projects, including the restoration of temples damaged by the Hyksos, and sent trading expeditions to Punt and the Sinai. When Tuthmosis III died in 1425BC, Egypt had an empire extending from Niya in north west Syria to the Fourth Cataract of the Nile in Nubia, cementing loyalties and opening access to critical imports such as bronze
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and wood.
The New Kingdom pharaohs began a largescale building campaign to promote the god Amun, whose growing cult was based in Karnak. They also constructed monuments to glorify their own achievements, both real and imagined. The Karnak temple is the largest Egyptian temple ever built.
Around 1350BC, the stability of the New Kingdom was threatened when Amenhotep IV ascended the throne and instituted a series of radical and chaotic reforms. Changing his name to Akhenaten, he touted the previously obscure sun deity Aten as the supreme deity, suppressed the worship of most other deities, and moved the capital to the new city of Akhetaten modernday Amarna. He was devoted to his new religion and artistic style. After his death, the cult of the Aten was quickly abandoned and the traditional religious order restored. The subsequent pharaohs, Tutankhamun, Ay, and Horemheb, worked to erase all mention of Akhenaten's heresy, now known as the Amarna Period.
Around 1279BC, Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Gr
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eat, ascended the throne, and went on to build more temples, erect more statues and obelisks, and sire more children than any other pharaoh in history. A bold military leader, Ramesses II led his army against the Hittites in the Battle of Kadesh in modern Syria and, after fighting to a stalemate, finally agreed to the first recorded peace treaty, around 1258BC.
Egypt's wealth, however, made it a tempting target for invasion, particularly by the Libyan Berbers to the west, and the Sea Peoples, a conjectured confederation of seafarers from the Aegean Sea. Initially, the military was able to repel these invasions, but Egypt eventually lost control of its remaining territories in southern Canaan, much of it falling to the Assyrians. The effects of external threats were exacerbated by internal problems such as corruption, tomb robbery, and civil unrest. After regaining their power, the high priests at the temple of Amun in Thebes accumulated vast tracts of land and wealth, and their expanded power splintered the
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country during the Third Intermediate Period.
Third Intermediate Period 1069653 BC
Following the death of Ramesses XI in 1078BC, Smendes assumed authority over the northern part of Egypt, ruling from the city of Tanis. The south was effectively controlled by the High Priests of Amun at Thebes, who recognized Smendes in name only. During this time, Libyans had been settling in the western delta, and chieftains of these settlers began increasing their autonomy. Libyan princes took control of the delta under Shoshenq I in 945BC, founding the socalled Libyan or Bubastite dynasty that would rule for some 200 years. Shoshenq also gained control of southern Egypt by placing his family members in important priestly positions. Libyan control began to erode as a rival dynasty in the delta arose in Leontopolis, and Kushites threatened from the south.
Around 727BC the Kushite king Piye invaded northward, seizing control of Thebes and eventually the Delta, which established the 25th Dynasty. During the 25th Dynasty, Ph
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araoh Taharqa created an empire nearly as large as the New Kingdom's. Twentyfifth Dynasty pharaohs built, or restored, temples and monuments throughout the Nile valley, including at Memphis, Karnak, Kawa, and Jebel Barkal. During this period, the Nile valley saw the first widespread construction of pyramids many in modern Sudan since the Middle Kingdom.
Egypt's farreaching prestige declined considerably toward the end of the Third Intermediate Period. Its foreign allies had fallen under the Assyrian sphere of influence, and by 700BC war between the two states became inevitable. Between 671 and 667BC the Assyrians began the Assyrian conquest of Egypt. The reigns of both Taharqa and his successor, Tanutamun, were filled with constant conflict with the Assyrians, against whom Egypt enjoyed several victories. Ultimately, the Assyrians pushed the Kushites back into Nubia, occupied Memphis, and sacked the temples of Thebes.
Late Period 653332 BC
The Assyrians left control of Egypt to a series of vassals who beca
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me known as the Saite kings of the TwentySixth Dynasty. By 653BC, the Saite king Psamtik I was able to oust the Assyrians with the help of Greek mercenaries, who were recruited to form Egypt's first navy. Greek influence expanded greatly as the citystate of Naukratis became the home of Greeks in the Nile Delta. The Saite kings based in the new capital of Sais witnessed a brief but spirited resurgence in the economy and culture, but in 525BC, the powerful Persians, led by Cambyses II, began their conquest of Egypt, eventually capturing the pharaoh Psamtik III at the Battle of Pelusium. Cambyses II then assumed the formal title of pharaoh, but ruled Egypt from Iran, leaving Egypt under the control of a satrap. A few successful revolts against the Persians marked the 5th centuryBC, but Egypt was never able to permanently overthrow the Persians.
Following its annexation by Persia, Egypt was joined with Cyprus and Phoenicia in the sixth satrapy of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. This first period of Persian rule o
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ver Egypt, also known as the TwentySeventh Dynasty, ended in 402BC, when Egypt regained independence under a series of native dynasties. The last of these dynasties, the Thirtieth, proved to be the last native royal house of ancient Egypt, ending with the kingship of Nectanebo II. A brief restoration of Persian rule, sometimes known as the ThirtyFirst Dynasty, began in 343BC, but shortly after, in 332BC, the Persian ruler Mazaces handed Egypt over to Alexander the Great without a fight.
Ptolemaic period 33230 BC
In 332BC, Alexander the Great conquered Egypt with little resistance from the Persians and was welcomed by the Egyptians as a deliverer. The administration established by Alexander's successors, the Macedonian Ptolemaic Kingdom, was based on an Egyptian model and based in the new capital city of Alexandria. The city showcased the power and prestige of Hellenistic rule, and became a seat of learning and culture, centered at the famous Library of Alexandria. The Lighthouse of Alexandria lit the way fo
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r the many ships that kept trade flowing through the cityas the Ptolemies made commerce and revenuegenerating enterprises, such as papyrus manufacturing, their top priority.
Hellenistic culture did not supplant native Egyptian culture, as the Ptolemies supported timehonored traditions in an effort to secure the loyalty of the populace. They built new temples in Egyptian style, supported traditional cults, and portrayed themselves as pharaohs. Some traditions merged, as Greek and Egyptian gods were syncretized into composite deities, such as Serapis, and classical Greek forms of sculpture influenced traditional Egyptian motifs. Despite their efforts to appease the Egyptians, the Ptolemies were challenged by native rebellion, bitter family rivalries, and the powerful mob of Alexandria that formed after the death of Ptolemy IV. In addition, as Rome relied more heavily on imports of grain from Egypt, the Romans took great interest in the political situation in the country. Continued Egyptian revolts, ambitious p
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oliticians, and powerful opponents from the Near East made this situation unstable, leading Rome to send forces to secure the country as a province of its empire.
Roman period 30 BC AD 641
Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire in 30BC, following the defeat of Mark Antony and Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VII by Octavian later Emperor Augustus in the Battle of Actium. The Romans relied heavily on grain shipments from Egypt, and the Roman army, under the control of a prefect appointed by the emperor, quelled rebellions, strictly enforced the collection of heavy taxes, and prevented attacks by bandits, which had become a notorious problem during the period. Alexandria became an increasingly important center on the trade route with the orient, as exotic luxuries were in high demand in Rome.
Although the Romans had a more hostile attitude than the Greeks towards the Egyptians, some traditions such as mummification and worship of the traditional gods continued. The art of mummy portraiture flourished, and som
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e Roman emperors had themselves depicted as pharaohs, though not to the extent that the Ptolemies had. The former lived outside Egypt and did not perform the ceremonial functions of Egyptian kingship. Local administration became Roman in style and closed to native Egyptians.
From the midfirst century AD, Christianity took root in Egypt and it was originally seen as another cult that could be accepted. However, it was an uncompromising religion that sought to win converts from the pagan Egyptian and GrecoRoman religions and threatened popular religious traditions. This led to the persecution of converts to Christianity, culminating in the great purges of Diocletian starting in 303, but eventually Christianity won out. In 391 the Christian emperor Theodosius introduced legislation that banned pagan rites and closed temples. Alexandria became the scene of great antipagan riots with public and private religious imagery destroyed. As a consequence, Egypt's native religious culture was continually in decline. Whil
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e the native population continued to speak their language, the ability to read hieroglyphic writing slowly disappeared as the role of the Egyptian temple priests and priestesses diminished. The temples themselves were sometimes converted to churches or abandoned to the desert.
In the fourth century, as the Roman Empire divided, Egypt found itself in the Eastern Empire with its capital at Constantinople. In the waning years of the Empire, Egypt fell to the Sasanian Persian army in the Sasanian conquest of Egypt 618628. It was then recaptured by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius 629639, and was finally captured by Muslim Rashidun army in 639641, ending Byzantine rule.
Government and economy
Administration and commerce
The pharaoh was the absolute monarch of the country and, at least in theory, wielded complete control of the land and its resources. The king was the supreme military commander and head of the government, who relied on a bureaucracy of officials to manage his affairs. In charge of the administra
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tion was his second in command, the vizier, who acted as the king's representative and coordinated land surveys, the treasury, building projects, the legal system, and the archives. At a regional level, the country was divided into as many as 42 administrative regions called nomes each governed by a nomarch, who was accountable to the vizier for his jurisdiction. The temples formed the backbone of the economy. Not only were they places of worship, but were also responsible for collecting and storing the kingdom's wealth in a system of granaries and treasuries administered by overseers, who redistributed grain and goods.
Much of the economy was centrally organized and strictly controlled. Although the ancient Egyptians did not use coinage until the Late period, they did use a type of moneybarter system, with standard sacks of grain and the deben, a weight of roughly of copper or silver, forming a common denominator. Workers were paid in grain; a simple laborer might earn 5 sacks 200 kg or 400 lb of grain per
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month, while a foreman might earn 7 sacks 250 kg or 550 lb. Prices were fixed across the country and recorded in lists to facilitate trading; for example a shirt cost five copper deben, while a cow cost 140deben. Grain could be traded for other goods, according to the fixed price list. During the fifth centuryBC coined money was introduced into Egypt from abroad. At first the coins were used as standardized pieces of precious metal rather than true money, but in the following centuries international traders came to rely on coinage.
Social status
Egyptian society was highly stratified, and social status was expressly displayed. Farmers made up the bulk of the population, but agricultural produce was owned directly by the state, temple, or noble family that owned the land. Farmers were also subject to a labor tax and were required to work on irrigation or construction projects in a corve system. Artists and craftsmen were of higher status than farmers, but they were also under state control, working in the s
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hops attached to the temples and paid directly from the state treasury. Scribes and officials formed the upper class in ancient Egypt, known as the "white kilt class" in reference to the bleached linen garments that served as a mark of their rank. The upper class prominently displayed their social status in art and literature. Below the nobility were the priests, physicians, and engineers with specialized training in their field. It is unclear whether slavery as understood today existed in ancient Egypt; there is difference of opinions among authors.
The ancient Egyptians viewed men and women, including people from all social classes, as essentially equal under the law, and even the lowliest peasant was entitled to petition the vizier and his court for redress. Although slaves were mostly used as indentured servants, they were able to buy and sell their servitude, work their way to freedom or nobility, and were usually treated by doctors in the workplace. Both men and women had the right to own and sell prop
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erty, make contracts, marry and divorce, receive inheritance, and pursue legal disputes in court. Married couples could own property jointly and protect themselves from divorce by agreeing to marriage contracts, which stipulated the financial obligations of the husband to his wife and children should the marriage end. Compared with their counterparts in ancient Greece, Rome, and even more modern places around the world, ancient Egyptian women had a greater range of personal choices, legal rights, and opportunities for achievement. Women such as Hatshepsut and Cleopatra VII even became pharaohs, while others wielded power as Divine Wives of Amun. Despite these freedoms, ancient Egyptian women did not often take part in official roles in the administration, aside from the royal high priestesses, apparently served only secondary roles in the temples not much data for many dynasties, and were not so likely to be as educated as men.
Legal system
The head of the legal system was officially the pharaoh, who was re
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sponsible for enacting laws, delivering justice, and maintaining law and order, a concept the ancient Egyptians referred to as Ma'at. Although no legal codes from ancient Egypt survive, court documents show that Egyptian law was based on a commonsense view of right and wrong that emphasized reaching agreements and resolving conflicts rather than strictly adhering to a complicated set of statutes. Local councils of elders, known as Kenbet in the New Kingdom, were responsible for ruling in court cases involving small claims and minor disputes. More serious cases involving murder, major land transactions, and tomb robbery were referred to the Great Kenbet, over which the vizier or pharaoh presided. Plaintiffs and defendants were expected to represent themselves and were required to swear an oath that they had told the truth. In some cases, the state took on both the role of prosecutor and judge, and it could torture the accused with beatings to obtain a confession and the names of any coconspirators. Whether the
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charges were trivial or serious, court scribes documented the complaint, testimony, and verdict of the case for future reference.
Punishment for minor crimes involved either imposition of fines, beatings, facial mutilation, or exile, depending on the severity of the offense. Serious crimes such as murder and tomb robbery were punished by execution, carried out by decapitation, drowning, or impaling the criminal on a stake. Punishment could also be extended to the criminal's family. Beginning in the New Kingdom, oracles played a major role in the legal system, dispensing justice in both civil and criminal cases. The procedure was to ask the god a "yes" or "no" question concerning the right or wrong of an issue. The god, carried by a number of priests, rendered judgement by choosing one or the other, moving forward or backward, or pointing to one of the answers written on a piece of papyrus or an ostracon.
Agriculture
A combination of favorable geographical features contributed to the success of ancient E
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gyptian culture, the most important of which was the rich fertile soil resulting from annual inundations of the Nile River. The ancient Egyptians were thus able to produce an abundance of food, allowing the population to devote more time and resources to cultural, technological, and artistic pursuits. Land management was crucial in ancient Egypt because taxes were assessed based on the amount of land a person owned.
Farming in Egypt was dependent on the cycle of the Nile River. The Egyptians recognized three seasons Akhet flooding, Peret planting, and Shemu harvesting. The flooding season lasted from June to September, depositing on the river's banks a layer of mineralrich silt ideal for growing crops. After the floodwaters had receded, the growing season lasted from October to February. Farmers plowed and planted seeds in the fields, which were irrigated with ditches and canals. Egypt received little rainfall, so farmers relied on the Nile to water their crops. From March to May, farmers used sickles to har
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vest their crops, which were then threshed with a flail to separate the straw from the grain. Winnowing removed the chaff from the grain, and the grain was then ground into flour, brewed to make beer, or stored for later use.
The ancient Egyptians cultivated emmer and barley, and several other cereal grains, all of which were used to make the two main food staples of bread and beer. Flax plants, uprooted before they started flowering, were grown for the fibers of their stems. These fibers were split along their length and spun into thread, which was used to weave sheets of linen and to make clothing. Papyrus growing on the banks of the Nile River was used to make paper. Vegetables and fruits were grown in garden plots, close to habitations and on higher ground, and had to be watered by hand. Vegetables included leeks, garlic, melons, squashes, pulses, lettuce, and other crops, in addition to grapes that were made into wine.
Animals
The Egyptians believed that a balanced relationship between people and anim
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als was an essential element of the cosmic order; thus humans, animals and plants were believed to be members of a single whole. Animals, both domesticated and wild, were therefore a critical source of spirituality, companionship, and sustenance to the ancient Egyptians. Cattle were the most important livestock; the administration collected taxes on livestock in regular censuses, and the size of a herd reflected the prestige and importance of the estate or temple that owned them. In addition to cattle, the ancient Egyptians kept sheep, goats, and pigs. Poultry, such as ducks, geese, and pigeons, were captured in nets and bred on farms, where they were forcefed with dough to fatten them. The Nile provided a plentiful source of fish. Bees were also domesticated from at least the Old Kingdom, and provided both honey and wax.
The ancient Egyptians used donkeys and oxen as beasts of burden, and they were responsible for plowing the fields and trampling seed into the soil. The slaughter of a fattened ox was also a
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central part of an offering ritual. Horses were introduced by the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period. Camels, although known from the New Kingdom, were not used as beasts of burden until the Late Period. There is also evidence to suggest that elephants were briefly utilized in the Late Period but largely abandoned due to lack of grazing land. Cats, dogs, and monkeys were common family pets, while more exotic pets imported from the heart of Africa, such as SubSaharan African lions, were reserved for royalty. Herodotus observed that the Egyptians were the only people to keep their animals with them in their houses. During the Late Period, the worship of the gods in their animal form was extremely popular, such as the cat goddess Bastet and the ibis god Thoth, and these animals were kept in large numbers for the purpose of ritual sacrifice.
Natural resources
Egypt is rich in building and decorative stone, copper and lead ores, gold, and semiprecious stones. These natural resources allowed the ancient Eg
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yptians to build monuments, sculpt statues, make tools, and fashion jewelry. Embalmers used salts from the Wadi Natrun for mummification, which also provided the gypsum needed to make plaster. Orebearing rock formations were found in distant, inhospitable wadis in the Eastern Desert and the Sinai, requiring large, statecontrolled expeditions to obtain natural resources found there. There were extensive gold mines in Nubia, and one of the first maps known is of a gold mine in this region. The Wadi Hammamat was a notable source of granite, greywacke, and gold. Flint was the first mineral collected and used to make tools, and flint handaxes are the earliest pieces of evidence of habitation in the Nile valley. Nodules of the mineral were carefully flaked to make blades and arrowheads of moderate hardness and durability even after copper was adopted for this purpose. Ancient Egyptians were among the first to use minerals such as sulfur as cosmetic substances.
The Egyptians worked deposits of the lead ore galena a
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t Gebel Rosas to make net sinkers, plumb bobs, and small figurines. Copper was the most important metal for toolmaking in ancient Egypt and was smelted in furnaces from malachite ore mined in the Sinai. Workers collected gold by washing the nuggets out of sediment in alluvial deposits, or by the more laborintensive process of grinding and washing goldbearing quartzite. Iron deposits found in upper Egypt were utilized in the Late Period. Highquality building stones were abundant in Egypt; the ancient Egyptians quarried limestone all along the Nile valley, granite from Aswan, and basalt and sandstone from the wadis of the Eastern Desert. Deposits of decorative stones such as porphyry, greywacke, alabaster, and carnelian dotted the Eastern Desert and were collected even before the First Dynasty. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, miners worked deposits of emeralds in Wadi Sikait and amethyst in Wadi elHudi.
Trade
The ancient Egyptians engaged in trade with their foreign neighbors to obtain rare, exotic goods
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not found in Egypt. In the Predynastic Period, they established trade with Nubia to obtain gold and incense. They also established trade with Palestine, as evidenced by Palestinianstyle oil jugs found in the burials of the First Dynasty pharaohs. An Egyptian colony stationed in southern Canaan dates to slightly before the First Dynasty. Narmer had Egyptian pottery produced in Canaan and exported back to Egypt.
By the Second Dynasty at latest, ancient Egyptian trade with Byblos yielded a critical source of quality timber not found in Egypt. By the Fifth Dynasty, trade with Punt provided gold, aromatic resins, ebony, ivory, and wild animals such as monkeys and baboons. Egypt relied on trade with Anatolia for essential quantities of tin as well as supplementary supplies of copper, both metals being necessary for the manufacture of bronze. The ancient Egyptians prized the blue stone lapis lazuli, which had to be imported from faraway Afghanistan. Egypt's Mediterranean trade partners also included Greece and Cret
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e, which provided, among other goods, supplies of olive oil.
Language
Historical development
The Egyptian language is a northern AfroAsiatic language closely related to the Berber and Semitic languages. It has the second longest known history of any language after Sumerian, having been written from c. 3200BC to the Middle Ages and remaining as a spoken language for longer. The phases of ancient Egyptian are Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian Classical Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic. Egyptian writings do not show dialect differences before Coptic, but it was probably spoken in regional dialects around Memphis and later Thebes.
Ancient Egyptian was a synthetic language, but it became more analytic later on. Late Egyptian developed prefixal definite and indefinite articles, which replaced the older inflectional suffixes. There was a change from the older verbsubjectobject word order to subjectverbobject. The Egyptian hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic scripts were eventually replaced by the more pho
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netic Coptic alphabet. Coptic is still used in the liturgy of the Egyptian Orthodox Church, and traces of it are found in modern Egyptian Arabic.
Sounds and grammar
Ancient Egyptian has 25 consonants similar to those of other AfroAsiatic languages. These include pharyngeal and emphatic consonants, voiced and voiceless stops, voiceless fricatives and voiced and voiceless affricates. It has three long and three short vowels, which expanded in Late Egyptian to about nine. The basic word in Egyptian, similar to Semitic and Berber, is a triliteral or biliteral root of consonants and semiconsonants. Suffixes are added to form words. The verb conjugation corresponds to the person. For example, the triconsonantal skeleton is the semantic core of the word 'hear'; its basic conjugation is , 'he hears'. If the subject is a noun, suffixes are not added to the verb , 'the woman hears'.
Adjectives are derived from nouns through a process that Egyptologists call nisbation because of its similarity with Arabic. The word o
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rder is in verbal and adjectival sentences, and in nominal and adverbial sentences. The subject can be moved to the beginning of sentences if it is long and is followed by a resumptive pronoun. Verbs and nouns are negated by the particle n, but nn is used for adverbial and adjectival sentences. Stress falls on the ultimate or penultimate syllable, which can be open CV or closed CVC.
Writing
Hieroglyphic writing dates from c. 3000BC, and is composed of hundreds of symbols. A hieroglyph can represent a word, a sound, or a silent determinative; and the same symbol can serve different purposes in different contexts. Hieroglyphs were a formal script, used on stone monuments and in tombs, that could be as detailed as individual works of art. In daytoday writing, scribes used a cursive form of writing, called hieratic, which was quicker and easier. While formal hieroglyphs may be read in rows or columns in either direction though typically written from right to left, hieratic was always written from right to lef
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t, usually in horizontal rows. A new form of writing, Demotic, became the prevalent writing style, and it is this form of writingalong with formal hieroglyphsthat accompany the Greek text on the Rosetta Stone.
Around the first century AD, the Coptic alphabet started to be used alongside the Demotic script. Coptic is a modified Greek alphabet with the addition of some Demotic signs. Although formal hieroglyphs were used in a ceremonial role until the fourth century, towards the end only a small handful of priests could still read them. As the traditional religious establishments were disbanded, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was mostly lost. Attempts to decipher them date to the Byzantine and Islamic periods in Egypt, but only in the 1820s, after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and years of research by Thomas Young and JeanFranois Champollion, were hieroglyphs substantially deciphered.
Literature
Writing first appeared in association with kingship on labels and tags for items found in royal tombs. It
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was primarily an occupation of the scribes, who worked out of the Per Ankh institution or the House of Life. The latter comprised offices, libraries called House of Books, laboratories and observatories. Some of the bestknown pieces of ancient Egyptian literature, such as the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, were written in Classical Egyptian, which continued to be the language of writing until about 1300BC. Late Egyptian was spoken from the New Kingdom onward and is represented in Ramesside administrative documents, love poetry and tales, as well as in Demotic and Coptic texts. During this period, the tradition of writing had evolved into the tomb autobiography, such as those of Harkhuf and Weni. The genre known as Sebayt "instructions" was developed to communicate teachings and guidance from famous nobles; the Ipuwer papyrus, a poem of lamentations describing natural disasters and social upheaval, is a famous example.
The Story of Sinuhe, written in Middle Egyptian, might be the classic of Egyptian literature. Al
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so written at this time was the Westcar Papyrus, a set of stories told to Khufu by his sons relating the marvels performed by priests. The Instruction of Amenemope is considered a masterpiece of Near Eastern literature. Towards the end of the New Kingdom, the vernacular language was more often employed to write popular pieces like the Story of Wenamun and the Instruction of Any. The former tells the story of a noble who is robbed on his way to buy cedar from Lebanon and of his struggle to return to Egypt. From about 700BC, narrative stories and instructions, such as the popular Instructions of Onchsheshonqy, as well as personal and business documents were written in the demotic script and phase of Egyptian. Many stories written in demotic during the GrecoRoman period were set in previous historical eras, when Egypt was an independent nation ruled by great pharaohs such as Ramesses II.
Culture
Daily life
Most ancient Egyptians were farmers tied to the land. Their dwellings were restricted to immediate famil
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y members, and were constructed of mudbrick designed to remain cool in the heat of the day. Each home had a kitchen with an open roof, which contained a grindstone for milling grain and a small oven for baking the bread. Ceramics served as household wares for the storage, preparation, transport, and consumption of food, drink, and raw materials. Walls were painted white and could be covered with dyed linen wall hangings. Floors were covered with reed mats, while wooden stools, beds raised from the floor and individual tables comprised the furniture.
The ancient Egyptians placed a great value on hygiene and appearance. Most bathed in the Nile and used a pasty soap made from animal fat and chalk. Men shaved their entire bodies for cleanliness; perfumes and aromatic ointments covered bad odors and soothed skin. Clothing was made from simple linen sheets that were bleached white, and both men and women of the upper classes wore wigs, jewelry, and cosmetics. Children went without clothing until maturity, at about
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age 12, and at this age males were circumcised and had their heads shaved. Mothers were responsible for taking care of the children, while the father provided the family's income.
Music and dance were popular entertainments for those who could afford them. Early instruments included flutes and harps, while instruments similar to trumpets, oboes, and pipes developed later and became popular. In the New Kingdom, the Egyptians played on bells, cymbals, tambourines, drums, and imported lutes and lyres from Asia. The sistrum was a rattlelike musical instrument that was especially important in religious ceremonies.
The ancient Egyptians enjoyed a variety of leisure activities, including games and music. Senet, a board game where pieces moved according to random chance, was particularly popular from the earliest times; another similar game was mehen, which had a circular gaming board. Hounds and Jackals also known as 58 holes is another example of board games played in ancient Egypt. The first complete set of thi
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s game was discovered from a Theban tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhat IV that dates to the 13th Dynasty. Juggling and ball games were popular with children, and wrestling is also documented in a tomb at Beni Hasan. The wealthy members of ancient Egyptian society enjoyed hunting, fishing, and boating as well.
The excavation of the workers' village of Deir elMedina has resulted in one of the most thoroughly documented accounts of community life in the ancient world, which spans almost four hundred years. There is no comparable site in which the organization, social interactions, and working and living conditions of a community have been studied in such detail.
Cuisine
Egyptian cuisine remained remarkably stable over time; indeed, the cuisine of modern Egypt retains some striking similarities to the cuisine of the ancients. The staple diet consisted of bread and beer, supplemented with vegetables such as onions and garlic, and fruit such as dates and figs. Wine and meat were enjoyed by all on feast days
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while the upper classes indulged on a more regular basis. Fish, meat, and fowl could be salted or dried, and could be cooked in stews or roasted on a grill.
Architecture
The architecture of ancient Egypt includes some of the most famous structures in the world the Great Pyramids of Giza and the temples at Thebes. Building projects were organized and funded by the state for religious and commemorative purposes, but also to reinforce the wideranging power of the pharaoh. The ancient Egyptians were skilled builders; using only simple but effective tools and sighting instruments, architects could build large stone structures with great accuracy and precision that is still envied today.
The domestic dwellings of elite and ordinary Egyptians alike were constructed from perishable materials such as mudbricks and wood, and have not survived. Peasants lived in simple homes, while the palaces of the elite and the pharaoh were more elaborate structures. A few surviving New Kingdom palaces, such as those in Malkata an
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d Amarna, show richly decorated walls and floors with scenes of people, birds, water pools, deities and geometric designs. Important structures such as temples and tombs that were intended to last forever were constructed of stone instead of mudbricks. The architectural elements used in the world's first largescale stone building, Djoser's mortuary complex, include post and lintel supports in the papyrus and lotus motif.
The earliest preserved ancient Egyptian temples, such as those at Giza, consist of single, enclosed halls with roof slabs supported by columns. In the New Kingdom, architects added the pylon, the open courtyard, and the enclosed hypostyle hall to the front of the temple's sanctuary, a style that was standard until the GrecoRoman period. The earliest and most popular tomb architecture in the Old Kingdom was the mastaba, a flatroofed rectangular structure of mudbrick or stone built over an underground burial chamber. The step pyramid of Djoser is a series of stone mastabas stacked on top of ea
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ch other. Pyramids were built during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but most later rulers abandoned them in favor of less conspicuous rockcut tombs. The use of the pyramid form continued in private tomb chapels of the New Kingdom and in the royal pyramids of Nubia.
Art
The ancient Egyptians produced art to serve functional purposes. For over 3500 years, artists adhered to artistic forms and iconography that were developed during the Old Kingdom, following a strict set of principles that resisted foreign influence and internal change. These artistic standardssimple lines, shapes, and flat areas of color combined with the characteristic flat projection of figures with no indication of spatial depthcreated a sense of order and balance within a composition. Images and text were intimately interwoven on tomb and temple walls, coffins, stelae, and even statues. The Narmer Palette, for example, displays figures that can also be read as hieroglyphs. Because of the rigid rules that governed its highly stylized and sym
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bolic appearance, ancient Egyptian art served its political and religious purposes with precision and clarity.
Ancient Egyptian artisans used stone as a medium for carving statues and fine reliefs, but used wood as a cheap and easily carved substitute. Paints were obtained from minerals such as iron ores red and yellow ochres, copper ores blue and green, soot or charcoal black, and limestone white. Paints could be mixed with gum arabic as a binder and pressed into cakes, which could be moistened with water when needed.
Pharaohs used reliefs to record victories in battle, royal decrees, and religious scenes. Common citizens had access to pieces of funerary art, such as shabti statues and books of the dead, which they believed would protect them in the afterlife. During the Middle Kingdom, wooden or clay models depicting scenes from everyday life became popular additions to the tomb. In an attempt to duplicate the activities of the living in the afterlife, these models show laborers, houses, boats, and even m
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ilitary formations that are scale representations of the ideal ancient Egyptian afterlife.
Despite the homogeneity of ancient Egyptian art, the styles of particular times and places sometimes reflected changing cultural or political attitudes. After the invasion of the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period, Minoanstyle frescoes were found in Avaris. The most striking example of a politically driven change in artistic forms comes from the Amarna Period, where figures were radically altered to conform to Akhenaten's revolutionary religious ideas. This style, known as Amarna art, was quickly abandoned after Akhenaten's death and replaced by the traditional forms.
Religious beliefs
Beliefs in the divine and in the afterlife were ingrained in ancient Egyptian civilization from its inception; pharaonic rule was based on the divine right of kings. The Egyptian pantheon was populated by gods who had supernatural powers and were called on for help or protection. However, the gods were not always viewed as benevo
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lent, and Egyptians believed they had to be appeased with offerings and prayers. The structure of this pantheon changed continually as new deities were promoted in the hierarchy, but priests made no effort to organize the diverse and sometimes conflicting myths and stories into a coherent system. These various conceptions of divinity were not considered contradictory but rather layers in the multiple facets of reality.
Gods were worshiped in cult temples administered by priests acting on the king's behalf. At the center of the temple was the cult statue in a shrine. Temples were not places of public worship or congregation, and only on select feast days and celebrations was a shrine carrying the statue of the god brought out for public worship. Normally, the god's domain was sealed off from the outside world and was only accessible to temple officials. Common citizens could worship private statues in their homes, and amulets offered protection against the forces of chaos. After the New Kingdom, the pharaoh's
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role as a spiritual intermediary was deemphasized as religious customs shifted to direct worship of the gods. As a result, priests developed a system of oracles to communicate the will of the gods directly to the people.
The Egyptians believed that every human being was composed of physical and spiritual parts or aspects. In addition to the body, each person had a wt shadow, a ba personality or soul, a ka lifeforce, and a name. The heart, rather than the brain, was considered the seat of thoughts and emotions. After death, the spiritual aspects were released from the body and could move at will, but they required the physical remains or a substitute, such as a statue as a permanent home. The ultimate goal of the deceased was to rejoin his ka and ba and become one of the "blessed dead", living on as an akh, or "effective one". For this to happen, the deceased had to be judged worthy in a trial, in which the heart was weighed against a "feather of truth." If deemed worthy, the deceased could continue their ex
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istence on earth in spiritual form. If they were not deemed worthy, their heart was eaten by Ammit the Devourer and they were erased from the Universe.
Burial customs
The ancient Egyptians maintained an elaborate set of burial customs that they believed were necessary to ensure immortality after death. These customs involved preserving the body by mummification, performing burial ceremonies, and interring with the body goods the deceased would use in the afterlife. Before the Old Kingdom, bodies buried in desert pits were naturally preserved by desiccation. The arid, desert conditions were a boon throughout the history of ancient Egypt for burials of the poor, who could not afford the elaborate burial preparations available to the elite. Wealthier Egyptians began to bury their dead in stone tombs and use artificial mummification, which involved removing the internal organs, wrapping the body in linen, and burying it in a rectangular stone sarcophagus or wooden coffin. Beginning in the Fourth Dynasty, some p
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arts were preserved separately in canopic jars.
By the New Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had perfected the art of mummification; the best technique took 70 days and involved removing the internal organs, removing the brain through the nose, and desiccating the body in a mixture of salts called natron. The body was then wrapped in linen with protective amulets inserted between layers and placed in a decorated anthropoid coffin. Mummies of the Late Period were also placed in painted cartonnage mummy cases. Actual preservation practices declined during the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, while greater emphasis was placed on the outer appearance of the mummy, which was decorated.
Wealthy Egyptians were buried with larger quantities of luxury items, but all burials, regardless of social status, included goods for the deceased. Funerary texts were often included in the grave, and, beginning in the New Kingdom, so were shabti statues that were believed to perform manual labor for them in the afterlife. Rituals in which
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the deceased was magically reanimated accompanied burials. After burial, living relatives were expected to occasionally bring food to the tomb and recite prayers on behalf of the deceased.
Military
The ancient Egyptian military was responsible for defending Egypt against foreign invasion, and for maintaining Egypt's domination in the ancient Near East. The military protected mining expeditions to the Sinai during the Old Kingdom and fought civil wars during the First and Second Intermediate Periods. The military was responsible for maintaining fortifications along important trade routes, such as those found at the city of Buhen on the way to Nubia. Forts also were constructed to serve as military bases, such as the fortress at Sile, which was a base of operations for expeditions to the Levant. In the New Kingdom, a series of pharaohs used the standing Egyptian army to attack and conquer Kush and parts of the Levant.
Typical military equipment included bows and arrows, spears, and roundtopped shields made
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by stretching animal skin over a wooden frame. In the New Kingdom, the military began using chariots that had earlier been introduced by the Hyksos invaders. Weapons and armor continued to improve after the adoption of bronze shields were now made from solid wood with a bronze buckle, spears were tipped with a bronze point, and the khopesh was adopted from Asiatic soldiers. The pharaoh was usually depicted in art and literature riding at the head of the army; it has been suggested that at least a few pharaohs, such as Seqenenre Tao II and his sons, did do so. However, it has also been argued that "kings of this period did not personally act as frontline war leaders, fighting alongside their troops." Soldiers were recruited from the general population, but during, and especially after, the New Kingdom, mercenaries from Nubia, Kush, and Libya were hired to fight for Egypt.
Technology, medicine, and mathematics
Technology
In technology, medicine, and mathematics, ancient Egypt achieved a relatively high stand
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ard of productivity and sophistication. Traditional empiricism, as evidenced by the Edwin Smith and Ebers papyri c. 1600BC, is first credited to Egypt. The Egyptians created their own alphabet and decimal system.
Faience and glass
Even before the Old Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had developed a glassy material known as faience, which they treated as a type of artificial semiprecious stone. Faience is a nonclay ceramic made of silica, small amounts of lime and soda, and a colorant, typically copper. The material was used to make beads, tiles, figurines, and small wares. Several methods can be used to create faience, but typically production involved application of the powdered materials in the form of a paste over a clay core, which was then fired. By a related technique, the ancient Egyptians produced a pigment known as Egyptian blue, also called blue frit, which is produced by fusing or sintering silica, copper, lime, and an alkali such as natron. The product can be ground up and used as a pigment.
The
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ancient Egyptians could fabricate a wide variety of objects from glass with great skill, but it is not clear whether they developed the process independently. It is also unclear whether they made their own raw glass or merely imported premade ingots, which they melted and finished. However, they did have technical expertise in making objects, as well as adding trace elements to control the color of the finished glass. A range of colors could be produced, including yellow, red, green, blue, purple, and white, and the glass could be made either transparent or opaque.
Medicine
The medical problems of the ancient Egyptians stemmed directly from their environment. Living and working close to the Nile brought hazards from malaria and debilitating schistosomiasis parasites, which caused liver and intestinal damage. Dangerous wildlife such as crocodiles and hippos were also a common threat. The lifelong labors of farming and building put stress on the spine and joints, and traumatic injuries from construction and w
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arfare all took a significant toll on the body. The grit and sand from stoneground flour abraded teeth, leaving them susceptible to abscesses though caries were rare.
The diets of the wealthy were rich in sugars, which promoted periodontal disease. Despite the flattering physiques portrayed on tomb walls, the overweight mummies of many of the upper class show the effects of a life of overindulgence. Adult life expectancy was about 35 for men and 30 for women, but reaching adulthood was difficult as about onethird of the population died in infancy.
Ancient Egyptian physicians were renowned in the ancient Near East for their healing skills, and some, such as Imhotep, remained famous long after their deaths. Herodotus remarked that there was a high degree of specialization among Egyptian physicians, with some treating only the head or the stomach, while others were eyedoctors and dentists. Training of physicians took place at the Per Ankh or "House of Life" institution, most notably those headquartered in PerB
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astet during the New Kingdom and at Abydos and Sas in the Late period. Medical papyri show empirical knowledge of anatomy, injuries, and practical treatments.
Wounds were treated by bandaging with raw meat, white linen, sutures, nets, pads, and swabs soaked with honey to prevent infection, while opium, thyme, and belladona were used to relieve pain. The earliest records of burn treatment describe burn dressings that use the milk from mothers of male babies. Prayers were made to the goddess Isis. Moldy bread, honey, and copper salts were also used to prevent infection from dirt in burns. Garlic and onions were used regularly to promote good health and were thought to relieve asthma symptoms. Ancient Egyptian surgeons stitched wounds, set broken bones, and amputated diseased limbs, but they recognized that some injuries were so serious that they could only make the patient comfortable until death occurred.
Maritime technology
Early Egyptians knew how to assemble planks of wood into a ship hull and had mastere
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d advanced forms of shipbuilding as early as 3000BC. The Archaeological Institute of America reports that the oldest planked ships known are the Abydos boats. A group of 14 discovered ships in Abydos were constructed of wooden planks "sewn" together. Discovered by Egyptologist David O'Connor of New York University, woven straps were found to have been used to lash the planks together, and reeds or grass stuffed between the planks helped to seal the seams. Because the ships are all buried together and near a mortuary belonging to Pharaoh Khasekhemwy, originally they were all thought to have belonged to him, but one of the 14 ships dates to 3000BC, and the associated pottery jars buried with the vessels also suggest earlier dating. The ship dating to 3000BC was long and is now thought to perhaps have belonged to an earlier pharaoh, perhaps one as early as HorAha.
Early Egyptians also knew how to assemble planks of wood with treenails to fasten them together, using pitch for caulking the seams. The "Khufu ship
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", a vessel sealed into a pit in the Giza pyramid complex at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza in the Fourth Dynasty around 2500BC, is a fullsize surviving example that may have filled the symbolic function of a solar barque. Early Egyptians also knew how to fasten the planks of this ship together with mortise and tenon joints.
Large seagoing ships are known to have been heavily used by the Egyptians in their trade with the city states of the eastern Mediterranean, especially Byblos on the coast of modernday Lebanon, and in several expeditions down the Red Sea to the Land of Punt. In fact one of the earliest Egyptian words for a seagoing ship is a "Byblos Ship", which originally defined a class of Egyptian seagoing ships used on the Byblos run; however, by the end of the Old Kingdom, the term had come to include large seagoing ships, whatever their destination.
In 1977, an ancient northsouth canal was discovered extending from Lake Timsah to the Ballah Lakes. It was dated to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt
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by extrapolating dates of ancient sites constructed along its course.
In 2011, archaeologists from Italy, the United States, and Egypt excavating a driedup lagoon known as Mersa Gawasis have unearthed traces of an ancient harbor that once launched early voyages like Hatshepsut's Punt expedition onto the open ocean. Some of the site's most evocative evidence for the ancient Egyptians' seafaring prowess include large ship timbers and hundreds of feet of ropes, made from papyrus, coiled in huge bundles. In 2013, a team of FrancoEgyptian archaeologists discovered what is believed to be the world's oldest port, dating back about 4500 years, from the time of King Cheops on the Red Sea coast near Wadi elJarf about 110 miles south of Suez.
Mathematics
The earliest attested examples of mathematical calculations date to the predynastic Naqada period, and show a fully developed numeral system. The importance of mathematics to an educated Egyptian is suggested by a New Kingdom fictional letter in which the writer pro
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poses a scholarly competition between himself and another scribe regarding everyday calculation tasks such as accounting of land, labor, and grain. Texts such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus show that the ancient Egyptians could perform the four basic mathematical operationsaddition, subtraction, multiplication, and divisionuse fractions, calculate the areas of rectangles, triangles, and circles and compute the volumes of boxes, columns and pyramids. They understood basic concepts of algebra and geometry, and could solve simple sets of simultaneous equations.
Mathematical notation was decimal, and based on hieroglyphic signs for each power of ten up to one million. Each of these could be written as many times as necessary to add up to the desired number; so to write the number eighty or eight hundred, the symbol for ten or one hundred was written eight times respectively. Because their methods of calculation could not handle most fractions with a numerator greater than o
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ne, they had to write fractions as the sum of several fractions. For example, they resolved the fraction twofifths into the sum of onethird onefifteenth. Standard tables of values facilitated this. Some common fractions, however, were written with a special glyphthe equivalent of the modern twothirds is shown on the right.
Ancient Egyptian mathematicians knew the Pythagorean theorem as an empirical formula. They were aware, for example, that a triangle had a right angle opposite the hypotenuse when its sides were in a 345 ratio. They were able to estimate the area of a circle by subtracting oneninth from its diameter and squaring the result
Area D2 r2 3.16r2,
a reasonable approximation of the formula .
The golden ratio seems to be reflected in many Egyptian constructions, including the pyramids, but its use may have been an unintended consequence of the ancient Egyptian practice of combining the use of knotted ropes with an intuitive sense of proportion and harmony.
Population
Estimates of the size
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of the population range from 11.5 million in the 3rd millennium BCE to possibly 23 million by the 1st millennium BCE, before growing significantly towards the end of that millennium.
DNA
In 2012, the DNA of the 20th dynasty mummies of Ramesses III and another mummy believed to be Ramesses III's son Pentawer were analyzed by Albert Zink, Yehia Z Gad and a team of researchers under Zahi Hawass, then Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egypt. Genetic kinship analyses revealed identical haplotypes in both mummies. Using the Whit Athey's haplogroup predictor, they identified the Y chromosomal haplogroup E1b1a EM2.
In 2017, a team led by led by researchers from the University of Tuebingen and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena tested the maternal DNA mitochondrial of 90 mummies from Abusir elMeleq in northern Egypt near Cairo, which was the first reliable data using highthroughput DNA sequencing methods. Additionally, three of the mummies were also analyzed f
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or YDNA. Two were assigned to West Asian J and one to haplogroup E1b1b1 both common in North Africa. The researchers cautioned that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were from a single archaeological site. Whilst not conclusive since the few relatively older mummies only go back to the 18th19th dynasty, the rest being from then up to late Roman period, the authors of this study said the Abusir elMeleq mummies "closely resembled ancient and modern Near Eastern populations, especially those in the Levant." The genetics of the mummies remained remarkably consistent within this range even as different powersincluding Nubians, Greeks, and Romansconquered the empire." A wide range of mtDNA haplogroups were found including clades of J, U, H, HV, M, R0, R2, K, T, L, I, N, X, W. The authors of the study noted that the mummies at Abusir elMeleq have 615 maternal subSaharan DNA while modern Egyptians have a little more subSah
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aran ancestry, 15 to 20, suggesting some degree of influx after the end of the empire. Other genetic studies show greater levels of subSaharan African ancestry in modern southern Egyptian populations and anticipate that mummies from southern Egypt would show greater levels of subSaharan African ancestry.
In 2018, the 4000yearold mummified head of Djehutynakht, a governor in the Middle Kingdom of the 11th or 12th dynasty, was analyzed for mitochondrial DNA. The sequence of the mummy most closely resembles a U5a lineage from sample JK2903, a much more recent 2000yearold skeleton from the Abusir elMeleq site in Egypt, although no direct matches to the Djehutynakht sequence have been reported.
Haplogroup U5 is also found in modernday Berbers from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt. A 2008 article by C. Coudray, "The complex and diversified mitochondrial gene pool of Berber populations", recorded haplogroup U5 at 16.7 for the Siwa whereas haplogroup U6 is more common in other Berber populations to the west of Egypt.
In 20
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20, Yehia Z Gad and other researchers of the Hawass team published results of an analysis of the maternal and paternal haplogroups of several 18th dynasty mummies, including Tutankhamun.
Genetic analysis indicated the following haplogroups
Tutankhamun YDNA R1b mtDNA K
Akhenaten YDNA R1b mtDNA K
Amenhotep III YDNA R1b mtDNA K
Yuya G2a mtDNA K
Tiye mtDNA K
Thuya mtDNA K
The clade of R1b was not determined. A high frequency of R1b1a2 RV88 26.9 was observed among the Berbers from the Siwa Oasis. This haplogroup reaches its highest frequency in northern Cameroon, northern Nigeria, Chad, and Niger.
Legacy
The culture and monuments of ancient Egypt have left a lasting legacy on the world. Egyptian civilization significantly influenced the Kingdom of Kush and Mero with both adopting Egyptian religious and architectural norms hundreds of pyramids 630 meters high were built in EgyptSudan, as well as using Egyptian writing as the basis of the Meroitic script. Meroitic is the oldest written language in Afric
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