Intro into Ancient Egypt PDF

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Lecture notes for C C 302 with Prof Nethercut...

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Out of Africa (8/30/17) The King is connected with lions in symbology. People question whether there was an ancient civilization prior to the ancient Egyptians with the ability to carve granite with great granite saws - “Civilization X”. Egyptians had technology to create PERFECT right angles, used sand/silica to make process more efficient. Egyptian granite slabs have the same machine marks as contemporary slabs of granite. Palettes in ancient egypt were used for men for war not for make up. Cats were important beings in egyptian communities. Spirits rose from skulls = resurrection. Manetho wrote “Aegyptiaka” ca. 300BC (history before 30,000BC, currently located in Heliopolis - also known as lunu in Egyptian) Herodotus was a greek historian (“father of history or father of stories”) who wrote about the precession of equinoxes (goes back 25,000 years). Agriculture starts 13,000-11,000 BC - the whole nile delta was further down south. Between 10,000-5,000BC, water was abundant in the nile region/north africa. Roman legions could transverse area without concerns for water. Rock drawings in the area indicate there were animals local in the region that normally live in wet environments. Because of the watery environment, trade flourished during “nomadic pastoralism” (people were on the move all the time with herds). Harpoons were used to hunt hippos (the second leading cause of death in africa). Hippos:Egyptians as Bison:Native Americans. Ammit “The Devourer” is present at the Judgment of the Dead. Ibis (Greek) // thoth (egyptian) = beaked god of math, astronomy and measurement. Also supposedly the god who invented hieroglyphics The moon is tool for measurement. Anubis (greek name) anpu (egyptian name) is god of the dead or god of the mummification. Names ending in -is are greek. Maat (goddess of justice) - you will go to next stage if your heart balances with a feather. If you fail, a ammut/ammit (crocodile/hippo/lion). Names ending with the letter t are female names. The devourer will be crushed and destroyed if the subject fails judgment day. Osiris / Hor (daylight) is the god of the sky, also known as Horus. If the subject survives Ammut, the subject will go to Hor. Osiris is dressed in white, he was torn in battle by his brother Set. Isis and her sister flew over countryside to find the pieces of Osiris and pieced him back together, wrapping him with pure white cotton - the first mummy. The white appearance is the wrapping. He has a green face because he is associated with the mud of the Nile after the floods. Three seasons: flooding (july-november), the planting and harvesting - the soil is nutritious (november-march) “the coming forth”, the hot season (april-july). Osiris is the god of rebirth after the fall floods. He has a green/black-green face. Isis is the sister/wife of Osiris - the goddess of magic. Rio de Oro - found some original north african animals.

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Nomadic pastoralism - cattle grazers since the animals provided milk, blood and pure protein. Cattle were never eaten except in special sacrifices (shown in the “Tribal Odyssey” Discovery Channel). People raise arms when the herd is about to move (to emulate the horns of the cattle). Qena Bend - Luxor and Valley of the Kings - where everything is centered carrying on into modern times. Nabta Playa - Temple of Ramses II and Abu Simbel. There is a stonehenge type structure there to calculate the rising of stars. Bahariya - the golden mummies (10,000 mummies) - is on the oasis trail. After 5,000 BC, the sahara started drying out so the people moved east to the predictable source of water (the nile). The person who excavated the nabta playa was Fred Wendorf, SMU. A playa is a sloping beach (Spanish). It would be an important watering location because it is a gently sloping area where people can resupply. The only humans remains found are dolichocephalic - elongated and similar to crystal skull Boucranion - ox skull - lucky symbol against death. Skull contains moisture (water-brain). The horns are pushed out by the intense moisture. Lap is sacred because it is in the lap of the gods. Boucrania found widely in ancient africa such as 12,000BC in sudan. MOISTURE is the stuff of life in africa so skulls are seen as preserver of life. Horns in bovine burials stick above the ground The Black Mummy (9/6/17) Acacus Mountains are on the border of Libya and Algeria. The mmy was found 40 years ago and was surprising because previously people thought the area was inhabited by ‘Middle-Easterners’ not black south Africans. This could mean the mummification process was not only restricted to Egyptians but also spread throughout Africa. The mummy was 5600 years old. This is important because it was roughly 1,000 years before the Egyptians supposedly invented mummification. The mummy was the oldest mummy ever found in Africa. All internal organs have been removed prior to mummification to reduce the possibility for bacterial infection - the question now is did the black mummy’s mummification process influence the later Egyptian process? More than 50% of the rock shelter paintings in the area were of cattle - the Saharan area was not desert-like 5000 years ago. NASA found paleolakes (ancient lakes that dried out and got buried) using radar images of the Acacus Mountains. All the rock shelter drawings in the area depicted animals normally found in savannahs, there was also a painting of a crocodile (which wouldn't be found where there was no water). People from Palestine and Mesopotamia introduced cattle to central Africa.

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They estimate roughly 4-5 families with 40-50 people living there with cows and lived in round huts. The discovery of the black mummy indicates that mummification has happened in the area for likely hundreds if not thousands of years prior. The fact that a two year old was mummified with such care and attention indicates that the community didn’t place too much importance in one’s achievements but instead treated everyone equally. There is a possibility that the parents and community of the black mummy eventually migrated eastward to the nile valley after climate changes made the sahara as arid as it is today. Evidence of a cattle cult was found 60 miles away from the rock shelter, they found cattle bones buried in a circle. Cattle sacrifices and rituals were most likely prayers for rain. Cattle was used as a means of transferring sacred life, sacred power to the deceased in the hopes that the humans may live again. In a wadi less than a mile away from the cattle cult area was a painting of an animal-headed figure (human with a dog/jackal masks - could these be the predecessors of the dog-headed Anubis, god of embalming?). Sub-saharan pottery was highly decorated unlike Nile pottery, 6000 years ago there was an influx of highly decorated pottery into the Nile valley. The Black Mummy Cont. (9/8/17) The Black Mummy was discovered in the 1960s and was named “Ouan Mehudjadj” after the rock shelter he was found in. He was wrapped in antelope skin (which was not used in Egypt) and covered in leaves and wore an ostrich egg necklace. He was the oldest eviscerated (internal organs removed) mummy. First discovered Egyptian mummy was in 3500 BC, the Black Mummy was found before 4000 BC. The mummy is currently in the Tripoli Museum. Savino di Lernia and Giorgio Manzi found the Black Mummy. Manzi identified the mummy as black because of the length of the base of the nose and that the lips and mouth are much further to the front. Over 50% of the rock drawings (petroglyphs) show cattle in great herds, they are colored in red and white (same as the cattle drawings in Egyptian tombs in 2000 BC). The most remarkable of the cave drawings was a masked priest (human with dog mask) which was a far earlier depiction of the Egyptian god Anubis (Anpu). The Bashendi people had masked priestesses performing cattle rituals. A major shift of trade winds around 10,000 BC brought increased precipitation into Central Africa allowing life to flourish. A second shift in 5,000 BC caused the savannah to dry out and migration to the Nile began. The ornate pottery found in the Acacus Mountains began to show up in the Nile Valley alongside the undecorated pottery of Nilotic people around 5,000 BC. In Nubia (modern day Sudan), the dead were wrapped in antelope skins.

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Egyptians spoke of a shadowy figure “The First of the Westerners” who watched over the dead. Anubis inherited the title and started to show up in 3100 BC. Later Osiris was more widely known as the “First of the Westerners”. Out of Africa Cont. (9/8/17) Bougonia (ox birth ritual) is a sacrifice. The animal is rubbed with herbs and shut in an enclosure for 10 days then enclosure opened. The winged insects (“blow flies”) fly out from the body. Psyche is the winged soul that ascends into Heaven. Red ochre bar with engravings found in 77,000 BC. Magical Egypt (DVD) (9/11/17) Egyptians believed they can only go to heaven on the equinoxes or the solstices because the constellations were seen as the gates to the milky way. Star means “gate”. Nabta Playa stone circle in the middle of the desert. Egyptians used the “procession of the equinoxes” in their mythology and daily processes. Their astronomy was so sophisticated that modern day astronomy only caught up a few decades ago. The six stones in the middle of the stone circle were the locations of the Orion’s Belt stars during the solstice and Orion’s Shoulder tilted. A star passes through its vertical heliacal rising every 26,000 years. Ba is a human headed bird. Solstice is when the summer begins and the spring ends and was considered to be mystifying. In stonehenge, the solstice rises over the heel stone (“hyal” in Welch, translates into “sun”). The sight lines at the Nabta Playa stone circle are North to South, West to East, Southwest to Northeast and Northwest to Southeast. North: The circumpolar stars (Big Dipper, Little Dipper etc) are “immortal” stars, they never set. South: The Meridian, where stars rise to their highest. Northeast: Where the summer solstice run rises. East: Where Vernal and Autumnal equinoxes have sunrise. Southeast: Where the winter solstice sun rises. Magical Egypt (DVD) Cont. (9/13/17) Radiocarbon dating from the stone circle date from 6400 BC - 4900 BC. In 4800 BC, Orion tilted to its greatest degree. Every 72 years there is 1 degree change. Significance: it’s African and West of the Nile Valley so it shows that outside of the Egyptian civilization, there is also advanced technology. The brightest stars of the Orion constellation are Betelgeuse and Bellatrix. Neolithic observers would have known that everything in the natural world operates in cycles. There is a location south of the Sahara is another stone circle called Namoratunga (located in colonial Rhodesia). Aveni coined the term archeoastronomy at UT.

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The different distances of the megaliths show the distance from Earth in light-years of Betelgeuse and Bellatrix. One meter on the ground equals 0.799 light years. The appearance of Orion in line with the internal stones confirmed the rise of the summer solstice sun. Vega is a circumpolar star that does not shift much from its position in the North. The southern baselines measure the distance to Orion, the northern baselines measure the radial velocities of the northern stars. Radial velocity is the speed at which a star moves away from Earth. Significance: There is a way to measure distance from the stars in light-years (using meters on Earth) and radial velocity (also meters on Earth). Where did Egyptian Civilization Come From? (9/13/17) In 3500 BC, a “Dynastic Race” brought social organization, writing, weaponry (“pear-shaped” maces), gods and architecture. There have been drawings of people arriving through canyons through big boats which appeared to imply that the race migrated. In 3500 BC, the first hieroglyphics and highly decorated pottery “D-Ware” (boats and goddess figures with raised arms). In hieroglyphics, a symbol represents a word not a letter. It gives hieroglyphics a poetic or philosophical side. Where did Egyptian Civilization Come From? Cont. (9/15/17) Circa 3000 BC, the first dynasty appeared. An ivory knife handle was found and is now stored in the Louvre in Paris. When you see two animals facing each other in art, it’s Mesopotamian art. Proto-Dynastic Egypt: 4000-3500 BC (9/15/17) Figures on boats with raised arms unlike priestesses elsewhere. Egyptian “Ka”-sign found in Crete, Peru and Mesopotamia. Also seen in “Bird goddess” from Nagada in 3800 BC. Bat - Cow-goddess with human eyes and curved horns. Professor Cles Ko says there is a connection between the lifestyle of a group and the depiction of horns in that group. Hat Hor - Cow goddess who came in relevance in 2400 BC. Nagada Pottery - 4000-3800 BC: black-topped red ware. Red + white lines “C-ware”, cross-lined ware. Tomb U-239 dates to 3800 BC and has pre-Mesopotamian innovations. It also has vase (C-ware) with pear shaped maces. Min - God of cattle and fertility. Also Lord of Lettuce. Proto-Dynastic Egypt: 4000-3500 BC Cont. (9/18/17) Hierakonpolis (name in Greek) is Nekhen (in Egyptian). Nysu (Egyptian word for king, translates to “one who is of the reeds”) The red crown is called the green crown. There are two crowns that combined form the “red crown”. In Nagada (Nubt), there are 2700 burials in 17 square acres. The feet are positioned towards towards the flow of the Nile (North) and the head turned left (West). The layout

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matters because it has magical properties that ensures that the individual will live again. The river flows forever and the sun rises forever hence give eternity to the deceased individual. Nekhen and Nekheb (Elkab in modern Arabic) and considered the “Twin Cities”. Hierakonpolis (Nekhen) was considered Capital of the South in 3500 BC, there are 1 million square acres of remains. Coprolites show that diet included scratch and vegetables but no meat. The first mummy is in Hierakonpolis in 3500 BC, face and hands wrapped in linen. Firsts in Hierakonpolis: first temple is dedicated to the god Hor, Taharqa is the great ruler of Nubia. The hieroglyph for a god is a flag because the wind indicated the presence of a god. Proto-Dynastic Egypt Cont. (9/20/17) Palettes were not used by women but instead by warriors before combat. They also eased to be made after the Predynastic period. King Scorpion’s macehead depicts him holding a plowshare to open irrigation channels. His headgear is a connection to Mesopotamia. Rhyt bird is a representation of people. First hieroglyphic phrase is from Tomb U-J and showed influence of hieroglyphics on Arabic in the Hagia Sophia. Dju Gereh (Mountains of Darkness) - earliest hieroglyphic phrase in Tomb U-J. A serekh (emblem) has three parts to it: the falcon, the name of the king and a lined part (the palace facade). Neith Hotep (goddess of weapons and the Nile) Notes (9/22/17) A given sign can be a syllable, a letter in the alphabet or hold a specific meaning. The sound of the human voice is one of the most important parts of Egyptian magic - it’s not the words that matter but the voice. Determinatied gives meaning to a phrase. Nut - Goddess of Heaven The sun “enters the mouth of Nut” at night and “comes out from between her legs” in the morning. We have never found archaeological evidence for an Egyptian king named “Menes”, Menes might be a nickname since it translates to “the Establisher”. People in subsidiary burials are “honored” by being stabbed or strangled. This practice ended in the first dynasty. Notes (9/25/17) King Den (Dynasty I) is the first time you see the king depicted as a cobra “nemesh” (the cobra headress). “Khepresh” “Mastaba” is a bench in Arabic, it is a tomb that can be up to two stories underground. Above ground the tomb looks like a bench hence its name. King Kha Sekhem Wy (Dynasty II) - name means the rise of the twin powers (the gods Hor/Horus and Seth rise)

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3800 BC, 3500 BC (D-Ware, first mummy, Hierakonpolis, first hieroglyphics, Nekhen’s tomb), 3250 BC (Dynasty 0, King Scorpion, Tomb U-J), 2686 BC (last great ruler of Dynasty II passes away) Kairouan (a central city in Tunisia) Saqqara is the location of the Step Pyramid of Djoser (“the holy one”). First time a tomb is made out of stone is Stone Enclosure “Of The Boss” (Gisr El Mudir) most likely by Kha Sekhem Wy. The Search for the Lost Mummy of Imhotep (9/27/17) The step pyramid was unique since it was aesthetically aimed at trying to get Pharaoh Djoser into the afterlife. Step pyramid was created by stacking mastabas on top of each other until a pyramid is formed. Rhyt (also called lapwings) represent the people living in a certain area. Djoser’s serekh - Netcherikhat (“Divine Form”). Ra Hor Akhty - new god “Falcon of the Horizon” (or two Horizons). New burial tradition with Djoser, feet now no longer point north and face west. Now the head points north and feet south, face points east. Djoser starts the “Renewal of Births” after he creates the new dynasty. Djehuty is the god of writing, astronomy and math. The ibis and baboons found inside the stepped pyramid are sacred to djehuty. The Search for the Lost Mummy of Imhotep (10/2/17) Ibises are found anywhere with cattle grazing. Buildings around the pyramid use architectural forms from several periods of Egyptian history. Blue tiles are the marks of royalty. Herons are associated with marshes and Osiris in the afterlife. First monarch butterfly depicted in 2300 BC in the fifth dynasty. Marshes are paradise in Egypt (“field of reeds”) because there is a constant rebirth of life in the marshy area adjacent to the Nile. Sekhmet (“the lady of power”) is the Lion Goddess of Medicine is fearsome but also confers blessings. Her sacred color is red. The bird hieroglyph is pronounced “wer” and means “great”. Peseshet is the equivalent of an “emir” (in the UAE) and is an overseer. “Everything here is the opposite of Greece! The men are the ones who are bleeding!” Things that come from Mesopotamia: the palace facade of Kha Sekhem Wy, the white crown, Rulers of the first dynasty to know: Narmer, Scorpion, Den Building the Great Pyramid (10/9/17) Seshat is the goddess of astronomy before Djehuty, she has the “scribe” (“sesh”). She set alignment of pyramid with the North. Nut is the outstretched Heaven, she is placed inside a coffin and has stars all over her body.

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In the workman’s village, food was provided (normally they had to grow the food themselves at home) and there was a dormitory arrangement. There were no wheels, instead they used sleds and water. Nesu Wesert was in control of the granary for the workman’s village, his name translates to “Powerful King”. The workers had to use copper chisels that needed to be reheated and tempered every 100 hits. The hieroglyph for “emir” means one who everyone talks to or wants to connect to. Nefertiabet is the “Beautiful Lady of the East” The scarab beetle (also known as the dung beetle) follows the sun’s movement during the day and the moon at night. It is known as khepri to the Egyptians. The sun only rises because the scarab beetle pushes or kicks the sun up into the sky. Phyle - Greek for “tribe”. Names of tribes can be Nefer (pure, perfect, handsome, good) Building the Great Pyramid Cont. (10/11/17) No other pyramid has the complexity of the Great Pyramid. There were false doors and narrow apertures that pointed to the stars. The Belt of Orion can be easily seen and can indicate a change in seasons (dep...