Ancient Egyptian Culture

Ancient Egyptian Culture

• Coach Parrish
• OMS
• Chapter 3, Section 4

Social Classes

• Most of what is known about social classes, and other Egyptian history is from their artwork.
• Egyptian society resembled a pyramid.
• At the top was the pharaoh. Beneath him was a small upper class including priests, pharaoh’s court, and landholding nobles.
• Below the upper class was the middle class of merchants and skilled workers.
• At the bottom of the social pyramid was the lower class called peasants.

Social Class Pyramid

Slavery

• Prisoners captured in wars were made into slaves. Slaves formed a separate social class that was never very large in number.
• Slaves in Egypt could own personal items and inherit land from their masters. Occasionally they were also made free.

Lives of the Peasants

• Most peasants worked the land of wealthy Egyptians. During the flood season, they worked on roads, temples, and buildings.
• Once the flood season was over, they quickly worked the soil to prepare crops for planting.
• The busiest season for the peasants was harvest season when men, women, and children went into the fields to pick the crops.

Women in Egypt

• Women were viewed as living models of Isis, the goddess of motherhood.
• Egyptian women had the same rights as men and held various jobs throughout the empire.

A New System of Writing

• In ancient Egypt, they wrote using a system of pictures to stand for words called hieroglyphs.
• Some symbols stood for words and other symbols stood for sounds. They began using hieroglyphs because of the empire’s growing wealth.

Writing Materials

• At first, the Egyptians wrote on clay and stone like the Sumerians. Over time, they wanted to write on something more stable, so they chose papyrus.
• Papyrus – early form of paper made from a reed found in the marshy areas of the Nile delta.
• Papyrus was made by cutting the inner stalks into narrow strips, laying them side by side, wetting them and then letting them dry outside.

Papyrus Artwork

Unlocking a Mystery

• Historians could not read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics until 1799 AD. A soldier found a large stone later called the Rosetta Stone while digging a fort in the Nile delta.
• The Rosetta Stone contained 3 languages on it, hieroglyphics, demotic (later Egyptian writing), and Greek letters. In 1820, a French scholar named Jean Francois Champollion cracked the code.

Jean-Francois Champollion

Egyptian Legacy

• Astronomers – scientists who study the stars and other objects. Egyptians were astronomers in that they knew when the Nile would flood based on Sirius (dog star).
• Because of mummification, ancient Egyptians knew a great deal about the body. They learned how to perform surgery on broken bones. They also used plants to create medicines.