The Ancient Egyptians have fascinated me since I was a young age. The whole ancient civilisation is fascinating and in this not-so-romantic blog, I take a look at the Ancient Egyptians and do my best to unearth their fascinating civilisation.
From building the inspiring pyramids, a unique writing system, worshipping more Gods and Goddesses than pieces of LEGO in my house (which is saying something) to creating an incredible civilisation in the ancient world- Egypt had it all, including a civilisation which lasted the best part of 3000 years to be one of the longest lasting civilisations in history.
Table of Contents
The ancient Egyptian civilisation
Egypt itself is in the North-East of Africa and is definitely well recognised around the world because of its pyramids. People settled in Egypt as early as 6000 BCE (before common era) which is roughly 8000 years ago. They mostly settled around the River Nile, as it provided food, resources, land for farming and a way of transporting people and the materials for buildings.
These small villages eventually joined together to create two kingdoms. “Lower Egypt” and “Upper Egypt”. To make the situation slightly more confusing, Lower Egypt was higher up the country than Upper Egypt. This was because of the direction the River Nile flowed in.
These two kingdoms were united together by a King in around 3100 BCE.
I also just learnt whilst researching this blog (that’s right I don’t make them all up as I go along) that if you see “ca” written next to dates this means “circa” or more accurately “around”. So we use “ca” when we’re not sure of the exact date but know it’s “around this date”.
I don’t know why I mentioned this as I don’t actually think I’ll be using “ca” at all in this not-so-romantic blog.
The Pharaohs: Rulers of Ancient Egypt
Alongside the pyramids, Ancient Egypt was also known for its Pharaohs. Pharaohs are the equivalent of Kings and Queens in the rest of the world. They held the title “lord of the two lands”. But they weren’t actually called Pharaohs until the New Kingdom which started in the 1570s BCE. They were often buried inside pyramids which were one heck of a fancy tombstone.
Pharaohs were typically male but interspersed within the males were a collection of female pharaohs. Cleopatra is perhaps the most recognised alongside Hatschepsut. Sadly, many of Hatschepsuts monuments and inscriptions were destroyed after her successful rule. This was more than likely an attempt to stop any other women from becoming pharaohs.
It’s believed that “Narmor” (sometimes called Manes- an obvious nickname) was the first King of Egypt but it is argued and isn’t confirmed by any stretch of the imagination. I’m pretty sure the only way we’d ever know for sure is by inventing a time machine. (Please someone invent a time machine).
There were 163 male Kings/Pharaohs and at least 6 female Pharaohs so, as you can imagine, there are several blogs worth of Pharaohs we could talk about so I’ve had a hard time narrowing down who should feature in this particular blog.
Dynasties
No- dynasties wasn’t a Pharoah. But I wanted to mention these before we go any further.
You’ll see the word “dynasty” a lot when it comes to the Ancient Egyptian rulers. A dynasty is a line of rulers from common origins. To put it a different way, kings and queens that are from the same family tree. Like son and father or sister and brother- mother and daughter.
There were thirty dynasties in Ancient Egypt.
The Valley Of Kings
And just to quickly mention the Valley of Kings – again not a pharaoh- this was an important burial site in Ancient Egypt between 1500 and 1000 BCE as, by that time, they no longer used pyramids as tombs. The hope was that the Valley of Kings would be more secretive than pyramids to avoid tombs being robbed by robbers. In fairness building a pyramid as a tomb isn’t the best idea if you want to keep them secret.
There are more than 60 tombs inside the Valley. The tombs themselves were carved deep inside the rock to keep them as hidden as possible. Each tomb is a web of long corridors and several chambers.
The longest corridor goes to Queen Hatshepsut with the corridor leading up to her burial chamber being 215 metres or 700 feet long- about the length of my nose.
Sadly most of the tombs and treasure were removed in 1000 BCE. The mummies were reburied elsewhere and the gold and treasure either went to the robbers or were repurposed by other kings. A king gotta have bling, right?
One tomb however did remain untouched…
Tutankhamun
Perhaps one of the most famous Pharoahs or more accurately one of the most famous Pharoah tombs was that of Tutankhamun.
Tutankhamun was King during the 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt. He sat upon the throne when he was just 10 years old and only ruled for around 9 years. He passed away aged just 19. He may have introduced some religious reforms but was never really noted as a leader.
What makes Tutankhamun famous is the fact that his tomb in the Valley of Kings was found pretty much intact and free of graverobbing. It was found in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter.
He died young and in pain from the combined effects of Malaria and a broken leg- the broken leg seems a random thing to be mentioned but it was infected. He had a curved spine and problems with his immune system.
Ramesses II
I first learnt about Ramesses in my archaeology A-level at college and I have to say he’s one heck of a guy. This is one Pharoah I’ll definitely be writing a not-so-romantic blog about in the future.
Ramesses was the third pharaoh of the 19th dynasty and is known as the “great ancestor”. He had a formidable military career to the great benefit of the Egyptian Empire conquering enemies such as Hittites, Syrians, and Nubians.
Ramesses died aged 90 and was buried in the Valley of the Kings.
Cleopatra VII
Cleopatra is written and spoken about a lot in the early days of the Roman Empire. She was Egypts last ruling Pharoah and when she committed suicide, aged 39, in 30BCE- the Egyptian Empire came to an end.
Her early reign was strongly challenged by her own brother.
She introduced various reforms to improve the Egyptian economy. Her foreign relations, both personal and political, proved to be of great value to the kingdom and led to much prosperous foreign trading. She was a smart and competent leader- and we all know how few of them there were (and still are) in the world today.
It is interesting where Cleopatra would have taken Ancient Egypt had she been able to have a longer reign.
I’ve mentioned just 3 of the rulers of Ancient Egypt but here are two more Pharaoh facts to finish us off.
#1- Rulers of Ancient Egypt tended to marry other family members in order to keep the bloodline pure. Yep, you’re right in thinking that’s just wrong- marrying family members, not the fact. I miss the not-so-romantic blogs which talk about poo.
If you were interested sewers weren’t a thing in Ancient Egypt so human waste was either tossed into the river – hopefully whilst wearing gloves- or let out into the street. They had no running water but the rich would have a sort of wet room which had a drain in the floor and you’d wash everything down the drain with several buckets worth of water.
#2- It brings me great joy to tell you that all pharaohs- even the female ones- wore a fake beard as they believed it bought them closer to the Gods. They all wore makeup as well.
Ancient Egyptians: Society and Culture
If you were to travel back in time to Ancient Egypt you’d, obviously, find a very different society and culture than we have in the modern-day world.
You were expected to start work at the age of 12 and only priests, scribes and other similar jobs would actually know how to read and write. Some of the jobs would sound familiar though.
There were bakers, scribes, doctors, merchants, farmers and a whole host of craft-related jobs. You would normally be expected to inherit jobs from your parents. So if your father was a farmer you would normally also become a farmer. You may have also heard of apprenticeships where you can go on to learn to do a job whilst doing it. The Ancient Egyptians had apprenticeships as well.
Like most of the ancient world, the Ancient Egyptians used slave labour. They were forced to work in manual labour and sometimes other craft trades and were often paid in food rather than money.
The Ancient Egyptians worshipped somewhere in the region of 2000 Gods and Goddesses. I can barely remember the names of a handful of people, I’d stand no chance remember the name of 2000 Gods and Goddesses.
Mummies and the Afterlife
The Ancient Egyptians believed that when your body died your spiritual existence would continue on in the afterlife which looked very similar to the physical world. So it was important to the Egyptians to live a good life so they would be able to travel to the afterlife- if they didn’t they would be sent down to the underworld.
Not going to the underworld was a big deal because the Egyptians thought the afterlife was exactly the same as life- just without sadness, illness or silent and deadly farts. That should be enough reason to make sure you get there. And people believing that the afterlife was the same as real life, probably tells you how much people enjoyed living in Ancient Egypt.
A big part of getting to the glorious afterlife was being turned into a mummy when you died. The tomb you were buried in was equally as important as they filled them with treasure, games, underwear and even food that you would need for the afterlife. This is why Ancient Egyptian tombs were robbed so often- they just couldn’t resist the lure of free underwear.
But how did you make a mummy? Word of warning- the next few paragraphs are not ones to read when you’re eating your breakfast- you should be fine if you’re eating your lunch, tea or supper though.
How to make a mummy
Let’s get down to the business of making a mummy.
The first step is important… make sure the person is dead and not just sleeping heavily. Take it from me, people don’t appreciate being wrapped in bandages when they’re sleeping… I also don’t want to talk about how I know that.
STEP 1: Wash the dead body with wine and water from the River Nile. If you’re not near the River Nile, I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to use any water.
STEP 2: With the body clean cut into the side of their body and pull out their organs… An evil laugh will help with this as well.
STEP 3: With the organs gone get a hook and stuff it up the person’s nose, wriggle it about and pull out the brain. If there is no brain you’ve found a chav.
STEP 4: Next, carefully clean the stomach, lungs, liver and intestines and place them inside canopic jars. These jars had lids that looked like the heads of Gods who would help protect the body parts on the journey to the afterlife. You can put the heart back in the body because the Ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was where we did all of our thinking. It was often dubbed “the centre of our intelligence”.
STEP 5: Cover the body in a special salt called “Natron”. Make sure it gets all in the body and the body is completely covered. The salt helps get rid of the moisture. After 40 days of being buried in salt, you need to get rid of it out of the body- this may involve having to scoop some out with your hand from some – how shall I put it?- delicate places.
STEP 6: Stuff plants, spice and rags inside the newly de-salted body so the body keeps its form and structure.
STEP 7: It’s finally time to wrap the body! The Ancient Egyptians wrapped their mummies in the finest linen cloth. During the wrapping, they would throw in some amulets and charms which would be embued in “magic” to continue to help protect the body on the journey to the afterlife.
Once the mummy was complete, it was buried inside an elegant coffin. Once inside that coffin, it was then placed inside a larger coffin.
And now you know how to make a mummy!
Ancient Egyptian Pyramids
The Ancient Egyptians made a whole host of achievements and contributions to the world. And I bet you’re surprised that it’s taken this long for me to finally start talking about pyramids!
If you were to say “Ancient Egyptians” then you can pretty much guarantee most people will say “pyramids”. It’s slightly difficult to get a 100% accurate number of how many pyramids were built – mostly because I’ve never been to count them and every source seems to say a slightly different number. 118 seems to be the most common number written.
So I’ll say there are roughly 118 pyramids in Egypt. Most of these pyramids were built in the period known as the “Old Kingdom” of Ancient Egypt. Originally these pyramids were built to house the tombs of the Ancient Egyptian rulers.
The problem with such large and notable tombs was that the grave robbers knew exactly where all the treasure was hidden and it wasn’t unsurprising for tombs to be ransacked and stripped of everything valuable that wasn’t nailed down- though nails wouldn’t have stopped them.
The first pyramid built in Ancient Egypt was the Step Pyramid of Djoser. Djoser was the third King of the 3rd Dynasty and I could make a whole book on Djoser… not-so-romantic Egyptians? … he charged enough taxes to have collected 38 years worth in his 19-year reign.
It’s called the Step Pyramid because it actually looks like 6, very large steps, all the way around.
Like Pharaohs you could spend entire blogs writing about the structures of Ancient Egypt. I’ll whet your appetite for future blogs where we’ll talk about the lighthouse of Alexandria, The Colossi of Memnon, The Temple of Edfu, the Bent pyramid, The Great Sphinx at Giza and many many more.
Ancient Egypt: Final thoughts
Unsurprisingly the monuments and culture of Ancient Egypt have made a lasting impression on the world today. The awe-inspiring sight of the pyramids alone is legacy enough. It is a place I would love to visit and hopefully one day I will!
With almost 30 centuries of history there is so much to explore in Ancient Egypt and it would never all fit inside a single blog post. So I, Andy Lickley, promise this is only the first of many blogs about the Ancient Egyptians. If you do have anything, in particular, you’d like me to write about- please let me know.
And be sure to let me know your favourite thing about the Ancient Egyptians in the comment section.
What to read next
Thank you for reading this not-so-romantic blog about the Ancient Egyptians! If you have enjoyed it (which I hope you have) here are some other posts I think you’ll enjoy.