Powerpoint Notes

In class today, we took more notes on Egypt because we have a quiz tomorrow. I'm not sure if we do have a quiz tomorrow though, because we were unable to finish the powerpoint. However, the powerpoint was on his blog, so I finished to be able to study, so if we don't I'll be extra prepared. Here are the notes we took today:

• Land of Pharaohs
• the Nile and the "Two Lands"
• Upper Egypt: 500m long strip of fertile land along the Nile; mountain level
• Lower Egypt: wide land of Nile delta, emptying into Med. Sea; sea level
• the Nile was a major provider of life for the Egyptians and was much reserved in lore and writing
• around 3100 BC the two lands were united under a single king or "pharaoh" (Narmer)
• Government by a God-King
• pharaoh was all-powerful, worshipped as a god and intimately connected to the other major Egyptian gods and goddesses
• Egyptians relied on harmony and balance of the universe, which they called "maat" (personified by the goddess Maat; ideological opposite of Isfet)
• pharaohs had multiple wives and all routes to financial and social success were thru the palace
• women could inherit money + land and divorce their husbands, though only a tiny few ever wielded real political power
• Gods, Humans, Everlasting Life
• gods were often portrayed with animal heads or bodies
• Egyptians believed in an afterlife (ka) and they mummified bodies to preserve them for this post-death journey
• all souls would need to justify themselves at the point of death and be either sent to an after-world paradise, or the jaws of a monster
• Writing of Words of God
• earliest Egyptian writing formed c 3100 BC and were small pictures known as hieroglyphics
• Egyptian script was usually written in ink on papyrus, which was made from mashed Nile reeds
• papyrus, the precursor to paper, was stored in scrolls and these scrolls were the books of ancient Egypt
• Jean Francois Champollion found the code of Rosetta Stone
• Calenders and Sailboats
• Egyptian astronomers created a calendar with 12 months and 365 days to make better sense of the seasonal cycle
• Egyptians were able to create potions and cures
• wooden sailboats were constructed to increase transportation ability on the Nile
• Pyramids and Temples
• pyramids: massive stone tombs, originally covered in marble, but the marble was later stripped off during the Muslim conquest
• Temple of Amon at Karnak: the largest religious building in the world, also made out of huge blocks of stone
• stone sculptures and interior painting depicted humans and gods in a series of regulated poses, often in profile and without perspective, but were highly effective