Egypt
| جمهورية مصر العربية Arab Republic of Egypt | ||
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| - | ||
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| - | c.3150 BCE | |
| - | Independence from United Kingdom | February 28, 1922 |
| - | Republic declared | June 18, 1953 |
| - | Total | 1,002,450 km² (30th) |
| - | 0.632 | |
| - | July 2008 estimate | |
| - | 74/km² (120th) | |
| 2007 estimate | ||
| - | Total | $403.961 billion (27th) |
| - | $5,491 (97th) | |
| Gini (1999–00) | 34.5 (medium) | |
| HDI (2007) | ▲ 0.708 (medium) (112nd) | |
| - | Summer (DST) | |
| 1 | Spoken language is Egyptian Arabic. | |
Egypt: officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is an Arab country in North Africa and partly, due to the Sinai Peninsula, in southwestern Asia . Covering an area of about 1,001,450 square kilometers, Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west.
Background
Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa and the Middle East. The great majority of its estimated 80 million live near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable agricultural land is found. The large areas of the Sahara Desert are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with the majority spread across the densely-populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.
Egypt is famous for its ancient civilization and some of the world's most famous monuments, including the Giza pyramid complex and its Great Sphinx. The southern city of Luxor contains numerous ancient artifacts, such as the Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings. Egypt is widely regarded as an important political and cultural nation of the Middle East.
Etymology
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One of the ancient Egyptian names of the country, Kemet, is derived from the fertile black soils deposited by the Nile floods, distinct from the deshret, or "red land", of the desert. The name is realized as kīmi and kīmə in the Coptic stage of the Egyptian language, and appeared in early Greek as Χημία. Another name was t3-mry "land of the riverbank". The names of Upper and Lower Egypt were Ta-Sheme'aw "sedgeland" and Ta-Mehew "northland", respectively.
Miṣr, the Arabic and modern official name of Egypt, is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם, literally meaning "the two straits". The word originally connoted "metropolis" or "civilization" and also means "country", or "frontier-land".
The English name "Egypt" came via the Latin word Aegyptus derived from the ancient Greek word Aígyptos. The adjective aigýpti, aigýptios was borrowed into Coptic as gyptios, kyptios, and from there into Arabic as qubṭī, back formed into qubṭ, whence English Copt. The term is derived from Late Egyptian Hikuptah "Memphis", a corruption of the earlier Egyptian name Hat-ka-Ptah, meaning "home of the ka (soul) of Ptah", the name of a temple to the god Ptah at Memphis. Strabo provided a folk etymology according to which Aígyptos had evolved as a compound from Aegaeon uptiōs, meaning "below the Aegean".
The Nile River in Egypt
Giza Pyramids
History
Evidence of human habitation in the Nile Valley since the Paleolithic era appears in the form of artifacts and rock carvings along the Nile terraces and in the desert oases. In the 10th millennium BC, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishers replaced a grain-grinding culture. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 8000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society.
By about 6000 BC the Neolithic culture rooted in the Nile Valley. During the Neolithic era, several predynastic cultures developed independently in Upper and Lower Egypt. The Badarian culture and the successor Naqada series are generally regarded as precursors to Dynastic Egyptian civilization. The earliest known Lower Egyptian site, Merimda, predates the Badarian by about seven hundred years. Contemporaneous Lower Egyptian communities coexisted with their southern counterparts for more than two thousand years, remaining somewhat culturally separate, but maintaining frequent contact through trade. The earliest known evidence of Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions appeared during the predynastic period on Naqada III pottery vessels, dated to about 3200 BC.
A unified kingdom was founded circa 3150 BC by King Menes, giving rise to a series of dynasties that ruled Egypt for the next three millennia. Egyptians subsequently referred to their unified country as tawy, meaning "two lands", and later kemet, the "black land", a reference to the fertile black soil deposited by the Nile river. Egyptian culture flourished during this long period and remained distinctively Egyptian in its religion, arts, language and customs. The first two ruling dynasties of a unified Egypt set the stage for the Old Kingdom period, c.2700−2200 BC., famous for its many pyramids, most notably the Third Dynasty pyramid of Djoser and the Fourth Dynasty Giza Pyramids.
The Great Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza, built during the Old Kingdom, are modern national icons that are at the heart of Egypt's thriving tourism industry.
The First Intermediate Period ushered in a time of political upheaval for about 150 years. Stronger Nile floods and stabilization of government, however, brought back renewed prosperity for the country in the Middle Kingdom c. 2040 BC, reaching a peak during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III. A second period of disunity heralded the arrival of the first foreign ruling dynasty in Egypt, that of the Semitic Hyksos. The Hyksos invaders took over much of Lower Egypt around 1650 BC and founded a new capital at Avaris. They were driven out by an Upper Egyptian force led by Ahmose I, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty and relocated the capital from Memphis to Thebes.
The New Kingdom began with the Eighteenth Dynasty, marking the rise of Egypt as an international power that expanded during its greatest extension to an empire as far south as Jebel Barkal in Nubia, and included parts of the Levant in the east. This period is noted for some of the most well-known Pharaohs, including Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. The first known self-conscious expression of monotheism came during this period in the form of Atenism. Frequent contacts with other nations brought new ideas to the New Kingdom. The country was later invaded by Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians, but native Egyptians drove them out and regained control of their country.
First built in the third or fourth century AD, the Hanging Church is Cairo's most famous Coptic church.
The Thirtieth Dynasty was the last native ruling dynasty during the Pharaonic epoch. It fell to the Persians in 343 BC after the last native Pharaoh, King Nectanebo II, was defeated in battle. Later, Egypt fell to the Greeks and Romans, beginning over two thousand years of foreign rule.
Before Egypt became part of the Byzantine realm, Christianity had been brought by Saint Mark the Evangelist in the AD first century. Diocletian's reign marked the transition from the Roman to the Byzantine era in Egypt, when a great number of Egyptian Christians were persecuted. The New Testament had by then been translated into Egyptian. After the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, a distinct Egyptian Coptic Church was firmly established.
The Byzantines were able to regain control of the country after a brief Persian invasion early in the seventh century, until in AD 639, Egypt was invaded by the Muslim Arabs. The form of Islam the Arabs brought to Egypt was Sunni. Early in this period, Egyptians began to blend their new faith with indigenous beliefs and practices that had survived through Coptic Christianity, giving rise to various Sufi orders that have flourished to this day.[11] Muslim rulers nominated by the Islamic Caliphate remained in control of Egypt for the next six centuries, including a period for which it was the seat of the Caliphate under the Fatimids. With the end of the Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, a Turco-Circassian military caste, took control about AD 1250. They continued to govern even after the conquest of Egypt by the Ottoman Turks in 1517.
Mosque of Mohamed Ali built in the early nineteenth century within the Cairo Citadel.
The brief French Invasion of Egypt led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 had a great social impact on the country and its culture. Native Egyptians became exposed to the principles of the French Revolution and had a chance to exercise self-governance. The expulsion of the French in 1801 by Ottoman, Mamluk, and British forces was followed by four years of anarchy in which Ottomans, Mamluks, and Albanians who were nominally in the service of the Ottomans, wrestled for power. Out of this chaos, the commander of the Albanian regiment, Muhammad Ali emerged as a dominant figure and in 1805 was acknowledged by the Sultan in Istanbul as his pasha in Egypt; the title implied subordination to the Sultan but this was in fact a polite fiction: Ottoman power in Egypt was finished and Muhammad Ali, an ambitious and able leader, established a dynasty that was to rule Egypt until the revolution of 1952. His primary focus was military: he annexed Northern Sudan , Syria , and parts of Arabia and Anatolia; but in 1841 the European powers, fearful lest he topple Byzantium itself, checked him: he had to return most of his conquests to the Ottomans, but he kept the Sudan and his title to Egypt was made hereditary. A more lasting consequence of his military ambition is that it made him the moderniser of Egypt. Anxious to learn the military techniques of the great powers he sent students to the West and invited training missions to Egypt. He built industries, a system of canals for irrigation and transport, and reformed the civil service. For better or worse, the introduction in 1820 of long-staple cotton, the Egyptian variety of which became famous, transformed Egyptian agriculture into a cash-crop monoculture before the end of the century. The social effects of this were enormous: it led to the concentration of agriculture in the hands of large landowners, and, with the additional trigger of high cotton prices caused by the United States' civil war production drop, to a large influx of foreigners who began in earnest the exploitation of Egypt for international commodity production.
Muhammad Ali was succeeded briefly by his son Ibrahim (in September 1848), then by a grandson Abbas I (in November 1848), then by Said (in 1854), and Isma'il (in 1863). Abbas I was cautious. Said and Ismail were ambitious developers; unfortunately they spent beyond their means. The Suez Canal, built in partnership with the French, was completed in in 1869. The expense of this and other projects had two effects: it led to enormous debt to European banks, and caused popular discontent because of the onerous taxation it necessitated. In 1875 Ismail was forced to sell Egypt's share in the canal to the British government. Within three years this led to the imposition of British and French controllers who sat in the Egyptian cabinet, and, "with the financial power of the bondholders behind them, were the real power in the government." Local dissatisfaction with Ismail and with European intrusion led to the formation of the first nationalist groupings in 1879, with Ahmad Urabi a prominent figure. In 1882 he became head of a nationalist-dominated ministry committed to democratic reforms including parliamentary control of the budget. Fearing a diminishment of their control, Britain and France intervened militarily, bombarding Alexandria and crushing the Egyptian army at the battle of Tel el-Kebir. They reinstalled Ismail's son Tewfik as figurehead of a de facto British protectorate. In 1914 the Protectorate was made official, and the title of the head of state, which had changed from pasha to khedive in 1867, was changed to sultan, to repudiate the vestigal suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan, who was backing the Central powers in World War One. Abbas II was deposed as khedive and replaced by his uncle, Husayn Kamil, as sultan.
In 1906, the Dinshaway Incident prompted many neutral Egyptians to join the nationalist movement. After the First World War, Saad Zaghlul and the Wafd Party led the Egyptian nationalist movement, gaining a majority at the local Legislative Assembly. When the British exiled Zaghlul and his associates to Malta on March 8, 1919, the country arose in its first modern revolution. Constant revolting by the Egyptian people throughout the country led Great Britain to issue a unilateral declaration of Egypt's independence on February 22, 1922.
The new Egyptian government drafted and implemented a new constitution in 1923 based on a parliamentary representative system. Saad Zaghlul was popularly-elected as Prime Minister of Egypt in 1924. In 1936 the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was concluded. Continued instability in the government due to remaining British control and increasing political involvement by the king led to the ouster of the monarchy and the dissolution of the parliament in a military coup d'état known as the 1952 Revolution. The officers, known as the Free Officers Movement, forced King Farouk to abdicate in support of his son Fuad.
On June 18, 1953, the Egyptian Republic was declared, with General Muhammad Naguib as the first President of the Republic. Naguib was forced to resign in 1954 by Gamal Abdel Nasser – the real architect of the 1952 movement – and was later put under house arrest. Nasser assumed power as President and declared the full independence of Egypt from the United Kingdom on June 18, 1956. His nationalization of the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956 prompted the 1956 Suez Crisis.
View of Cairo, the largest city in Africa and the Middle East. The Cairo Opera House is the main performing arts venue in the Egyptian capital.
Three years after the 1967 Six Day War, during which Israel had invaded and occupied Sinai, Nasser died and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. Sadat switched Egypt's Cold War allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States, expelling Soviet advisors in 1972. He launched the Infitah economic reform policy, while violently clamping down on religious and secular opposition alike.
In 1973, Egypt, along with Syria, launched the October War, a surprise attack against the Israeli forces occupying the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. It was an attempt to liberate the territory Israel had captured 6 years earlier. Both the US and the USSR intervened and a cease-fire was reached. Despite not being a complete military success, most historians agree that the October War presented Sadat with a political victory that later allowed him to regain the Sinai in return with peace with Israel.
Sadat made a historic visit to Israel in 1977, which led to the 1979 peace treaty in exchange for the complete Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. Sadat's initiative sparked enormous controversy in the Arab world and led to Egypt's expulsion from the Arab League, but it was supported by the vast majority of Egyptians. A fundamentalist military soldier assassinated Sadat in Cairo in 1981. He was succeeded by the incumbent Hosni Mubarak. In 2003, the Egyptian Movement for Change, popularly known as Kefaya, was launched to seek a return to democracy and greater civil liberties.
Identity
Mahmoud Mokhtar's Egypt's Renaissance 1919-1928, Cairo University.
The Nile Valley was home to one of the oldest cultures in the world, spanning three thousand years of continuous history. When Egypt fell under a series of foreign occupations after 343 BC, each left an indelible mark on the country's cultural landscape. Egyptian identity evolved in the span of this long period of occupation to accommodate, in principle, two new religions, Christianity and Islam; and a new language, Arabic, and its spoken descendant, Egyptian Arabic.] The degree to which Egyptians identify with each layer of Egypt's history in articulating a sense of collective identity can vary. Questions of identity came to fore in the last century as Egypt sought to free itself from foreign occupation for the first time in two thousand years. Three chief ideologies came to head: ethno-territorial Egyptian nationalism, secular Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism, and Islamism. Egyptian nationalism predates its Arab counterpart by many decades, having roots in the nineteenth century and becoming the dominant mode of expression of Egyptian anti-colonial activists and intellectuals until the early 20th century. Arab nationalism reached a peak under Nasser but was once again relegated under Sadat; meanwhile, the ideology espoused by radical muslim groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood is present in small segments of the lower-middle strata of Egyptian society.
Geography
White Desert, Farafra
At 1,001,450 square kilometers, Egypt is the world's 38th-largest country. It is comparable in size to Tanzania, twice the size of France, four times the size of the United Kingdom, and is more than half the size of the US state of Alaska.
Nevertheless, due to the aridity of Egypt's climate, population centres are concentrated along the narrow Nile Valley and Delta, meaning that approximately 99% of the population uses only about 5.5% of the total land area.
The Coastline of Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city
Egypt is bordered by Libya to the west, Sudan to the south, and by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east. Egypt's important role in geopolitics stems from its strategic position: a transcontinental nation, it possesses a land bridge between Africa and Asia, which in turn is traversed by a navigable waterway that connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea.
Apart from the Nile Valley, the majority of Egypt's landscape is a sandy desert. The winds blowing can create sand dunes more than 100 feet high. Egypt includes parts of the Sahara Desert and of the Libyan Desert. These deserts were referred to as the "red land" in ancient Egypt, and they protected the Kingdom of the Pharaohs from western threats.
Towns and cities include Alexandria, one of the greatest ancient cities, Aswan, Asyut, Cairo, the modern Egyptian capital, El-Mahalla El-Kubra, Giza, the site of the Pyramid
Egyptian pantheon
Ancient Egyptian religion was polytheistic and often zoomorphic. The Egyptian term for goddess was neṯeret and the term for god was neṯer. Earliest hieroglyphs for goddesses were just a flag or a flag with an Egyptian cobra arising from the base of the pole. The later hieroglyphs for these terms (R8) are depicted as flags followed by an appropriate gender symbol.
Being a culture dating from 10,000 B.C. or before, there is an extensive pantheon for Ancient Egypt. The earliest deities are presumed to be goddess figures such as Bat, Mut, or Ma'at. Symbols for Neith also appear among the earliest of images. Many fertility figurines have been discovered. Vestiges of the early white vulture and cobra goddesses are born on the crowns of the separate Egyptian cultural centers as well as the crown of the united Upper and Lower Egypt of the predynastic and protodynastic periods and all periods thereafter until the Roman period began in 30 B.C. Once the country was united and the dynasties emerged, these two deities, known as the Two Ladies always remained as the protecting deities of the country and the pharaoh in particular.
Cattle were domesticated in Egypt by 8,000 B.C. and by 5,500 B.C. stone-roofed subterranean chambers and other subterranean complexes in Nabta Playa are seen to contain the tombs of ceremoniously-sacrificed cattle, indicating the worship of the goddess Hathor. The fierce lionesses who hunted in groups, were represented by Sekhmet as the warrior goddess in the south. She later was merged with an aspect of Hathor.
Predynastic artifacts: clockwise from top left: a Bat figurine, a Naqada jar, an ivory figurine, a porphyry jar, a flint knife, and a cosmetic palette
Predynastic Egypt included a culture identified as, Naqada, which arose in the western desert. By 4,000 B.C. Gerzean tomb-building was seen to include underground rooms and burial of furniture and amulets, a prelude to the worship of Osiris also. Many local variants of these and other deities existed, becoming polytheistic. After this period historical records began to appear and some were retained in tombs and temples that can be deciphered from the two writing systems that emerged.
Eventually most deities began to be seen as existing in equal pairs, most of the ancient goddesses accompanied by a male counterpart having a similar role, with significant exceptions. Aspects of some deities diversified and merged at different times and in different regions.
The pharaoh was deified after death, and bore the title of nṯr nfr "the good god," if male. The title, "servant of god" was used for the religious leaders in the temples of gods, ḥmt-nṯr was applied to priestesses and ḥm-nṯr was applied to priests, with parallel constructions for goddesses, the religious leaders of their temples, and for dead pharaohs who were women.
Over the great period of time included in ancient Egyptian culture, some deities arose, gained greater prominence over others or receded into less significance. At times abstract concepts emerged and regressed, as well as did a short-lived episode when one deity eclipsed most others, sometimes referred to as a monotheistic religion, in the 1,300s B.C., toward the end of the eighteenth dynasty that is dated 1,550-1,292 B.C. The worship of some early deities never ceased, however, and with the death of the pharaoh who advanced this cult based upon his favorite regional deity—a quick reversal occurred. Even members of his own family reverted to the worship of the deities as proscribed by the previously dominant cult, which would be eclipsed again and fade into obscurity when the cult of Osiris and Isis reached its highest development.
First mentions of Isis date back to the fifth dynasty which is when the first literary inscriptions are found, but her cult became prominent late in Egyptian history, when it began to absorb the cults of many other goddesses. It eventually spread outside Egypt. She absorbs many aspects of earlier goddesses, becoming identified as the mother of Horus, who represented and protected the pharaohs.
After Horus, Amun was a regional solar deity whose importance increased greatly when the pharaohs of Thebes regained control of the country from invaders and began the eighteenth dynasty. Ra became the next son of the solar deity and his cult rose to later dominance, eclipsing the earlier deities.
The term, hemt-nṯr-nt imen "servant of the god, wife of Amun" was a title held by priestesses in the tenth and twelfth dynasties, which was adopted by the female members of the royal family in the New Kingdom. The New Kingdom is dated from 1,570-1,070 BCE and includes the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth dynasties. The term "god father" jt-nṯr was an epithet of Thoth when he became identified as a counterpart to the goddess, Ma'at.
Ancient Egyptian culture persisted, albeit quite altered, through the Ptolemaic dynasty. That dynasty was ruled by a Hellenistic royal family for nearly 300 years, from 305 BCE. to 30 BCE, when the Romans conquered Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh. Roman rule lasted until the final invasion by Muslim Arabs in 646 CE that ended 975 years of Græco-Roman rule over Egypt. During that time religious concepts had blended few aspects from the invading cultures with the native, but retained most of the Egyptian cults and deities for continuity with the long history of a culture that served as the authority for the government, maintained the royal lineage, and interwove their deities with those of their rulers—along with the developing Christian beliefs among some of the Romans. Cults of Isis persisted in Egypt and spread with the Greek and Roman cultures—as far as Britian.
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Regional pantheons during the Old Kingdom
Ancient Egyptian votive statues of the deities
In the Old Kingdom, the third through sixth dynasties dated between 2,686 to 2,134 BCE, the pantheons of individual Egyptian cities varied by region. Beliefs can be split into five distinct localized groups during that time and which arose later:
the Ennead of Heliopolis, meaning the nine - consisted of Atum, Geb, Isis, Nut, Osiris, Nephthys, Seth, Shu, and Tefnut
the Ogdoad of Hermopolis, a changing myth which began with eight deities who were worshipped in four female-male pairs; the females were associated with snakes and the males with frogs: Naunet and Nu, Amaunet and Amun, Kauket and Kuk, Hauhet and Huh; first being a cult having Hathor and her son, Ra; later changing to a cult where Hathor and Thoth were the main deities over a much larger number of deities; and even later, Ra was assimilated into Atum-Ra through a merger with Atum of the Ennead cosmogeny; in the final version of the creation myth a lotus, a symbol held by Hathor, was said to have arisen from the waters after an explosive interaction, the lotus was said to have opened and revealed Ra, who later became identified as Horus also
the Khnum-Satis-Anuket triad of Elephantine, which was the dwelling place of Khnum, the ram-headed god of the cataracts, who guarded the origin of the waters of the Nile which was thought to issue from caves beneath the island; in Elephantine he was worshipped along with his counterpart, Satis, a more ancient gazelle-headed war, protector, and fertility deity who personified the flooding of the Nile, and Anuket, the fertility goddess who was the deification of the Nile, daughter to Satis, and became identified as their daughter in the triad. Other versions of myths identify Khnum with the creation of bodies in association with Heket, the goddess who breathed life into the bodies. In another variant Khnum is identified as the counterpart of Menhit and the father of Heka, a personification of law
Later regional pantheons
The Amun-Mut-Chons triad of Thebes that arose during the Middle Kingdom in 2134-1991 B.C.
The Ptah-Sekhmet-Nefertem triad of Memphis, which is unusual because these deities were not associated with each other before this triad was formalized, when beliefs about the Ennead and Ogdoad were merged after Memphis rose to prominence
List of deities of Ancient Egypt
Ammit - crocodile-headed devourer in Duat, not a true deity
Amun - the hidden one, a local creator deity later married to Mut after rising in importance
Amunet - female aspect of the primordial concept of air in the Ogdoad cosmogony; was depicted as a cobra snake or a snake-headed woman
Anubis - dog or jackal god of embalming and tomb-caretaker who watches over the dead
Anuket, goddess of the Nile River, the child of Satis and among the Elephantine triad of deities; temple on the Island of Seheil, giver of life and fertility, gazelle-headed
Apep - evil serpent of the Underworld, enemy of Ra and formed from a length of Neith's spit during her creation of the world
Apis - the Apis bull probably was at first a fertility figure concerned with the propagation of grain and herds; but he became associated with Ptah, the paramount deity of the Memphis area and also, with Osiris and Sokaris, later gods of the dead and the underworld. As Apis-Atum he was associated with the solar cult and was often represented with the sun-disk of the cow deity between his horns, being her offspring. The Apis bull often represented a king who became a deity after death, suggesting an earlier ritual in which the king was sacrificed
The Aten - the sun disk or globe worshipped primarily during the Amarna Period in the eighteenth dynasty when representing a monotheistic deity advanced by Amenhotep IV, who took the name Akhenaten
Atum - a creator deity, and the setting sun
Bast - goddess, protector of the pharaoh and a solar deity where the sun could be seen shining in her eyes at night, a lioness, house cat, cat-bodied or cat-headed woman, also known as Bastet when superseded by Sekhmet
Bat - represented the cosmos and the essence of the soul, cow goddess who gave authority to the king, cult originated in Hu and persisted widely until absorbed as an aspect of Hathor after the eleventh dynasty; associated with the sistrum and the ankh
Bes - dwarfed demigod - associated with protection of the household, particularly childbirth, and entertainment
The four sons of Horus- personifications of the containers for the organs of the deceased pharaohs - Imsety in human form, contained the liver and was protected by Isis; Hapi in baboon form, contained the lungs and was protected by Nephthys; Duamutef in jackal form, contained the stomach and was protected by Neith; Qebehsenuef in hawk form, contained the large intestines and was protected by Serket
Hapy - god embodied by the Nile, and who represents life and fertility
Hathor - among the oldest of Egyptian deities - often depicted as the cow, a solar deity who was the mother to the pharaoh and earlier to the universe, the golden calf of the bible, and later goddess of love and music
Heget - goddess of childbirth and fertility, who breathed life into humans at birth, represented as a frog or a frog-headed woman
Horus - the falcon-headed god. Includes multiple forms or potentially different gods, including Heru the son of Isis, god of pharaohs and Upper Egypt, and Heru the elder
Isis - goddess of magical power and healing, "She of the Throne" who was represented as the throne, also later as the wife of Osiris and as the protector of the dead
Iusaaset - the great one who comes forth, the goddess who was called the mother and grandmother of all of the deities and later, the "shadow" of Atum or Atum-Ra
Khnum - a creator deity, god of the inundation
Khonsu - the son of Amun and Mut, whose name means "wanderer", which probably refers to the passage of the moon across the sky, as he was a lunar deity. In the late period, he was also considered an important god of healing
Kuk - the personification of darkness that often took the form of a frog-headed god, whose consort was the snake-headed Kauket
Maahes - he who is true beside her, a lion prince, son of Bast in Lower Egypt and of Sekhmet in Upper Egypt and sharing their natures, his father varied—being the current chief male deity of the time and region, a god of war, weather, and protector of matrilineality, his cult arrived during the New Kingdom era perhaps from Nubia and was centred in Taremu and Per-Bast, associated with the high priests of Amon, the knife, lotuses, and devouring captives
Ma'at - a goddess who personified concept of truth, balance, justice, and order - represented as a woman, sitting or standing, holding a sceptre in one hand and an ankh in the other - thought to have created order out of the primal chaos and was responsible for maintaining the order of the universe and all of its inhabitants, to prevent a return to chaos
Mafdet - she who runs swiftly, early deification of legal justice (execution) as a cheetah, ruling at judgment hall in Duat where enemies of the pharaoh were decapitated with Mafdet's claw; alternately, a cat, a mongoose, or a leopard protecting against vermin, snakes, and scorpions; the bed upon which royal mummies were placed in murals
Menhit - goddess of war - depicted as a lioness-goddess and therefore becoming associated with Sekhmet
Meretseger - goddess of the valley of the kings, a cobra-goddess, sometimes triple-headed, dweller on the top of or the personification of the pyramid-shaped mountain, Al-Qurn, which overlooked the tombs of the pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings
Meskhenet - goddess of childbirth, and the creator of each person's Ka, a part of their soul, thereby associated with fate
Menthu - an ancient god of war - nomad - represented strength, virility, and victory
Min - represented in many different forms, but was often represented in male human form, shown with an erect penis which he holds in his left hand and an upheld right arm holding a flail; by the New Kingdom he was fused with Amen in the deity Min-Amen-kamutef, Min-Amen-bull of his mother, and his shrine was crowned with a pair of cow horns
Mnevis - was the sacred bull of Heliopolis, later associated with Ra as the offspring of the solar cow deity, and possibly also with Min; when Akhenaten abandoned Amun in favour of the Aten he claimed that he would maintain the Mnevis cult, which may have been because of its solar associations
Mut - mother, was originally a title of the primordial waters of the cosmos, the mother from which the cosmos emerged, as was Naunet in the Ogdoad cosmogony, however, the distinction between motherhood and cosmic water lead to the separation of these identities and Mut gained aspects of a creator goddess
Naunet - a goddess, the primal waters from which all arose, similar to Mut and later closely related to Nu
Neith - goddess of war, then great mother goddess - a name of the primal waters, the goddess of creation and weaving, said to weave all of the world on her loom
Nekhbet - goddess depicted as a white vulture - protector of Egypt, royalty, and the pharaoh with her extended wings - referred to as Mother of Mothers, who hath existed from the Beginning, and Creatrix of the World; always seen on the front of pharaoh’s double crown with Wadjet
Nephthys - goddess of death, holder of the rattle, the Sistrum - sister to Isis and the nursing mother of Horus and the pharaohs represented as the mistress of the temple, a woman with falcon wings, usually outstretched as a symbol of protection
Nut - goddess of heaven and the sky - mother of many deities as well as the sun, the moon, and the stars
Osiris - god of the underworld after Hathor and Anubis, fertility, and agriculture - the oldest son of the sky goddess, Nut, and the Earth god, Geb, and being brother and later, the husband of Isis - and early deity of Upper Egypt whose cult persisted into the sixth century BC
Pakhet - she who tears, deity of merged aspects of Sekhmet and Bast, cult center at Beni Hasan where north and south met - lioness protector, see Speos Artemidos
Ptah - a creator deity, also god of craft
Ra - the sun, also a creator deity - whose chief cult centre was based in Heliopolis meaning "city of the sun"
Ra-Horakhty - god of both sky and Sun, a combination of Ra and Horus - thought to be god of the Rising Sun
Satis - the goddess who represented the flooding of the Nile River, ancient war, hunting, and fertility goddess, mother of the Nile, Anuket, associated with water, depicted with a bow and arrows, and a gazelle or antelope horned, and sometimes, feathered crown
Sekhmet - goddess of destruction and war, the lioness - also personified as an aspect of Ra, fierce protector of the pharaoh, a solar deity, and later as an aspect of Hathor
Seker - god of death
Set - god of storms, later became god of evil, desert, also Lower Egypt
Seshat - goddess of writing, astronomy, astrology, architecture, and mathematics depicted as a scribe
Shu - embodiment of wind or air
Swenet - goddess of the ancient city on the border of southern Egypt at the Nile River, trade in hieroglyphs
Taweret - goddess of pregnant women and protector at childbirth
Tefnut - goddess, embodiment of rain, dew, clouds, and wet weather, depicted as a cat and sometimes as a lioness
Thoth - god of the moon, drawing, writing, geometry, wisdom, medicine, music, astronomy, magic; usually depicted as ibis-headed, or as a goose; cult centered in Khemennu
Wadjet - the goddess, snake goddess of lower Egypt, depicted as a cobra, patron and protector of Egypt and the pharaoh, always shown on crown of the pharaohs; later joined by the image of Nekhbet after north and south united; other symbols: eye, snake on staff
Wadj-wer - fertility god and personification of the Mediterranean sea or lakes of the Nile delta
Wosret - a localized guardian goddess, protector of the young god Horus, an early consort of Amun, who was later superseded by Mut
Egyptian hieroglyphs
| Egyptian hieroglyphs | ||
| Type | logography usable as an abjad | |
| Spoken languages | ||
| Time period | 3200 BC – AD 400 | |
| Parent systems | (Proto-writing) | |
| Child systems | | |
| Egyp | ||
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Hieroglyphic = a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that contained a combination of logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood. Less formal variations of the script, called hieratic and demotic, are technically not hieroglyphs.
Etymology
The word hieroglyph comes from the Greek adjective ἱερογλυφικά , a compound of ἱερός and γλύφω. The glyphs themselves were called τὰ ἱερογλυφικά γράμματα. The word hieroglyph has become a noun in English, standing for an individual hieroglyphic character. While "hieroglyphics" is commonly used, it is discouraged by Egyptologists.
History and evolution
Hieroglyphs emerged from the preliterate artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from circa 4000 BC resemble hieroglyphic writing. For many years the earliest known hieroglyphic inscription was the Narmer Palette, found during excavations at Hierakonpolis in the 1890s, which has been dated to circa 3200 BCE. However, in 1998 a German archaeological team under Günter Dreyer excavating at Abydos uncovered tomb U-j of a Predynastic ruler, and recovered three hundred clay labels inscribed with proto-hieroglyphs, dating to the Naqada IIIA period of the 33rd century BC. The first full sentence written in hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal impression found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qa'ab, which dates from the Second Dynasty. In the era of the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom, about 800 hieroglyphs existed. By the Greco-Roman period, they numbered more than 5,000.
Hieroglyphs consist of three kinds of glyphs: phonetic glyphs, including single-consonant characters that functioned like an alphabet; logographs, representing morphemes; and determinatives, which narrowed down the meaning of a logographic or phonetic words.
As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic (priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The Rosetta Stone contains parallel texts in hieroglyphic and demotic writing.
Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BC), and after Alexander's conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Macedonian and Roman periods. It appears that the misleading quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part, as a response to the changed political situation. Some believe that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish 'true Egyptians' from the foreign conquerors. Another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally. Having learned that hieroglyphs were sacred writing, Greco-Roman authors imagined the complex but rational system as an allegorical, even magical, system transmitting secret, mystical knowledge.
By the 4th century, few Egyptians were capable of reading hieroglyphs, and the myth of allegorical hieroglyphs was ascendant. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in AD 391 by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I; the last known inscription is from Philae, known as the The Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, from AD 396.
Decipherment of hieroglyphic writing
In the 5th century appeared the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo, a spurious explanation of almost 200 glyphs. Authoritative yet largely false, the work was a lasting impediment to the decipherment of Egyptian writing. Whereas earlier scholarship emphasized Greek origin of the document, more recent work has recognized remnants of genuine knowledge, and casts it as an attempt by an Egyptian intellectual to rescue an unrecoverable past. The Hieroglyphica was a major influence on Renaissance symbolism, particularly the emblem book of Andrea Alciato, and including the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna.
The first known attempts at deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs were made by Arab historians in medieval Egypt during the 9th and 10th centuries. By then, hieroglyphs had long been forgotten in Egypt, and were replaced by the Coptic and Arabic alphabets. Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya were the first historians to be able to at least partly decipher what was written in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, by relating them to the contemporary Coptic language used by Coptic priests in their time.
Various modern scholars attempted to decipher the glyphs over the centuries, notably Johannes Goropius Becanus in the 16th century and Athanasius Kircher in the 17th, but all such attempts met with failure. The real breakthrough in decipherment began with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's troops in 1799. In the early 1800s scholars such as Silvestre de Sacy, Johan David Åkerblad and Thomas Young studied the inscriptions on the stone, and were able to make some headway. Finally, Jean-François Champollion made the complete decipherment by the 1820s:
Hieroglyphs are written from right to left, from left to right, or from top to bottom, the usual direction being from right to left. The reader must consider the direction in which the asymmetrical hieroglyphs are turned in order to determine the proper reading order. For example, when human and animal hieroglyphs face to the right (i.e., they look right), they must be read from right to left, and vice versa, the idea being that the hieroglyphs face the beginning of the line.
Like many ancient writing systems, words are not separated by blanks or by punctuation marks. However, certain hieroglyphs appear particularly commonly at the end of words making it possible to readily distinguish words.
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This was a major triumph for the young discipline of Egyptology.
Hieroglyphs survive today in two forms: Directly, through half a dozen Demotic glyphs added to the Greek alphabet when writing Coptic; and indirectly, as the inspiration for the original alphabet that was ancestral to nearly every other alphabet ever used, including the Roman alphabet.
Writing system
Visually hieroglyphs are all more or less figurative: they represent real or imaginary elements, sometimes stylized and simplified, but all generally perfectly recognizable in form. However, the same sign can, according to context, be interpreted in diverse ways: as a phonogram (phonetic reading), as a logogram, or as an ideogram (semantic reading). The determinative was not read as a phonetic constituent, but facilitated understanding by differentiating the word from its homophones.
Phonetic reading
Most hieroglyphic signs are phonetic in nature, meaning the sign is read independent of its visual characteristics (according to the rebus principle where, for example, the picture of an eye could stand for the English words eye and I ). Phonograms are formed, whether with one consonant (signs called mono- or uniliteral) or by two consonants (biliteral signs) or by three (triliteral signs). The twenty-four uniliteral signs make up the so-called hieroglyphic alphabet. Since Egyptian hieroglyphic writing does not normally indicate vowels, in contrast, for example, to cuneiform, it could perhaps be argued that it is a variety of abjad.
Thus, hieroglyphic writing representing a duck is read in Egyptian as sȝ, the consonants of the word for this animal. Nevertheless, it is also possible to use the hieroglyph of the duck without a link to the meaning in order to represent the phonemes sȝ, independent of any vowels which could accompany these consonants, and in this way write the words: sȝ, "son," or when complemented by other signs detailed further in the text, sȝ, "keep, watch"; and sȝṯ.w, "hard ground".
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Spelling
The idea of standardized orthography—"correct" spelling—in Egyptian is much looser than in modern languages. In fact, one or several variants exist for almost every word. One finds:
Redundancies;
Omission of graphemes, which are ignored whether they are intentional or not;
Substitutions of one grapheme for another, such that it is impossible to distinguish a "mistake" from an "alternate spelling";
Errors of omission in the drawing of signs, much more problematic when the writing is cursive: hieratic writing, but especially demotic, where the schematization of the signs is extreme.
However, many of these apparent spelling errors are more of an issue of chronology. Spelling and standards varied over time, so the given writing of a word during the Old Kingdom might be considerably different during the New Kingdom. Furthermore, the Egyptians were perfectly content to include older orthography ("historical spelling") alongside newer practices, as if it were acceptable in English to use the spelling of a given word from 1600 in a text written today. Most often ancient spelling errors are more of an issue of modern misunderstandings of the specific context of a given text. Today, hieroglyphicists make use of a number of catologuing systems in order to clarify the presence of determinatives, ideograms and other ambiguous signs in transliteration.
Simple examples
The glyphs in this cartouche are transliterated as:p
t
o
l
m
i i s
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Ptolmiis
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though ii is considered a single letter and transliterated i or y.
Another way in which hieroglyphs work is illustrated by the two Egyptian words pronounced pr (usually vocalised as per). One word is 'house', and its hieroglyphic representation is straightforward:
Here the 'house' hieroglyph works as a logogram: it represents the word with a single sign. The vertical stroke below the hieroglyph is a common way of indicating that a glyph is working as a logogram.
Another word pr is the verb 'to go out, leave'. When this word is written, the 'house' hieroglyph is used as a phonetic symbol:
Here the 'house' glyph stands for the consonants pr. The 'mouth' glyph below it is a phonetic complement: it is read as r, reinforcing the phonetic reading of pr. The third hieroglyph is a determinative: it is an ideogram for verbs of motion that gives the reader an idea of the meaning of the word.
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Mummy
A mummy is a corpse whose skin and flesh have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs. Mummies of humans and other animals have been found throughout the world, both as a result of natural preservation through unusual conditions, and as cultural artifacts to preserve the dead.
Etymology
| Mummy (sˁḥ) |
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The English word mummy is derived from medieval Latin mumia, a borrowing of the Persian or Arabic word mūmiyyah , which means "bitumen". Because of the blackened skin bitumen was once thought to be used extensively in ancient Egyptian embalming procedures.
Deliberately embalmed mummies
The best known mummies are those that have been deliberately embalmed with the specific purpose of preservation, particularly those in ancient Egypt, where not only humans but also crocodiles and cats were mummified. Ancient Greek historians record that the Persians sometimes mummified their kings and nobility in wax, though this practice has never been documented in Egypt. The body of a Persian Princess which surfaced in 2004 in Pakistan turned out to have been forged. In China, preserved corpses have been recovered from submerged cypress coffins packed with medicinal herbs. Although Egyptian mummies are the most famous, the oldest mummies recorded are the Chinchorro mummies from northern Chile and southern Peru. Also among the oldest is Uan Muhuggiag which is a place in the central Sahara, and the name of the mummy of a small boy found there in 1958 by Professor Fabrizio Mori. The mummy displays a highly sophisticated mummification technique, and at around 5,500 years old is older than any comparable Ancient Egyptian mummy. The monks of Palermo in Sicily began mummifying their dead in 1599, and gradually other members of the community wished to have their bodies preserved as a status symbol. The last person to be mummified there died in the 1920s. The Capuchin catacombs of Palermo contain thousands of bodies, many which are clothed and standing, however in many cases the preservation was not successful with only the skeleton and clothing surviving.
Ancient Egypt
Although mummification existed in other cultures, eternal life was the main focus of all Ancient Egyptians, which meant preserving the body forever. Egyptian culture believed the body was home in the afterlife to a person's Ka and Ba, without which it would be condemned to eternal wandering.
The earliest known Egyptian "mummified" individual dates back to approximately 3300 BC. This individual, nicknamed 'Ginger' because of the color of his hair, is not internationally renowned despite being older than other famous mummies, such as Rameses II or Seti I. Currently on display in the British Museum, Ginger was discovered buried in hot desert sand. Desert conditions can naturally preserve bodies so it is uncertain whether the mummification was intentional or not. However, since Ginger was buried with some pottery vessels it is likely that the mummification was a result of preservation techniques of those burying him. Stones might have been piled on top to prevent the corpse from being eaten by jackals and other scavengers and the pottery might have held food and drink which was later believed to sustain the deceased during the journey to the other world. While there are no written records of religion from that time, the beliefs of those who buried Ginger could have resembled the later religion to some extent.
The earliest technique of deliberate mummification, as used ca. 3000 BC, was minimal and not yet mastered. The organs were eventually removed (with the exception of the heart) and stored in canopic jars, allowing the body to be more well-preserved as it rested. Occasionally embalmers would break the bone behind the nose, and break the brain into small pieces in order that it could be pulled out through the nasal passage. The embalmers would then fill the skull with thick plant-based resin or plant resin sawdust.
It also wasn’t until the Middle Kingdom that embalmers used natural salts to remove moisture from the body. The salt-like substance natron dried out and preserved more flesh than bone. Once dried, mummies were ritualistically anointed with oils and perfumes. The 21st Dynasty brought forth its most advanced skills in embalming and the mummification process reached its peak. The bodies' abdomens were opened and all organs, except for the heart, were removed and preserved in Canopic jars. The brain, thought to be useless, was pulled out through the nose with hooks, then discarded. It was also drained through the nose after being liquefied with the same hooks.
The emptied body was then covered in natron, to speed up the process of dehydration and prevent decomposition. Natron dries the body up faster than desert sand, preserving the body better. Often finger and toe protectors were placed over the mummies fingers and toes to prevent breakage. They were wrapped with strips of white linen that protected the body from being damaged. After that, they were wrapped in a sheet of canvas to further protect them. Many sacred charms and amulets were placed in and around the mummy and the wrappings. This was meant to protect the mummy from harm and to give good luck to the Ka of the mummy. Once preserved, the mummies were laid to rest in a sarcophagus inside a tomb, where it was believed that the mummy would rest eternally. In some cases the mummy's mouth would later be opened in a ritual designed to symbolize breathing, giving rise to legends about revivified mummies.
Scientific study of Egyptian mummies
Egyptian mummies became much sought-after by museums worldwide in the 19th and early 20th centuries and many exhibit mummies today. Notably fine examples are exhibited at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, at the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin, and at the British Museum in London. The Egyptian city of Luxor is also home to a specialized Mummification Museum. The mummified remains of what turned out to be Ramesses I ended up in a "Daredevil Museum" near Niagara Falls on the United States–Canada border; records indicate that it had been sold to a Canadian in 1860 and exhibited alongside displays such as a two-headed calf for nearly 140 years, until a museum in Atlanta, Georgia, which had acquired the mummy along with other artifacts, determined it to be royal and returned it to Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. It is currently on display in the Luxor Museum.
More recently, science has also taken interest in mummies. Dr. Bob Brier, an Egyptologist, has been the first modern scientist attempted to recreate a mummy using the ancient Egyptian method. Mummies have been used in medicine to calibrate CAT scan machines at levels of radiation that would be too dangerous for use on living people. In fact, mummies can be studied without unwrapping them using CAT scan and X-ray machines to form a digital image of what's inside. They have been very useful to biologists and anthropologists, as they have provided a wealth of information about the health and life expectancy of ancient people.
Scientists interested in cloning the DNA of mummies have recently reported findings of clonable DNA in an Egyptian mummy dating to circa 400 BC. Although analysis of the hair of Ancient Egyptian mummies from the Late Middle Kingdom has revealed evidence of a stable diet, Ancient Egyptian mummies from circa 3200 BC show signs of severe anaemia and hemolytic disorders.
Modern mummies
In the 1830s, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, left instructions to be followed upon his death which led to the creation of a sort of modern-day mummy. He asked that his body be displayed to illustrate how the "horror at dissection originates in ignorance"; once so displayed and lectured about, he asked that his body parts be preserved, including his skeleton, which were to be dressed in the clothes he usually wore and "seated in a Chair usually occupied by me when living in the attitude in which I am sitting when engaged in thought." His body, outfitted with a wax head created because of problems preparing it as Bentham requested, is on open display in the University College London.
During the early 20th century the Russian movement of Cosmism, as represented by Nikolaj Fedorov, envisioned scientific resurrection of dead people. The idea was so popular that, after Lenin's death, Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov suggested to cryonically preserve his body and brain in order to revive him in the future. Necessary equipment was purchased abroad, but for a variety of reasons the plan was not realized. Instead his body was embalmed and placed on permanent exhibition in the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow, where it is displayed to this day. The mausoleum itself was modeled by Aleksey Shchusev on the Pyramid of Djoser and the Tomb of Cyrus.
In the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, mummies were discovered in a cemetery of a city named Guanajuato northwest of Mexico City. They are accidental modern mummies and were literally "dug up" between the years 1896 and 1958 when a local law required relatives of the deceased to pay a kind of grave tax. The Guanajuato mummies are on display in the Museo de las momias, high on a hill overlooking the city. Another notable example of natural mummification in modern times is Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz , whose body is on exhibit in his native Kampehl.
In 1994 265 mummified bodies were found in the crypt of a Dominican church in Vác, Hungary from the 1729-1838 period. The discovery proved to be scientifically important, and by 2006 an exhibition was established in the Museum of Natural History in Budapest. In March 2006, the body of the Greek Orthodox Monk Vissarion Korkoliacos was found intact in his tomb, after fifteen years in grave. The event has led to a dispute between those who believe the preservation to be a miracle and those who claimed the possibility of natural mummification.
Summum
In 1975, an esoteric organization by the name of Summum introduced "Modern Mummification", a form of mummification that Summum claims uses modern techniques along with aspects of ancient methods. The service is available for spiritual reasons. Summum considers animals and people to have an essence that continues following the death of the body, and their mummification process is meant to preserve the body as a means to aid the essence as it transitions to a new destination. Summum calls this "transference," and the concept seems to correlate with ancient Egyptian reasons for mummification.
Rather than using a dehydration process that is typical of ancient mummies, Summum uses a chemical process that is supposed to maintain the body's natural look. The process includes leaving the body submerged in a tank of preservation fluid for several months. Summum claims its process preserves the body so well that the DNA will remain intact far into the future, leaving open the possibility for cloning should science perfect the technique on humans.
According to news stories, Summum has mummified numerous pets such as birds, cats, and dogs. People were mummified early on when Summum developed its process and many have made personal, "pre-need" arrangements. Summum has been included in television programs by National Geographic and the British Broadcasting Corporation, and is also discussed in the book The Scientific Study of Mummies by Arthur C. Aufderheide.
Plastination
Plastination is a technique used in anatomy to conserve bodies or body parts. The water and fat are replaced by certain plastics, yielding specimens that can be touched, do not smell or decay, and even retain most microscopic properties of the original sample.
The technique was invented by Gunther von Hagens when working at the anatomical institute of the University of Heidelberg in 1978. Von Hagens has patented the technique in several countries and is heavily involved in its promotion, especially with his travelling exhibition Body Worlds, exhibiting plastinated human bodies internationally. He also founded and directs the Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg.
Mummies in fiction
Mummies are commonly featured in romance genres as a undead creatures. During the 20th century, horror films and other mass media popularized the notion of a curse associated with mummies. Films representing such a belief include the 1932 movie "The Mummy" starring Boris Karloff as Imhotep; four subsequent 1940's Universal Studios mummy films which featured a mummy named Kharis, who also was the title mummy in a 1959 Hammer remake of "The Mummy's Hand" and "The Mummy's Tomb"; and a remake of the original film that was released in 1999. The belief in cursed mummies probably stems in part from the supposed curse on the tomb of Tutankhamun. In 1979, the American Broadcasting Company aired a TV holiday show, "The Halloween That Almost Wasn't", in which a mummy from Egypt (Robert Fitch) arrived at Count Dracula's castle without speaking.
In 1939, The Three Stooges spoofed the discovery of King Tutankhamun with their short film "We Want Our Mummy".
The 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by archaeologist Howard Carter brought mummies into the mainstream. Slapstick comedy trio the Three Stooges humorously exploited the discovery in the short film "We Want Our Mummy", in which they explored the tomb of the midget King Rutentuten. A decade later, they played crooked used chariot salesmen in "Mummy's Dummies", in which they ultimately assisted a different King Rootentootin (Vernon Dent) with a toothache.
Fictional mummies have also been prominently featured in comics and animation, such as Hakushin in the anime series "InuYasha", Anal Ho Tep from Eric Millikin's "Fetus-X", N'Kantu, the Living Mummy from Marvel Comics, and Mumm-Ra from the animated TV series "ThunderCats". A humorous cartoon mummy was also used as the mascot for General Mills' monster-themed breakfast cereal Yummy Mummy.
Egyptian pyramids
A view of the pyramids at Giza from the plateau to the south of the complex. From right to left are the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the Pyramid of Khafre and the Pyramid of Menkaure. The three smaller pyramids in the foreground are subsidiary structures associated with Menkaure's pyramid.
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The Egyptian Pyramids are ancient pyramid shaped structures located in Egypt. There are over 100 Egyptian pyramids, most of which were built during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods. The first Egyptian pyramid was the Pyramid of Djoser which was built during the third dynasty under King Djozer. The pyramid was designed by Imhotep as a tomb for the King. The best known egyptian pyramids are the Giza pyramids which are recognized among the largest structures ever built] and are the only remaining monuments of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
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Historic development
By the time of the early dynastic period of Egyptian history, those with sufficient means were buried in bench-like structures known as mastabas.
The first historically documented Egyptian pyramid is attributed to the architect Imhotep, who planned what Egyptologists believe to be a tomb for the pharaoh Djozer. Imhotep may have been the first to conceive the notion of stacking mastabas on top of each other — creating an edifice composed of a number of "steps" that decreased in size towards its apex. The result was the Step Pyramid of Djozer — which was designed to serve as a gigantic stairway by which the soul of the deceased pharaoh could ascend to the heavens. Such was the importance of Imhotep's achievement that he was deified by later Egyptians.[5]
The most prolific pyramid-building phase coincided with the greatest degree of absolutist pharaonic rule. It was during this time that the most famous pyramids, those near Giza, were built. Over time, as authority became less centralized, the ability and willingness to harness the resources required for construction on a massive scale decreased, and later pyramids were smaller, less well-built and often hastily constructed.
Long after the end of Egypt's own pyramid-building period, a burst of pyramid-building occurred in what is present-day Sudan, after much of Egypt came under the rule of the Kings of Napata. While Napatan rule was brief and ceased in 661 BC, the Egyptian influence made an indelible impression, and during the later Sudanese Kingdom of Meroe (approximately in the period between 300 BC–300 AD) this flowered into a full-blown pyramid-building revival, which saw more than two hundred indigenous, but Egyptian-inspired royal pyramid-tombs constructed in the vicinity of the kingdom's capital city.
Pyramid symbolism
The shape of Egyptian pyramids is thought to represent the primordial mound from which the Egyptians believed the earth was created. The shape is also thought to be representative of the descending rays of the sun, and most pyramids were faced with polished, highly reflective white limestone, in order to give them a brilliant appearance when viewed from a distance. Pyramids were often also named in ways that referred to solar luminescence. For example, the formal name of the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur was The Southern Shining Pyramid, and that of Senwosret at el-Lahun was Senwosret is Shining.
While it is generally agreed that pyramids were burial monuments, there is continued disagreement on the particular theological principles that might have given rise to them. One theory is that they were designed as a type of "resurrection machine"
The Egyptians believed the dark area of the night sky around which the stars appear to revolve was the physical gateway into the heavens. One of the narrow shafts that extends from the main burial chamber through the entire body of the Great Pyramid points directly towards the center of this part of the sky. This suggests the pyramid may have been designed to serve as a means to magically launch the deceased pharaoh's soul directly into the abode of the gods.
All Egyptian pyramids were built on the west bank of the Nile, which as the site of the setting sun was associated with the realm of the dead in Egyptian mythology.
Number and location of pyramids
The number of pyramid structures in Egypt today is reported by most sources as being between 81 and 112, with a majority favouring the higher number. In 1842 Karl Richard Lepsius made a list of pyramids, in which he counted 67. Pyramid 29 that Lepsius called the "Headless Pyramid" remained lost until being found in an archaeological dig in 2008. A great many more Pyramids have since been discovered.
The imprecise nature of the count is related to the fact that as many smaller pyramids are in a poor state of preservation and appear as little more than mounds of rubble, they are only now being properly identified and studied by archaeologists. Most are grouped in a number of pyramid fields, the most important of which are listed geographically, from north to south, below.
Abu Rawash
Abu Rawash is the site of Egypt's most northerly pyramid, the mostly ruined Pyramid of Djedefre, son and successor of Khufu. Originally it was thought that this pyramid had never been completed, but the current archaeological consensus is that not only was it completed, but that it was originally about the same size as the Pyramid of Menkaure, which would have made it among the half-dozen or so largest pyramids in Egypt.
Its location adjacent to a major crossroads made it an easy source of stone. Quarrying has left little apart from a few courses of stone superimposed upon the natural hillock that formed part of the pyramid's core. A small adjacent satellite pyramid is in a better state of preservation.
Giza
Map of Giza pyramid complex.
Giza is the location of the Pyramid of Khufu (also known as the "Great Pyramid" and the "Pyramid of Cheops"); the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre (or Kephren); the relatively modest-sized Pyramid of Menkaure (or Mykerinus), along with a number of smaller satellite edifices known as "Queen's pyramids"; and the Great Sphinx.
Of the three, only Khafre's pyramid retains part of its original polished limestone casing, near its apex. This pyramid appears larger than the adjacent Khufu pyramid by virtue of its more elevated location, and the steeper angle of inclination of its construction — it is, in fact, smaller in both height and volume.
The Giza Necropolis has been a popular tourist destination since antiquity, and was popularized in Hellenistic times when the Great Pyramid was listed by Antipater of Sidon as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Today it is the only one of those wonders still in existence.
[edit] Zawyet el-Aryan
See also: Zawyet el'Aryan
This site, halfway between Giza and Abu Sir, is the location for two unfinished Old Kingdom pyramids. The northern structure's owner is believed to be the Pharaoh Nebka, whilst the southern structure is attributed to the Third Dynasty Pharaoh Khaba, also known as Hudjefa, successor to Sekhemkhet. Khaba's four-year tenure as pharaoh more than likely explains the similar premature truncation of his step pyramid. Today it is approximately twenty meters in height; had it been completed it is likely to have exceeded 40.
Abu Sir
There are a total of seven pyramids at this site, which served as the main royal necropolis during the Fifth Dynasty. The quality of construction of the Abu Sir pyramids is inferior to those of the Fourth Dynasty — perhaps signaling a decrease in royal power or a less vibrant economy. They are smaller than their predecessors, and are built of low-quality local limestone.
The three major pyramids are those of Niuserre, Neferirkare Kakai and Sahure. The site is also home to the incomplete Pyramid of Neferefre. All of the major pyramids at Abu Sir were built as step pyramids, although the largest of them — the Pyramid of Neferirkare Kakai — is believed to have originally been built as a step pyramid some 70 metres in height and then later transformed into a "true" pyramid by having its steps filled in with loose masonry.
Saqqara
The Step Pyramid of Djozer
Major pyramids located here include the Step Pyramid of Djozer — generally identified as the world's oldest substantial monumental structure to be built of finished stone — the Pyramid of Merykare, the Pyramid of Userkaf and the Pyramid of Teti. Also at Saqqara is the Pyramid of Unas, which retains a pyramid causeway that is one of the best-preserved in Egypt. This pyramid was also the subject of one of the earliest known restoration attempts, conducted by a son of Ramesses II. Saqqara is also the location of the incomplete step pyramid of Djozer's successor Sekhemkhet, known as the Buried Pyramid. Archaeologists believe that had this pyramid been completed it would have been larger than Djozer's.
South of the main pyramid field at Saqqara is a second collection of later, smaller pyramids, including those of Pepi I, Isesi, Merenre, Ibi, Pepi II and Shepseskaf. Most of these are in a poor state of preservation.
Dahshur
Snofru's Red Pyramid
This area is arguably the most important pyramid field in Egypt outside Giza and Saqqara, although until 1996 the site was inaccessible due to its location within a military base, and hence was virtually unknown outside archaeological circles.
The southern Pyramid of Sneferu, commonly known as the Bent Pyramid is believed to be the first attempt at creating a pyramid with smooth sides. In this it was only a partial — but nonetheless visually arresting — success; it remains the only Egyptian pyramid to retain a significant proportion of its original limestone casing, and serves as the best example of the luminous appearance common to all pyramids in their original state. The northern, or Red Pyramid built at the same location by Sneferu was later successfully completed as the world's first true smooth-sided pyramid. Despite its relative obscurity, the Red Pyramid is actually the third largest pyramid in Egypt — after the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre at Giza. Also at Dahshur is the pyramid known as the Black Pyramid of Amenemhet III.
Mazghuna
Located to the south of Dahshur, this area was used in the First Intermediate Period by several kings who constructed their pyramids out of mudbrick. Today these structures are obscure and unimpressive.
Meidum
Sneferu's Pyramid at Meidum; the central core structure remains, surrounded by a mountain of rubble from the collapsed outer casing.
The pyramid at Meidum is one of three constructed during the reign of Sneferu, and is believed by some to have been started by that pharaoh's father and predecessor, Huni. However, this is not very likely, as his name does not appear on the site. Some archaeologists also suggest that the Meidum pyramid may have been the first unsuccessful attempt at the construction of a "true" or smooth-sided pyramid.
The pyramid suffered a catastrophic collapse in antiquity, and today only the central parts of its stepped inner core remain standing, giving it an odd tower-like appearance that is unique among Egyptian pyramids. The hill that the pyramid sits atop is not a natural landscape feature — it is the small mountain of debris created when the lower courses and outer casing of the pyramid gave way.
Hawara
el-LahunAmenemhet III was the last powerful ruler of the 12th Dynasty, and the pyramid he built at Hawarra, near Faiyum, is believed to post-date the so-called "Black Pyramid" built by the same ruler at Dahshur. It is the Hawarra pyramid that is believed to have been Amenemhet's final resting place.
The Pyramid of Senusret II. The pyramid's natural limestone core is clearly visible as the yellow stratum at its base.
The pyramid of Senusret II at el-Lahun is the southernmost royal-tomb pyramid structure in Egypt. Its builders reduced the amount of work necessary to construct it by ingeniously using as its foundation and core a 12-meter-high natural limestone hill.
