2. INTRODUCTION TO ANCIENT EGYPT

ADMINISTRATIVE: Prof. Wilfong's office hours still TBA

Section meetings this week

No recording or professional note-taking without permission

Academic integrity issues: no cheating


EGYPT

·Location
·Modern Egypt vs. Ancient Egypt
·Geography and Environment
•Historical overview

Egypt in the modern world


MODERN EGYPT:
Arab Republic of Egypt

Area: about 400,000 square miles
Population: about 55,000,000 people
Official Language: Arabic
Majority Religion: Islam
(significant minority of Coptic Christians)
Government: Republic

Main sources of income: Agriculture and Tourism


ANCIENT EGYPT
Kemet
Aigyptos, Aegyptus > Egypt

Area: varies
Population: never more than a few million
Official language: Ancient Egyptian, later Greek
Religion: indigenous Egyptian belief system (subject of course!)
Form of government: monarchy (divine king as ruler)
Major economic activities: Agriculture and (later) tourism


Nile River:

-Nile flows north from central Africa
-Annual flooding of Nile irrigates farm land
-Nile branches into Delta
-Nile flows into Mediterranean Sea

NILE: cross-section
-Nile
-Farm land/flood plain
-Low desert
-High desert

Regular cycle of agriculture

Cyclical thinking/cyclical time

Repeating religious calendar

Environmental features important for religion?

Nile
Sun
Desert
Fertile farm land
Water


Ancient Egypt:

Dating
Chronological Systems

Dating Systems:
B.C. / A.D.
"Before Christ" / "Anno Domini"

B.C.E. / C.E.
"Before Common Era" / "Common Era"

Course covers roughly
3000-300 BC/BCE


"Circa"
or "c."

"About"

As in:
c. 1950 B.C.E. =
"about 1950 B.C.E."


Kinds of evidence

Archaeological evidence

Context:
Funerary (tombs, burials)
Temple (sites of worship, cult)

Settlement (where people lived)


Representational Evidence

Painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.

Egyptian conventions of representation:
-Human figures as composites of views
-Canon of proportions
-Size relates to status
-Art as diagram: limited use of perspective


Textual evidence

Written words, connected text, compositions

Egyptian writing: hieroglyphs and cursive forms:
-picture writing
-signs represent sounds and/or ideas
-vowels not written
-interaction of text and image

Egyptian language

Scripts:
Hieroglyphic
Hieratic
Demotic
Coptic

Egyptian Language

"Afroasiatic family"
Semitic: Akkadian, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.
African: Bedja, Berber, Bantu, etc.


Rosetta stone

Egyptian
Hieroglyphs

Demotic
(also Egyptian)

Greek


Greeks and Romans

Plutarch (important for Egyptian religion)

Manetho:

Egyptian history divided into
DYNASTIES
(families of rulers)

Egyptologists:

Further group dynasties into periods:

Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, etc.
First Intermediate Period, Second Intermediate Period, etc.


Problems for the beginning Egyptologist:

Names
Different spellings
Amen, Amon, Amun, Ammon, etc.
Amenhotep, Amunhotpe, Amenophis, etc.
Egyptian versus Greek
Hor/Horus, Ise/Isis, Djheuty/Thoth,
Taweret/Thoëris, etc.

Dates
No one agrees!