February 25, 2015: Class notes

In class today we took more notes on Ancient Egypt while a few other people did the online pyramid because they weren't here yesterday. 

Government by a God-king 

- Pharaoh was all powerful, worshiped as a God and intimately connected to other major Egyptian gods and goddesses

- Egyptians relied on a harmony and balance of the universe, which they called "maat" (known as Nirvana to Buddhists)

- Pharaohs had multiple wives, and all routes to financial and social success through the palace

- Women could inherit money and land and divorce their husbands, though only a tiny few ever wielded real political power

Gods, Humans, and Everlasting Life

- Gods were often portrayed with animal heads and bodies

- Egyptians believed in an afterlife and 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

The Writings of the Words of God

- Earliest Egyptian writing formed c. 3100 B.C.E. and were small pictures known as hieroglyphs 

- Hieroglyphs represented religious words, or part of words, and most commonly adorned temples

- Hieratic script was a shorthand developed by scribes and priests

- Hieratic script was usually written in ink on Papyrus, which was made from mashed Nile reeds

- Papyrus, the precursor of paper, was stored in scrolls and these scrolls were the books of Ancient Egypt 

Calendars and Sailboats

- Egyptian astronomers created a calendar with 12 months and 365 days to make better sense of the seasonal cycles 

- Due to their excellent knowledge of human anatomy, Egyptian doctors wrote extensively on health issues and created potions and cures for a number of common ailments. 

- wooden sailboats were constructed to increase transport ability on the Nile

Pyramids and Temples

- The pyramids were massive stone temples, originally covered in marble but the marble was later stripped off during the Muslim conquest

- The temple of Amon at Karnak is 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