Ancient Egypt report

Ancient Egypt

By Shiloh Marriott

Government

Ancient Egypt was a hereditary monarchy. When The Pharaoh dies his oldest son takes his place, but if the son it too young to rule the mother runs the country in her sons name until he is of age. If there is no son then the mother rules, and when she dies the closest male relative becomes pharaoh. The word pharaoh meant “great house” and was referring to the palace where the king lived, but soon became the name of the ruler.

Ancient Egypt’s military was strong, though they did lose some wars. They learned from there mistakes. Before the new kingdom, young boys could pick a more secure job rather than a job in the military, but in the new kingdom, boys where sometimes forced. Ancient Egypt’s military used weapons such as bows, spears, rocks, slings, clubs, and growing sticks. Chariots where used to ride into battle. It was armed with a driver and a archer. Mercenaries where paid solders, but if they where paid more they would fight for the other side. 

The government officials worked directly for the king, this included, advisers, priests, wiremen, and the army chief. The government officials and the pyramid builders got paid with onions and garlic. The religious officials helped the pharaoh make decisions because it helped maintain peace. People in the lower class such as merchants, artisans, farmers and slaves. Ancient Egypt government is very interesting and fun to learn about. 

Justice system 

Ancient Egypt was a very religious country, they believed in many gods including Amun, Horus, Bastet and many others. They thought that these gods controlled the elements of nature. Pharaohs where the kings and law givers of Egypt. There where many punishments in ancient Egypt like 100 - 200 blows with sticks, cutting off the nose or ears and forced labor. The death sentence was rare because they where saved for worse crimes like attempted assassination of the pharaoh or tomb robbery. The forced labor punishment was also directed towards the criminals family. The had to work for as long as ten to twenty years. There was no official judge, there was no such thing as a judge in there language, but in the new kingdom they had officials that where called kenbet, and they acted like judges. Slaves where put into slavery if they could not pay off there debts or they would even sell themselves into slavery to get out of poverty.

Language & Learning 

Hieroglyphics are a form of writing used in ancient Egypt. It was mostly used for important or religious text. Only scribes where allowed to read and write. Scribes where men who learned how to read and write at a special school for scribes, but it was very difficult to learn all those symbols. In order to become a scribe you had to be a son of a scribe, or some times a craftsmen could get his son into the scribe school, but that was rare. It could take 3 - 5 years to finish scribe school. 

The Rosetta stone is a very important relic from ancient Egypt. It was found in Rosetta (Rashid) in Egypt, thats why it is called the Rosetta Stone. It was found by Napoleons solders in 1799. It is super important because before we found it, we had a hard time translating hieroglyphics intel the Rosetta Stone. We only figured hieroglyphics because on the Rosetta Stone it was the same story written three times in three different  scripts, hieroglyphics, demonic, and greek, comparing hieroglyphics to the other languages. 

In ancient Egypt a year was 365 days with 30 days in a month with 5 extra days. Papyrus were thin pieces of paper like sheets made from papyrus plant, it was one of the first forms of paper. Pyramids were made mostly made of lie stone. No one really knows how the lime stone blocks got raised to make a pyramid, but people think it was by ramps because wooden ramps have been found near pyramids. 

Egyptians believed that they got sick because there gods where angry, so doctors would pray and preform rituals on the sick. They also surprisingly new a lot about the body, but they had weird remedies and medicines like how they used cow and horse hooves to make tooth paste and they used putrid donkey liver as black hair dye.

When they first started to mummify a dead body was because they thought it was uncomfortable for there loved ones to be buried in the sand so they used woven baskets then developed to wooden coffins. But then the bacteria in the body was contained and decomposed the body, so the Egyptians tried rapping them in linen but it did not work. Eventually they figured out that the bacteria lives mostly in there organs, this is why they took the organs out and put them in jars. Learning about hoe Egyptians learn is very interesting.