Ancient Egyptian: Ways Of Life Essay, Research Paper

The Egyptians were the first to make bread that is soft, light and filled with air. They also made the first ovens, because they need a different way to bake the larger mass of dough used for this new kind of bread. The Egyptians used mud bricks that have been dried in the sun to make houses.

The sun is shining on our backs. In town ,we shall be paid fish for our barley.

That was a song of Egyptian farmers , more than 3,000 year ago. Wall paintings in ancient tombs show farmers at work in their fields. The early Egyptians had hundreds of signs for words or for parts of words. Like other ancient people, the Egyptians often wrote on clay tablets or stone. It was from one such stone, the Rosetta Stone, that we learned ancient languages. Cheops was the name of a king in ancient Egypt who wanted a place to stay when he died. So he ordered his men to build a huge stone house in the shape of a pyramid. A pyramid looks somewhat like a giant tent. The base of this pyramid is almost big enough to fill ten football fields. Its peak is as high as a stairway with more than eight hundred stairs. Kings of Egypt used to be buried in great tombs with jewels and golden vases, and even thrones and chariots. The tombs had so many valuable things in them, that thieves used to break into them and steal their treasures. So later kings decided to hide their tombs. They left orders for their burials to be in a secret place called the Valley of the Kings. The graves were not to be marked. But, still, the jewels in golden vases and thrones and chariots were stolen. When historians checked it out they found out who stole the treasures, that?s right the men who were supposed to guard the tombs.

The Great Sphinx

The Great Sphinx was built almost 5,000 years ago , when Khafre was king of Egypt. It had a human head and a lions body. It stands 66 feet high and more than 240 feet long. Both head and body were carved from solid rock. The head of the Sphinx has been damaged more than once by people who destroy things on purpose.

Over the centuries, desert sand storms have also warn away some of the stone.

The Giant Statue on the Shore

In Egypt , there is a statue so big that eight men can sit on one of its feet. It is one the giant statues of King Ramses the 2nd

that stands outside two temples. When the Egyptians decided to build a new high dam across the Nile, it meant that the river waters rising behind the dam would flood the temples. The temples and the statues had to be cut into many huge blocks. Each block was numbered and raised to the top of the cliff. The numbers helped the workers to know how to put the blocks back together again. The cliff where the temples were first built is now covered with water.

The Great Stone Tent

To build the pyramid they didn?t use cranes or bulldozers, they used wooden ramps. Each stone weighed as much as four cows. How did the men lift these stones to the top of the pyramid? Maybe the men pulled the giant stones up a ramp on sled. These pyramids took twenty years to build.(Today it only would take one to build a pyramid.) Today the Great Pyramid still stands in Egypt. People from all over the world still come to see this Great Pyramid.

The Nile River Valley

The Nile is the largest river in Africa and the largest river in the world. It flows north into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile floods every year, so over the years the Egyptians began to be able to predict when the Nile river would overflow. When the Nile floods the Egyptians get a surplus of food and crops. The Nile flows about 6,677 km. Through Africa. The river has been used for irrigation since 4000 BC .

The Euphrates River

The Euphrates is the longest river in Western Asia. It is 1,700 miles long. Because of Iraq?s hot ,dry climate much of the rivers water is lost through evaporation and used for irrigation. There are two flood peirods each year. The rivers carry a heavy load of silt and have deposited much of it. The major tributaries of the Euphrates are the Balikh, Al Khabur , and Gharraf Channel.

The Tigris River

The streams that join to form the Tigris River begin in high mountains near Lake Van in Turkey. As the Tigris River flows out of Turkey it touches the northeastern border of Syria and flows southeastward toward Iraq. In Iraq it is joined by tributaries from the east. These tributaries are Great Zab , Little Zab , and Diyala. The Euphrates, west of the Tigris flows in the same direction toward the Persian Gulf. The Tigris is 1,880 miles long. The fertile region between the Euphrates and the Tigris is called Mesopotamia, this was named by the Ancient Greeks. Since ancient times the people of Mesopotamia have depended on the water of the two rivers to irrigate their hot and dry land. The Persian Gulf is filled with about 70 feet of water a year from the Tigris and the Euphrates River.