More Egypt 2

• Upper Egypt was a 500 mile long strip of fertile land along the Nile
• Lower Egypt was the wide land of the Nile delta, emptying into the Mediterranean Sea
• The Nile was the major provider of life for the Egyptian and much is revered in lore and writing 
• around 3100 B.C. the two lands combined
• Pharaoh was all powerful, worshiped as a god, and intimately connected to the other major Egyptian gods and goddesses
• Egyptians relied on a harmony and balance in which they called maat
• Pharaohs had multiple wives and all routes to financial and social success were though the palace
• Goddess maat is the opposite of goddess isfet
• women could inherit money and land and could divorce their husbands, though only a few had real political power
• Gods were often portrayed as having animal heads or bodies
• Egyptians believed in afterlife (ka), and they mummified bodies to preserve them for the past-death journey
• all souls would need to justify themselves at the point of death and be either send to an after-world paradise or the jaws of a monster
• earliest Egyptian writing formed around 3100 B.C. and were small pictures known as hieroglyphics
• egyptian script was usually written in ink on papyrus
• papyrus, the precursor to paper, was stored in scrolls and these scrolls were books of ancient egypt
• Egyptian astronomers created a calender 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 common ailments 
• wooden sail boats were constructed to increase transportation ability on the Nile
• the pyramid were massive stone tombs, 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 of interior painting depicted humans and gods in a series of regulated poses, often in profile and without perspective but were highly affected