AncientEgypt was one of the oldest cultures that ever existed from NeolithicRevolution until the Achaemenid Persian Empire.
It is known as a big empirethat conquered Egypt in the 6th century BCE. The longest Nile riverbeing the main reason in flourishing the land of Egypt. Since then, life ofEgyptians has been supported by its annual inundation which created the fertilelands. Besides, The Egyptians believed there were gods of Nile, the afterlifeand they built tombs, statues and temples in their favor. The Gods that theywere worshipped to are Re, Isis, Seth and Horus. A few years then, Egyptstarted to develop into a big empire as they had Pharaoh who is a supreme yetpowerful ruler at that time. The pharaohs also being considered as a God byEgyptians. The changes of the kingdom since Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom to theNew Kingdom was successfully ruled by the pharaohs.
Through the changes of thekingdom, more cultural activities were developed which still exist until today suchas mummification, medicine, the language used (hieroglyphics), the Amarnaletter (used as traded and diplomacy) and papyrus which make a unique andinteresting for me to learn in this course. Therefore, I will summarize andbriefly describe and give my reflection about few things that attracted me throughmy studies for this course of history of ancient Egypt and west Asia.Importance ofarchitectural, engineering and invention to a civilization Ithink the technological advances are important from a historical perspectivebecause the Egyptians provided such a strong foundation for the organization ofcivilization. This is proven from the cultural and societal beliefs surroundedwith religions and maintains an idea of there is world in afterlife. Religion wasappeared to guide the Egyptians in every part of their lives. This lead them tobuild something so massive like building pyramids and tombs for their gods inorder to show extreme devotion to their gods and religion. I found that havingreligion as a guiding hand to build civilization set in place a hierarchy forthe Egyptian society, with a god to look up to, a god-pharaoh to worship onearth, and everyone, in their appropriate place, below the god-pharaoh.
The establishmentof theocracy and religion within the Egyptian society was extremely importantto build a civilization foundation and hierarchy. Columns, the famous Egyptiantemples is an example of architectural advance in Egypt with its amazingstructures. Generally, columns were used to support a building and it also allowsthe great tombs created for religious purpose. Therefore, the development ofcolumn is an evidence how in order for the Egyptians to build their ideas tofruition, they had to establish important architectural structures. Anotherexample of invention of Egyptians were their advancement in mathematics fieldwhere for instance, they used the system of fraction in their everyday life torecord land measurements. This can be proven with the event in Deir el-Medinavillage, where they recorded the volumes of dirt removed while quarrying tombs.The event shows that the use of mathematics is important in order to performany architectural.
In addition, the literacy of Egyptians that found inhieroglyphs form was the evidence that there was a development of alphabet. Hieroglyphswere unique as it contained a mix of ideograms and phonetic symbols which thenwe realized that there was a started for many professions of scribes werespecialized and privileged. It comes to a natural way when there was a massivedevelopment of paper (also called as papyrus) as there were a huge number ofscript produced at that time. This is also important for them for the purposeof education and developing texts for business, historical researched,mathematical recorded, and medicine-related. I assume that, the development ofpapyrus paper is the greater evidence of the Egyptians ability to form othertechnological advance with the reason that the Egyptians needed to transmit theknowledge or information through paper instead of verbal communication. This isalso the reason of the Egyptians can maintain its hierarchy and can enforce thegovernmental structure easily.
Explorationof the rise and fall of the earliest empire and reason why the empire of Egyptis last longerFrom mypoint of view, factors that contribute to a last long one empire are the civilizationneed to be organized, easy to defend, wealthy and also must be unified underthe government. This can be found through the development of ancient Egypt andalso may be the reasons why other earliest empire easily to collapse. In general,wealth will always become a strong factor for a governing body to create moreprojects that can benefit the whole government and the citizens itself. In orderto create wealth, labors are needed to form a trade and diplomacy as what theking of Egypt did (sent an Amarna letter to create trade and diplomacy) duringthe middle Kingdom. However, trade is not always being the main reason incontributing to a strong empire but strong military may be the second factor.
Thisis because
