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Learn about the history, politics, and demographics of the Egyptian state from 1922 to 1953, when it was nominally independent but still under British influence. Find out how the Kingdom of Egypt was established, recognized, and dissolved, and what happened to its territories and successors.
Learn about the period of ancient Egyptian history from c.2700 to c.2200 BC, when the pyramids were built and the pharaohs ruled as gods. Find out the history, art, religion, and decline of the Old Kingdom.
- Overview
- Life in ancient Egypt
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Egyptian kings are commonly called pharaohs, following the usage of the Bible. The term pharaoh is derived from the Egyptian per ʿaa (“great estate”) and to the designation of the royal palace as an institution. This term was used increasingly from about 1400 BCE as a way of referring to the living king.
What were the two types of writing in ancient Egypt?
The two basic types of writing in ancient Egypt were hieroglyphs, which were used for monuments and display, and the cursive form known as hieratic, invented at much the same time in late predynastic Egypt (c. 3000 BCE).
Which pharaoh probably built the first true pyramid?
Snefru was the first king of ancient Egypt of the 4th dynasty (c. 2575–c. 2465 BCE). He probably built the step pyramid of Maydūm and then modified it to form the first true pyramid.
Who was the first king to unify Upper and Lower Egypt?
Ancient Egypt can be thought of as an oasis in the desert of northeastern Africa, dependent on the annual inundation of the Nile River to support its agricultural population. The country’s chief wealth came from the fertile floodplain of the Nile valley, where the river flows between bands of limestone hills, and the Nile delta, in which it fans into several branches north of present-day Cairo. Between the floodplain and the hills is a variable band of low desert that supported a certain amount of game. The Nile was Egypt’s sole transportation artery.
The First Cataract at Aswān, where the riverbed is turned into rapids by a belt of granite, was the country’s only well-defined boundary within a populated area. To the south lay the far less hospitable area of Nubia, in which the river flowed through low sandstone hills that in most regions left only a very narrow strip of cultivable land. Nubia was significant for Egypt’s periodic southward expansion and for access to products from farther south. West of the Nile was the arid Sahara, broken by a chain of oases some 125 to 185 miles (200 to 300 km) from the river and lacking in all other resources except for a few minerals. The eastern desert, between the Nile and the Red Sea, was more important, for it supported a small nomadic population and desert game, contained numerous mineral deposits, including gold, and was the route to the Red Sea.
To the northeast was the Isthmus of Suez. It offered the principal route for contact with Sinai, from which came turquoise and possibly copper, and with southwestern Asia, Egypt’s most important area of cultural interaction, from which were received stimuli for technical development and cultivars for crops. Immigrants and ultimately invaders crossed the isthmus into Egypt, attracted by the country’s stability and prosperity. From the late 2nd millennium bce onward, numerous attacks were made by land and sea along the eastern Mediterranean coast.
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At first, relatively little cultural contact came by way of the Mediterranean Sea, but from an early date Egypt maintained trading relations with the Lebanese port of Byblos (present-day Jbail). Egypt needed few imports to maintain basic standards of living, but good timber was essential and not available within the country, so it usually was obtained from Lebanon. Minerals such as obsidian and lapis lazuli were imported from as far afield as Anatolia and Afghanistan.
Learn about ancient Egypt, a civilization in northeastern Africa that dates from the 4th millennium BCE. Explore its achievements, monuments, religion, writing, and more.
May 13, 2024 · Learn about the history of ancient Egypt from the Predynastic Period to the Roman Era, with dates, definitions, and sources. Explore the chronology, culture, and achievements of the Egyptian civilization.
- Joshua J. Mark
- Content Director
Sep 26, 2016 · Learn about the Old Kingdom of Egypt, also known as the 'Age of the Pyramids', when the 4th Dynasty built the pyramids of Giza and the central government was strong. Find out how the Old Kingdom ended and why it is not a collapse but a transition to the First Intermediate Period.
- Joshua J. Mark
Oct 14, 2009 · Learn about the rise and fall of the ancient Egyptian empire, from its unification under Menes to its conquest by Alexander the Great. Explore the achievements, art, religion and mysteries of one of the world's oldest and most influential civilizations.
Learn about the long and wealthy history of Egypt, from the predynastic period to the modern republic. Explore the ancient Egyptian civilization, the Greco-Roman period, the Islamic conquest, the Ottoman rule, the British occupation, and the Kingdom of Egypt.
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