Education

Ancient Egypt

By N.S. Gill, About.com Guide

Ancient Egyptian history spans millennia. It was part of the fertile crescent and had contact with Mesopotamia, was conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great and became a very important part of the Hellenistic and then the Roman Empire. Alexandria, the great city named for the Macedonian conqueror, was home to the famous library and museum complex where some of the greatest Greek scientists left their marks.

Queens of Egypt
Periods of Egyptian History
Pyramids and Other Egyptian Structures
Alexandria
Religion and the Afterlife

Medicine, Technology and Science
Life in Ancient Egypt
Writing
Quizzes

Queens of Egypt

3,400-year-old bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti.

Cleopatra, Nefertiti, and Hatshepsut are the best known of the queens of ancient Egypt. All were exceptional.

Periods of Egyptian History

Ancient Egypt was ruled by pharaohs. These pharaohs could be Egyptians or foreigners who gained control. By the time of the Greeks and Romans, local rule was done. There were periods of relative stability, the old, new, and middle kingdoms, and periods when the rule was less so. These latter were the intermediate periods.

Pyramids and Other Egyptian Structures

Egyptian pyramids are the most familiar symbol of ancient Egypt, but there were temple complexes, sphinxes, and the famed lighthouse.

Alexandria

Alexandria was home to the Macedonian Greeks who came to rule Egypt in the wake of Alexander the Great. It was home to a famous library/museum complex where philosophers like the famous Hypatia may have met with her pupils. Christianity found a home in this metropolitan area that was the London/Paris/Hong Kong/New York of its time.

Religion and the Afterlife

The Egyptians believed in a variety of gods and in an afterlife that resembled life on earth and for that reason pharaohs were buried with the supplies they would need.

Medicine, Technology and Science

From paper making to papyrus documents recording medical observations to Greek and Roman borrowings, the innovations of the ancient Egyptians had a lasting impact. Some of the major Greek scientists from the Hellenistic period on were stationed in Alexandria.

Life in Ancient Egypt

Ancient musicians and singers, Tomb of Nevothph, Beni-Hassan-el-Qadin. (1844-1889)

Egyptians lived thanks to the bounty of the Nile and most engaged in farming. There was also a substantial workforce devoted to the needs of the pharaoh.

Writing

Papyrus Fragments from Homer's Iliad Book II.

Monuments as well as papyrus provide us with much of the detail we possess about ancient Egypt. The Egyptians decorated their monuments not just with relief sculptures of the faces of the pharaohs, but with the pictorial writing so characteristic of Egypt that we know of as hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs aren't the only writing style found in Egypt. With the presence of the Greeks after Alexander, there is a lot of material in Greek, and there is also the script known as demotic. A great source of waste paper, the city of Oxyrhynchus is looked upon as a source of information on the world of early Christianity as well as administrative and civil details.

Quizzes

Here are some self-grading simple quizzes on ancient Egypt.

Ancient / Classical History