Advancements of the Ancient Egyptians and Their Impacts

The Egyptians decided that they needed some sort of way to express the thinking of their mind. They decided to invent the art of writing so that they could keep track of their thoughts. In the beginning they did not have the knowledge to understand the alphabet yet. This did not stop them, because they decided to record their ideas through different pictures instead of words. This is popularly known as ‘Hieroglyph’ with it being written by the priests.

They did not stay with this practice forever, because at first they just used pictures until they figured out pictographic signs and used around 2000 of them. They would eventually reduce the number of pictographic signs down to 700 to make it easier for them. You can actually see an example of this practice at the British Museum in London where they have the ‘Rosetta Stone’ on display. In due time they would advance on from this practice and use pen and paper.

Later on they figured out how to make pen and paper to be able to use to record their knowledge. They used a plant that was named the ‘Papyrus’ and there was plenty of this plant along the Nile. They figured out that you could take the leaves of the plant and join them through gum and roll the long roll to prepare it. The modern name of ‘Paper’ perhaps may have actually been derived from the term ‘Papyrus’. It was a normal practice for them to extract juices from the plant and they would then prepare the ‘ink’ by mixing gum and water with it.

The Egyptians were smart enough to figure out that they could prepare ink by mixing gum with the black particles that was normally found in kitchen homes or lamps. It is interesting how they used every part of the plant as they would sharpen the edge of the stem of a plant and then prepared ‘reed pen’. Then they would dip the pen into the ‘ink pot’ and then write on the papyrus. The last thing would be put pieces of papyrus that were rolled up into earthen pots. It is interesting to think about the fact that they were able to write onto paper and it is a noble invention of the Egyptians.

Another great advancement that the Egyptians achieved was the art and architecture of building the Pyramid. The Pyramid was created by the Egyptians to use as tombs for the Pharaoh. It was believed by the Egyptians that after death, the soul would eventually come back to their body. The belief of the afterlife and the soul returning to the body they thought that they should preserve the dead body of the Pharaoh by using chemicals in them. The process of preserving the body of the Pharaoh was known as Mummification. The body was covered with cloth and then placed inside of a coffin. The coffin was actually placed inside a stone box which contained small holes and was known as the Sarcophagus.

They had the thought of the afterlife with the Sarcophagus so that the soul would be able to enter into the body through the holes in the box. The building of the Pyramids was a major accomplishment and among the Pyramids of Egypt, the one that was built by Pharaoh Josher at Sakara is the oldest one. One of the most well-known and largest Pyramids ever build was done under Pharaoh Khufu at Gizeh. This Pyramid is known by most as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. This gigantic Pyramid was 481 feet tall and was built over 13 acres of land with 2,300,000 pieces of stones. These amazing works of architecture were incredible, because they stacked these stones that weighed around 2.5 tons and they did not have the modern technology that we have today that would have made it easy. The building was done by hand and the Khufu Pyramid was the largest of all the Pyramids, so it took nearly twenty years.

One of the most vital things in the life of an Egyptian was Religion. They all believed in Polytheism and worshipped around 2200 gods and goddesses. It was known for them to attach a divinity to a creature and worship them. They had a crocodile god who was famous as ‘Sibek’ and their cat god was known as ‘Pashat’. The Egyptians regarded ‘Ra’ as the God of the universe and his song ‘Osiris’ was famous as the ‘Lord of Egypt’ and also as Justice of the departed soul. Osiris was known to the people as the god of poor and destitute. There was an influential community of priest that was in Egypt so that they could worship these gods and goddesses.

The field of religion would be changed in a major way by the Pharaoh Akhnaton that introduced ‘Monotheism’. He brought to life the belief that there was only one God and he is the ‘Sun-god’ or ‘Aton. He created the concept of offering fruits in vegetables of animal sacrifices. A major concept with religion was the belief in life after death and that deals with the building of Pyramids. It was thought that Osiris would either be sending a man to heaven or hell after his judgement of them. There was a belief that if you did good deeds as a human then you would be likely to go to heaven and hell if you did bad deeds.