And now we get to head off to Egypt. Now Egypt is contemporary in time with Mesopotamia. In other words, both civilizations are growing around the same point in history, but as even though they're happening at the same time, they are very different from one another in the way that they develop and the kind of culture that ends up being created. Now part of that is simply because of the geography of the location.
Mesopotamia, remember the land between the rivers? It is a rough place to live. They're going to be really creative when it comes to survival, when it comes to figuring out how to remain in some sense organized and stable in a world where politics and the environment itself is often against them. Egypt isn't that kind of a place. Egypt is incredibly stable and largely thanks to its location.
Egypt is located along the banks of the Nile River in the ancient world. Now Egypt is originally broken up into multiple kingdoms, but two large ones show up often in Egyptian history. That is Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt.
Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt are often combined into a single unified state of Egypt, but at different points in history they will be separate or they will be ruled by two co-rulers instead of being two completely separate countries or being unified into a single unified Egypt. Now, this is where I get problems. And you guys can't actually see me, but if you could you would see me stopping and squinching up my face as I try to get this right and as we go through Egypt. Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt are backwards to my head because we are on the southern half of the globe, which means that the river is running from south to north, which means Upper Egypt is upriver, so it is south. It's further down on the map.
Lower Egypt is the lower part of the river. It includes the Nile Delta, which is a large, very fertile, swampy area on the banks of the Mediterranean Sea, and it is lower even though it is higher on the map. Yeah, it's like that.
I get so confused. Anyway, Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt are different regions, but they both share the blessing of the freshwater of the Nile River, which is what makes them habitable. Now, Egyptian language really shows us Exactly how important the Nile River is in ancient Egypt.
In ancient Egyptian language, there are only two words for travel, upriver and downriver. So in other words, there is not even a word in the ancient Egyptian language for traveling to the east or the west. Basically, you only traveled upriver and downriver.
Traveling any other direction was unthinkable. Egypt is incredibly stable because it's centered on the banks of the Nile River and because there's not a lot of chance for political upheaval. When I showed you Mesopotamia, I showed you how many different groups of people lived in that same region and they were constantly vying for political superiority. Egypt doesn't work that way and there's very little chance for conquest.
If you look, you'll see that the Egyptian Nile River, where all of the center of farming and culture is located, lies on the map between the Western Desert and the Eastern Desert. In other words, it kind of lies between two areas that say, don't go here, don't go here, you're going to die. There really isn't a way to march an army through that at this point in history. The only places where there are really threats are from the Mediterranean Sea.
The problem is you've got the Nile Delta there, and it's going to be very hard to invade or attack Egypt through that swampy region with ships. You can attack from the south coming upward, and that does happen on numerous occasions. And you can attack through what we would call the Sinai Peninsula.
Still, those angles, those methods of attack are nothing. They're tiny compared to what we see in Mesopotamia. Egyptian culture is almost completely centered on the Nile River because the Nile River is life. That fresh water provides them life and sustenance.
All of the farm fields in Egypt are also on the banks of the Nile River. We talked about Mesopotamia. I talked about how they had terraced fields with little walls around them and canals and they had to figure out how to keep the water in, how to keep the water out.
Mesopotamian farming is very different. They have crop rotation. Egypt simply plants their crops on the banks of the Nile River. The reason it's so simple for Egypt is because of the Nile River Flood. Now the Nile River Flood is an annual event.
You can see in the photograph on your screen with the modern buildings in the background that it still happens to this day. The waters rise around the end of June, and basically the flood period lasts for several months. Then there's a planting and growing period at that point, and essentially what happens is that the soil is, number one, watered because it's flooded with fresh water, and number two, soil is exchanged every year. What do I mean by that?
In Mesopotamia, I told you they were the first people to invent crop rotation because essentially they have to to keep the nutrients in their soil by growing different things in the soil in different years. Egypt, when the Nile River floods, The Nile River washes up over the farm fields. The current of the river washes away the topsoil and brings fresh, nutrient-rich topsoil that has not been used in farm fields and drops it on the farm fields.
When the river recedes, It leaves fresh dirt behind. They never have to worry about their crops growing because they get new dirt every year. The Mesopotamians have nothing like this. The Egyptians have the luxury of essentially never having to worry about the fields and the soil in them.
It is naturally replenished and that water, that water is life. In Egyptian life, in Egyptian culture, in Egyptian belief, in Egyptian mythology, the Nile River represents life. Because it is what gives their fields life and allows their crops to grow.
Now, I can say that. I can say that passionately. But you know what says it a lot better than me?
A picture. Here, look at this. Yeah, yeah, see that? Can you tell where the river stops flooding?
Gee, let me think really hard. Guys, this is why Egypt is able to be so stable. This is why Egyptian culture focuses so strongly on the Nile River. The Nile River is what lets them live, because that fresh water provides them life, and it keeps their fields and crops growing year by year by year. Now that Nile River also shapes Egyptian culture in another way.
It creates a culture around it that is what we call cyclical. Everything in Egyptian culture goes essentially in cycles. Things repeat over and over again, and of course they move forward. Of course they change, but ultimately there is a pattern. The Nile River floods every year around the same time of year.
The Nile River retreats around the same time every year. You plant crops around the same time every year. Everything in Egypt is constantly changing, but it repeats recognizable patterns. That idea of cycles, that cyclical culture, is reflected as well in the way the Egyptians structure their calendar.
For them, their calendar is structured on the lunar month, the 28-day cycle of the moon, which is strongly related to agriculture. An Egyptian year lasts between 12 and 13 cycles. Now, it varies because, like I said, a lunar month is around 28 days. So if you have 12 months of 28 days, you're not going to come up with the correct number of days that we have in our calendar. Essentially, their calendar is increasingly incorrect every year, which is why they have a correction point.
they check where the star Sirius, what we would call the dog star, rises on the horizon, and there's a marked point where it's supposed to rise. When it no longer rises in the correct location, they add an extra month, making a year of 13 lunar cycles in order to correct for the error in the number of days in their months. Now we know this thanks to documents like what you're seeing on the screen.
That's actually the broken off part of an Egyptian obelisk. An obelisk is a form of steel. It's a marker stone. It's a tall rectangular stone with a pyramid at the top.
The easiest reference modern world, a minute, minute nine that states, is actually the Washington Monument. The Washington Monument is an obelisk shape. This is the top of an obelisk recording the Egyptian calendar, and again, it's all about cycles.
Now, that pyramid shape on the top is also worth mentioning at this point, simply because it's going to keep coming back up. I mean, most people immediately recognize Egyptian pyramids. That Egyptian pyramid structure actually goes back to Egyptian mythology. Like many things in Egyptian culture, it has its roots in their religious belief system. In Egyptian mythology, there are many different stories, many different variations on stories.
You'll discover that in a little bit. But one of the stories deals with actually a creator being, a creator god, and he is actually a self-created being. His name is Atum.
He's a maker or creator. In many of the stories, Atum is the first god who creates himself out of the chaos. In that story, in that version, the earth is covered with ocean, with water, with this black unshaped sea.
And Atum appears on one tiny piece of land in that sea. That tiny piece of land, that origin of all life and all order, is a pyramid-shaped piece of soil. That pyramid-shaped piece represents the beginning of life, it represents the origin of life, and it represents the rebirth of life.
The Egyptians also have a creature in their mythology called the Benu bird, which is a bird that lands on that tiny pyramid-shaped piece of land, lays its eggs, and then destroys itself to rise again to be reborn on that tiny pyramid shape. They call it the Benu bird. We would call it the Greek word, we would call it a phoenix.
That idea of the pyramid as life and rebirth repeats over and over again. It's a part of that cycle. Now Egyptian kings are also going to fit into that idea of cycle, cyclical matter, but Egyptian kings are much more complicated than most people reading a fourth grade history book would believe. The earliest part of Egyptian rulers, or the earliest group of Egyptian kings or pharaohs, are what we call the pre-dynastic period or the pre-dynastic group.
The pre-dynastic group are pharaohs who do not belong to a set family. So in other words, they are not part of one of the great ruling families of Egypt that we can kind of trace. Now, kind of trace. I just said that this is way more complicated than we tend to acknowledge. Part of that comes from the fact that we do not have a definitive list of Egyptian pharaohs.
Back at the beginning, when I talked about prehistory, I talked about how difficult dating is in the BCE era, simply because we don't have a definite number count, like this is 2018 when I'm recording this, so we know that it has been 2018 years since an agreed-upon zero point. Predynastic is BCE, which means they are far before that agreed-upon point. Essentially, they have no definitive way of counting where they are in history, so they tend to date things by kings. The problem is we don't know where these kings are located in history frequently because we do not have a complete list. What we do know is these very early rulers are often ruling two different kingdoms, either Upper Egypt or Lower Egypt, and there is a rapid turnover because again there is a great deal of conflict between Upper and Lower Egypt.
It is not until Upper and Lower Egypt are brought together and unified that we begin having a steady line of kings. And fortunately for us, we know who one of the first kings to unify Upper and Lower Egypt was. We know that because we actually found something with his name on it that tells us in pictures he unified Upper and Lower Egypt. The object that marks that Upper and Lower Egypt unification is something called the Pallet of King Narmer. Now this Pallet of King Narmer dates back to pre-dynastic Egypt.
Some others is before a definitive family group had taken over. The pallet itself is a stone about 25 inches high, dated to between 3200 and 3000 BCE. 25 inches high is pretty good size, guys. That's more than two feet tall.
It has a front and a back, and yes, it is actually a pallet. It's a makeup pallet. It was designed to hold the king's makeup. Now, if you think that's weird, it really isn't. Egyptians commonly wore makeup around the eyes, male and female.
It was not only a fashion statement, it served two practical purposes. The first of those two practical purposes was actually what we would think of as sunglasses. It actually allowed the Egyptians to put black lining around their eyes to prevent light bounce.
If you've ever seen a football player put black lines on their cheeks, black marks, to prevent the light from bouncing, it's a similar idea. And the Egyptians did that with their their black eyeliner. The other reason the Egyptians used that black eyeliner was because the mixture of the eyeliner actually included several antibacterial things that prevented eye infections. They probably had fewer eye infections from water and other environmental factors that might have been vectors for infection, thanks to that eye makeup.
Unfortunately, historically, we know something else. We know a lot of those antibacterial substances also unfortunately happen to be toxic, but we won't talk about that part. Now we know whose makeup palette this is because the top of the makeup palette is what's called a seric. Basically this is like the king's monogram, his initials at the top of the palette.
They're located between two cow heads, very anthropomorphic or zoomorphic again, human and animal characteristics. Those represent the goddess Hathor, whom you will encounter on your quiz on Egyptian Gods. Now in between those two images of Hathor, There is the seric. Now the seric is made up of two picture images. The top one is what's called in ancient Egyptian is pronounced nar.
It's a catfish. Now if that doesn't look like a catfish to you, its little mouth with the bristles are facing your right hand side, its little tail is facing the left, so that nar represents a catfish. On the bottom below that, that strange vertical shape, is actually a chisel like you would use to chisel a pattern into stone or wood. The Egyptian sound designated for chisel is mer.
So this is basically catfish chisel or King Narmer. So he's King Catfish Chisel or King Narmer. King Narmer signs this palette with a serif on the front and the back, so we know the name of the king because his name is actually included on the palette.
It's like he monogrammed it, he wrote his initials on it, he wrote his name on it, essentially, so we would know whose it was. Fortunately for us, that tells us who the guy is. and the pictures below this top area, below the xeric, tell us exactly what it is he's claiming to have done. Now beneath that iserik, that set of initials, that name, is actually a picture of King Narmer himself as the ruler of Upper Egypt conquering Lower Egypt. Now again, ancient artwork, size does matter. If you'll notice, the king is the largest figure on the palette.
The thing I love, there's a little dude behind him. That's actually his servant. His servant is carrying a water container, so basically he's carrying his aesipi bottle and his shoes. Because evidently when you're about to bash someone in the head with a mace, which is what King Narmer's doing, you don't kill your shoes. Who knew?
Now, if you'll notice, King Narmer here is standing. He's about to execute a prisoner whose hair he's got grasped in his left hand. That is a mace or other weapon that he's got held back in his right hand behind his head.
Now, King Narmer here is wearing the crown of Upper Egypt. Now, just so you know, I actually had to delete and go back because I had this backwards because Upper and Lower Egypt just mess with my head. That is the ruler of Southern Egypt, which is Up River, and it is indicated that he is the king of Upper Egypt because he's wearing a bowling pin shaped crown.
If you'll notice King Normer, he kind of looks like he's got a giant bottle nipple on his head. Basically, that is the crown that marks him as the king of Upper Egypt. He is defeating Lower Egypt as shown by the strange image just to the right of the king on your screen that shows a hawk or a falcon, which is representative of the god Horus. You'll meet him later. He is the god who's supposed to take care of the living, the people of Egypt.
And the hawk or falcon is giving with his little arm this strange thing that has a human head and like a fan on his back. Those things on its back are actually papyrus reeds. Those are indicative or symbolic of Lower Egypt, the place where the Nile Delta is, that large swampy area.
The fact that Horus is giving this to the king indicates that King Narmer, king of Upper Egypt, is being given the kingdom of Lower Egypt. Below the line on the palette you will see two figures that appear to be lying down crushed sideways. We believe that they represent conquered people. or people that he has been victorious over in his conquest of Lower Egypt.
So the king of Upper Egypt now rules Lower Egypt, which means he is now the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, unifying them. Now, you get the other side of that story on the other side of the palette, if you flip it over. On the other side of the palette, we see King Narmer as the ruler of Lower Egypt, conquering Upper Egypt.
Now, on this side, King Narmer is once again in the top register, the top area. and again size does matter. He's standing there at the top, again, adorable little servant with his water bottle and shoes faithfully following behind him. In this panel, however, King Narmer is shown wearing a very different crown, no bowling pin.
On this side he's wearing a crown with a flat top and a spike on the back. That crown, we know, is the crown of Lower Egypt, the place where the Nile Delta is located, the place where on the other side of the Pallet he was being given reign or power over that region. In front of King Narmer are his soldiers, standard bearers, and then over the far right hand side you see the conquered peoples of Upper Egypt.
These conquered peoples are depicted as decapitated bodies. Very neat though, they have their heads nicely placed between their legs so they don't get lost. But you can see Narmer here is shown marching in victory with the crown of Lower Egypt conquering Upper Egypt. Again at the very bottom of the palette you can see an image of a defeated individual being trampled by a mighty bull.
Again, we believe that the bull is a reference back to power and virility, masculinity. It probably represents the power of King Narmer. The middle register of the back of this palette is actually the makeup palette part.
The makeup would actually have been mixed in that space that is actually between the two creatures'necks. What those creatures are, we do not know for sure. They appear to have lion heads, but they've got giraffe necks, and we don't know what they are.
They could be a composite image like a Lamassu or a Shedu. It's also possible they could symbolically represent the two halves of Egypt, Upper and Lower Egypt, being unified by Norma. It is also quite possible that those two creatures simply represent the fact that King Norma needed a space to mix his makeup, and so that space between the two could have been created specifically for the practical purpose of this makeup palette.
Regardless, what this tells us between the two sides, the front and back of the palette of King Narmer, is that Narmer was the king of Upper and Lower Egypt. He unifies the two regions and brings them together into a single Egyptian nation. Now this is picture, so we were able to figure out what happened based on interpreting the images on the actual palette.
The only thing that is written in any kind of writing, per se, is the seric, the catfish chisel at the top. These picture writings actually refer to the later Egyptian form of writing, Egyptian hieroglyphs. Now Egyptian hieroglyphs are awesome and terrifying at the same time.
Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is one of the most complex systems known in the world. In Egyptian hieroglyphs, most of the writing is done in a form of pictograph, actual picture writing. Now those picture writings are very complex simply because they are not largely phonetic. They're not largely sound-based.
Many of them stand for words or concepts, which means that there are more than five thousand different characters in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Many of them stand for entire words or phrases in a picture. Others do stand for actual sounds, but the problem with those ones is that they are only consonant sounds.
There are no vowel sounds in Egyptian writing. Instead, a vowel sound is simply indicated by what is called a delimiter, which is a small symbol carved in front of the picture that tells you what vowel sound is supposed to be accompanying the consonant sound indicated by the picture. Not only that, Egyptian hieroglyphs picture writing can change its meaning depending on its delimiters and its location in relation to other Egyptian symbols. So putting it really oversimplified, the bird means one thing when it's next to the eye, but it means something different when it's next to the bug.
This is incredibly complex. In fact, the writing system it bears most resemblance to in our knowledge is actually Central American writing. Mayan and Aztec writing is more similar to this than any other system.
Understandably, it is incredibly daunting because translating it, it's not a one to one. It's not this letter means this sound. It is very, very complex because symbols can stand for words and phrases or symbols can stand for single sounds.
You have multiple symbols stacked on top of one another. Let me give you an example of how this actually works in translation so you can see. The fact that it ranges from simple to incredibly complex. Here. This is actually a translation of a hieroglyphic inscription.
You can see that some things make sense. For example, in the one, two, three, third line down, I get four pillars. Four pillars, okay, I got.
There's four little Y-shaped dookie thingies. I got that. Like in the very bottom row, fish. I get fish.
It looks like a fish. Got this. No problem.
Some of the other things, they don't seem to make any kind of sense, and there are multiple symbols for one simple word. The complexity of Egyptian hieroglyphs is mind-boggling, and because it was so complex, because it was over 5,000 characters with these changing meanings standing for entire words and phrases, essentially we were unable to crack hieroglyphics. We were not able to read Egyptian hieroglyphs.
We could read Mesopotamian cuneiform years before we got anywhere near Egyptian hieroglyphs. We knew Egyptian hieroglyphs were complex. We knew that they recorded largely religious and political information.
For example, what you're seeing is actually the inside of a tomb. Those oval repeated shapes that you see going across, those are actually what we call cartouches. Those are actually names of kings.
So you're looking at basically family history, a record of the family painted onto the walls of the tomb. but we couldn't actually read any of that. We had no idea how to understand these Egyptian picture writings until Napoleon's soldiers landed in Egypt.
Now, that may sound really weird if you know who Napoleon was. Napoleon is a French leader who is going to come along long, long after this class is over. He's thousands of years later.
What's Napoleon, a French dude, doing in Egypt? well, Napoleon gets around. Historically, Napoleon actually tried to conquer the world.
He and his army show up in surprising places. They show up in Spain, they show up in Egypt, they show up in Russia. That was a bad idea.
But when Napoleon sends his soldiers into Egypt, he doesn't just send them in to conquer Egypt. He actually sends them in to win Egypt over. If we were doing this in modern parlance, we would call this a hearts and minds campaign.
Napoleon sends in not just soldiers, He sends in scholars. He wants to preserve Egyptian history, to show the respect for Egyptian history, and to help the people better understand their own culture. These scholars he sends in are called his savants, his intellectuals. And Napoleon's soldiers are under strict orders that if they find anything that looks important and historical, they should not destroy it, they should not shoot it, they should instead go get the savants. So one day, as Napoleon's soldiers are in a small town called Rashid, which is down in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt, I had to think.
In Lower Egypt, the Napoleon soldiers see a large black stone in the foundation of a building in Rashid. Now, the Egyptians call this town Rashid. However, Napoleon soldiers, the Europeans, they do not call this town Rashid.
The Europeans call this town Rosetta. The stone that is actually spotted by Napoleon soldiers as part of the foundation of another building. becomes known as the Rosetta Stone because it is found in the town the Europeans call Rosetta. Now, the Rosetta Stone is a vitally important bit of history found by accident by Napoleon's soldiers.
It's a vital piece of history because the Rosetta Stone is the object that lets us begin, for the very first time, understanding how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Rosetta Stone is the gateway, the translation key, that opens up an entire world of Egyptian culture to us as we begin to look at it. Now the Rosetta Stone is found in the town of Rashid, known to Europeans as the Rosetta. It is a large stone, about three foot nine high, and the stone has three different areas of writing. Now I wanted to say that before I go to the next slide because I actually want you to be able to see it on the big shot of the stone here.
You can see the entire bottom area of the stone has small writing on it. That area of writing is actually in Greek. I'll show you that again in a minute.
The middle area is in a form of writing called demotic, D-E-M-O-T-I-C. That demotic is a later form of Egyptian. It was something that people in Napoleon's time would have been able to read.
And the very top area is Egyptian hieroglyphs. Now, the stone, like I said, is pretty large. It's about three foot nine, and it's a little over two and a half.
feet wide. It weighs just under a ton. It's not something you would just pack up in a backpack and bring home. The stone itself was originally used as a public announcement stone, a marker stone. The bottom area, the part I showed you that actually was in Greek, Napoleon's soldiers could read, well, Napoleon's savants, not his soldiers, forgive me.
Napoleon's savants, his scholars, could read that no problem. They could read ancient Greek very well. They understood what that part of the Rosetta Stone said. That part of the Rosetta Stone, the part that's pictured in the middle on your screen, actually was an announcement by the Egyptian government. Now, if you're wondering why something in Egypt would have been written in Greek, there are two reasons for that.
The first is that Egypt was conquered or invaded by the Greeks by a fellow named Alexander the Great, whom you'll meet a little bit later. Now, Alexander the Great loved Egypt. He's the whole reason we have a city in Egypt named Alexandria, named after Alexander. And when he came into Egypt, he actually intermarried with the Egyptian royals.
He brought a lot of Greek ideas and Greek culture to Egypt, and he brought Greek language. Greek language throughout history has remained the language of the intellectuals. So intellectual people of Greek heritage, educated Egyptians, would have spoken Egyptian just fine, or spoken Greek just fine, when the Rosetta Stone was originally carved.
That Greek section that... could easily be read by Greek-speaking Egyptians in the time and could easily be read by Napoleon's scholars was an announcement of the crowning of a new king. It's really boring. Basically, it says, you know, this guy is crowned king of Egypt, blessed by the Egyptian priesthood and the Egyptian gods, blah blah blah, on this day of this month of the reign of King so-and-so. Okay, now, on the left-hand side is a picture of the next area of writing up.
That area of writing is something called demotic. It's D-E-M-O-T-I-C. Don't call it demonic.
That would be entirely different. It's demotic. All right.
Egyptian demotic was a later form of Egyptian, something that would have been spoken and written under Alexander during the time that the Greek would have been used. And basically it was for people who read and wrote Egyptian instead of Greek. And what it says on the Rosetta Stone is exactly the same thing the Greek says.
This guy was crowned king and this year blessed by the Egyptian priesthood and the gods. Under the Rain of God, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It says exactly the same thing it says in Greek. So basically, it says it in Greek. It says it in later Egyptian.
They can read both of those. The third thing, the thing at the very top, the thing that's pictured all the way over on the right-hand side of your screen, that's Egyptian hieroglyphs. No one has any idea what those mean. They're presented to Napoleon's scholars, but they can't read them. No one in Egypt can read them.
No one has any idea what the hieroglyphs mean. But guys, go. If it says it in Greek, it says exactly the same thing in Egyptian. You know what it probably says in hieroglyphs?
Uh, yeah, the same thing. They're pretty sure that this is a repetition of the announcement of the crowning of a new king. So basically, they already know what it says.
All they have to figure out is how. How does it actually say that? And that's a mind-bogglingly complicated undertaking.
Even already knowing what the hieroglyphs say, it takes scholars over 20 years in order to crack the code of the hieroglyphs and figure out how it says it. There are two competing scholars working on it, and actually the way they crack it is by finding the names. They find the names of the people they know, and basically knowing the name specifically, what that says and what sounds are included, they're able to work backward from there. Now the Rosetta Stone doesn't include all, you know, more than 5,000 characters. It's broken at the top.
But still, even with all of that, being able to find the Rosetta Stone and use it to begin to understand hieroglyphs opened the world of Egyptian culture to us. It allowed us to read the carvings on tombs, on marker stones, on government documents, and get a real glimpse of Egyptian culture. And we learned a lot about Egyptian culture as we were able to read their writing. One of the big things we learned about Egyptian culture, the Egyptians were really religious.
Like. really religious. Like the Greek historian Herodotus, the historian Herodotus, the Greek guy, said he'd never seen anybody religious like the Egyptians were religious.
I mean, wow. The Egyptian religion is very important because it informs their culture and their government. Essentially, for the Egyptians in the ancient world, their culture and their religion, their government and their religion are not separate things.
They are all intertwined and interrelated. Now, Egyptian religion is incredibly complex. We are talking about 3,000 years of culture here. Egypt is a very strong, stable culture. It's a very cyclical culture.
Things do not change in huge ways over that 3,000 years or so. However, just because things don't completely change doesn't mean that there aren't shifts and alterations. A lot of the shifts and alterations come in Egyptian religious belief and culture.
In the very ancient world, Egyptians are polytheistic. They have many, many gods and goddesses. And the Egyptians tell the stories of their gods and goddesses and relate them directly to their leaders, their kingship.
The Egyptians believe there is a very strong connection between their pharaoh, their leader, and their gods. Now, having said that, which god or goddess is considered to be most closely related to the king? And which one is considered to be in charge of looking after the people of Egypt? It sounds terrible, but guys, the best way I can explain this to you... It's like modern pop culture.
It's like movies and TV shows. Things come in and out of style, and fandoms rise and fall. In ancient Egyptian belief, there are certain gods who are always important, but which god is most important at a certain time in Egyptian history kind of determine, depends upon who's popular at the time. So when we're talking about generalizations over 3,000 years, when I say this god is very important.
That might be true at 1,000, but not at 3,000, okay? So there's a lot of shifting in and out. It depends on where you are in Egyptian culture. These gods and goddesses are all a part of Egyptian myth and belief, and they're all important, but which one is incredibly important depends on where we are, and certain myths and legends are going to become more and less important at different points in Egyptian history.
So we are generalizing for a... college humanities class that's in the first two years of college, all right? So I'm not going to get deep into the complexities of mythology and chronology, tying them into Egyptian rulers. What I do want you to understand is that these gods and goddesses are important, and their stories are important for the Egyptians, even if it's not the most trendy or popular story at the time. Now I'm going to talk about some of the gods and goddesses a little bit in your next lecture, but I want you to do a little bit exploring.
and read some of those stories for yourself. So you're going to have a quiz on the Egyptian gods and goddesses. You're going to need to do a little bit exploring and reading. Don't fall down the rabbit hole.
Remember that there are multiple variations on the stories of gods and goddesses, so you may find some differences. We're talking about 3,000 years of Egyptian history here, and you may see some variations and some elements that are more or less important at different times in Egyptian history. What is important is those gods and goddesses are important.
to the way that the Egyptians see their kings, and they see their kings as being very much related to those gods and goddesses. Pay attention to that part, and also pay attention to gender dynamics, just like we did in Mesopotamia with Inanna. Make sure that you pay attention to the role of the goddesses and gods in Egypt, and how the different gender roles appear in their mythology.