There has long been a fascination in Britain with the world of ancient Egypt.

What
is it about this mysterious civilization that so catches the imagination?

Five thousand years ago the chain of independent city-states lining the River Nile
united to form one long, thin country ruled by one king, or pharaoh. Almost
instantly a highly distinctive culture developed. For almost 30 centuries Egypt
remained the foremost nation in the Mediterranean world. Then, in 332 BC, the
arrival of Alexander the Great heralded the end of the Egyptian way of life.

All ancient civilizations have contributed in some way to the development of

modern society.

The unique culture was quickly buried beneath successive layers of Greek, Roman
and Arabic tradition, and all knowledge of Egypt's glorious past was lost. Only the
decaying stone monuments, their hieroglyphic texts now unreadable, survived as
silent witnesses to a long lost civilization.

Some 2,000 years on, however, the ancient hieroglyphs have been decoded and
Egyptology the study of ancient Egypt is booming. At a time when Latin and
ancient Greek are rapidly vanishing from the school curriculum, more and more
people are choosing to read hieroglyphs in their spare time. And the Egyptian
galleries of our museums are packed with visitors, while the galleries dedicated to
other ancient cultures remain empty.

To emphasize the point, University Egyptology courses are full to bursting, and
night school classes are attracting increasing numbers of people happy to spend
their leisure hours studying the far distant past. This obvious interest has become
self-fulfilling. Publishers and television producers are happy to invest in ancient
Egypt because they know that there will be an appreciative audience for their
work, and every new book, each new program, attracts more devotees to the
subject.

All ancient civilizations have contributed in some way to the development of

modern society. All therefore are equally deserving of study. Why then do so
many people choose to concentrate on Egypt? What does the culture of ancient
Egypt offer the modern world that other cultures those of Mesopotamia, the
Indus Valley, or China do not?

Those who have been bitten by the Egyptology bug cite a variety of reasons for
their addiction the beauty of the art, the skill of the craftsmen, the intricacies of
the language, the certainties of the priests or even a vague, indefinable feeling
that the Egyptians came as close as is humanly possible to living a near perfect
life. Individually these would all be good reasons to study any ancient civilization.
Combined, and tinged with the glamour bestowed by some of the world's most
flamboyant archaeologists, they make an irresistible package.

Our fascination with ancient Egypt is, to a large extent, a product of the vast
amount

of material information available. We know so much about the daily lives of the
ancient

Egyptians we can read their words, meet their families, feel their clothes, taste
their food and drink, enter their tombs and even touch their bodies that it seems
that we almost know them. And knowing them, maybe even loving them, we feel
that we can understand the very human hopes and fears that dominated their
lives.
Some of these myths passed from Egypt to Rome, and have had a direct effect on
the development of modern religious belief. Preserved in their writings and coded
into their artwork the Egyptians asked, and answered, the questions that all
societies ask. What happens after death? How was the world created? Where
does the sun go at night? Lacking any real scientific understanding they answered
their own questions with a series of myths and legends designed to explain the
otherwise inexplicable.

Some of these myths passed from Egypt to Rome, and have had a direct effect on
the development of modern religious belief. Reading and understanding the
ancient stories allows us to abandon our modern preconceptions, step outside
our own cultural experiences and enter a very different, lifeenhancing world.

Egypt's rich material legacy is the result of her unique funerary beliefs, which
combined with her distinctive geography, encouraged the preservation of
archaeological material. The River Nile flows northwards through the center of
Egypt, bringing much needed water to an otherwise arid part of northeast Africa.

This wealth of objects, of course, creates a highly biased collection of artifacts.

Their total dependence on the River Nile as a source of water and a means of
transport had a deep impact on the way that the Egyptians saw the world. Their
sun god, the falcon headed Re, did not cross the heavens in a flaming chariot, he
sailed sedately in a solar boat. Parallel to the Nile on both banks of the river runs
the Black Land the narrow strip of fertile soil that allowed the Egyptians to
practice the most efficient agriculture in the ancient world. Beyond the Black Land
lies the inhospitable Red Land, the desert that once served as a vast cemetery,
and beyond the Red Land are the cliffs that protected Egypt from unwelcome
visitors.
Believing that the soul could live beyond death, the Egyptians buried their dead in
the Red Land, with all the goods they considered they would need in what they
thought of as the 'afterlife'. While their mud brick houses have dissolved and their
stone temples have decayed, their desert tombs have survived relatively intact,
the dry conditions encouraging the preservation of such delicate materials as
plaster, wood, papyrus, cloth, leather and skin.

This wealth of objects, of course, creates a highly biased collection of artifacts.

The lives and possessions of the poor are under represented, and we can never be
certain that the goods so carefully provided for the dead were representative of
the goods used in daily life. Nevertheless, the contents of Egypt's tombs,
supplemented by the illustrations on the tomb walls, have allowed specialists to
develop a greater understanding of Egyptian material technology than of any
other ancient civilization.

Egypt's magnificent stone buildings her pyramids and temples have inspired
innumerable artists, writers, poets and architects from the Roman period to the
present day. The pyramid form, in particular, still pays an important role in
modern architecture, and can be seen rising above cemeteries and innumerable
shopping centers, and at the new entrance to the Louvre Museum, Paris. They
hold the key to understanding the structure of Egyptian society. The original
pyramids serve as a testament to the mathematical skill of the Egyptians, a skill
that stimulated Greek mathematicians, including Pythagoras, to perfect their
work. The Great Pyramid, built by Khufu (Cheops) in 2550 BC, for

example, stands an impressive 46m (150ft) high, with a slope of 51degrees. Its
sides, with an average length of 230m (754ft), vary by less than 5cm (2in). Higher
than St Paul's Cathedral, the pyramid was aligned with amazing accuracy almost
exactly to true north.
But the pyramids are more than mathematical puzzles. They hold the key to
understanding the structure of Egyptian society. The pyramids were built, not by
the gangs of slaves often portrayed by Hollywood film moguls, but by a workforce
of up to 5,000 permanent employees, supplemented by as many as 20,000
temporary workers, who would work for three or four months on the pyramid
site, before returning home.

The bureaucracy that we know lay behind this operation is staggering. Not only
did the workforce have to be summoned, housed and fed, but administrators also
had to coordinate the supplies of stone, rope, fuel and wood that were needed to
support the building work. Pyramid studies confirm that a pre-mechanical society
can, given adequate resources and the will to succeed, achieve great things.
Pyramid building would have been impossible without strong government backed
up by an efficient civil service. No wonder many archaeologists believe that, while
the Egyptians undeniably built the pyramids, the pyramids also built Egypt.

The Egyptians were renowned throughout the Mediterranean world for their
medical skills, skills that were eventually passed on to the Greek and the Roman
doctors that followed them. Unlike those of other ancient societies, the Egyptians
were experienced in dissecting corpses because, believing that their souls needed
an earthly body, they preserved their dead as mummies.Their eviscerated, dried
and bandaged bodies were once regarded as useless curiosities to be unwrapped,
stripped of their jewelry, then discarded, and the archaeological literature is full
of horrific stories of unwanted mummies being burned as torches, ground into
pigment, processed into brown paper and even

dispensed as stomach medicine for the rich and gullible.

Today attitudes to the long deceased have changed and it is no longer considered
appropriate to destroy a mummy out of mere curiosity. However, the countless
mummies, already unwrapped, stored in the world's museums and universities
offer an incomparable source of ancient human tissue.

Their work has not only provided a wealth of information about the health of the
ancient Egyptians, it has provided useful information to scientists engaged in the
struggle to eliminate the parasitical infestation bilharzia (schistosomiasis) which
still plagues the Nile Valley. In its worst, untreated form, bilharzia can lead to the
development of cancer.

The study of Egyptian art, of genealogy or hieroglyphs, is above all, however, the
greatest of fun.

The Egyptologists have noted that both ancient and modern bilharzia infection
can be identified by testing for the presence of antibodies. This suggests that the
parasite has remained fundamentally unchanged since ancient Egyptian times. It
is hoped that the study of bilharzia worms discovered in mummies may eventually
help determine those parts of their genetic code that cause the development of
cancer.

So far we have considered a series of worthy reasons why ancient Egypt is

important to the modern world. Egypt offers inspiration, stimulation, valuable
knowledge and an insight into our own modern culture. One very important
reason, however, has been overlooked. The study of Egyptian art, of genealogy or
hieroglyphs, is above all, however, the greatest of fun.