Ancient Of Egypt

Introduction

-One of the world’s earliest civilizations.

-Developed as a river-valley culture.
-Because of Nile River’s, agriculture groups established small village settlements on the riverbanks
and organized tribal kingdoms.
-About 3000 BCE, these kingdoms consolidated into a large empire, with eventually became a highly
organized and centralized political colossus.

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-Egyptian religious beliefs affirmed the divine origin of the pharaoh, or emperor.

WHO IS PHARAOH?

-The most powerful person in ancient Egypt.

-It was the name for king and the son of the god Ra.
-The pharaoh was the political and religious leader of Egyptian people.
-They believed that the pharaoh was not only the King, but also a god.
-They also believed that at the death, he became Osiris, and would help them in their afterlife.
-The concept of king-priest gave the priestly elite, high status and considerable power, by making
them the guardians of state culture.
-In contrast to the scholars who were leading educators in China, the priestly elite exercised that role
in Egypt.
-For much of history, priests or other religious figures controlled much formal education.

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Religious and Secular Concerns

-Educationally, the Egyptians were both worldly and otherworldly.

-Although preoccupied with the supernatural, they also developed technologies to irrigate the Nile
Valley and to design and build Egypt’s massive pyramids and temples.
>>VIDEO: THE PHARAOH’S WRATH

-To administer and defend their vast empire, they studied civil administration.
-Their obsession with mummification led them to study medicine, anatomy, and embalming.
MUMMIFICATION STORY

http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/mummies/story/main.html

>>VIDEO: TRAILER THE MUMMY

-The Egyptians also developed a writing system.
-They left so many writings in the form of pictures on the walls of tombs and pyramids.

-This writings is known as hieroglyphs.

>> VIDEO: ANCIENT EGYPT- HIEROGLYPICHS

-Hieroglyphs were written in columns from left to right.
-Hieroglyphics writing was used in tombs and for religious purposes.
-Two languages were developed in Egypt for business and everyday use. They were known as
Hieratic and Demotic.
-From these two languages, a later language, known as Coptic, developed.
-The teaching of writing and reading then became an important feature of schooling that has
persisted through the centuries.

>>Education in Ancient Egypt

-Children stayed with their mothers until age 4.

-At the age of 4, education of the boys was taken over by their fathers.

-Some children at this time, attended a general village school (low level of education).
-Children from upper class family attended a school that were designed for a specific career such as
scribe.
-After finished school, sons typically followed in the same area that their father practiced.
-For example, at the age of 14, sons of farmers or craftsmen joined their fathers in their professions.
-While, sons whose parents had higher status careers continued their education at special schools
usually attached to temples or governmental centres.
-At higher level of education, they learned “Instruction of Wisdom”, which included lessons on ethics
and morality. They also focused on skills needed for higher status positions such as doctor or scribe.
-The educational track that a student followed was typically determined by the position that the
father held in society.

-Very few careers were available for women.

-Women had to stay at home.
-They trained for motherhood and on how to be a good wife.
-Some girls could train to be dancers, entertainers, weavers, or bakers.

-Only the daughters of wealthy family received education in reading or writing.

>>Temple and court schools

-Egypt required an educated bureaucracy to administer the empire and collect taxes.
-By 2700 BCE, the Egyptians had established an extensive system of temple and court schools to
train scribes, in reading and writing. Many of them were priests.
-After a primary education, boys studied the literature which was needed for their future
professions.
-Special advanced schools prepared priests, government officials, and physicians.

>>Educating scribes
-In the scribal schools, students (male from upper class) learned to write hieroglyphic script by
copying documents on papyrus, sheets made from reeds, which growing along the Nile’s river.
-Teachers say or read aloud any religious or technical texts, and the students need to copy what they
heard.
-This is to reproduce a correct, exact copy of a text.
-Usually, students would chant a short passage until they had memorized it thoroughly.
-Advanced students studied mathematics, astronomy, religion, poetry, literature, medicine, and
architecture.

Major purposes of education in Egypt (Yang ni tolong buatkan mind map)

-To transmit and approved rendition of the cultural heritage that was constructed by the religious
and political elite.
-To reproduce dominant leadership elite.
-To transmit skills such as reading and writing and higher studies such as embalming, medicine, civil
administration, and architecture.

Egypt’s Historical Controversies

Traditional Interpretation

-In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great, the King of Macedon, led his armies to conquer Persia,
Mesopotamia, and Egypt.
-His conquest of Egypt introduced Hellenistic civilization, which in turn had been shaped by ancient
Greek culture.
-According to the conventional historical interpretation, ancient Egyptian civilization was a highly
static despotism and its major cultural legacy was comprised of its great architectural monuments.

Bernal’s Theory

-The historian, Martin Bernal, argues that the ancient Greeks borrowed many of ancient Egypt’s
concepts about government, philosophy, the arts, sciences, and medicine.
-Futhermore, the Egyptians, located in North Africa, were an African people, and the origins of
Western culture are thefore African.
-Though they recognize Egyptian and Greek interactions, Bernal’s critics contend that he greatly
overemphasizes Egypt’s influence on ancient Greek.
-While historians continue to debate the matter, tentative findings indicate that Egyptian-Greek
contacts, particularly at Crete, introduced the Greeks to Egyptian knowledge and art.
-This historical controversy has important ideological significance, which is, whoever interprets the
past gains the power of illuminating and shaping the present.

>>For better understanding,

VIDEO: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ANCIENT EGYPT