Kafr El Sheikh University

Faculty of Engineering
Architecture Engineering Department

History of City & Site Planning

Lecture 3

Ancient Egyptian Civilization

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Ancient Egyptian Civilization

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 Egyptian Geography
• Location: Located in the
northeast corner of Africa
• Surrounded by natural
barriers
• Desert
• Mountains
• Mediterranean Sea
• Red sea
• Concentrated along the lower
reaches of the Nile river

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Geographical Characteristics
• Protected by natural barriers
• Floods were predictable
• River used for transportation
• No natural barriers allows
cultural diffusion
• Long Growing Season
• Fertile Soil
• Warm Climate

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 Nile River
• Herodotus called (Egypt the
Gift of The Nile)
• The longest river in the
world 4.000 miles long
(Egyptians only knew of
1,000 miles)
• The Nile flows from south to
north
• The main source of water
• Settlement was along the
banks of the Nile

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 Main Historical Periods
• Ancient Egyptian civilization
followed prehistoric Egypt 3000
: 5000 BCE
• Early Egypt was divided into two
kingdoms
– Upper Egypt
– Lower Egypt
• Unification: Egypt was united in
3100 BCE by Menes
– Made Memphis the Capital
– Established the first Dynasty

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 Main Historical Periods in
Ancient Egyptian Civilization

Periods Time Frame

Nile Culture Begins 3900 B. C. E.
Archaic 3100 – 2650 B. C. E.
Old Kingdom 2650 – 2134 B. C. E.
Middle Kingdom 2040 – 1640 B. C. E.
New Kingdom 1550 – 1070 B. C. E.
Late Period 750 – 332 B. C. E.
Greek Ptolemaic 332 – 30 B. C. E.
Era
Roman Period 30 B. C. E. – 395 C. E. 8
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 Old Kingdom
• The Old Kingdom
– Begins 2650 BCE
– Time of Growth and
Prosperity
– Pyramids constructed
– Pharaohs with absolute
power establish strong
governments

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 The Old Kingdom
• Major advances in architecture, art, and technology
fueled by the increased agricultural productivity
• Some of ancient Egypt's crowning achievements, the
Giza pyramids and Great Sphinx, were constructed
during the Old Kingdom.
• a well-developed central administration.
• state officials collected taxes, coordinated irrigation
projects to improve crop yield, drafted peasants to
work on construction projects, and established a
justice system to maintain peace and order
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 Middle Kingdom
• Difficult and
turbulent time
• Pharaohs began to
lose power to local
nobles
• Invasions, famines,
civil wars
• Built fortress up
and down the Nile
• Traded with
Greeks,
Phoenicians, and
others around the
Mediterranean
• Conquered by the
Hyksos in 1650 BCE
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 The New Kingdom

• Hyksos defeated
• Egyptians realized
they needed a strong
army
• Took lands around
them to serve as a
buffer from invasion

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 Egyptian Social Characteristics
Egyptian Social Classes

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 The Pharaoh
• Class system was hierarchal
People with most power at
the top, Least power on the
bottom
• The King, Had absolute power
• Pharaohs established
dynasties
– 31 dynasties
• Was believed to be a god in
human form
– Had to perform religious
rituals along with priests
to ensure positive
outcomes in daily life

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 Some Famous Egyptian Pharaohs

Tutankhamon
1336-1327 B. C. E.

Thutmose III Ramses II

1504-1450 B. C. E. 1279-1212 B. C. E.

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 Egyptian Religion
• Egyptians were polytheistic
– Believed gods controlled
natural events
• Built temples and obelisks to
honor the gods

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 The Afterlife
• Egyptians view of the afterlife was positive
• Believed that when someone died the Ka (spirit)
escaped and journeyed to the land of the dead

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The Afterlife
• Egyptian Book of the Dead
– Contained magic spells and
rituals to assist the dead enter
the afterlife
• Mummification:
- Designed to protect the dead body
from decay and keep the Ka alive

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 Hieroglyphics “Alphabet”
• Used picture symbols to
represent objects, sounds,
and ideas
• Wrote on papyrus
– Plant that grew along the
Nile
• The Rosetta Stone
– Discovered in 1799
– Used to translate
hieroglyphics
• 24 “letters” + 700 phonetic
symbols
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 Urban Characteristics
• Main Urban Components

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Main Urban Components …Temples

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Main Urban Components …The Death City

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Tombs … Pyramids

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Tombs … Mastaba

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 Tell El-Amarna City
• Tell el-Amarna, also spelled Tall al-
Amarna or Tall al-ʿAmarīnah, site of the ruins
and tombs of the city of Akhetaton (“Horizon
of Aton”) in Upper Egypt, 44 miles (71 km)
north of modern Asyūt. On a virgin site on the
east bank of the Nile River,
• Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV) built the city
about 1348 BCE as the new capital of his
kingdom when he abandoned the worship
of Amon and devoted himself to that of Aton.
• About four years after Akhenaton’s death
(c. 1332), the court returned to Thebes, and
the city was abandoned.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Tell-el-Amarna 43
 Tell El-Amarna City … Main Components

• The principal buildings of Akhetaton lay on either side of the

Royal Road, the largest of them being the Great Temple of the
Aton, primarily a series of walled courts leading to the
completely open-air main sanctuary.
• Near the Great Temple were the palace and the commodious
residence of the royal family.
• The dwellings at Tell el-Amarna were made of baked mud
brick, and the walls, floors, and ceilings of many of the rooms
were painted in a lively naturalistic style; each large house
had a shrine with a stela depicting Akhenaton in the
affectionate embrace of his family.

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The Central City ,,, Main Components

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 The Central City ,,, Main Components

• Great Aten Temple

• Buildings south of the Great Aten Temple
- The house of the high priest and others
• Great Palace
• The Bridge
• The King’s House
• Buildings east of the King’s House
- The ‘Records Office and others

http://www.amarnaproject.com/pages/amar
na_the_place/central_city/index.shtml

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 Workmen's Village

• A walled village. In its final stage the village proper was

contained within a plain brick wall, approximately 69 metres
square. A major internal subdividing wall and joins in the
brickwork imply that the village was extended westwards
during its life, so that it rose up the flank of the western side
of the valley. A total of 72 houses of similar design were built
along a series of parallel streets. They preserved the remains
of furnishings and craft materials. A larger house in the south-
east corner was presumably for the official in charge. The
later addition also contained one larger house. The village
came to have a single narrow entrance (a separate one to the
later addition was walled up).
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 Workmen's Village

http://www.amarnaproject.com/pages/amarna
_the_place/workmans_village/index.shtml

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Kahun City
One of the first ancient Egyptian towns to
be ever excavated is the town of Kahun,
also known as Lahun. Unlike other towns,
Kahun was not meant for the general
population and regular life, instead, the
town was a temporary site for the workers
building the Al-Lahun pyramid. The town, or
rather the worker’s village, was built in
1895 BC under the reign of King Senusret II
during the Middle Kingdom period of
ancient Egypt.
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 The Layout of the Town of Kahun

• Covering about 14 hectares (14,0000

m2), the walled town took a
rectangular shape and was rather
overpopulated according to an
estimate of ancient urban population
densities. The houses had one or at
most two floors. The town was much
smaller than the 4th dynasty
settlement at Giza. It was
surrounded by a brick wall that https://thinkafrica.net/2018/11/30/cons
extended along the north, west and truction-of-kahun-1895bc/

partly along the east sides.

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 Kahun City
• The town itself was divided into two parts by another wall
separating the poor and the rich residential areas. The houses
of the rich residential area were about fifty times as big as the
houses of the poorer part of the town.
• All over the town, the streets were laid out in straight lines.
The main street was 9 meters wide while the streets and the
alleys in the workers districts were as narrow as 1.5 meters.
• The streets had shallow stones channels running down along
the middle for drainage. There wasn’t much space left for
gardens within the walls of the city, the entire area was
covered with streets and mud-brick buildings.

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Kahun City

Plans of two different types of

housing; worker dwellings (left)
and Great Houses (right

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Main Urban Components
The Temple Area The West Quarter: Workers’ Dwellings
Storage Area The East Quarter: The Great Houses

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• The East Quarter: According to archaeological findings, the
different elements of those 9 houses can be interpreted as:
• Small rooms at the house entrance: Most likely to be a
porter’s lodge.
• A set of large rooms: Would be suitable for group activities
such as weaving.
A set of small, square interconnected rooms: A granary.
• A series of open spaces close to the granary: Suitable for food
production activities such as baking and brewing.
• A set of rooms close to the granary: Administrative offices to
pay close attention to deposits and withdrawals of grains from
the granary.
• A large courtyard at the centre.Two integrated sets of rooms
opening on the courtyard: Residential units that contained
identifiable bedrooms.
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• After the construction of the Al-Lahun pyramid was
completed, the town was completely abandoned. It was a
large working village that somehow seems to have
disappeared right after the completion of Senusret’s Pyramid.
They left behind their advanced buildings and infrastructure,
as well as their legal and periodic texts and medical papyri,
which tell us a lot about the city and the lives of the
inhabitants of Kahun in the Middle Kingdom.

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 The City of Habu
• The "city of Habu" designates primarily the town
that arose in and around the temple enclosure of
Ramesses III on the west bank of the Nile (25°43′ N,
32°36′ E), opposite the ancient city of Thebes
(modern Luxor). This modern name probably reflects
the settlement’s proximity to the temple of a local
saint, Amenhotep the son of Hapu, who lived in the
fourteenth century BC and was especially revered in
the Graeco-Roman period.

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• The 18th Dynasty building consisted of two parts, a bark
shrine surrounded by pillared porticoes, and the temple
proper.
• The first structural addition to the small temple was made
during the 25th Dynasty, when the Kushite kings built a pylon
connected to the older temple by a gallery which one of the
later Ptolemies replaced with a wider columned hall.
• The ceremonial entrance to the complex was located on the
east side
• Nothing can be seen today of the walled enclosures and
office buildings (all built out of mudbrick) that crowded the
space between the eastern high gate and the main temple in
Ramesses III’s time.
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• South of the main temple is the ceremonial palace
that served both as a rest house for visiting royalty and a
mock dwelling for the dead king’s spirit. In its original layout
Ramesses III’s palace bore a close resemblance to its analog at
the Ramesseum, but the plan was changed later in the king’s
reign
• Similarities to Ramesses II’s mortuary building are not
random, but extend also to the layout of the temple proper.
• While the back of the temple has lost its upper parts to later
quarrying, the cult rooms at the sides are tolerably well
preserved.
• Behind Ramesses III’s temple complex is a row of mudbrick
funerary chapels, their interiors originally sheathed with
stone blocks carved with scenes of their owners’ mortuary
cults.
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Habu City

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http://what-when
how.com/archaeology-of-
ancient-egypt/medinet-
habu-to-meirarchaeology-
of-ancient-egypt/

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