Beliefs in the divine and in the afterlife were ingrained in ancient Egyptian civilization from its inception; pharaonic

rule was based on the divine right of kings. The Egyptian pantheon was populated by gods who had supernatural powers and were called on for help or protection. However, the gods were not always viewed as benevolent, and Egyptians believed they had to be appeased with offerings and prayers. The structure of this pantheon changed continually as new deities were promoted in the hierarchy, but priests made no effort to organize the diverse and sometimes conflicting creation myths and stories into a coherent system.[145] These various conceptions of divinity were not considered contradictory but rather layers in the multiple facets of reality.[146] Gods were worshiped in cult temples administered by priests acting on the king's behalf. At the center of the temple was the cult statue in a shrine. Temples were not places of public worship or congregation, and only on select feast days and celebrations was a shrine carrying the statue of the god brought out for public worship. Normally, the god's domain was sealed off from the outside world and was only accessible to temple officials. Common citizens could worship private statues in their homes, and amulets offered protection against the forces of chaos.[147] After the New Kingdom, the pharaoh's role as a spiritual intermediary was de-emphasized as religious customs shifted to direct worship of the gods. As a result, priests developed a system of oracles to communicate the will of the gods directly to the people.[148] The Egyptians believed that every human being was composed of physical and spiritual parts or aspects. In addition to the body, each person had a wt (shadow), a ba (personality or soul), a ka (life-force), and a name.[149] The heart, rather than the brain, was considered the seat of thoughts and emotions. After death, the spiritual aspects were released from the body and could move at will, but they required the physical remains (or a substitute, such as a statue) as a permanent home. The ultimate goal of the deceased was to rejoin his ka and ba and become one of the "blessed dead", living on as an akh, or "effective one". For this to happen, the deceased had to be judged worthy in a trial, in which the heart was weighed against a "feather of truth". If deemed worthy, the deceased could continue their existence on earth in spiritual form.[150] Hieroglyphic writing dates to c. 3200 BC, and is composed of some 500 symbols. A hieroglyph can represent a word, a sound, or a silent determinative; and the same symbol can serve different purposes in different contexts. Hieroglyphs were a formal script, used on stone monuments and in tombs, that could be as detailed as individual works of art. In day-to-day writing, scribes used a cursive form of writing, called hieratic, which was quicker and easier. While formal hieroglyphs may be read in rows or columns in either direction (though typically written from right to left), hieratic was always written from right to left, usually in horizontal rows. A new form of writing, Demotic, became the prevalent writing style, and it is this form of writing along with formal hieroglyphsthat accompany the Greek text on the Rosetta Stone.[citation needed] Around the 1st century AD, the Coptic alphabet started to be used alongside the Demotic script. Coptic is a modified Greek alphabet with the addition of some Demotic signs.[115] Although formal hieroglyphs were used in a ceremonial role until the 4th century, towards the end only a small handful of priests could still read them. As the traditional religious establishments were disbanded, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was mostly lost. Attempts to decipher them date to the Byzantine[116] and Islamic periods in Egypt,[117] but only in 1822, after the discovery of the

Rosetta stone and years of research by Thomas Young and Jean-Franois Champollion, were hieroglyphs almost fully deciphered.[118]

Literature
Main article: Ancient Egyptian literature

The Edwin Smith surgical papyrus (ca 16th century BC) describes anatomy and medical treatments and is written in hieratic.

Writing first appeared in association with kingship on labels and tags for items found in royal tombs. It was primarily an occupation of the scribes, who worked out of the Per Ankh institution or the House of Life. The latter comprised offices, libraries (called House of Books), laboratories and observatories.[119] Some of the best-known pieces of ancient Egyptian literature, such as the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, were written in Classical Egyptian, which continued to be the language of writing until about 1300 BC. Later Egyptian was spoken from the New Kingdom onward and is represented in Ramesside administrative documents, love poetry and tales, as well as in Demotic and Coptic texts. During this period, the tradition of writing had evolved into the tomb autobiography, such as those of Harkhuf and Weni. The genre known as Sebayt (Instructions) was developed to communicate teachings and guidance from famous nobles; the Ipuwer papyrus, a poem of lamentations describing natural disasters and social upheaval, is a famous example. The Story of Sinuhe, written in Middle Egyptian, might be the classic of Egyptian literature.[120] Also written at this time was the Westcar Papyrus, a set of stories told to Khufu by his sons relating the marvels performed by priests.[121] The Instruction of Amenemope is considered a masterpiece of near-eastern literature.[122] Towards the end of the New Kingdom, the vernacular language was more often employed to write popular pieces like the Story of Wenamun and the Instruction of Any. The former tells the story of a noble who is robbed on his way to buy cedar from Lebanon and of his struggle to return to Egypt. From about 700 BC, narrative stories and instructions, such as the popular Instructions of Onchsheshonqy, as well as personal and business documents were written in the demotic script and phase of Egyptian. Many stories written in demotic during the Graeco-Roman period were set in previous historical eras, when Egypt was an independent nation ruled by great pharaohs such as Ramesses II.[123]

Culture
The ancient Egyptians maintained a rich cultural heritage complete with feasts and festivals accompanied by music and dance.

Most ancient Egyptians were farmers tied to the land. Their dwellings were restricted to immediate family members, and were constructed of mud-brick designed to remain cool in the heat of the day. Each home had a kitchen with an open roof, which contained a grindstone for milling flour and a small oven for baking bread.[124] Walls were painted white and could be covered with dyed linen wall hangings. Floors were covered with reed mats, while wooden stools, beds raised from the floor and individual tables comprised the furniture.[125] The ancient Egyptians placed a great value on hygiene and appearance. Most bathed in the Nile and used a pasty soap made from animal fat and chalk. Men shaved their entire bodies for cleanliness, and aromatic perfumes and ointments covered bad odors and soothed skin.[126] Clothing was made from simple linen sheets that were bleached white, and both men and women of the upper classes wore wigs, jewelry, and cosmetics. Children went without clothing until maturity, at about age 12, and at this age males were circumcised and had their heads shaved. Mothers were responsible for taking care of the children, while the father provided the family's income.[127] Music and dance were popular entertainments for those who could afford them. Early instruments included flutes and harps, while instruments similar to trumpets, oboes, and pipes developed later and became popular. In the New Kingdom, the Egyptians played on bells, cymbals, tambourines, and drums and imported lutes and lyres from Asia.[128] The sistrum was a rattle-like musical instrument that was especially important in religious ceremonies. The ancient Egyptians enjoyed a variety of leisure activities, including games and music. Senet, a board game where pieces moved according to random chance, was particularly popular from the earliest times; another similar game was mehen, which had a circular gaming board. Juggling and ball games were popular with children, and wrestling is also documented in a tomb at Beni Hasan.[129] The wealthy members of ancient Egyptian society enjoyed hunting and boating as well. The excavation of the workers village of Deir el-Madinah has resulted in one of the most thoroughly documented accounts of community life in the ancient world that spans almost four hundred years. There is no comparable site in which the organisation, social interactions, working and living conditions of a community can be studied in such detail.[130]

By the Early Dynastic Period in the late 4th millennium BC, Egyptian hieroglyphs and their cursive form hieratic were well-established written scripts.[4] Egyptian hieroglyphs are small

artistic pictures of natural objects.[5] For example, the hieroglyph for door-bolt, pronounced se, produced the s sound; when this hieroglyph was combined with another or multiple hieroglyphs, it produced a combination of sounds that could represent abstract concepts like sorrow, happiness, beauty, and evil.[6] The Narmer Palette, dated c. 3100 BC during the last phase of Predynastic Egypt, combines the hieroglyphs for catfish and chisel to produce the name of King Narmer.[7] The Egyptians called their hieroglyphs "words of god" and reserved their use for exalted purposes, such as communicating with divinities and spirits of the dead through funerary texts.[8] Each hieroglyphic word both represented a specific object and embodied the essence of that object, recognizing it as divinely made and belonging within the greater cosmos.[9] Through acts of priestly ritual, like burning incense, the priest allowed spirits and deities to read the hieroglyphs decorating the surfaces of temples.[10] In funerary texts beginning in and following the Twelfth dynasty, the Egyptians believed that disfiguring, and even omitting certain hieroglyphs, brought consequences, either good or bad, for a deceased tomb occupant whose spirit relied on the texts as a source of nourishment in the afterlife.[11] Mutilating the hieroglyph of a venomous snake, or other dangerous animal, removed a potential threat.[11] However, removing every instance of the hieroglyphs representing a deceased person's name would deprive his or her soul of the ability to read the funerary texts and condemn that soul to an inanimate existence.[11]

The Abbott Papyrus, a record written in the hieratic script; it describes an inspection of royal tombs in the Theban Necropolis and is dated to the 16th regnal year of the Ramesses IX, c. 1110 BC. Hieratic is a simplified, cursive form of Egyptian hieroglyphs.[12] Like hieroglyphs, hieratic was used in sacred and religious texts. By the 1st millennium BC, calligraphic hieratic became the script predominantly used in funerary papyri and temple rolls.[13] Whereas the writing of hieroglyphs required the utmost precision and care, cursive hieratic could be written much more quickly and was therefore more practical for scribal record-keeping.[14] Its primary purpose was to serve as a shorthand script for non-royal, non-monumental, and less formal writings such as private letters, legal documents, poems, tax records, medical texts, mathematical treatises, and instructional guides.[15] Hieratic could be written in two different styles; one was more calligraphic and usually reserved for government records and literary manuscripts, the other was used for informal accounts and letters.[16] By the mid-1st millennium BC, hieroglyphs and hieratic were still used for royal, monumental, religious, and funerary writings, while a new, even more cursive script was used for informal, day-to-day writing: Demotic.[13] The final script adopted by the ancient Egyptians was the Coptic alphabet, a revised version of the Greek alphabet.[17] Coptic became the standard in the 4th century AD when Christianity became the state religion throughout the Roman Empire; hieroglyphs were discarded as idolatrous images of a pagan tradition, unfit for writing the Biblical canon.[17]

[edit] Writing implements and materials

An ostracon with hieratic script mentioning officials involved in the inspection and clearing of tombs during the Twenty-first dynasty of Egypt, c. 1070945 BC Egyptian literature was produced on a variety of media. Along with the chisel, necessary for making inscriptions on stone, the chief writing tool of ancient Egypt was the reed pen, a reed fashioned into a stem with a bruised, brush-like end.[18] With pigments of carbon black and red ochre, the reed pen was used to write on scrolls of papyrusa thin material made from beating together strips of pith from the Cyperus papyrus plantas well as on small ceramic or limestone ostraca known as potsherds.[19] It is thought that papyrus rolls were moderately expensive commercial items, since many are palimpsests, manuscripts that have their original contents erased to make room for new written works.[20] This, alongside tearing off pieces of papyrus documents to make smaller letters, suggests that there were seasonal shortages caused by the limited growing season of Cyperus papyrus.[20] It also explains the frequent use of ostraca and limestone flakes as writing media for shorter written works.[21] In addition to stone, ceramic ostraca, and papyrus, writing media also included wood, ivory, and plaster.[22] By the Roman Period of Egypt, the traditional Egyptian reed pen had been replaced by the chief writing tool of the Greco-Roman world: a shorter, thicker reed pen with a cut nib.[23] Likewise, the original Egyptian pigments were discarded in favor of Greek lead-based inks.[23] The adoption of Greco-Roman writing tools had an impact on Egyptian handwriting, as hieratic signs became more spaced, had rounder flourishes, and greater angular precision.[23] Literature is an important cultural element in the life of Egypt. Egyptian novelists and poets were among the first to experiment with modern styles of Arabic literature, and the forms they developed have been widely imitated throughout the Middle East.[138] The first modern Egyptian novel Zaynab by Muhammad Husayn Haykal was published in 1913 in the Egyptian vernacular.[139] Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Egyptian women writers include Nawal El Saadawi, well known for her feminist activism, and Alifa Rifaat who also writes about women and tradition.

Vernacular poetry is perhaps the most popular literary genre among Egyptians, represented by the works of Ahmed Fouad Negm (Fagumi), Salah Jaheen and Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi. In their belief, boats were used by the dead to accompany the sun around the world, as Heaven was referred to as Upper Waters. In Egyptian mythology, every night the serpentine god Apophis would attack the Sun Boat as it brought the sun (and as such order )back to the Kingdom in the morning. It is referred to as the Boat of Millions as all the gods and souls of the blessed dead may at one point or another be needed to defend or operate it. Constituional Proclamation. We, the people of Egypt, who have been toiling on this glorious land since the dawn of history and civilization, we the people working in Egypts villages, fields, cities, factories, centers of education and industry in any field of work which contributes to the creation of life on its soil or plays a part in the honour of defending this land We, the people who believe in its spiritual and immortal heritage and who are confident in our profound faith and cherish the honour of man and of humanity at large, We, the people who in addition to preserving the legacy of history, bear the responsibility of great present and future objectives whose seeds are embedded in the long and arduous struggle, with which the banners of liberty, socialism and unity have been hoisted along the great march of the Arab Nation, We, the Egyptian people, in the name of God and with His assistance pledge to indefinitely and unconditionally exert every effort to realise:-

Peace to our world Being determined that peace can only be based on justice and that political and social progress of all peoples can only be realized through the freedom and independent will of these peoples, and that any civilization is not worthy of its name unless it is free from exploitation whatever its form. Unity The hope of our Arab Nation being certain that Arab Unity is a call of history and future and an inevitable destiny which can only materialize through an Arab Nation capable of warding off any threat whatever may be the source or the pretexts justifying it.

The Constant Development Of Life In Our Nation Being convinced that the true challenge confronting nations is the realization of progress and that such progress does not occur automatically or through slogans alone, but that the driving force behind it is the release of all potentials of creativity and originality in our people, who have asserted at all times their contribution to civilization and humanity through work alone. Our people have passed through successive experiences, meantime offering rich experiences on both the national and international levels, by which they have been guided. These experiences finally took shape in the basic documentations of the July, 23rd Revolution led by the alliance of

the working forces of our struggling people . This people have been able, through deep awareness and refined sensibility, to retain the genuine core of this revolution and to continuously rectify its path and to realize through it full integration between science and faith, political and social freedom, national independence and affiliation on the one hand and the worldwide struggle of humanity for political economic, cultural and intellectual freedom and the fight against all forces and remnants of regression domination and exploitation on the other hand.

Freedom For The Humanity Of The Egyptian Man Having realized that mans humanity and dignity are the torches that guide and direct the course of the enormous development of mankind towards its supreme ideals. The dignity of every individual is natural reflection of the dignity of his nation, for each individual is a cornerstone in the edifice of the homeland . This homeland derives its strength and prestige from the value of each individual, his activity and dignity . The sovereignty of law is not only a guarantee for the freedom of the individual but is also the sole basis for the legality of authority. The alliance of the popular working forces is not a means for social conflict towards historical development, it is , in this modern age, with its climate and ways , a safety valve protecting the unity of the working powers of the nation and eliminating contradictions within these forces through democratic interaction .

We the working masses of the people of Egypt - out of determination, confidence and faith in all our national and international responsibilities, and in acknowledgment of Gods right and His messages, and in recognition of the right of our nation as well as of the principle and responsibility of mankind, and in the name of God and with His assistance - declare on the Eleventh of September 1971 that we accept and grant ourselves this Constitution, asserting our firm determination to defend and protect it, assuring our respect for it. The Tale of Sinuhe is considered one of the finest works of Ancient Egyptian literature. It is a narrative set in the aftermath of the death of Pharaoh Amenemhat I, founder of the 12th dynasty of Egypt, in the early 20th century BC. It is likely that it was composed only shortly after this date, albeit the earliest extant manuscript is from the reign of Amenemhat III, ca. 1800 BC.[1] There is an ongoing debate among Egyptologists as to whether or not the tale is based on actual events involving an individual named Sinuhe,[2] with the consensus being that it is most likely a work of fiction.[3][4] Due to the universal nature of the themes explored in Sinuhe, including divine providence and mercy, its anonymous author has been described as the Egyptian Shakespeare whose ideas have parallels in biblical texts. Sinuhe is considered to be a work written in verse and it may also have been performed.[5] The great popularity of the work is witnessed by the numerous surviving fragments.[6]
Sinuhe is an official who accompanies prince Senwosret I in Libya. He overhears a conversation connected with the death of King Amenemhet I and as a result flees to Upper Retjenu (Canaan), leaving

Egypt behind. He becomes the son-in-law of Chief Ammunenshi and in time his sons grow to become chiefs in their own right. Sinuhe fights rebellious tribes on behalf of Ammunenshi. As an old man, in the aftermath of defeating a powerful opponent in single combat, he prays for a return to his homeland.[5]: "May god pity me..may he hearken to the prayer of one far away!..may the King have mercy on me..may I be conducted to the city of eternity!".[6] He then receives an invitation from King Senwosret I of Egypt to return, which he accepts in highly moving terms. Living out the rest of his life in royal favour he is finally laid to rest in the necropolis in a beautiful tomb.[5]

The ancient Egyptians wrote works on papyrus as well as walls, tombs, pyramids, obelisks and more. Perhaps the best known example of ancient Egyptian literature is the Story of Sinuhe;[2] other well known works include the Westcar Papyrus and the Ebers papyrus, as well as the famous Book of the Dead. While most literature in ancient Egypt was so-called "Wisdom literature" (that is, literature meant for instruction rather than entertainment), there also existed myths, stories and biographies solely for entertainment purposes. The autobiography has been called the oldest form of Egyptian literature.[3] The Nile had a strong influence on the writings of the ancient Egyptians,[4] as did Greco-Roman poets who came to Alexandria to be supported by the many patrons of the arts who lived there, and to make use of the resources of the Library of Alexandria.[5] Many great thinkers from around the ancient world came to the city, including Callimachus of Libya and Theocritus of Syracuse. Not all of the great writers of the period came from outside of Egypt, however; one notable Egyptian poet was Apollonius of Rhodes.