Napoleon I 1769-1821: speech, 21 July 1798, before the Battle of the Pyramids

Table of Contents:

• An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian History
• Egyptian Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology
• About Hieroglyphics
• The Hieroglyphic Phonetic Alphabet
• Online Resources for Ancient Egyptian History
• Bibliography of Sources for Further Study

An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian History

Life in ancient Egypt was centered largely on agriculture. The majority of the people were involved in farming, and the growing season lasted eight-nine months. Wheat, fruits and vegetables were the principal crops, although there was some pastoral farming of cattle, sheep, or goats. Farmers in ancient Egypt worked to reach a level of subsistence so that they could feed themselves and pay their taxes. During the annual flooding of the Nile, which typically lasted from July through November, farming was impossible. But when the waters receded, a thick layer of fertile silt over the farmlands remained to insure rich soil for their crops and thick grasses for their grazing animals.

The country of Egypt consisted of two narrow strips of arable land lining either bank of the river Nile, from Aswan to the northern Delta. Just beyond the farmlands lay enormous deserts. The Nile was the lifeblood of Egypt. Its cycle of flooding -- growth, death, and rebirth to new growth -- became the cycle of everyday life, and also of Egyptian religion and understanding of an afterlife. The people of Egypt were dependent on the river for more than their food. It insured a line of communication and transportation among the provinces of the kingdom. The pharaohs took advantage of the Nile as a means to transport their armies, thus maintaining a strong, unified nation.

By 3100 BC, Egypt had a centralized government controlled by a line of hereditary rulers. These kings, called pharaohs, kept a royal court of advisors and nobility, and oversaw the governors of the provinces of the kingdom. They were also commanders of the Egyptian army. Even the priests and priestesses who officiated at the complex religious ceremonies and attended on the gods served the pharaohs. The rule of the pharaohs is considered dynastic; it can also be considered absolute in the truest sense of the word. The pharaohs came to be considered as the representatives of the gods on earth and even as gods themselves.

Egyptian Gods, Goddesses and Mythology

Ancient Egyptian society treated men and women equally. Women participated in the political, economic, and judicial world of ancient Egypt on the same terms as men. This social system reflects Egyptian mythology, where Goddesses played an equal, if not chief, role. The primeval mother-figures in the earliest prehistoric Egyptian myths are female. Female deities were kept separate from the males, with their own temples and followers. Egyptian goddesses are also creator deities, and the protectors of the pharaohs in the form of the cobra, vulture, or linoness.

In ancient Egyptian mythology, Egypt was created from the Watery Waste of Nun, a chaos god from whose body all things were born. The continuous mission of the daily temple services and strictly followed religious codes was to keep ordered Egyptian society from returning to the state of chaos in which it was born. Ma'at, the goddess in charge of law, balance and order, was one of the principal deities. The two "protectors of the realm" of Egypt were originally Nekhbet, vulture goddess of Northern Egypt, and Wadjet, cobra goddess of Lower Egypt. The cobra and the vulture were chosen by the Egyptians as the royal symbols because they were thought to be self-producing and therefore creators, or divine.

Egyptian mythology is a complex collection of often competing stories, traditions, and practices. This is partly because the culture is so ancient, and partly because each city had its own set of deities, whose unique personalities are lost as their cults age. Just as each city vied for supreme power before Egypt was a unified kingdom, the cities each tried to establish their gods as the supreme gods. Even after unification, each time the capital moved, the supreme god of the new city rose to be the supreme god of the kingdom.

Below, a table listing some of the many gods and goddesses of Egyptian mythology. The deities are listed as closely as possible to the order of their appearance in the myths, from oldest to newest.

About Hieroglyphics

The Egyptians began to form a pictographic written language about 5000 years ago, which they continued to use for more than 3500 years, until about 400 AD. Eventually, the pictures they used to represent words came to represent sounds. These symbols, hieroglyphs, or "sacred inscriptions" were adapted for use in everyday life, in addition to their important religious/mystical identity.

After 400 AD, the Egyptian language was written in the Greek alphabet, with the addition of several extra letters to represent Egyptian sounds that didn't exist in Greek. This form of Egyptian is called Coptic, and was in turn eventually replaced by Arabic, the language spoken in Egypt today. The ancient Egyptian tongue died out -- only the hieroglyphics remain to remind us that it ever existed.

For more than 1000 years, the hieroglyphics were little more than mysterious symbols carved on ancient monuments. All kinds of theories abounded: some thought that they recorded magic spells, others secret religious ceremonies. Then, in 1799, Napolean's army uncovered the key. The Rosetta Stone was discovered when Lieutenant Bouchard's men were remodeling the Fortress at Rosetta. The slab of basalt is inscribed with three texts, each in a different script: one in Demotic, one in hieroglyphics, and one in Coptic. Scholars hoped to use the Greek text to translate the others. Twenty-three years later, the young Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion became the first person in thousands of years to read hieroglyphics.

The Hieroglyphic Phonetic Alphabet

The following table explains the significance of the hieroglyphs and gives the phonetic equivalent of each in English.

Symbol	Meaning	English Sound
	vulture	short A, as in cat
	forearm	long A, as in table
	leg	hard B, as in big
	basket,hillside	hard C (K), as in call
	hobble rope	CH, as in children
	hand	hard D, as in dog
	two reed leaves	long E, as in lead
	vulture	short E, as in met
	horned viper	F, as in flower
	pot stand	hard G, as in gap
	cobra	soft G, as in generous
	shelter, rope	H, as in he, who
	reed leaf	short & long I, as in him, I'm
	cobra	J, as in jelly
	basket, hillside	hard C or K, as in kind, Christmas, lack
	mouth	L, as in lisp, linger
	owl	M, as in milk, dumb
	water	N, as in none
	quail chick	long O, as in lose, moon
	vulture	short O, as in brought, got
	stool	P, as in pretty
	horned viper	PH, as in pharaoh
+	basket + quail	Q, as in queen
	mouth	R, as in red
	folded linen	S, (soft C), as in silly, peace
	lake	SH, as in shilling
	loaf of bread	T, as in talk
	cow belly	soft TH, as in moth
	(not known)	hard TH, as in there
	quail chick	short U, as in lull
+	reed + quail	long U, as in rule
	horned viper	V, as in villain
	quail chick	W, as in will, where, when
+	basket + linen	X, as in fox
	reed leaf	short Y, as in yes
	two reed leaves	long Y, as in tarry
	door fastening	Z sound, as in xylophone, zany

Online Resources for Ancient Egyptian History

• Ancient Egypt (a British Museum site)
• E-Museum Ancient Egyptian Culture Exhibit
  
• Guardian's Egypt
• Mummies of Ancient Egypt (University of Michigan)
  

Bibliography of Sources for Further Study

Allen, J.P. et al, ed. Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt . Yale Egyptological Studies, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1989.

Blackman, A. M. The Story of King Kheops and the Magicians . J. V. Books, 1988.

Bonfante, L., et al. Reading the Past, Ancient Writing from Cuneiform to the Alphabet. British Museum Publication, 1990.

Clarke and Engelbach. Ancient Egyptian Construction and Architecture . Dover, 1930.

De Buck, A. An Egyptian Reading Book. Nederland Institute for the Near East.

Dersin, Denise, ed. What Life was Like on the Banks of the Nile: Egypt 3050-30 BC. Time Life Books, 1996.

Englund, G. Middle Egyptian: An Introduction. Uppsala University, 1988.

Faulkner, R.O. The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. British Museum Press, 1993.

Gardiner, Sir A.H. Egypt of the Pharaos. Oxford, 1961.

Gardiner, Sir A.H. Egyptian Grammar, Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs. Griffith Institute.

Hornung, E. Conception of God in Ancient Egypt: the One and the Many. London, 1993.

Kemp, B.J. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. Routledge, London, 1989.

Lichteim, M. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Loprieno, Antonio. Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction . Cambridge University Press,1995.

Martin, G.T. The Hidden Tombs of Memphis. Thames & Hudson, London.

Parkinson, R.B. Voices from Ancient Egypt. British Museum Press, 1991.

Säve-Söderbergh, Torgny. Temples and Tombs of Ancient Nubia. Thames & Hudson, 1987.

Silverman, David, gen. ed. Ancient Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Taylor, John. Egypt and Nubia. The British Museum, 1991.

Uphill, E.P. Egyptian Towns and Cities. Shire Egyptology, 1988.

Wenig, Steffen, ed. Africa in Antiquity. 2 vols. The Brooklyn Museum, 1978.