Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors: An Activity Guide
Introduction ow did the ancient Egyptians live Have you ever wondered In this book you'll learn about life among the Egyptians and their neighbors thou sands of years ago You'll learn to build a model Egyptian step pyramid follow an ancient Mesopotamian recipe dis covered on a clay tablet dress like a Nubian king or queen complete with robe royal shawl earrings and headdress build a model of the oldest known machine for drawing water create a Hittite pendant to wear and much more This book will show you what life was like for Egyp tians and their neighbors people from other cultures who lived nearby The Mesopotamians meh so po TAY me ans Nubians Hittites Syrians Libyans and the peo ple of Ebla Elam Susa and Mari all lived in nearby lands at some point during the time of the ancient Egyptians This book is about the ancient Egyptians and three of their neighbors the Mesopotamians Nubians and Hit tites The ancient Egyptian civilization lasted a remarkably long time more than 3 000 years During this time cul tures arose prospered and died out in neighboring lands and new cultures arose to replace them For example at different times different cultures resided in the land we now call Israel At some point in Egypt s past the Canaanites ka NA nites the Hebrews the Phoenicians foe NEE shuns the Philistines FILL i stines and oth ers called parts of the land of Israel home The Mesopotamians lived in western Asia between the famous Tigris TIE griss and Euphrates you FRAY teez rivers in a country now called Iraq i RACK The Mesopotamians included the Sumerians Babylonians bah bih LOE nee ans Assyrians a SEE ree ans and countless less well known groups Mesopotamia was
powerfully influential Its customs affect us even today You practice Mesopotamian math whenever you tell time Ever wonder why we have 60 minutes in an hour It's because the Mesopotamians counted in 60s They were also the first people to invent writing This book will teach you how to make a model ziggurat ZIG goo rat a towering staircase for the gods like those the Mesopotamians built The Bible story of the Tower of Babel was probably about a Mesopotamian ziggurat The Nubians were people who lived south of Egypt in Africa They traded extensively with Egypt sending gold spices and ostrich eggs in ships traveling north on the Nile They built pyramids modeled on the Egyptians and in later years invented their own alphabet Their language or languages remain a mystery only a few words of one language are understood today Several Egyptian pharaohs were Nubians Nubia though far less powerful than Egypt succeeded in ruling Egypt for 70 years Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors will teach you about the first Nubian king to rule Egypt a man named Piye pi YAY who loved horses and built the first pyramid in Nubia You will learn to cook a dish with millet a grain grown in Nubia and make a model Nubian house from clay You also will read about the fierce lion god Apede mak who was worshipped by the Nubians in later years The Hittites lived north of Egypt in the land we now call Turkey or Anatolia Once one of the most powerful cultures in the region they were forgotten for thousands of years until archaeologists began to uncover their ruins and scholars discovered that the mysterious Hittite lan guage was actually a relative of ours You already know one word in Hittite What comes from the sky in the form of rain What flows in rivers in Anatolia and the United States The Hittites called it watar The Hittite kingdom lasted about 500 years Fierce fighters the Hittites conquered vast territories You can read about their religion here they claimed to have a thousand gods and pretend you are a servant lost in their Great Temple And you can copy an ancient sentence in actual Hittite writing
There are several reasons why Egypt is so much more famous than these other cultures First Egypt's dry desert air preserved things well Colors stayed brilliant reds blues and greens leap from the walls of tomb paintings to our eyes Loaves of bread linen dresses even baskets of real figs have survived intact in the still air of the tombs During the same centuries many Hittite and Mesopotamian objects rotted away The things that sur vived are those that couldn't rot bronze statues clay tablets and silver harps Second mummies let us see how ancient Egyptians really looked Scholars unwrapped the mummy of Ramses II perhaps the most powerful pharaoh of Egypt and learned he had a high bridged nose and infected teeth In contrast most of the Egyptians neighbors buried or burned their corpses leaving only bones or dust for archaeologists to uncover Third the sheer number of objects found in Egypt is staggering The tomb of an important lady held 77 linen sheets Countless rings bracelets and necklaces of gold and beautiful stones have been found Glorious treasures did survive from the other three cultures but far less Much of it was probably melted down or stolen over the millennia Telling Time In this book dates are expressed using the abbreviation B C to indicate years before the year 1 in the Roman calendar and A D for those years that follow the year 1 Some people express these date as B C E and C E Time is counted backward before the year 1 The bigger the number B C the longer ago something happened About 3100 B C the first Egyptian king began his rule That was more than 5 000 years ago About 1200 B C the Hittite empire col lapsed That was only about 3 200 years ago The number 3100 is bigger than 1200 so the Egyptian king ruled first Here's a trick to quickly tell how many years ago an event occurred We are now near the year 2000 You can add 2 000 to any date B C and know how long ago something happened In 30 B C the Romans defeated the great Queen Cleopatra If the story is true she allowed a poisonous snake to bite her dying to escape from Roman control Add 2 000 to 30 from 30 B C and you know that Cleopatra died about 2 030 years
People in the ancient Near East as the region is called maintained some customs that were harsh and cruel All of these cultures kept slaves often foreigners who had been captured in war In the Mesopotamian city of Ur and the Nubian city of Kerma dozens Sometimes hundreds of the king's loyal subjects chose or were chosen to be buried with him when he died In Ur the subjects took poison first In Kerma they were probably buried alive This book begins with the first Egyptian pharaoh 5 000 years ago and ends with the defeat of Queen Cleopatra by the Romans 30 years before the year 1 B C It covers about three millennia three thousand years How many people have lived and died since Cleopatra was captured or the Hittites worshipped their thousand gods or King Piye of Nubia first sat on Egypt's throne Just imagine all those people century after century living their lives More than 50 centuries 5 000 years have passed since the earliest people in this book made their clothes grew their food raised their children and told their stories How amazing it is that we know anything at all about how they lived Yet we know quite a lot as you will
