THE WoRLD OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS Yo other country not even China or India has such a long unbro ken history as Egypt Nearly 3 000 years before the birth of Jesus the Egyptians had reached a high stage of civilization They lived under an orderly government they car ried on commerce in ships they built great stone structures and most important of all they had acquired the art of writing In the Nile River Valley where the Egyptian people lived the early development of the arts and crafts that formed the foundation of Western civilization can be traced The traveler along the Nile sees many majestic monuments that reveal the achieve ments of ancient Egypt Most of these monuments are tombs and temples The ancient Egyptians were very religious They believed in a life after deathſ at first only for kings and nobles if the body could be preserved So they carefully embalmed the body and walled it up in a massive tomb On the walls of the tomb they carved pictures Io
THE WoRLD OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS WWW 11 RE to Egyptian dancing detail from a tomb painting from Shaykh Abd al yrnah Egypt c 1400 BC in the British Museum London Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum and inscriptions Some private tombs were decorated with paintings They put into the tomb the person's statue and any objects they thought would be needed when the soul returned to the body The hot sand and dry air of Egypt preserved many of these objects through the centuries Thousands of them are now in museums all over the world Together with written documents they show how people lived in ancient Egypt II
ANCIENT EGYPT Egyptian archaeologists work at an ancient burial ground in Saqqara Egypt The 4 300 year old pyramid of yeen Sesheshet the mother of King Teti founder of Egypt s 6th dynasty was discovered here Khaled Desouki AFP Getty Images The desert sands have also preserved the remains of prehistoric people By their sides in the burial pits lie stone tools and weapons carved figures and decorated pottery These artifacts help archaeologists and historians piece together the story of life in the Nile Valley centuries before the beginning of the historical period I2
THE WORLD OF THE AIENT EGYPTIANS THIE ART OF MUMIMTIFICATION R In the great museum of Egyptian antiquities in Cairo throngs of sightseers daily look into the very faces of the pharaohs and nobles who ruled Egypt many centuries ago They were preserved as mummies thousands of which have been taken from the sands and tombs of Egypt The word mummy refers to a dead body in which some of the soft tissue has been preserved along with the bones The Egyptians practiced the art of mummifying their dead for 3 000 years or more in the belief that the soul would be reunited with the body in the afterlife so the body had to be kept intact The most carefully prepared Egyptian mummies date from about much older Sacred animals such as cats ibises and crocodiles were also mummified The most elaborate Egyptian process used for royalty and the wealthy took about 70 days First most of the internal organs were removed The brain was usually extracted through the nostrils with a hook and then discarded The heart considered the most important organ was usually left in place Most of the other vital organs were embalmed and placed in four vessels called canopic jars which were buried with the body In later Egyptian times the treated organs were
