Ancient Egypt Essay

Starting in 6000 B.C many people make up the community and they use the Nile as their center of their territory. The land around the Nile was rich and great for farming. The first civilization was made on the Nile, as it was a great place for farming. The Nile experienced flooding every year bringing water and rich soil and allowed for people to settle. All winter long the people watered their crops using an irrigation sytem. In 3200 B.C in Egypt, there was a lower and upper Egypt. The Lower being at the north end of Egypt and the Upper being at the south end of Egypt. River travel was a common thing to do Upper and Lower Egypt were both built on the Nile river. Eventually the two Kingdoms were combined as one Kingdom under the rule of King

Egyptians thought the Pharoahs had the powers to do anything they wanted. Like flooding the sea or causing the sun to rise. A big part of the Egyptian cultures, was the belief in the afterlife. To achieve the afterlife the pharaohs would have to be buried in a pyramid. This time period was called the Old Kingdom (2660-2180 B.C). The Old Kingdom was a time of building great Pyramids. The big pyramids built at this time, were the Pyramids of Giza. The Pyramids are the last of the 7 wonders of the world still up and not destroyed. The Pyramids were made out of limestone and weighed a lot. Slaves were put to work into building these pyramids. A popular way to move the heavy limestone was to make a ramp to where the slaves would put down the limestone. The reason why they used these ramps, was because the limestone was very heavy and was a whole group effort to move one piece. Each piece of limestone weighed 2.5million tons. At the time the Great Pyramids were built, they were the tallest man made structure in the world. The Old Kingdom was wiped because of a severe drought and the Nile did not flood. This was followed by decades of famine and resulted into the collapse of the Old

Mentuhotep II is considered the founder of the Middle Kingdom. He was the king of Upper Egypt and he defeated Lower Egypt, thus uniting them again. King Mentuhotep wore the crown of King Narmer signifying the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. The capital became Thebes. Thebes was the capital before of Upper Egypt. During the Middle Kingdom, trade and transportation improved. They built dikes to trap the Niles water and use it for irrigation. The prosperity and the reign of the Middle Kingdom did not last very long. In about 1640 B.C, a group called the Hyksos ruled much of Egypt. The name Hyksos meant, “Rulers of Foreign lands”. The Hyksos were from the Palestine area. The Middle Kingdom collapsed like the Old Kingdom and the New Kingdom would