Ancient Egypt
rating: +1+–x

Basic Information

Ancient Egypt refers to people of the land along the Nile river thousands of years ago, their culture and their nation. It is the land of the Pharaohs and the Great Pyramids.

History and Timeline

What we tend to think of as "Ancient Egypt" is the era of the Pharaohs, starting with the unification of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms around 3150 BC and lasting until Egypt became a province of Rome in 31 BC. In a broader sense, civilization within the Nile river area runs at least 1,500 years before the Pharoahs. Here's a rough timeline:

Don't let that timeline intimidate you. The culture and government of Ancient Egypt were remarkably stable and long-lived, so for most gaming purposes you don't have to sweat getting the details placed in the correct sub-era of Egyptian history. Egyptologists and Historians often debate the exact dating of when each period started and ended.

Ancient Egyptian culture didn't have long term unmoving roadmarks (as in "BC" vs "AD" or the like) on their calendars. They recorded the year in terms such as "in the 2nd year of the 33rd pharaoh". Such phrasing works fine if it's happening in your lifetime and you have a complete and accurate list of the dynasties of Egypt. Instead we have multiple incomplete, sometimes contradictory, lists of pharaohs. Reconciling these lists with each other or with non-Egyptian historical events is sometimes tricky. While this is a problem for historians, the lack of clarity is actual of benefit in gaming and storytelling as it lets you fudge the numbers in whatever ways your plot (or whim) requires.

Geography

Upper Egypt is in the South, and Lower Egypt is in the North. This reversal from common modern map orientations is because of the prominence of the Nile river. The Nile flowed North to the Mediterranean Sea from the higher ground of the southern mountains. Lower Egypt is therefore logically the part closer to sea level.

Egypt in the ancient times was far less arid and desertified than it is now. The periodic flooding of the Nile was the heartbeat rhythm of the age and culture. The majority of the citizens were farmers and lived in the flood zone. The flooding of the Nile happened started between June and September each year, and receded in September or October. The flood deposited fertile black soil on top of the fields, but it could also drown the unwary and wash entire buildings away. The flood marked the start of the new year, and defined the level of taxes that commoners had to pay that year. Predicting the start and the eventual height of the flood was one of the sacred tasks of the priesthood. To keep track of it they built special structures called nilometers.

Social Strata

For the majority of the period in which it was a significant power, Egypt was a hydraulic kingdom controlled by despotic rulers known as pharaohs. Like many early despotisms, the pharaohs claimed divine heritage, authority and mandate and were the prime source of both religious authority - justice and order proceeded from the pharaoh and had not separate institutionalisation.

Scribes, civil servants, and government appointees were the upper classes of Ancient Egypt. These noblemen bureaucrats outranked the professional class (made up of doctors, engineers, and priests), who in turn outranked the peasant farmers.

The law treated all the social strata and both genders as equals, and even a lowly farmer could petition the court if his or her social better had wronged them. The land was typically owned by nobles, religious institutions, or the state, and the farmers essentially employees, but again they legally could have owned land if they came in to money some how.

Slavery did exist, but modern scholars debate at what scale and to what extent it existed, and it may have waxed and waned in various periods. It is likely that the pyramids were built by free laborers, not slaves. All the lower classes had to pay a corvee-style tax of several days civil labor each year, so every farmer is likely to have a little bit of experience doing construction tasks on those numerous monuments.

The black eyeliner and heavy make-up worn by Egyptians of all social status was not merely to look emo. It served the important function of reducing glare when looking out over the desert, as well as protecting the face from sunburn.

The lower classes drank mostly a soupy beer with lots of sediment in it. White wine was the drink of the upper classes, or for special rituals and parties.

Political appointments were often given as favors to friends and family of the Pharaoh, and frequently accompanied by gifts of gold. Some seriously strange professions that you might expect to be low-status were actually (for cultural reasons) positions of prominence. For example, the job of cooling the royal personage with a large fan made of ostrich plumes. While you might imagine this to be a slave's job, it was actually a political appointment usually given to a relative of the Pharaoh. Likewise, Shepherd to the Royal Anus sounds like a punishment, but this royal enema coach was actually one of the highest positions a physician or priest could aspire to.

The role of human fly paper, by contrast, was indeed a low-status job assigned to slave who was covered in honey or asses milk and made to stand in the far corner of the room to attract, distract, and swat any insects that might otherwise bother the pharaoh.

Trade Goods

Egypt's main exports were:

Wood, by contrast, was a significant import and there are several accounts of missions undertaken up the Levantine Coast to buy cedar from the forests of Lebanon. Egypt also served as a thoroughfare for trade across the Red Sea and beyond into the Indian Ocean as far as Taprobane (Ceylon). This trade included incense (predominately myrhh and frankincense from Arabia) and spices from the Indian region.

Whilst trade did exist, and was important to the economy, as usual in the pre-modern era, the overwhelming majority of economic activity and wealth production was based around agriculture. We think of Egypt as a desert, but the cyclical flooding of the Nile brought fertility and life to its banks and the floodplain. (In the centuries where Roman Egypt was a part of the Roman Empire, it was one of the main suppliers of grain that kept the bread part of "bread and circuses" working in Rome.) Egyptian Laborers of all varieties were usually paid in grain. Ancient Egypt actually had no coins until foreign merchants introduced the concept in the Late Period.

The Ancient Egyptian people were known as well for their advanced medicine and doctors, their skill at shipbuilding (but not particularly for sailing as the Nile was easy waters), math, engineering and quarrying. As was mentioned in the section on social strata, being a scribe was an upper-class job that paid well. These are the sorts of professions for which wealthy ancient peoples might seek out an Egyptian specialist.

Architecture

You've probably heard about the pyramids, and specifically the Great Pyramids at Giza. You've also no doubt seen the huge sculptures and sculpted pillars of stone. Your mental image of these things is colored by the centuries of disuse and neglect they've been through. Instead of dull neutral stone surfaces, these objects were alive with color. The Great Pyramids were coated in white limestone and capped with electrum. They were blinding up close, and could be seen from miles away even at night. The walls of other buildings were often brightly painted as well, with whites and reds being common base coats over which details and hieroglyphs were applied. (Many generations later, the limestone was pried off the pyramid and used to build Cairo.)

Although the pyramids were made of stone, most Egyptian architecture made use of the humble mud-brick. Houses tended to be square, with flat roofs. Open air court-yards and just generally unroofed or partially roofed rooms were very common, because it almost never rained. People slept on the roof of their homes, both because it was cooler there and as an extra precaution against drowning should the flood season come earlier than expected (also, being on the roof placed you further from the miscellaneous things that crawl about at ground level). Interior rooms often had small cellars built into the floor, a short pit just deep enough to hold jugs of beer or wine.

Funerary Practices

The Ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife where you could "take it with you", in accordance with Egyptian Mythology. Elaborate mummification processes were used to preserve the bodies. Most of the internal organs were removed, and then natrine and salts were applied in a lengthy process to dry out the body. A fair amount of ritual was involved, as well. For example, the person who made the first incision into the corpse was ritually cursed and chased out of the room by someone wearing an Anubis mask. Despite all this formality, there was still enough concern about impropriety (i.e. necrophilia) that the bodies of noblewomen were generally kept around to "ripen" for a few days before they were handed over to the embalmers.

Additional rituals were performed during and prior to burial to prepare the dead for the next world. Prized possessions, domestic goods, and effigy laborers called shabti were buried with the dead to provide for them in the next life. (Shabti are the single most common egyptian burial artifact.) Relatives of the dead would visit the burial sites frequently to say prayers or even bring food to the departed.

Gold was deemed the "flesh of the gods" and thus highly fit for the afterlife. Gold statues, jewelry and gold-gilt wooden objects were frequently buried with dead, even those of relatively low social status. King Tut's Tomb Treasures were remarkably well preserved, giving us a catalog of what the upper classes might be buried with to insure their immortality is spent in the lap of luxury.

Note as well that pets were often mummified after they died. Cats, baboons, and other animals sacred to various deities might be sacrificed, dessicated and stored in a tomb, temple, clay pot or stone sarcophagus. Special mention needs to be made of the mummified Ibis. Literally millions of Ibises were mummified. It's believed they were offered up as sacrifices to catch the attention of the gods (most notably Thoth) and hopefully get one's prayers answered. So many were killed and mummified, that some historians think it's just not possible that they could have been only supplied by trapping or hunting. It's likely there was a Egyptian sacred Ibis farm somewhere that raised, killed and preserved them for ritual use. Recent research says that the Ibis mummies show more genetic diversity than you'd expect for farmed birds, so it's possible that they were hunted in the wild instead, but if so that might have taken remarkably large flocks of wild Ibis to support the scope of the animal mummy industry.

Military

Horse-drawn Chariots were introduced by the Hyskos invaders in the late Middle Kingdom, and quickly adopted by the Egyptians. The most common chariot configuration and use by the Egyptians was as a mobile archery platform, allowing them to deliver volleys of arrows anywhere on the battlefield and then withdraw before the enemy could respond. The battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC saw the use of literally thousands of chariots. The King of Kadesh attempted to disrupt the chariot forces by unleashing mares in heat onto the battlefield to distract the horses. Arguably the chariot dominated model could be said to have persisted into the classical period, but once Alexander the Great's conquest drew Egypt into the Hellenistic world, the military transformed into a phalanx based model, until that too was superseded by Roman occupation and the pseudo-legionary model.

The khopesh is a sword with a blade that is partly curved like a sickle. It was originally a Canaanite weapon, but was quickly adapted by the Egyptians and used for more than a millennium. Other typically Egyptian weapons of the period might be the delta-axe (an axe with a pointed, triangular blade) and the bladed-mace (a rounded headed mace with a blade stuck into one side of the head. As usual, spears seem to have been the most common infantry weapon and the javelin was also widespread. Armour appears to have been rare - the heaviest being bronze scale armour (usually worn by chariot crew), whilst a form of linothorax may also have existed. Shields made of leather-bound wood were the most common form of protection.

It is probably worth noting that the majority of the "ancient" period that springs to mind when thinking of Egypt took place during the Bronze Age - the iron age begins around the third intermediate period and by then Egypt is already on its way out as a power.

Animals

Baboons were used as police animals in Ancient Egypt, much the way we use police dogs. Which is kinda weird, because they did have dogs, and baboons weren't even native and had to be imported from elsewhere on the continent. But there are records of police in the market places of Ancient Egypt unleashing baboons to chase and bite thieves.

Horses were used to draw chariots in battle, as mentioned above - breeds large enough to ride, and the technology and doctrine with which to ride them seem to have come relatively late into Egypt.

Other domesticated animals in Egypt include cats, donkeys, mongeese, cattle, pigs and various birds.

Wild animals native to the region had a huge impact on Egyptian mythology and culture. Among the more notable were crocodiles, hippos, scarab beetles and the mysterious Set animal.

See Also

Sources

Bibliography
2. Documentary: The Hidden History of Egypt - narrated and hosted by Terry Jones
3. Documentary: Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs - narrated by Christopher Lee
4. Non-Fiction Book: A Visitor's Guide to the Ancient World by Lesley Sims
5. Non-Fiction Book: Cartoon History of the Universe by Larry Gonick
6. Museum: Egypt exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago
7. Museum: traveling King Tut exhibit (saw it when it stopped in Seattle)

Game and Story Use

  • Ancient Egypt can serve as a nice backdrop for a mythology or time travel adventure.
  • The trade goods section (above) can help you figure out what sort of exports and specialists might come from Egypt during the era to add a little verisimilitude to your historical campaign.
  • Ancient Egypt, with it's thousands of years of history and prehistory, and belief in the immortality of the soul, is a great location for the back story of a time abyss, mummy, or other immortal character.
    • A vampire from Ancient Egypt would be an interesting twist. Sun gods such as Ra, Amun and Aten featured prominently in the religion and culture, and deserts are known for being blindingly sunny. That's bound to have an impact on the character's personality.
egypthistoryrng_culture
page revision: 15, last edited: 19 May 2021 00:09
Edit Rate (+1) Tags Discuss History Files Print Site tools + Options
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License