Ancient Egypt

Generalization: According to Henry Parkes, a civilization needs to provide physical security, ethical guidance and emotional fulfillment to its members in order to survive. Ancient Egyptian Civilization was able to survive for more than 2000 years because, for the most part, it did an excellent job providing these three things.

I. Introduction to Egypt

Mark Millmore's Ancient Egypt is a great place to start. You can even learn to write your name in hieroglyphics.

The Ancient Egypt Site is another good place to start.

The "tour Egypt" site has some excellent resources for Egyptian history, divided by "dynasties" instead of "kingdoms. For this course, you can consider Dynasties I-VI as part of the the Old Kingdom, Dynasties XI and XII as the Middle Kingdom, and XVIII, XIX, and XX as part of the New Kingdom.

You may find even more useful the Ancient Egypt section of Providence College's CivWeb.

Note: Egyptian names are not transliterated consistently. The Pharaoh who had the great pyramid built is sometimes called Khufu and sometimes Cheops in English texts. The Pharaoh Unas is also called Wenis.

Several sites have excerpts including the Ancient History Source Book and the Digital Library have selections from the Maxims of Ptah Hotep.

II. Old Kingdom Egypt (3000-2200 B.C.)

A. Physical Security

1. Natural geographical advantages (ex. KEMET)

2. Unity (NOMES/PER-O)

3. Achievements made possible by unity

B. Ethical Guidance

1. Literature (MAXIMS OF PTAH HOTEP)

2. Pharaoh

C. Emotional Fulfillment

1. Pharaoh

2. Religion

gods and goddesses

3. Education

hieroglyphics.

4. Family
women in Egypt

D. Potential weaknesses (UNAS)

E. End of Old Kingdom (NOMES)

III. Middle Kingdom Egypt (2000-1750 B.C.)

A. Improvements on Old Kingdom

1. Government (PLEA OF THE ELOQUENT PEASANT)

2. Religion (OSIRUS)

B. End of Middle Kingdom (HYKSOS)

IV. New Kingdom Egypt (1570-1000 B.C.)

A. Ahmose (1570-1545) and Thutmose (1525-1495)

B. Strengths of NK

C. Problems in NK

1. Impact of constant war

2. Ethical breakdown (BOOK OF THE DEAD)

You can find Budge's translation of the Book of the dead either here orhere.