adze A stone, copper, or bronze tool used to carve and shave wood. It looks similar to an ax but with a head mounted perpendicular to the handle or with the blade set at a right angle to the shaft.
akh A concept meaning “effective.” In the funerary tradition of Egypt, the akh was a transfigured deceased person who had full physical range in the afterlife.
canopic A vase, jar, chest, or other container that held one of the internal organs of a body removed during the mummification process. There were four canopic jars per set, one each for the liver, the stomach, the lungs, and the intestines.
decans A group of 36 rising stars, each successively marking the beginning of a new “hour” (40 minutes) for an interval of ten days.
epagomenal days Days that fall outside of any regular month in the solar calendar. The Egyptians added five extra epagomenal days to their 360-day year.
faience More correctly known as “Egyptian faience,” this blue-green glaze is a nonclay ceramic of silica made from sand or crushed quartz. It was commonly used to make jewelry, amulets, scarabs, figurines, and vessels.
lunar calendar Certain Egyptian festivals were organized around various phases of the moon. The lunar calendar marked these lunar-based events and was restricted to the cultic sphere.
Mitanni A powerful kingdom located in northern Mesopotamia. The Mitanni were a group of Indo-Aryans who united several small Hurrian-speaking states during the Late Bronze Age.
mortuary temple A temple dedicated to commemorating the cult of the deceased king and the reign of the pharaoh who commissioned its construction.
obelisk A tall, narrow, four-sided structure with a pyramid-shaped top carved out of a single stone. It had symbolic connections with the sun cult, especially the sun god Re.
Punt An ancient land thought to comprise many small states located southeast of Egypt near the coastal region of modern-day Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan.
Pyramid Texts So-named because they were first discovered inscribed on the interior walls and sarcophagi of pyramids at Saqqara dating to the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, the Pyramid Texts are the earliest set of religious texts known from ancient Egypt. They consist of a number of spells and incantations that are often difficult to interpret, but they are primarily concerned with aiding the king’s ascent to the afterlife.
scriptorium A place for writing. In ancient Egypt, this place was called the “House of Life.” It is thought that scribes copied and recorded manuscripts here and that it acted as a library for papyrus scrolls, as well as a classroom to teach scribes and priests.
shabti Also known as ushebti. A funerary figurine placed in tombs as part of the grave goods to act as a substitute for the deceased in the afterlife by performing manual labor tasks. Many were inscribed with the name of their owner and an ushebti spell.
shadow clock A device used in daylight to measure the hours of the day by the position of the sun. The device, which cast its shadow to mark the hour, divided the day into ten parts plus two twilight hours in the morning and evening to make a 12-hour day.
solar bark A ceremonial vessel used during rituals and festival processions to transport the portable image of the sun god.
star clock The method of using stars to measure time. In ancient Egypt, star clocks occur as tables of decanal stars on the interior lids of coffins of the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties. The tables would be viewed under the night sky and the position of a specific star in the table would determine the time.
stela A standing stone or wooden tablet used to mark a tomb or boundary that was normally decorated with inscriptions, reliefs, or paintings. Stelae could also be used as votive monuments set up by individuals to worship gods or as commemorative monuments to record special events.
water clock Also called clepsydra. Water clocks were introduced in the New Kingdom to determine the hours of the day. They were shaped like vases and had a scale on the inside with a small needle-size hole in the bottom, where water could escape when the vases were filled. As the water drained, hours were measured against the scale.
Egyptian medical knowledge was limited. Only some bodily functions were understood, such as the circulatory system. Physicians performed surgery; one famous papyrus is a trauma surgeon’s handbook, probably for the battlefield. Nonsurgical treatments include medication but also magical procedures. The Ebers papyrus treats internal diseases and medical theory. Other papyri focus on gynecology or the diagnosis and treatment of snakebites. The medical profession comprised ordinary and specialized physicians (such as ophthalmologists and dentists). While Egyptians usually could rely on a sufficient diet, poor hygienic conditions contributed to a dramatic mortality rate. One-third of all newborns died within the first months, and half of all children did not live beyond their youth. Some of the known illnesses were diarrhea, amoebic dysentery, typhus, malaria, tuberculosis, smallpox, pneumonic plague, polio, schistosomiasis, hepatitis, illnesses caused by worms, conjunctivitis, diphtheria, dermatological conditions, and tumors. Also well attested are fractures of all kinds, and injuries to the skull and spinal column. Because the flour used in bread was ground coarsely and mixed with sand, teeth were often worn down to the nerve, which could lead to painful abscesses. However, there is hardly any evidence for cavities.
Ancient Egyptian medicine was famed abroad, from the Hittites to the Greeks. However, the efficacy of their medical practices very often finds no support in modern science.
Egypt’s climate and the Egyptian technique of mummification have preserved thousands of bodies that are an invaluable source for our understanding of health, disease, and living conditions in ancient Egypt. Noninvasive investigation and visualization methods have replaced actual autopsies and increased significantly our knowledge, as has the detection of many pathogens. However, the collection and analysis of DNA samples is still problematic.
IMHOTEP
reign of Djoser 2630–2611 BCE
Architect of the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, in the first millennium BCE worshipped as a god of healing
EDWIN SMITH
1822–1906
Collector of antiquities who purchased the medical papyrus named after him in 1862
WOLFHART WESTENDORF
1924–
German Egyptologist and scholar of ancient Egyptian medicine
Thomas Schneider
Papyri and wall carvings record medical treatments and tools. Imhotep was the god of healing.
Magic (personified as the god Heka, the son of the creator god, who helped his father construct the cosmos) was fundamental to every aspect of ancient Egyptian society: religious, political, scientific, and agricultural. Amulets, wands, effigies, and other paraphernalia were used, together with oral and written spells and rituals, to heal illness, induce divine visions, encourage the productivity of crops, safeguard livestock from wild animals, and aid deceased individuals in their journeys through the afterlife. The same magical precepts were used to protect newborn babies from disease-carrying demons, ordinary laborers from snakebites and scorpion stings, and the sun god on his nightly voyage when he was attacked by a monstrous serpent intent on blotting out the sun forever. Spells could be employed to make someone fall in love or to curse a hated rival. They could also be used to protect the entire country (and its king) from dangerous enemies and to subjugate foreign lands. Magical knowledge was closely guarded; the temple priests acted as private magicians in towns and villages and also as royal court magicians for the pharaoh. They possessed the education and access to these arcane rites, which were composed and stored in the temple scriptorium (the “House of Life”).
The term “magic” has negative connotations in modern Western society; however, it was not only legal and accepted, but also highly valued and integral to ancient Egyptian civilization.
An intact “magician’s box” was discovered in a Middle Kingdom tomb shaft, buried beneath the later mortuary temple of Ramesses II. It contained a number of papyri inscribed with medical prescriptions and fertility spells, divine hymns, exorcism rites, funerary and cultic rituals, and incantations for protective amulets. It also included ivory wands used to draw protective circles, figurines and human hair for coercive magic (such as love spells), divine statues, amulets, and other magical items.
Rachel Aronin
Magic, in the form of amulets and effigies, was part of everyday life in ancient Egypt. The god Heka personified this magical power.
The Nile River was not only a lifeline for agriculture; it was also the superhighway of ancient Egypt. The Egyptians devised watercraft for virtually any need—from tiny skiffs for private conveyance and fishing, to broad transport ships for military and trading campaigns. Seafaring boats are evidenced as early as the Old Kingdom, though cruising close to the coastline was probably the rule until later. Access to the Red or Mediterranean seas required land transport of boat components for assembly near a port. The intractable desert sands made wheeled vehicles impractical, so for land-based transportation, travel on-foot or by donkey was most effective. Donkeys were favored pack animals for both short- and long-distance movement of goods. Cattle power was also enlisted for pulling heavy loads. Widespread use of wheeled, animal-drawn carts became common only around the New Kingdom. Whereas land movement of monumentally heavy loads such as construction blocks and colossal statuary, was negotiated with wooden sleds, river barges could float cargo as big as a whole obelisk. Of world-changing significance, the introduction of the horse and chariot from western Asia in the Second Intermediate Period paved the way for Egypt’s rise as the supreme Near Eastern imperial power during the New Kingdom.
The ancient Egyptians faced a formidable landscape, but throughout history they proved adept at mastering their environment to reach and surpass intended destinations.
Some distant lands were special destinations. From Old through New Kingdom times, Egyptian expeditions traveled to Punt, a source of highly desired exotic goods—especially incense for temple rituals. Reachable via land or by sea, its exact location is debated, but current consensus favors eastern Eritrea and Sudan. Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari chronicles the most famous expedition, depicting a fleet of large, complexly rigged trade ships at various stages of their mission.
Nicholas Picardo
The Nile was vital to travel in ancient Egypt. Transport by land was more difficult, but donkeys were useful for moving goods. Giant sculptures could be moved by organized teams of laborers.
Because only a few sources have been preserved, such as the Mathematical Papyrus Rhind and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus, our knowledge of Egyptian mathematics is sketchy, but it seems that it was mainly applied to land administration and architecture. We have evidence of the basic arithmetic operations: use of a decimal system; use of fractions; calculation of surfaces and volumes (the surface of a circle with an approximate value for π of 3.16, the surface of a hemisphere, the volume of a truncated pyramid); summing of progressions, equations, reciprocals; and knowledge of Pythagorean triples. Astronomy devised a civil calendar of 365 days (12 months of 30 days and five epagomenal days), and a lunar calendar for religious feasts. Star clocks from the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties contain tables of the decans and when they rose in the night sky, which allowed for the determination of precise hours. In the New Kingdom, water clocks were introduced as an auxiliary device for this purpose; late New Kingdom royal tombs show grids of transiting stars behind a seated priest. Shadow clocks were used to measure daylight hours. From the New Kingdom onward, tomb and temple ceilings were decorated with complex depictions of star constellations in the form of animals and anthropomorphic deities.
Egyptian mathematics and astronomy served mainly practical purposes in administration and architecture, with a number of significant achievements in arithmetic and geometry.
Astronomical concepts were central to ideas about the king’s afterlife. According to the Pyramid Texts, the king journeyed like the sun god across the heavens, or became a star among two constellations. Among the southern “unwearying stars” that move far across the celestial sphere (Orion’s Belt and Sirius), he would become Osiris (Orion), whereas Sirius was identified with Osiris’s wife Isis. Or, he would join the “imperishable stars,” the northern circumpolar stars that never sink below the horizon (Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Draco).
AMENEMHAB
ca. 1500 BCE
Ancient Egyptian astronomer, inventor of a water clock
RICHARD A. PARKER
1903–1995
Egyptologist and pioneer of the study of Egyptian astronomy
Thomas Schneider
Mathematics was applied to architecture, assisting with the development of the pyramid. Star clocks enabled the Egyptians to determine the hours.
Did Thutmose III have a Napoleon complex, or did Napoleon have a Thutmose III complex? Both men built extraordinary empires for their countries. Son of Thutmose II and a minor queen named Isis, this fifth king of the 18th Dynasty spent his first 20 regnal years (from 1479 BCE) overshadowed by his aunt, Queen Hatshepsut. After her death in ca. 1458 BCE, Thutmose embarked on at least 16 Asiatic military campaigns over two decades, the most famous of which was the conquest and siege of Megiddo (years 22–23), part of a coalition of Syrian rebel towns. A clever surprise strategy, followed by a long siege, secured the victory. This and other triumphs are recorded in the king’s Annals at Karnak Temple, our most detailed journal accounts of Egyptian military exploits in Syria. By year 33 the king had crossed the Euphrates, defeated the Mitanni, and erected a stela to commemorate the feat. Another success subdued Kadesh on the Orontes River (year 42), where Thutmose’s officer, Amenemheb, slaughtered a mare sent out to distract the Egyptian chariotry stallions. To Egypt’s south, Thutmose eventually reached as far as the Fourth Cataract of the Nile.
The Egyptian sphere of influence had never been so expansive, and the tribute and booty flowed back home to support the king’s ambitious construction program. At Karnak, his Akh-menu, or jubilee temple, contained a hall of ancestors demonstrating Thutmose’s veneration of the past; for all, that is, except for Hatshepsut, whose name he started to erase—for reasons still unclear—after his forty-second year. The temple also contained the unique “Botanical Garden” chambers, with reliefs documenting the flora and fauna encountered by the army during its Syrian campaigns. At least 50 other temples and shrines by Thutmose are attested in Egypt as well as in Palestine and Nubia. Across the river from Karnak, Thutmose erected his mortuary temple, along with shrines at Deir el-Bahari (containing reliefs from his final decade) and Medinet Habu.
Stylistically, only the later portraits of Thutmose III can be clearly differentiated from those of Hatshepsut. His son Amenhotep II, coregent with his father for several years, continued some of the military traditions of his father. After 53 years on the throne, Thutmose was finally laid to rest in a sumptuous tomb high in the cliff in the Valley of the Kings, but his mummy was later moved to a secret cache near Deir el-Bahari; he rests today in the Cairo Museum, one of Egypt’s mightiest pharaohs.
Peter Der Manuelian
“The akh-spirit is bound for the sky, while the corpse is bound for the earth.” This Pyramid Texts spell demonstrates ancient Egyptians were fully aware of the differences between the spiritual and the corporeal aspects of human beings. They preserved corpses so that after death the nonmaterial components, which remained animated, could reunite with the body that lay inside the tomb. After centuries of trial and error, embalming techniques reached their peak in the New Kingdom. The first step was the removal of the internal organs—lungs, liver, intestines, and stomach—through an incision in the lower left side of the abdomen. These were mummified separately and kept in containers called canopic jars. The heart was left in the body and the brain discarded. The body cavity was then washed and packed with natron, a mixture of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate, which helped desiccate the body, and the entire body immersed in a natron bath for 40 days. The next step was to wash the body cavity with aromatic oils, replenish the natron, and cover the body with resin, which protected it from insects and bacteria. This phase lasted 30 days. Finally, the body was wrapped in bandages, within which were inserted protective amulets, according to rigorous religious specifications.
Mummification was the artificial preservation of the body arising from the belief that it would reunite with its spiritual counterparts in the afterlife.
The elaborate embalming method described herein was reserved for the wealthy. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus describes another method for those who “wished to avoid expense.” Cedar oil was injected into the body cavity, and the corpse then immersed in a bed of natron for 70 days. The oil would liquefy the internal organs, which were allowed to pour out from the desiccated body.
HERODOTUS
ca. 484–420 BCE
Greek historian
SALIMA IKRAM
1965–
Egyptologist, American University in Cairo
Ronald J. Leprohon
The jackal-headed deity Anubis was associated with embalming and mummification, having wrapped Osiris’s body.
Using stone, copper, and bronze tools, the Egyptians became proficient at working many stones, woods, and metals. Stonemasons and sculptors used picks, axes, and pounders of hard stone alongside copper saws, chisels, and drills to quarry and smooth stone construction blocks for temples and tombs and shape vessels, statues, and sarcophagi. With similar tools, woodworkers felled trees and cut boards, which shipwrights used to build large transport and ceremonial boats, like the famous solar bark found next to the Great Pyramid at Giza. Skilled carpenters fashioned wooden furniture, boxes, models, etc., with copper or bronze adzes, a tool so important that it became incorporated at an early date into the “Opening of the Mouth” ritual to (re)animate statues and mummies. Vessels and statuettes, for both tomb and temple use, were constructed from common and precious metals. Leatherworkers employed metal scrapers, knives, awls, pins, and needles for making sandals and garments, straps/lashes, and chariot and military equipment, as did garment makers for cutting and sewing everyday attire such as linen dresses and kilts. Specialized metal implements were also used by butchers, barbers, physicians, farmers, soldiers, and other workers.
Tomb reliefs frequently depict informative scenes of a wide variety of craftsmen engaged in their trades, as well as their tools, methods, and finished products.
Pottery vessels (formed by hand or made on potters’ wheels) comprised the most ubiquitous type of manufactured good, used for preparing, serving, and storing food, drink, and other commodities, as well as for ceremonial uses. Faience, a nonclay ceramic that could be colored and glazed, was fired in molds to produce amulets (including scarabs), inlays for jewelry and furniture, and funerary shabti figurines. Copper-rich glazes provided faience with its characteristic blue-green coloring, imitating costly turquoise and lapis lazuli.
Rachel Aronin
Each trade had its own specialized tools. Pottery was one of the most prolific crafts in ancient Egypt, and potters’ wheels became increasingly sophisticated pieces of equipment.
