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land of the pharaohs: Egypt

• the traditions of Egyptian civilization became so strong that they flourished even in its last thousand years, when the country was repeatedly invaded and for long periods under foreign rule

the Nile and the "two lands"

• upper Egypt is a narrow strip of fertile land, five hundred miles in length and averaging no more than twelve miles in width, that stretches alongside the river as it flows across the north African desert
• lower Egypt is a fan-shaped pattern of waterways, or delta, formed by the Nile in the last hundred miles before it reached the sea  
• in 3100 B.C. the two lands were unified under the rule of a single king
• the country's rulers are then and on know as pharaohs 

tending the "cattle of god"

• by birth, pharaoh was the son of the sun-god Re, the king of all the other gods and goddesses 
• in his succession he became the incarnation of Horus, the falcon-headed ruler of the sky
• when he died, he became one with Osiris, who resigned as pharaoh of the underworld 
• it was him who the gods and goddesses appointed 
• all of Egypt was deemed to belong to the pharaoh as his personal property
• officials and priests built tombs for themselves and their wives with inscriptions boasting of their virtuous deeds, and handed on their positions to their sons - all with the pharaoh's knowledge and approval 

men and women under the pharaohs 

• women closest to the pharaoh had divinity as well
• Egyptian deities were said to practice incest 
• pharaoh had many other wives along with his principal one 
• Hatsheput was one of the few female pharaohs
• women as well as men were entitled to benefit from the pharaoh's rule
• unlike sumer there are no records of women's expectations of men, but men were expected to respect the women in there families  

gods, humans, and everlasting life 

• many deities tracing back to the stone-age were originally conceived int he form of an animal
• the sky-god Horus is usually depicted as having the head of a falcon
• worshiped many different deities as a custom
• Egyptian priests believed that behind each god or goddess(deities) layed a divine power
• Egypt came to offer a growing hope of immortality(the Egyptian religion)
• the hope of immortality strengthened ethical ideas in the Egyptian religion 

the writing of the words of god

• the hieroglyphs was the earliest Egyptian writing