Diary Entry 7 - Death

Dear Diary,

Today is a sad day because my Uncle Rames died today.

i did not understand waht happens to people when they die, my dad explained everthing to me and since Uncle Rames was a priest his preperarion for the funeral was very complicated.

My father told me that he was muffified and the first thing that i imagened, when he said the word “mummy” was a body wrapped in strips of cloth. But, he said that in ancient Egypt manythousands of years ago, the first mummies were made naturally in the desert
sand. As their belief system developed, the ancient Egyptians began making mummies artificially. This means they deliberately preserved the bodies ofpeople who had just died, otherwise known as embalming. It took up to seventy days for the ancient Egyptians to artificially turn a dead person into a mummy.

The following are the steps the ancient Egyptians followed to mummify someone:

1. Wash and clean the body with water from the Nile River.

2. Remove the internal organs. Because internal organs have a lot of water,
they had to be removed before the body could be embalmed.
a. The brain was taken out through the nose and thrown away. The
ancient Egyptians believed the brain wasn’t very important, that it was
just stuffing for the head.
b. The heart was left inside the body. For Egyptians, the heart was the
most important organ. They believed that the heart controlled thoughts
and emotions, and served as the place where memories were stored.
c. Four organs were taken out and embalmed separately—the liver,
lungs, stomach, and intestines. Each of these four organs was placed
in a separate container called a canopic jar. These canopic jars were
placed beside the mummy when it was later put in a tomb. Other
organs were thrown away.

3. The body was covered in a type of salt called natron for forty days. It took
that long for the body to completely dry out.

4. The mummy was then stuffed with incense (frankincense and myrrh were
commonly used) and covered with resin to make it waterproof.

5. Finally, the mummy would be covered with amulets and wrapped in strips
of linen. Linen is a cloth material made from flax, which is similar to cotton.
Amulets are carved figures that are thought to have magical power. One
important amulet was the scarab beetle, which was placed over the heart
to protect it.

when my dad first told me all of this i was speachless, and i though that all you did was wrap some one up in linen cloth and put then in a coffin! '

The reason for all of this is because Egyptians believed strongly in an Afterlife—that after they died, they continued to live on in a different world. This Afterlife was a perfect version of life along the Nile River, with an abundance of water, fruit trees, animals to hunt, and especially crops. If you were rich and did not want to have to farm, you made sure there were plenty of little statues called ushabtis placed in your tomb. A ushabti is a small, carved, mummy-like figurine that has a spell placed on it, ensuring that it will do any hard work for the entombed person. i told my das that i wanted plenty of those.

In addition to ushabtis, many items from everyday life were included in a tomb along with the mummy, the coffin,and the four canopic jars. These everyday items could include clothing, furniture, cooking equipment, and even food

after my dad told me all of this i though long and hard about the effort that people go through to preserve bodies for the after life and i really appreciate it.

Diary Entry 6 - Employment

dear diary,

there are many different jobs in Ancient Egypt, currently i have no job but i am looking in to some because i have to choos by Monday and today it Friday, i have to start my reaserch.

i found 2 jobs that i am very interested in, the first one is a scribe, i enjoy writting very much so this job appealed to me, anyone could learn to be a scribe if they had the talent. Learning to be a script was a complicated process. Scribes went to scribe school. Most who attended did not pass the course. In ancient Egypt, everything was written down, especially lists. Scribes were in high demand. Good scribes could work their way up, all the way to Pharaoh's court. This job sounds amazing.

I also like the idea of being artist, my mother is an artist and she could help me if i choses this prfession. Ancient Egyptian art is five thousand years old. It emerged and took shape in the ancient Egypt. Expressed in paintings and sculptures, it was highly symbolic and fascinating - this art form revolves round the past and was intended to keep history alive. this is a brief summary of art considering i already wrote a diary entry about it. i love the idea that i was an artist i would have the opportunity to keep the history of my country flowing to the next genertaion, it would be a great honour.

i was thinking about these two options and i think that i am going to be an artist becasue i aslo watch my mother paint and the effort that goes in is exaclty what she gets out of it in the end, i love to see her happy face and hear the sroty she tells me that is shown in the painting so for those reasons i want to be an artist.

Chapter 5 - Housing

Dear Diary,

Part of my dad's job is to watch over the servants and make sure that they are doing there work, I love helping out my dad and giving him advice on things, they are currently building new houses and last night my dad came to me for advice. I do not know much about building houses so he explained the whole process to me and then I got to go with him to see some other houses and what they are like so I could help him with the ones that the servants are currently building.

The Egyptians lived in houses made of bricks. The bricks were made of mud and chopped straw. They mixed the mud and straw and then poured the mixture into moulds. The moulds were placed in the sun which turned it into hard bricks.

Some of the tools used to make homes were the T-square which was used for measuring angles. They also had a mallet, which is a type of big hammer. Of course, they had the brick moulds to make the bricks. They also had plumb lines which were used to make sure the houses were built straight and level.

The Rich homes usually had 10 rooms and the poor homes only one. The richer homes walls had a mixture of lime and water and some of the richest homes have painted walls, because my dad is so important her in Egypt we have painted walls. Some of our rooms are blue and some yellow, we also have coloured ceilings. Some rich people also have a room that is used for family worship of the friendlier gods. All rich people had gardens with pools to swim in. Most gardens were very peaceful. To get to the gardens they had very neat paths. They had high walls to keep out noise and intruders. At the doors there were guards to protect the gardens.

Townhouses were joined together on either side looked the same. The city has many avenues of very well built buildings. The windows were little small square holes in the wall that were fairly high.

Most people, except for the poor, had furniture. Some of the furniture was a bed to sleep on, a side table to place books and other things on, a toilet seat placed on top of a hole to go to the washroom, and a sideboard so they do not fall in the hole. Their kitchens had some small tables. They had drinking vessels and dishes but they had no cupboards.

The poor slept on the bare floor, the roof or on a mat. Because of the danger of scorpions, they had a head rest to raise their heads. In the houses of the rich there was a guest room and a set of rooms for the owner. There was another room for the woman of the house.

More About Homes

Diary Entry 4 - Education

Dear Diary,

In Acient Egypt the boys are the ones who get to go to school, the girls stayed home and our mothers teach us how to cook. I enjoy staying at home learning to cook, i is really good beacuse today my mother is teaching me a family recipe and i get to make it tommorow night for our second meal. All three of my brothers go to school, they always come home with lots of school work to do, lukily next year they stop school and help dad at work.

Diary Entry 3 - Art

Today in school we had art with Ms. Cleobey. We discussed the history of art in Ancient Egypt. We learnt that Ancient Egyptian art is five thousand years old. Expressed in paintings and sculptures, it was highly symbolic and fascinating - this art form revolves round the past and was intended to keep history alive. I think that its amazing that Art has been used to show the past, and teach us about our history!
There are many different art forms, Ancient Egyptian art forms are characterized by human beings and the nature, and, were intended to provide company to the deceased. Artists' endeavored to preserve everything of the present time as clearly and permanently as possible. Some art forms present an extraordinarily vivid representation of the time and the life, as the ancient Egyptian life was lived thousand of years before.

Egyptian art in all forms obeyed one law: the mode of representing man, nature and the environment remained almost the same for thousands of years and the most admired artists were those who replicated most admired styles of the past =]

I love to paint pictures of the nature, often after school i go to the nile and paint the environment around me.
My Mom is an artist and she tells me all about her painting and the history of painting, she told me that Ancient Egyptian paintings survived due to the extremely dry climate. The ancient Egyptians created paintings to make the afterlife of the deceased a pleasant place. Accordingly, beautiful paintings were created. The themes included journey through the afterworld. Some examples of such paintings are paintings of Osiris and Warriors.

Some tomb paintings show activities that the deceased were involved in when they were alive and wished to carry on doing for eternity.

The Tree of Life

On the Tree Of Life, the birds represent the various stages of human life. Starting in the lower right-hand corner and proceeding counter-clockwise:

The light gray bird symbolizes infancy.

The red bird symbolizes childhood.

The green bird symbolizes youth.

The blue bird symbolizes adulthood.

The orange bird symbolizes old age

In ancient Egypt, the direction east was considered the direction of life, because the sun rose in the east. West was considered the direction of death, of entering the underworld, because the sun set in the west. They believed that during the night, the sun traveled through the underworld to make its way back to the east so it could rise in the east again on the next day. On the tree of life, note that the birds representing the first four phases of life all face to the east, but the bird representing old age faces to the west, anticipating the approach of death.

Ancient Egyptian Art

Dairy Entry 2 - Food

Dear Diary,

Today we ran little on food supplies, due to the fact that the servants did not work fast enough. I mean we only eat two meals a day, one at morning and one at dusk, its not a lot. Most Egyptians but their food from the market but we don't have time so i servants make it for us. i geuss i feel sorry for them because we get to eat off gold and silver plates, while they have to eat out off clay dishes, and besides that the food on out plate is much better. A common meal for a peasant might be boiled or roasted beef, assorted vegetables, fruit (usually figs and grapes), a slice of bread, and beer. We get much more. Although bread is a everyday food of both the lower and the upper class. I love lentils and my favorite fruit are dates and apples.

Diary Entry 1 - Clothing

I am a wealthy girl living in Ancient Egypt, my parents gave dairy for my 14th birthday yesterday and i promised them i would write in it everyday. today i am going to be writing about the clothing in Ancient Egypt.

Clothing

I didn't start wearing clothes until i turned 13. This is because all children are not obligated to wear clothes until they reach puberty. All Egyptians were simple clothing made out of linen, which was made out of flax that is grown in the fields. People who came form my social class, the rich, were finely woven linen while the workers wear a stronger material. The male peasants wear loincloths which hang form their wasts down to their knees. Many times they wore no clothing. The upper class, rich men wear kilts or skirts and the women wear simple, tight-fitting dresses. In Egypt you are considered a man or a women when you are past the age of 12, so i wear a dress made out of fine linen. Some people wear sandals made form leather or reed. The rich women, like my mom wear shawls, flower headdresses and beaded collars. She, and all other upper class women love to decorated their clothes with costume jewelry.

More about Clothing

Games and entertainment

Ancient Egypt had games of all kinds. Some of the games were for fun and entertainment and the others for fitness. Samples of these games have been found in the drawings located in the tombs at Saqqara, and many others. These pyramids were built nearly 2600b.c.e and some of the games are still played today. As well as board games, pictures have also been found in tombs from the same period of time.

Children's Toys

The oldest toys ever found in Egypt, like little toy boats carved from wood, came from a child's tomb dating to the Predynastic Period. From the same period baked clay animals and rattles have been discovered.

Lovely toys were made by the ancient Egyptians from wood, bone, ivory, ceramics and stone. Many little children played with dolls of Nubians, toy animals, spinning tops and mechanical toys like crocodiles with moving jaws and Jumping Jacks. At el Lisht a toy was found it was made up of three carved ivory dancers. The figures were set in an ivory stand and by pulling the strings they span. Ancient Egyptian children played with many toys. One of the more popular ones was balls made of hollow painted clay and filled with many seeds. They played ball games standing, jumping high in the air, or even piggyback. These games were popular, especially with girls.
Paddle dolls were made out of wood, with twine threaded with clay beads for hair. They may have been for children, or they also may have been to accompany the deceased in the afterlife.

Fitness games

Some of ancient Egypt's games were for fitness. Hockey was played with long palm tree branches. The puck was made out of stuffed papyrus in-between two pieces of leather.
Some games were played with balls that were made of a leather skin filled with chaff, dry papyrus reeds tied tightly together, string or rags. Boys preferred team sports and throwing games, while girls generally went in for games which were less fiercely competitive.

Marble games are very ancient. A white and a black stone marble and three little stones forming an arch seem to have been used in one such game which may have been played like a sort of mini-skittles.

http://www.kingtutshop.com/freeinfo/Ancient-Egyptian-Games.htm

Woman in Egypt

A women’s ‘rank’ in Ancient Egypt depended mostly on the rank of their husband. Lower class women were responsible for domestic chores such as caring for children and grinding grain for flour. They also worked long hours in the fields. Upper class women were able to run their own household. They had their own rites for properties, and they could buy and sell property in their own right. Some women were able to reach such positions as officials A famous Egyptian woman who became a Vizier was Nebet The most famous woman who became a Pharaoh was Queen Hatshepsut Some jobs that women held across the different social classes in Egypt included slavery, working on the fields, running households, buying and selling properties.

Social Pyramid

The Social Pyramid was divided up into different social classes. At the top of the Social Pyramid was Pharaoh. They were gods chosen to lead the people and preserve order. Priests are the second most important people in Egypt, they highly powerful, just under the pharaoh. They carry out the sacred rituals at each temple and they control the temples of the G-d’s.
Officials collect taxes and run system, they held government officials. They are 3rd in the system. The Egyptian army was well organized and included infantry and chariot troops. The infantry, or foot soldiers, carried spears, shields, and battle axes. During peace time, soldiers worked on government projects such as digging irrigation canals for farming, or transporting stone for the king's tomb. Soldiers are 4th in the system. Scribes are next in the social Pyramid. They studied for many years to learn to read and write. Scribes had great opportunities as accountants, priests, doctors, and government officials of all sorts. Artisans were skilled workers, stonemasons, carpenters, painters.
They are 6th form the top of the pyramid. Slaves worked in the household or in the fields. They do not get payed a wage as they belong to there master. The slaves did not have any power at all. They were owned by their masters and had no control over their own lives.

Egyptian Odyssey