September 2011 – Emit Repoons on a Mission

Ancient Egypt left behind many legacies to future civilisations. A legacy in this context means a special contribution that a civilisation leaves behind.

People leave legacies too, and I don’t mean money. They leave behind their ideas, their acts of kindness, their inventions and their creativity. You are exploring the legacies of human beings in your work for the Night of Notables.

An example of a civilisation’s legacy is writing. The ancient Sumerians are believed to have been the first to create a writing system. They pressed wedge-shaped marks into clay tablets. Many historians believe that this is what gave the Egyptians the idea of developing hieroglyphs.

A legacy could also be:

a special way of organising a society or dealing with a problem;
some kind of scientific knowledge;
an invention;
a monument;
a skill;
an impressive achievement in art, government, literature, etc;
something that later societies have admired and sought to emulate.

Cuneiform – clipart kindly provided by www.phillipmartin.info I always think that it would be wonderful if the first writing was created to write love poems or great literature. But no – someone wanted a receipt. Sigh. This is a material world.

The ancient Egyptians had many achievements over the course of their long history. Their beautiful tomb paintings, for example, show us all about their lives on the Nile River. They drew figures in a way that changed little over the years. Can you think of other great and inspiring achievements that others might have built upon?

Egyptian peasants during harvest – note the side-on presentation of the bodies in classic Egyptian style

Image in public domain from wikimedia.commons

See what you can find out about the legacies of the ancient Egyptians at these sites.

Mathematics:

http://math.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_mathematics_of_ancient_egypt

Ancient Egyptian ideas about pi:

http://ualr.edu/lasmoller/pi.html

Ancient Egyptian art:

http://www.aldokkan.com/art/art.htm

Ancient Egyptian water engineering and inventions: http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/nile/t1.html

(You’ll need to scroll down to read the vital information.)

Managing time – calendars and clocks: http://library.thinkquest.org/J002046F/technology.htm

Ancient Egyptian writing:

http://www.ancientscripts.com/egyptian.html

Your task: Leave a comment describing the ancient Egyptian legacy you consider most interesting, significant or worthwhile.

Then answer this question: What legacy would you as an individual like to leave behind? Another way to put this could be: How do you intend to leave the world a better place than you found it?

Finally, see how many of the questions in the quiz below you can answer correctly.

Hi, 7B!

If you think about it, the power of the written word is immense. You can go on facebook (I hope not too often). You can email a friend a recipe. You can send someone a text. Can you imagine how many aspects of human life would be different, how impoverished life would be, without this simple, supreme gift of human expression?

Once you can write down a language, you can preserve ideas beyond your own lifetime and send them across the world. You can give orders, write love poems (though my husband never does), create books of quotations, remember speeches and create literature.

Humph, there is another side to this topic. You can also write death sentences and lies. Sometimes I think there’s a negative aspect to every human achievement.

As evidence of how writing can be used to impose your will on others, if I couldn’t write this post, you wouldn’t have to do any work. In fact, if it weren’t for writing, you might not need to go to school at all. But of course there would be many things you would miss out on too. Can you think of what you would miss most?

The ancient Egyptians used writing to administer their complex hierarchical society, to give orders, to tot up taxes, to write the spells that would protect the dead in the afterlife and to describe their lives. Their tombs were covered with the beautiful, pictorial symbols we call hieroglyphics.

Who would have thought that learning langauges no one could speak would one day open up the study of a fascinating ancient civilisation?

The knowledge of how to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics was lost for more than 1500 years, until Jean-Francois Champollion figured out how to decipher them. As a boy he used to write his journal in Coptic, the language used by the early Christian Church in Egypt, but long since dead.

A language is considered dead when no living child speaks it as his mother tongue. No living child had spoken Coptic for over 1500 years, but it turned out to be the one written language that could provide clues to the sounds of ancient Egyptian speech.

Never suspecting that Coptic might supply the vital link to understanding hieroglyphics, Champollion learned it as a teenager, along with several other dead languages. It was knowledge that he placed on the back-burner of his mind. One day that knowledge would burst into flame. One day it would illuminate the study of ancient Egypt.

To discover the basic details of hieroglyphics, go to this link:

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/egypt/writing.htm

This link could also be helpful:

http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/egypt/literature/hieroglyphs.htm

To learn how to write your name in hieroglyphics, visit this website:

http://www.guardians.net/egypt/hieroglyphs/hiero-translator.htm

In order to read the fascinating story behind the decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, go to this link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/decipherment_01.shtml

As you read, look for answers to these questions (and write or type brief notes):

♦What was the Rosetta Stone and why was it a key to understanding hieroglyphics?The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum

♦How did the recognition of the cartouche help with the process of decipherment?

♦Champollion eventually wrote that the “soul of hieroglyphics” was phonics. What did he mean?

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There is of course a moral to this story. (There’s a moral to all my stories.) You may think something you’re learning now is just for fun, or perhaps that you are learning it just because your teacher wants to be a slave-driver. Well, that last bit might be true! But put this new knowledge on the backburner and let it gently simmer. One day in a decade or two it might help you to find a job, learn a new and wonderful skill, make another person happy, or change the world.

Kind regards,

Ms Green

Month: September 2011

Wrapping up ancient Egypt