Being Remembered – a Legacy other than Gold

How will you be remembered?

You are all too young to contemplate the world without you, but as I grow older, I occasionally wonder whether anything I have done will be remembered with a smile, with affection or with honour. I do hope so. At least for a little while.

The ancient Egyptians are remembered with a kind of awe. Their ideas, art, architecture and way of life have intrigued humans for millennia. When a civilisation leaves something special behind that other civilisations copy, use and admire, we call this a legacy. This kind of legacy is not money, a house or a possession, though sometimes it might be something physical and tangible, like those astonishing pyramids. It is a set of ideas and achievements that has changed the way humans lived or influenced our existence in a positive way.

Today I want you to think about the legacies of the ancient Egyptians and your own possible legacy, in the distant future when you are older than I am and wondering, as I do, whether anything you have done will endure. What would you like to leave behind for others to treasure? How would you like to be remembered?

A legacy in this context might include:

♦ a method of communication, such as writing or communication technology

♦ 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.

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. 
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 the sites below.

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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 hope to leave the world a better place than you found it?

Egyptian Gallery 2013

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By Leah 2013
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By Declan 2013
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By Christian 2013
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By Josh 2013
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By March 2013
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By Lucas 2013
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By Paige 2013
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By Ekam 2013
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By Gerard 2013
“I wanted to show that the linen was transparent,” said Gerard. Well done!
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By Jonathan 2013
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By Sophie 2013
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By Shirley-Mae 2013
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By Adeline 2013

The Sources of Historical Knowledge

One aspect of history that appeals to me is that it is so difficult to be certain of the truth. This means that you are not learning just facts, but also considering all the intriguing possibilities. For instance:

♦How come Tutankhamen died at such a young age?
♦Was Claudius, a Roman emperor, murdered by his wife Agrippina?
♦How did the Egyptians actually build those stupendous structures in the desert – without even the wheel to help them?

We can sift the evidence, speculate and wonder, but often we have to rely on well-founded guesses and thoughtful judgements rather than certainties. History is like that.

That’s why we need sources – to try to work out what actually happened. One set of sources are those that remain from the time we are investigating. These are called PRIMARY SOURCES. This group of sources is often affected by the passage of time or naturally limited in scope. Here’s why:

♦Some artefacts are lost and others decay.

♦Certain groups, such as the poor and the uneducated, are less likely to produce written sources, since they rarely learn to write and are likely to spend their lives in menial labour.

♦Some artefacts lie buried for hundreds of years, like Tutankhamen’s tomb and the streets of Pompeii. Others never come to light.

♦Some scripts, like the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians, cannot be deciphered until someone breaks the code. As you know, Jean-François Champollion succeeded in deciphering hieroglyphics in 1822, thereby opening up a rich vein of historical study and illuminating sources that had previously puzzled scholars.

Despite their limitations, these primary sources give us great insight into the lives of people at that time in history. We would be lost without them.

This photo was taken last year when my family and I were in ancient Pompeii. The figure shows a plaster model created by archaeologists, who realized that the holes in the hardened volcanic rock represented the figures of people who had suffered and died.

The other type of source is usually written by experts who are scholars or historians, but you, as a history student, could also create this kind of source yourselves. Long after the period being studied, scholars, historians and students write about what happened. These sources are SECONDARY. They are not as immediate as the primary sources and they may be flawed, but they often provide a better overview of what happened, because they can refer to all the primary sources available.

Your task today is to search for a primary source on ancient Egypt and write a short account of what it shows about this intriguing civilisation. The primary source might be a picture of an artefact, a tomb painting or even a translation of a hieroglyphic text. Your description or annotations will then become a secondary source.

Recommended Link: An Online Egyptian Tour at the British Museum

Recommended Link: Cleveland Museum of Art – Egyptian Collection