Dear 7E,
Of course you’re not really peasants. You don’t have to work all day every day in the broiling sun, you don’t wear little coarse linen kilts, you don’t live in mud-brick houses.

All the same, for the purposes of this assignment, I want you to stand in a peasant’s shoes. (Though actually, they rarely wore shoes – maybe some papyrus sandals, but nothing very substantial.) I mean, imagine yourself in this role. Imagine the difficulties, the stresses and the hard-won pleasures of your life. Show me your historical empathy.

I want to sense the peasant’s sweat on your assignment, in a purely figurative sense. But don’t forget that you must blend your imaginative empathy with genuine and authentic historical information.

I hope the links below will help you in this task.

Kind regards, Ms Green

Download your assignment here…

 

 

 

 

 

Year 7 History 

BEGIN BY READING ABOUT THE PEASANTS AT THESE LINKS:

Site 1: PBS Website: A day in the life of an ancient Egyptian peasant 

Site 2: Egypt’s Past: http://egyptpast.com/daily-life-in-ancient-egypt.html

Site 3: Ancient Egypt: A farmer’s life in comparison with a noble’s: http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/life/story/main.html

Site 4: A primary source about farmers and their oxen, with a detailed explanation:  http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/TRC/EGYPT/farming.html 

Site 5: A fascinating (and more challenging) article about the everyday healthy problems of the ancient Egyptians. They probably had a life expectancy of about 40 years, many suffered from arthritis and dental problems and there were other problems associated with the environment of the Nile River:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/health_01.shtml

Dear 7E,

Ancient Egyptian society, as you know, was a kind of hierarchy in which some people had more power, status and importance than others. That means, some people got to boss others around, make them work and get them to pay taxes. Most of the people, who were peasant farmers, worked hard, were told what to do and paid taxes to those above them in the hierarchy.

Some anthropologists call this a kind of human pecking order.

The original type of pecking order was first observed by a biologist called W. C. Allee. He noticed in the 1920s that chooks peck each other according to their power or status in the farmyard. The most powerful chook pecks all the others. The least powerful chook is pecked by all the others. In between are the chooks who are pecked by those above them and who peck those below them. This concept of a pecking order is used to denote a hierarchy of power.

For instance, in our school Mrs Mitchell is above me in the pecking order and, I’m sorry to say, you are below me. Although I would never peck you, I do tell you what to do, badger you about your homework and talk endlessly about history while you feel more or less obliged to listen. That’s a bit like pecking, if you think about it.

Of course, human relationships are much more complex than those of chooks. In ancient Egypt, the people at the top had responsibilities as well as privileges, but they certainly wielded much more power than those at the bottom. The lowly peasant farmers had to work hard, sometimes on the pharaoh’s projects, sometimes on their own farms. 

The sources below will help you to find out about the people who established their lasting civilization on the banks of the Nile River.

Glossary
General	Specific to Ancient Egypt
hierarchy pecking order status power role privileges artisan scribe	pharaoh Nile yearly flood/inundation vizier hieroglyphics mummification nomarch high priest/ess

 

BEGIN BY READING ABOUT THE PEASANTS AT THESE LINKS:

Site 1: PBS Website: A day in the life of an ancient Egyptian peasant 

Site 2: Egypt’s Past: http://egyptpast.com/daily-life-in-ancient-egypt.html

Write notes based on these two sites, following these guidelines:

(1) Begin with a main heading

(2) Use subheadings: e.g. A Peasant’s Daily Work, Housing, Food, etc.

(3) Vary your pen colours or style of writing to emphasise your different topics

(4) Use dot points and simple symbols such as arrows, circles or squares

(5) Invent small pictures and symbols to accompany your subheadings or other major points
The Role of Slaves in Ancient Eygpt 

History for Kids

Hi 7E,

Today you can tackle some revision on the Stone Age and then begin a metaphorical journey along the Nile River, in order to observe the civilization of the ancient Egyptians.

1 First, a little quiz on the Stone Age and the Natufians, partially based on that film, “Stories from the Stone Age”:

Hanay [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The “Natufians” were hunter-gatherers whose descendants eventually became the first farmers and herders in the Fertile Crescent. Ultimately a great civilisation developed in that region. The people of that civilisation were called the Sumerians and they are generally credited with inventing the wheel and developing the first alphabet. These were remarkable achievements for people with hardly any wood, whose best material for a writing surface and for building houses was mud.

The ancient Egyptians built the Great Pyramid of Giza without the wheel. In addition, they developed their own system of writing, probably influenced by the Sumerians. The ancient Egyptians usually get the credit, among other things, for domesticating cats, embalming bodies with great skill and living successfully in a land that, except for a thin fertile strip near its river, was basically desert.

It was an improbable place for the development of such a major and successful civilization, made possible only by the existence of that river, the Nile, and by the talents of the people. Every year the Nile delivered its fertile silt to the inhabitants of the Nile Valley, its floodwaters sweeping down from the Ethiopian mountains in the south to the plains of the north. Every year the Egyptian peasant farmers used that silt and water to crop their land and grow the food that supported the whole population.

Some of my students think it would have been much easier for human beings once they started to farm. My students point out that people would no longer have encountered as much danger from hunting and would have felt more confidence about having food when they needed it.

While these are fair points, farming in ancient Egypt was labour-intensive, to say the least. A peasant farmer was also at the bottom of the social hierarchy. This was no easy life. Hunter-gatherers six or seven thousand years before in a fertile area might well have had more leisure time and fewer people telling them what to do – and no one to tax them as well.

2 Find out more about ancient Egypt at these links. This is just a preliminary wander along the Nile River:

Mummy Maker Game at the BBC Website

The importance of the Nile – BBC Website

Questions and answers about the Nile – an easier website

A day in the life of various ancient Egyptians – PBS Website

A fascinating account of archaeological evidence on who actually built the Pyramids – PBS website

3 Below there is also a little quizlet on ancient Egypt, which will help you to learn many of the words connected with this topic.

Kind regards, Ms Green