Dear 7B,
By now you should know quite a bit about the civilization of ancient Egypt. Test your knowledge by doing the little quiz below:
Your next steps are to do even more research, participate in a grisly mummification (that will take place next week, so prepare yourselves mentally) and begin writing your story.
Your story should be written in the first person, from the viewpoint of either Emit or Latiwonk. Emit could begin like this:
Phew. At long last I’m getting out of the office. Sure, ancient Egypt might be strenuous and even dangerous, but at least there won’t be any paperwork.
Looking down at ancient Egypt, at first all I can see is desert. But then I see the long strip of the Nile River, cutting through the plain, surrounded by greenness. Llatiwonk has been telling me about it (she never stops talking). Evidently the ancient Egyptians thought the yearly flood was a kind of miracle. It kept them alive, because the silt left by the flood was so fertile. They planted their crops in it. They dug ditches and canals to water their crops, because they knew that rain almost never fell on their land.
But all good things have their downsides: if the flood was too high it could sweep away whole villages. Weird, to be at the mercy of a river, to know that the melting snow in the mountains of Ethiopia could bring you a life-giving stream or a disaster…
Of course, if you are writing your story from Llatiwonk’s point of view, you could have a more “robotic voice”:
Report: Ancient Egypt
Year: Reign of Tutankhamen
Landing: 5.4 kilometres from the Valley of the Kings, in the neighbourhood of the New Kingdom capital, Thebes
Season: The yearly flood has just receded. The peasant farmers are planting their crops and tending their lands.
First Impressions: The area around the Nile River is a hive of activity. Now that the flood has receded, the peasants are hard at work, planting their staple crops of wheat and barley. From these two crops they make bread and beer, the essentials of life, and of course they pay their taxes to their god-king, known as the pharaoh. He is not the only person who exploits them and takes advantage of their daily, endless labour, but he is the most powerful and the most important.
Notice that I have tried to put quite a lot of detail into my introductions. That’s what you should try to do too. At the link below, you can try a little fill-the-blank quiz in which you can read more of Emit’s story. This should help you to know what your own task involves and also provide more knowledge for your own assignment.
Click here to try the little fill-the-blank quiz→Emit’s story goes on…
Stop Press:
A picture gallery of ancient Egyptian shoes, based on the discoveries in Tutankhamen’s tomb
Bad teeth tormented the ancient Egyptians (even the god-kings)
A gallery of photos from inside Tutankhamen’s tomb
