LESSON 3.2 How do we know about ancient Egypt?
LEARNING INTENTION By the end of this lesson you should be able to:
• describe how historians used hieroglyphics to understand Egypt’s history • analyse the importance of key discoveries in understanding Egypt.
Tune in SOURCE1 shows the Rosetta Stone, discovered in Egypt around 1799. It has been in the British Museum since 1802. The stone is black granite with three versions of a decree from Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BCE. The top band has hieroglyphics, the middle bandhas demotic script (simpliýed hieroglyphics) and the bottom band has ancient Greek. Before this, no one could read ancient Egyptian texts. 1. In small groups, discuss how the stone helped historians crack the code. 2. Consider what we wouldn’t know today if the stone hadn’t been found.
SOURCE1 The Rosetta Stone.
3.2.1 How do we know about ancient Egypt? The ancient Egyptians left many primary source evidence. As in Mesopotamia, most Egyptian houses were made of mud bricks, leaving few traces. However, their temples, pyramids and tombs were made of stone and held mummies and art. They also created enormous statues and painted wall panels. 3.2.2 How can we read ancient Egyptian writing? The Egyptians began writing over 5000 years ago, possibly around 3100 BCE. At ýrst, they used simple drawings and symbols for words. They wrote on stone, pottery and papyrus (paper made from plants). When the Greeks saw this writing on temple walls in the fourth century BCE, they called it hieroglyphs, meaning ‘sacred writing’. By the fourth century CE, the secret of reading hieroglyphs was lost. But in 1799, a French soldier found the Rosetta Stone in Rosetta (now called Rashid). This stone had the same message in three scripts: hieroglyphs, demotic script (a simpler form of hieroglyphs) and ancient Greek. Since people could still read Greek, they used it to understand hieroglyphs. After years of effort by scientists like Thomas Young and Jean François Champollion, the code was cracked. Scholars could now read Egyptian records, including king lists, myths, hymns, legal documents and even grafýti.
76 Jacaranda Humanities Alive 7 Victorian Curriculum Third Edition
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator