Old Kingdom Egypt

Old Kingdom Egypt

Chronological location

3100–2686 B.C.

Geographical location

It was located in the Nile Valley, in the north of East Africa.

Religion

Egyptian religion was based on polytheism. In fact Egyptians had up to 2000 gods. The variety and amount of gods they had was due to the fact that many of they were only praised by some cities, while others were known throughout all Egypt. They represented gods most of the times with parts of humans and parts of bodies, like for example the god of the sky had a hawk head and a human body. Egyptians used to think that animals such as the cats, that crocodiles, and the hawks were holy and those should not be bothered. Egyptians spent most of their lives trying to prepare for the afterlife, that’s how we can explain many events and rituals they had such as mummification, painted pots, and also tombs. These processes were made in order for people to get to its full potential as commonly believed by Egyptians. The priests were the once in charge of the ceremonies such as the sealing of the tombs and also the mummification in the temples of each city. Throughout the entire Egypt kingdom there were temples in order for gods to be praised and also to take the religious ceremonies. Each of the temples were made to praise a specific god or in honor to one. As we can see religion was very important for this culture, because all of their activities were based on religious believes.

Products

One of the most important resources that Egyptians used were animals. Animal products were in everything they crafted or used. Egyptians utilized different products for different matters such as personal beauty, hunting, crafting, and eve religious ceremonies. The most known materials used were bones, feathers, skin and leather, shells and wool. Bones were used to craft weapons and tools that could help them easily perform a task such ash hunting or raising the crops. Other important product was wool because most of their clothing came from this material. Other miscellaneous objects such as feathers and tails were uses most commonly in rituals, royalty and as decoration.

Government

Egypt had a government system as well as al functioning civilization. In this case the government was what we call now an absolute monarchy but in the case of Egypt they followed a Pharaoh making it a theocracy. A Pharaoh was believed to be a god in life that had the divine right to rule and a social class denominated followed him, which was below him. This social class had priests, warlords, chief treasurers, public ministers and tax collectors, which followed directly to the orders of the Pharaoh.

http://www2.sptimes.com/Egypt/EgyptCredit.4.3.html

http://reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/animal_products/index.html

http://www.ancient-egypt-online.com/ancient-egypt-government.html