Journals through History Egypt: Land of Abundance
History
The Land of Abundance, a Journals through the History Egypt
It's another sunny, beautiful day in ancient Egypt. During the illustrious reign of pharaoh ramses the second. At the bustling dock in Thebes, a boy named at is preparing for a great adventure. Wow. I thought today would never come. My brothers and I are heading down the Nile with our dad. My very first trip. Since I'm missing scribe school, teacher says I need to write everything down and give a report when I get back. So mom and dad gave me my very own med head. A set of writing tools. For the trip. It's got read brushes, a palette, and ink. We always use red and black ink in Egypt. I'm not sure why. But it reminds me of our red and black lens. Most of Egypt is like this. Hot and dry. It's pretty easy to see why we call it dash ramp.
The red light. But some of Egypt is like this. It looks green on the top, but underneath is very rich black dirt. We call this Len can. The blackland. It's where we grow all of our crops. If you flew like a bird, you'd see that the chemist is all along the banks of the Nile River. Dad says that's why Egypt is called the gift of the Nile. Sounds strange, I know. But let me explain. Egypt is mostly desert, right? But look. Here, flowing through the whole length of the country is the Nile River. It starts in a land far to the south and travels nearly 4000 miles to the sea of north. Everything in Egypt happens along the Nile. For one thing, it's like our main road. The very best way for anyone to travel around the country. But even more important than how the Nile carries us is what it brings us.
Every year, heavy rains far to the south, wash a lot of silk, or weathered rock particles, into the river. Dad says the silk combines with leaves and branches to form a rich mix full of iron, zinc, and other things, kind of like vitamins for the soil. We call this good stuff happy. So, every summer, all this water and hoppy flowed down the Nile into Egypt. Flooding the land for four months. When the floodwaters recede, they leave the hoppy behind. It makes the dirt really good for planet. Very long time ago, my ancestors started living along the Nile and planting crops. Then they had some very smart ideas. First, they dug ditches and canals to trap in the floodwater. Then, during the dry season, they would open the canals and let water flow into the fields. Sometimes the fields were higher than the canals. And it was really hard to carry enough water by hand. So, they invented the should do. A long pole, with a bucket at one end, and a way to the other. It makes lifting heavy water a lot easier.
Delivering water to crops is called irrigation. We are some of the first people to figure out how to do that. Pretty clever, huh? We Egyptians are always coming up with solutions to complicated problems. For instance, the Niles floodwaters are so important that we develop a way to predict when they would arrive. We watched the moon and stars very carefully. In order to keep track of the rivers rise and fall. Out of that, we created a really accurate calendar with 365 days. The sumerians only have 360 days in their calendar. Our new year starts with the first day of the flood. When the star serious rises directly with the sun. Then we have four months of accurate to the time of flooding. Four months of Perry, the time of sewing. When the river receives. And four months of shimmer. The time of harvest and heat. Everything in Egypt revolves around the seasons of the Nile. Not only did we figure out when the Nile was going to flood, we also figured out how well it would flood. We built a nilometer to keep track.
It features the water level at all times, letting us know the best hike for the incoming floods. If the flood is too low, we don't have enough water for our crops. If the flood is too high, everything washes away. Lucky for us, most years the Nile floods are just right. We can grow all kinds of crops, like barley, wheat, flax, vegetables, and fruits. Dad says, we have been farming like this for thousands of years. That makes us very experienced and well organized farmers. If the floods are good, it's easy to grow enough food for everyone. And that frees up time for us to work on other projects. Like building cities in temples. We couldn't do any of that if it was hard to grow food and we were hungry. So thanks to the Nile, we have a land of abundance. That's what dad means when he calls Egypt the gift of the Nile. Speaking of dad, where is he? I'm ready to start this boat down the river. We're going from Thebes down to tanis, where pharaoh ramses lives.
To deliver some important documents. Dad is a scribe. Someone who can read and write. Not very many people can do that immediate. Scribes write everything down. They keep track of our harvest. Arrange our irrigation and building projects, and write letters for people. So it's a very important job. I go to scribe school to learn how to read and write. It takes a lot of practice, but it's really fun. For one thing, we have different kinds of writing. This is hieratic script. We use it for our everyday writing. These are hieroglyphs. They are used for more formal things, like proclamations from the pharaoh, and religious matters. It takes years to learn hieroglyphs. They're more than 700 symbols. And they combine in lots of different ways to make words. Some hieroglyphs are hard to draw. Like this one, the symbol for thought, our God of writing and wisdom. But some hieroglyphs are so easy, even my little brothers could write them. Like this, son, or this papyrus. Oh yeah, book iris. Another gift of the Nile. And another great Egyptian invention.
Papyrus is a plant that grows along the banks of the Nile. It's really dangerous to harvest. Because hippos, crocodiles and snakes live in the water, which is why these men are singing loudly and beating the water with their oars. But the papyrus plant is important to us. We eat it, use it for boats, burn it for fuel, and even make sandals with it. And we make scrolls out of it. First, we cut the inside of the stalks into strips. Then we lay the strips at right angles to each other. Pound them until they stick together. And then glue the sheets together to make scrolls. What a great invention. For the first time in history, we could pick up our writing and carry it with us. We could never do that with one of these obelisks. Papyrus makes it possible for us to write down much more information and see if it easily. As dad always says, information is power and papyrus has helped make Egypt very powerful. Papyrus can be fun too.
We even created the first comic strips summer over a hundred feet long. But best of all, we wrote down our stories. Dad knows lots of gravy Egyptian stories. One of my all time favorites is the tale of Osiris and ISIS. Long ago, Osiris, the God king, ruled the land of Egypt with his wife. The beautiful and smart ISIS. Osiris was a wise and great ruler who brought civilization to Egypt. He taught us how to plant crops and care for animals. He gave us a code of laws to live by and showed us how to worship the gods. It was a beautiful time, and everyone was happy. Except for one person. Seth or Cyrus brother. He was really jealous. He wanted Osiris's power for himself. So he tricked Osiris into getting into a coffin. Then he nailed the coffin shot and threw it in the Nile. Osiris is coffin, floated down the river to the sea. And away from the land of Egypt, ISIS was heartbroken. She searched high and low so she could find Osiris's body and make sure he had a proper burial. Meanwhile, she stole the throne of Egypt, but he was cruel and unkind. There were wars and people were hungry. It was a very dark time. Dad says that set.
Thought he conquered Osiris's throne forever. But he didn't count on the power of love. ISIS never gave up. She finally found Osiris coffin. Near a tree far to the north. With magical help from sauce, the God of wisdom, she brought Osiris back to life. But even the most powerful magic can't bring the dead back to our world. So Osiris became the king of the next world. But that's not the end of the story. Ice is in Osiris had a son. Horrors. When Horace grew up, he fought set to win back the throne of Egypt. Horace won the battle, and banished set into the darkness. Where he lives to this day. Now Horace rules over us from his Gotham and advises our pharaohs and north Cyrus rules over the next world. From time to time, set tries to battle horrors for the throne. That's when we have wars and famine. But dad says, one day horse will vanquish set once and for all. And then we will live in peace and prosperity forever.
I can't believe we've been on the river for two weeks already. It's been days since I've written anything for my Egypt report. Well, I have been a little bit distracted. My brothers and I are keeping track of our favorite animals. We've only seen most of them on temple paintings. Now we get to see them up close. Our artists are fantastic at drawing animals. See how carefully they notice everything about the birds? Yesterday we saw an eyeball. Remember thought the God of wisdom and writing from the Osiris story? Well, one of his symbols is neither. Animals represent many of our gods. Female hippos represent our goddess of childhood. But male hippos can be pretty destructive, trampling, field and stuff. They sometimes represent sick. Remember him from ISIS and Osiris? Here's so bad. The crocodile God. He protects the pharaohs. You definitely don't want to get on so Beck's beds. Our crocodiles can grow to 30 feet long. And this are not vegetarians. These are vultures. They are very sacred to us. See how they spread their wings? It says if the vulture is praying or protecting us.
That's how vultures became the symbol of the goddess neck back. The guardian of children and mothers. And look, the hieroglyph for vulture reads moot or mother. Mom says she likes vultures fine. But wishes mothers were named after a prettier bird. This morning we saw a lot of water buffalo. Dad says they are a symbol of king narmer. The first barrel of Egypt. A long, long, long time ago, about 3000 years before my time, and Nile valley just had a bunch of little farming villages. Eventually, the villages formed two kingdoms, upper and lower Egypt. We, let me explain something first. Remember how the Nile River flows from south to north into the sea? That means upstream itself at the bottom of the map, and downstream is north. At the top. Which means upper Egypt to south, near Thebes, and lower Egypt is north, near the sea. Okay. Where was that? Right. King narmer.
When king narmer came along? Unified all of upper and lower Egypt. He was a powerful ruler who got people working together. He set up a system for irrigating our fields. And he established Dakota laws for everyone. He was our first Ferrell, a God here on earth. Sent to rule the Egyptian people. I wonder what he would say if he could see his country today. I bet he would be proud. Dad says that tomorrow we're going to see something really old and really amazing. I can hardly wait. And whatever it is, I promise to write all about it the first chance I get.