A Brief Introduction to the Ancient Egyptian World

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If you’ve heard of the Ancient Egyptians, it’s probably something about the gods, or the pyramids, or Cleopatra. But how often do we think about what it was like to live in the Ancient Egyptian world?

The period we call Ancient Egypt lasted for five thousand years, and all of it was pretty much under one governmental system. We’re talking from the unification in 3,000 BCE all the way to the Roman occupation in the 30s CE. In that time, even if some other religion came along, it all came back to the Pharaonic rule. So how did they do it?

There are many books on the subject, and if I sat down to tell you everything, I’d be here for decades. But this is a brief introduction, a taster, if you will, of what life was like back in the days of Ancient Egypt. We’ll look at just how the pharaohs kept that system going for so long, why they thought the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and just what role magic played in their daily lives. Oh, and let’s not forget the leading theory for how they built stone structures that large that still stand today.

Forget what you thought you knew about Ancient Egypt. The Victorians were wrong. This is the rediscovery of a civilisation so great, their pyramids are the only wonder of the Ancient World still standing.

Buckle up, buttercups. I’m taking you on a wild ride today.

In the Ancient Egyptian world, the Pharaohs were the living embodiment of the god Horus.

We’ll start with something simple. The reason the Pharaonic rule lasted so long was because it was a Pharaonic rule. Basically, the people believed so hard that their king was the living embodiment of a god, no changing of the system could remove it completely. Akhenaten tried to instigate a monotheistic religion by worshiping the sun, but his son Tutankhamun reverted it within weeks of coming to the throne. Just think how powerful Louis XIV, the Sun King, was in the 18^th century.

What this means is, the king (or Pharaoh if you’re old-school) was the go-between the deities and the people. They were both the civil and religious administrator. They officiated ceremonies just as much as they enacted laws or collected taxes. It was the job of the king to “promote harmony” (Ma’at) and “repel chaos” (Isfet).

Upon a king’s death, they were elevated to total godhood. In life, people believed the divine influence of Horus flowed through the king upon coronation. While a king was no doubt human, there was still that divine force elevating them to some form of divinity.

A pharaoh was no doubt an important person in the everyday life of an Ancient Egyptian. Perhaps they were even the most important person. By understanding just what role a leader played in the lives of the people, we can then hope to uncover the intersection between religious and everyday beliefs.

The Ancient Egyptian world believed the sun fought monsters during the night.

One thing I was told in school is that the Egyptians built their cities on the eastern banks and their graveyards in the west. She said the Egyptians buried their dead in the west because the sun sets in the west. And they lived on the east bank because the sun rises in the east.

I find this fascinating as a concept. In the Egyptian religion, the sun god Ra drove the sun across the sky during the twelve hours of the day in a boat called the Boat of Millions of Years. He came from the east and entered the Duat (the underworld) in the west. For the twelve hours of night, when Ra was in the underworld, he fought all sorts of monsters on his way to the exit so he could be reborn and do the whole thing again the next day. And that’s why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

Of course, Ra wasn’t alone in his nightly battle with the monsters. He had a few other gods with him battling the forces of Isfet. These included Sia (perception), Hu (command), and Heka (magic power). Sometimes, members of the more recognised gods helped him on his journey, including Set and Mehen. The representation of Isfet, Apophis, the god of chaos and evil, tried to stop Ra.

This tells us that the Egyptians believed the sun rising was a rebirth, a renewal, of the sun. With the renewal of the sun, the order of the universe was maintained and life could go on.

Magic was an everyday part of life in the Ancient Egyptian world.

According to the book “Ancient Egyptian Magic”, magic was used by the people in charge, so it wasn’t just superstition or for entertainment. Magic was a “helping hand”, a way of restoring the balance when the odds were against you.

There was the regular magic, the everyday things you could do, and the more complex magic you needed to call in a professional for. This is the difference between asking a god for help in your spelling test and requesting a flood to save the crops from drought.

Magic was a secret thing. If it wasn’t, anyone could do it. And the purpose of a magician was to help those who couldn’t help themselves. Most people agreed it was a magician’s responsibility to use the magic of the world to help people.

All magic, if it was to work, required three parts. You need the words (like a Pyramid Texts), a physical action (like waving a wand around), and an object to physically bring the two together (like Hollywood Voodoo dolls, it’s sympathetic magic).

Take, for example, bread dough. Maybe I want to bless my family with Sekhmet’s blessing (Sekhmet is a warrior goddess and associated with medicine). Using the three parts above, I might say a prayer (the words) while braiding the bread (physical action on an object).

For the larger problems, rather than call in the Ghostbusters (I love you really, Egon!), I’ll call in the magicians. Maybe there’s an unquiet spirit causing problems with my plan of saving family from an illness. That’s what they were there for.

Magic was embedded in the lives of the Ancient Egyptians. You can’t present all the amulets and shabti as superstition when there’s so many of them all over the Ancient Egyptian world.

The Ancient Egyptian World had architectural marvels that still stand.

I’ve mentioned before, about the Great Pyramid of Giza is the only Wonder of the Ancient World still standing. And it’s also the oldest one on the list. The Pyramid of Khufu was constructed in the third millennium BCE. It’s the largest monument in the Giza pyramid complex, and was the world’s tallest human-made structure for more than 3,800 years.

For centuries, people held the belief that human development was linear. They thought we got smarter the older human civilisation became. For monuments such as the Great Pyramid, aliens became a workable theory for how something so old came to be. In line with the linear development theory, humans five thousand years ago couldn’t have created something so spectacular. They wouldn’t have had the brain capacity for it.

To start, the pyramid once stood at 146.6 metres (481 feet) with a limestone casting. The base is about 230.3 metres (755.6 ft) square, giving a volume of roughly 2.6 million cubic metres (92 million cubic feet), which includes an internal hillock. The sides match closely to the geographical cardinal directions, and the site was levelled within a fraction of an inch over the entire 13.1-acre base. So aliens had to have done it for the ignorant people of the past.

But we don’t believe in linear progression. In fact, I believe they were smarter than us because they weren’t relying on computers to do everything for them. While each theory seeks to disprove the last of how such a monument came into being, one thing remains clear. Whether they used spiralling ramps or raised platforms of sand, the Ancient Egyptians knew exactly what they were doing. They built these things to last.

Conclusion

For all that a lot can change in five thousand years, the Ancient Egyptians kept the foundations near enough the same. That, I think, more than anything, is the secret to their success of such a long-lasting civilisation.

The belief system was so embedded in their way of life, they kept coming back to it after every major change. While that makes it easier in some respects to understand how they saw the world, it provides problems when we fundamentally get something wrong.

For a civilisation as complex and as long-lasting as the Egyptian world, we can’t let our modern biases and beliefs get in the way of understanding how they lived their lives. I mentioned this while talking about both Loki and Perkin Warbeck. History should not be seen from the single point of view of the one writing the history books. We need contemporary evidence alongside the sources written after the time we’re talking about.

Pre-Roman Egypt was a fascinating place to be, but many people only really stop once they hit Cleopatra. And often, men writing about women doesn’t turn out flattering. The beliefs of the Egyptian themselves, their monuments and leaders, shouldn’t have their stories told by the people who conquered or pillaged their lands.

History is more than the victors writing the books. History is everything that led us to this moment. And that includes the people who lived five thousand years ago.

Resources and Links

• “Ancient Egyptian Magic: A Hands-On Guide” by Christina Riggs (2020). An easy-to-understand book on just how engrained every aspect of magic was in the life of an Ancient Egyptian.
• “An Introduction to the Ancient World” by L. de Blois and R.J. van der Spek (2019). A fantastic textbook on Ancient Egypt if you want to understand the basics and don’t know where to begin.
• Interactive timeline and map of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The red dates are the destruction of each wonder, the green their construction.

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