readx;? Ancient Egypt was one of the four great civilizations, located in northeastern Africa (present-day Middle East), initially in the Nile Valley, until the height of its power, when it reached the territory of present-day Egypt. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Nubia (present-day Ethiopia and Sudan) to the south, and Libya to the west. Geographically, Egypt is desert on both sides of the east and west, and there are several large dangerous shoals in the south, so it is very difficult to communicate with the outside world, and it is more convenient to travel with West Asia only through the Sinai Peninsula at the northeast end. Therefore, ancient Egypt was relatively isolated.

The Nile River, which runs through Egypt, is formed by the confluence of the White Nile, which originates in central Africa, and the Blue Nile, which originates in Sudan. The Nile, which flows through the forests and grasslands, floods regularly from July to November, flooding the arid land on both banks, where the sediment, rich in minerals and humus, is gradually deposited into fertile black soil. The ancient Egyptians thus called their country "Kemet" (meaning black earth). The ancient Egyptians wrote this psalm: "O Nile, I praise you, you gushed out of the earth to feed Egypt, and when your water decreases, the people stop breathing." The ancient Greek historian Herodotus said, "Egypt is a gift from the Nile." The understanding of this sentence is that the Nile River in geography comes from the mountains of the East African plateau, and uses floods and sediment to shape the fertile valley plains in the Great Rift Valley, which stretches like a vine of life on the desolate Sahara Desert, and the historical Nile River came from the Neolithic Age, and it fed the ancient Egyptian civilization with its own milk.

In 8000 BC, due to the large-scale expansion of the Sahara Desert, there was little precipitation in North Africa, and the tribes that had been scattered throughout North Africa were forced to migrate to the Nile Valley.

After 4000 BC, the Sumerians from the two river valleys also merged into the leading class, and brought with them a wealth of knowledge of water conservancy technology, so that Egypt quickly entered the period of copper and stone use, and entered the class society, and the slave state developed. The Sumerians arrived in the Sumerian region by boat, and the Sumerian region was not far from Egypt, so it was logical for them to enter Egypt.

From the large number of carvings and paintings left in ancient Egypt, it can be seen that the characteristics of the ancient Egyptians were: tall stature, black hair, low forehead, dense eyelashes, black eyes, straight nose, wide face, broad shoulders, bronze skin, and strong physique. Their body shape and appearance are typical of the yellow race, which is very close to the Sumerians.

They work hard to improve their farming techniques. After a long period of hard work, the Nile Valley was transformed into a famous granary in ancient times.

The ancient Egyptian script, created in 3500 BC, is a hieroglyphic script called the Sacred Script, which also has a phonetic effect. This script is one of the oldest written scripts of mankind, and it is mostly engraved in the tombs of ancient Egyptians, on the walls of monuments, temples or stones, so it is called "holy script". There was a great influence on the later Phoenician alphabet, while the Greek alphabet was created on the basis of the Phoenician alphabet.

The ancient Egyptians made the world's first sheet of paper made from papyrus in 2600 BC. It is taken directly from a kind of aquatic grass that grows in the Nile Delta, and is called, one papyrus, one papyrus. This grass has slender leaves, and a long and long stem with a thumb sticking out of the middle, up to 5 meters long, and the top of the flower resembles a rush grass. The ancient Egyptians cut off the stalk with a knife, cut it into sections, peeled off the green skin, and then cut the white stalk of sugarcane inside into very thin slices, soaked it in water, and after 6 days, took it out, rolled out the water and sugar in the stem with a round wooden stick, to prevent insects, and then braided these thin stems into sheets like woven bamboo mats, and rolled them flat under heavy objects, so that it became a kind of straw paper, also called papyrus, or straw paper...... In addition to discovering paper, the ancient Egyptians were also the first people in the world to know how to use the stems of papyrus to make writing pens and water mixed with black soot and glue to make ink.

The ancient Egyptians invented a kind of number symbol, this mathematical symbol system is not the carry system we use today, but uses a symbol to represent a fixed value, when writing 5, they will use 5 symbols representing 1 to write, of course, there are certain rules for layout, and again, when writing 111, they will use 1 symbol representing 100, 1 symbol representing 10 and a symbol representing 1 to write.

Ancient Egyptian mathematicians, geometricians, were already able to calculate the areas of isosceles triangles, rectangles, trapezoids, and circles. In addition, the Egyptians used the method of cutting and repairing the approximation to find the area of the circle.

Ancient Egypt had a considerable level of astronomical knowledge, and they developed a calendar, known as the Coptic calendar, by observing the movement of the Sun and the star A Canis Major (Sirius, known in ancient Egypt as "Sob-ude", meaning the star on the water). The ancient Egyptians set a year of 365 days, 12 months of the year, 30 days of the month, and the remaining 5 days as festivals. Ancient Egypt was the first in the world to use a solar calendar, which is similar to what we use today. The ancient Egyptians divided the year into three seasons of four months, and they also invented two types of timepieces, the water clock and the sundial (i.e., the reflection of the sun), which divided the day into 24 hours. Archaeology has found that the ancient Egyptians knew many constellations, such as Cygnus, Shepherd, Cassiopeia, Orion, Scorpio, Aries, and the Pleiades. In addition, the ancient Egyptians also divided the zodiac stars and constellations into 36 groups, and added ten stars to the calendar, and ten days are 10 days, which is similar to the concept of ten days in the Chinese lunar calendar. The concept of the stars has been around since at least the Third Dynasty of Egypt.

Since there was significant star god worship in ancient Egyptian culture, astronomical observations and records were the responsibility of priests. Every summer, when Sirius rises before dawn, the Nile River begins to flood, so the ancient Egyptians believed that Sirius was the god who ruled the holy river Nile, so they built temples to worship Sirius.

Through accurate observations of Sirius, the Egyptians determined the length of a year (Sirius year, a type of sidereal year) to be 365.25 days. The ancient Egyptians gave the sun a strong religious color, and there were only a few gods representing the sun, the most important of which were Ra and Aten, and many pharaohs ruled Egypt with their own representatives of Ra or Aten.

Ancient Egypt was a typical water-powered empire with a narrow strip of land around the Nile River, heavily influenced by religion and polytheistic beliefs. The multi-state form allowed polytheistic beliefs to spread rapidly in Egypt, much like the polytheistic situation in Sumer. The religion of Egypt is a cult of fertility. The earth is feminine, while the sun is masculine. Bulls are often considered the embodiment of masculine reproductive performance, and bull gods are very common.