African Mythology
African Mythology a Focus on the History of the Ancient EgyptAncient Egypt history began from the period of pre-dynastic settlements of the northern Nile valley. Egypt’s history is in divisions of periods according to the dynasty of the ruling of each pharaoh. The dates provided under history are not clear and remains a debate up to date. The earliest history records of Egypt begun during the Neolithic period.
It is a belief that Nile was the source of life for the Egyptians.Origin of Egyptian peoplesThe reason of believing that the Nile was the source of life was the existence of the nomadic hunters and gatherers along the Nile River. The evidence of the existence of these people at the Neolithic age is the traces of the artifacts and the rock curving in the oasis and along the terraces of the Nile in the 11th BC.The study takes into consideration the history of the ancient Egypt. Historians say that the Egyptians were at the crossroads where many different groups and cultures merged over time.
The people of the ancient Egypt were likely a cross of two tribes. These tribes were the Hemitic and the Semitic peoples. Possibly, a blend of the Nubian people from South Africa, an observation states that after the Islamic inversion Arabs and other Semitic groups saturated people (The Egyptian People, par 20). Caucasian Romans, Greeks are the group that played a little role in the in the origin of the modern Egypt. With this, archeologists also have recorded the possibilities of the origin of Egyptians, as we will discus in the study. Location of Egypt Egypt is a country that enjoys a strategic location in the north East Conner of Africa.
The Egypt’s boundary is between Mediterranean Sea in the North, Sudan in the South, Israel and red sea at the East, then Libya in the West. The geographical location of Egypt has granted it a chance to play a major role of transportation between African countries, Europe and Asia. Egypt is as well associated with the Nile River, which is the longest river in the world. It is also the lifeline of Egypt.Contributions of Egyptians to the worldPeople know Egyptians for their early civilization, Egyptians made an impact in the ancient world.
Their civilization was great and led to the growth of many things such as agriculture, introduction of writing, the art of building and other several things that we will see in this study. Egyptian early civilization made it famous and as a result encouraged people from other part of the world to migrate into Egypt. Since the ancient time, the records keeps it that the Egyptians are good inventors. They had already engaged in the art of construction of the pyramids and event introduction of tarmac roads in those ancient days. Other significant inventions in the field of agriculture were in existence during the same period.
An example of these agricultural inventions was the ox-draws plough that Egyptians invented as early as 2500BC.The art of writing in Egypt started many years ago. This art of writing begun with dawning, pictures represented objects and occurrences. It reached a point where pictures become a representation of spoken language rather than the objects. At this time, Egyptian cultures drew picture instead of writing.
After this, some Egyptian culture introduced the hieroglyphs. The hieroglyphs form of writing interpreted the drawings into words. Then it also represented consonants for each symbol. It as well represented class of objects rather than sound, this is a determinative, and is optionally in word spelling. The ancient Egypt used hieroglyphs for monumental and official inscriptions, the materials used were rocks and other had materials.
History states that this activity begun some years before 4000BC to about 300AD. After the 300AD, improvements come in this art of writing. At least the writing on rock stopped and writing on papyrus and other temporary materials begun and as well a cursive form called hieratic. This involved the use of a reed pen dipped in ink and simplified symbols. History continues saying that Egyptian culture played a significant role in writing, they believed in well keeping of records and communicating information about religion and government.
This prompted then to introduce written scripts for recording this information. The famous script of the ancient Egypt was the hieroglyphics. Nevertheless, throughout the 3000 years of Egypt civilization, there were more scripts introduced to meet different purposes. By the use of these scripts, the scribes now had an ability to preserve their history, beliefs and idea of the ancient Egypt in the temple, papyrus scripts and tomb walls. This art of writing was not only important to the people of Egyptians because it made an impact to the world towards the kill of writing. Many places over the world got the skill of writing from the Egyptians, especially the neighboring countries.
This benefited the world in a way that most cultures became able to keep records of their religion, form of government and other important information that was helpful to the society.Egyptians are among the first cultures of the world to introduce writing. This art is significant because is benefited other ancient generations. This was one way of the early civilization. Apart from the early civilization, many nations benefited from this art, as they were able to come up with an effective mode of communication. Many nations in the present world still associate their art of writing to the History of Egyptian writing.
It is as well a good source of study to the present scholars of history.Egyptians have made a great impact of the field of agriculture. Actually, Egypt keeps a world record of being the first nation to begin the practice of agriculture. It perhaps started agriculture around 10,000BC but definitely by 5200BC. At the beginning, people dag the ground a hole for a single seed with a stick. This work was very hard because of the clay soil along the Nile River.
This may have created a suggestion in the mind of Egyptians to introduce an alternative way of making agriculture cheaper.Egyptians were very fast in inventions and they had already invented animal drawn plough by 300BC as a way of expanding agriculture and simplifying life. The plough oxen pulled the plough while man applied a little force to make furrows or plough the land. This invention was significant to the people of Egypt because it led to increased productivity of the firm produce. For this reason, there was enough food.
Besides this, ancient Egypt has kept a clear record of irrigation. Famers in this place used the waters of the Nile River for irrigation. Agriculture did not only benefit Egypt but all the neighboring nations benefited a lot. These nations and many others got the influence of agriculture and benefited from the invention of the ancient agricultural implement such as the ox-draw plough. Egyptians had gone to an extent of introducing sickles for harvesting wheat.
This served a great importance to all the nations that had borrowed from Egyptian civilization in those ancient days.The invention of better agricultural implements increased the agricultural products. The increase of these agricultural products was significant in a way that it brought the introduction of trade. Since food was in plenty, thought of selling the surplus came. Now we can gladly say the invention of the agricultural tools in the ancient Egypt had an impact to the world.Egyptian mythologyAn interesting part of Egyptian history is the Egyptian mythology, this country has monuments inked with its mythology, and some of the monuments that still exist in Egypt are the pyramids.
Besides these, along the Nile River there still rocks with the ancient writing and rock curving. Egyptian mythology includes the religious beliefs, and ritual practices of the ancient Egypt. This is three hundred years back before the pre-dynastic period to the adoption of Christianity those early centauries after Christ’s death (AD). Apart from the traditional beliefs mythology as well takes into consideration the language of the people in the ancient days.History provides it that Egyptian language is among the first spoken language in the world.
A branch of Afro-asiatic and Egyptian is the language spoke in the ancient Egypt. The written records of the Egyptian language is dates it to the early 3400BC. Egyptian language was spoken until the late 1700AD in the form of Coptic. There is a change in the Egyptian language in that the preset Egypt no longer speak the Afro-asiatic and Egyptian but the speak Egyptian Arabic language. The Arabic displaced Coptic language mostly used in Egypt in the ancient time. The Arabic language came into Egypt after the Muslim conquest of Egypt.
Even though the Muslims introduced Arabic language in Egypt their ancient, language that is the Coptic did not die. Many indigenous people of Egypt still speak the Coptic language. With this history, analyze that there is no big change in the language of the Egypt. This is because the ancient language is still in existence.In mythology, we will also discuss the religious rituals. Ritual is an extraordinary event in time and space, organized in terms of a shared series of a symbolical, official act and utterances serving the values, expectations and goals of an individual, group or a society.
This applies to the cultural form or the world order in any aims that it may be (Ancient Egyptian Ritual Worship, par 1). Egyptian religion is a ritualistic one, where it has many ceremonial activities without appropriate timing. All ceremonies had association with rituals. They had no specific time of practicing these rituals, as they would practice it any time as it was in their calendars.The Egyptian theology provided a means of worship that led Egyptians to believe that pharaoh was the high priest of Egypt and the only representative of gods and goddesses in the world.
Besides this, all people practiced royal festival. Actually, this was a way of strengthening pharaoh’s prestige. Some of the rituals practiced during the ancient Egypt were the diurnal and nocturnal rituals.The diurnal ritual also called life rehearsal took place in the temples the hymns are in the books of the day and in the records of the liturgy, is delivered to the temples of Egypt since the thousands past years. There is an evidence of constant celebration of life and order thanks to pharaoh.
The priests initiated the ritual as well in some areas where they observed the stars and planets in the sky. Some hours before the sun rises above the horizon all the temple domain awaken and prepare for the major important of diurnal sacred service. The midday and evening ritual follows this morning ritual.Nocturnal ritual is the sacerdotal rehearsal for the netherworld, it was the journey of Re at night and protection through the knowledge and sheer presence of the sacred words. The intention of the text that the stages of the nether world showed importance of the ritual importance was well known by Hornung.
Until the present time, the Egyptians have the same way of way of worship. In some indigenous groups, you can find the same traditional beliefs and rituals.Ancient Egypt has not had a different form of recipes prepared. From the Nile River, they had fish and snakes as well. Because of their fertile land, they grew wheat and from it, they prepared locally made bread. This foods still exists in Egypt today and therefore the only thing noted is the improved way of food preparation.
Another aspect in under mythology is the medicine, before civilization in the ancient Egypt medicine was unknown. During this period, Egyptians believed that the demons and Evil gods caused ailments. For this case, treatment or medicine was a supernatural thing. They believed in magic as a form of healing. Beyond magic people consulted the priest to heal them through the power of fighting the wicked.
Gods a and goddesses in Egypt The gods and goddesses is something that was very common in the ancient Egypt. Egyptians believed that in the beginning of the universe Osiris was the king over Egypt and his queen Isis the sister as well was the goddess. All people whom he thought to worship gods and plant crops for their daily bread loved him.His brother set become jealous and decided to overthrow him so that he becomes the king. One day in a feast, Set described a beautiful coffin he had come along his way.
This made Osiris curious and he requested the coffin. Actually, this was an arranged plan of Set. People agreed that it was an artisanship, but Set said that he would give this coffin to whomever it will fit well. Set was sure of what he had made this coffin. He made it to fit his brother Osiris when Osiris fit himself in the coffin it was clear that the present was his.
Because of the evil of Set and his followers, they nailed the lid of the coffin and threw it in the Nile.Queen Isis was sorrowful, she searched for the king all over Egypt but all was in vain. When Osiris died it is believed that he went t the under world. Set had a son called Horus, this son battled with Set and become the king of the earth while his father Set was the king of the under world. The ancient Egyptians believed in gods and worshiped idols. This was there traditional believe.
A moral lesson one can learn from the gods and goddess of the Egyptian gods is as follows; we see that Set killed his brother Osiris in order to overthrow him. This shows jealousy in him and with this, a moral lesson that one should learn is to avoid jealousy. The second part is when the wife of Osiris looks for the body of his husband. This is a moral lesson of love; we should have love to those whom we live with.The study was about the history of the ancient Egypt, the study was broken down to various parts so that we can have an understanding of activities that took place in the ancient Egypt.
The first part of the study took into consideration the origin of the people of Egypt. In the study, we found out that most people in Egypt might have originated from the crossroads in Egypt where there had a mixture of some other tribes from the south and other parts of the world.The second part of the study explained the location of Egypt in the world. The meaning of this part was to make the reader understand where the country of which he/she is studying is located in the world.The third part of the study was establishing the contribution of the people studied to the world.
At this part, we have learnt that this people had a great impact to the world because of their early civilization. They contributed a lot in the art of writing. It has recognition by the present world. They also introduced agriculture and agricultural tools, which made the work easier and led to more food production. Later on because of surplus foods, trade emerged.The forth part of the study is about the Egyptian mythology.
In this part, we discussed the myth that was about the gods and goddesses we also studied the religious beliefs of this people. We also made a study on the language spoken by the people in this area of study, which was a significant par of the study. Another aspect we dealt with in this study was the medicine, which we found out that these people were superstitious. They had a belief that illness was a result of demons and bad gods. In the study, we also focused on the kind of recipes prepared by the people in the area of study, which we found out that the kind of food had not made a big change until now.
It is only that the mode of preparation has changed making the present attractive as compared to the ancient time.
