Definition of Civilization

The term 'civilization' is derived from a Latin term 'civics' which indicates 'someone who resides in a
town'.

The term 'civilization' is not confined to town; rather it talks about adopting better ways of living, and
making the best possible use of nature's resources, so as to satisfy the needs of the group of people.

Some important definitions of civilization...

* Culture is what we are and civilization is what we have (MacIver).

* Culture is our way of life and civilization is our achievement (MacIver).

* Culture is our identity, Civilization is our creation (Jones).

* Civilization is the total of all concerns from origin to recent of a period (Toynbee).

* Civilization flourishes as culture progresses (Spengler).

* Civilization is a developed level of urban life (Wallbank & Taylor).

Elements or features of Civilization

1. Cities or permanent settlementsWhen many cultures gather together and their populations grow,
they move from being communities, to towns, to cities. Agricultural Revolution more control over
their environment. could grow food to store during the leaner months of winter. give up their
nomadic ways and stay in one place. Portable huts became permanent houses.Once civilizations could
create surplus food, populations grew, and cities formedCities → larger areas that have political centers,
social centers, and financial centers.

2. Government and lawsGovernments are necessary for the protection of citizens from each other and
outside forcesPeople subscribe to government to benefit from the rule of law.Government → system of
rule over a community or civilization to keep order

3. Social classesSocial classes → breakdown of populations and civilizations according to social standing
or level of wealthSocieties began to rank their citizens as a means of separating certain groups from
othersSo, social classes are usually different “levels” of people, broken down by either importance, job,
amount of money or education.

4. ReligionReligion → system of beliefs which usually involve a belief in a higher power or supernatural
forceReligion has been a unifying force in many civilizations while in others it has served to divide.A
shared system of beliefs and goals among a group of people that can include God (or gods), rituals, &
ceremonies.
5. TechnologyThe use of technology has been associated with the level of civilization within a
culture.The higher the level of technology, the more advanced the cultureTechnology → any invention
or item that can help make other aspects of life easierExamples: tools, transportation, bridges, irrigation

6. Writing systems/writtenWriting systems → systems that use symbols to represent spoken

sounds.Writing systems are crucial for cultures since they are used to keep records.Writing was needed
as more information developed. People needed to keep track of food, trade, laws, religion.

7. Job specializationJob specialization → clear definition of different occupations within a societyOnce

they got better at farming, this allowed people to become specialists within a field rather than having to
do every job themselves. They could split the workload and then trade for what they needed.

8. Art and ArchitectureArts and Architecture → the defining characteristics of a culture's

creativity.Allows historians and other people to see the unique features of a culture.Distinguishes one
culture from another

Geographical perspective of Egyptian Civilization:

Ancient Egypt evolved between 5500 and 7th century B.C. along the middle and lower channel of the
Nile River.
The country is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Red Sea to the east, and the Sahara
and Libyan desert to the west, and the Nubian desert to the south.
Egyptian civilization developed along the Nile River in large part because the river's annual flooding
ensured reliable, rich soil for growing crops.
“Egypt is the gift of Nile” (Herodotus 443BC).
The Nile is composed of two tributaries: the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The White Nile, which is the
longer of the two, begins at Lake Victoria in Tanzania and flows north until it reaches Khartoum, Sudan,
where it converges with the Blue Nile. The Blue Nile begins near Lake Tana in Ethiopia.
To the north was Lower Egypt, where the Nile stretched out with its several branches to form the Nile
Delta. To the south was Upper Egypt, stretching to Aswan. The terminology "Upper" and
"Lower" derives from the flow of the Nile from the highlands of East Africa northwards to the
Mediterranean Sea.

Social and cultural life of ancient Egypt

The population of ancient Egypt was divided into groups of people with different jobs and
responsibilities to society. These social classes were structured as a pyramid with six levels. This social
pyramid shows the levels of each social class in terms of importance.

The two top levels, the Pharaoh and Government Officials, were the most powerful and wealthy. The
bottom level, the peasants, were the largest social class and were the workers that were the farmers
and construction workers.
Agriculture was the foundation of the ancient Egyptian economy and vital to the lives of the people of
the land. Agricultural practices began in the Delta Region of northern Egypt and the fertile basin known
as the Faiyum in the Predynastic Period in Egypt (c. 6000 - c. 3150 BCE), but there is evidence of
agricultural use and overuse of the land dating back to 8000 BCE.

The yearly inundation was the most important aspect of Egyptian agriculture, but the people obviously
still needed to work the land. Fields had to be ploughed and seed sown and water moved to different
areas, which led to the invention of the ox-drawn plough and improvements in irrigation. The ox-drawn
plough was designed in two gauges: heavy and light. The heavy plough went first and cut the furrows
while the lighter plough came behind turning up the earth.

Once the field was ploughed, then workers with hoes broke up the clumps of soil and sowed the rows
with seed. These hoes were made of wood and were short-handled (most likely because wood was
scarce in Egypt and so wooden products were expensive) and so to work with them was extremely
labor-intensive. A farmer could expect to spend most of a day literally bent over the hoe.
Egyptian irrigation techniques were so effective they were implemented by the cultures of Greece
and Rome. New irrigation methods were introduced during the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt (c.
1782 - c.1570 BCE) by the people known as the Hyksos, who settled in Avaris in Lower Egypt and the
Egyptians would further improve upon these techniques, such the expanded use of the canal.

The staple crops of ancient Egypt were emmer (a wheat-grain), chickpeas and lentils, lettuce, onions,
garlic, sesame, wheat, barley, papyrus, flax, the castor oil plant, and - during the period of the New
Kingdom (c. 1570-1069 BCE) at Thebes - the opium poppy.
Most farmers worked on land owned by the nobles or the priests or other wealthy members of society,
and so the men would typically tend the fields and surrender the produce to the noble while keeping a
small amount for personal use
Crops were harvested and stored at the local level and then a portion collected by the state and moved
to the Royal Granaries in the capital as taxes.

Economy and Trade: The ancient Egyptians were wonderful traders. They traded gold, papyrus, linen,
and grain for cedar wood, ebony, copper, iron, ivory, and lapis lazuli (a lovely blue gem stone.) Ships
sailed up and down the Nile River, bringing goods to various ports.
Religion: Religion played a big part in the lives of the ancient Egyptians. Like other early civilizations,
ancient Egypt was polytheistic. Polytheism is a belief in more than one god. The fact that the ancient
Egyptians had more than 2000 gods and goddesses is a good example of the sophistication of their belief
system.
Many Pharaohs built large temples to honor their gods. These temples were really more temple
complexes. Some famous temples include the Luxor Temple, the Temple of Isis at Philae, the Temple of
Horus at Edfu, the Temples of Rameses and Nefertiti at Abu Simbel, and the Temple of Amun at Karnak.
In the religious beliefs of ancient Egypt, the temples were believed to be the dwelling places of the gods
and goddesses. Because of that, only priests, priestesses, and the Pharaoh, the Queen, and occasionally
other members of the royal family were allowed inside the temples. Ordinary Egyptians could only go as
far as the gates.
Additionally, while it is true that for the vast majority of their history the ancient Egyptians were
polytheistic, for a brief time in the 14th century BCE all of Egypt worshiped only Atun, the Sun god. That
makes Egypt the first monotheistic religion in world history. The Pharaoh at the time, Amenhotep IV, so
strongly believed in the worship of only Atun that he made it the state religion and changed his name to
Akhenaten to reflect his personal devotion to the Sun god. He also had any plural references to gods
struck from Temple carvings throughout Egypt. It seems radical, and it was. But then Akhenaten, in
addition to being the father of King Tut, is one of the more interesting figures in Egyptian history.

The ancient Egyptians were also very likely the first people to believe in an afterlife. To support that
belief, the Egyptians developed elaborate burial practices to ensure that a person's body and soul stayed
together in their journey to the afterlife and that the comfort of loved ones would be maintained.
Mummification and Burial:
The afterlife for the ancient Egyptians was The Field of Reeds (Aaru) which was a perfect reflection of
the life one had lived on earth. Everything one thought had been lost at death was waiting in an
idealized form in the afterlife and one's earthly goods, interred with one's corpse, followed suit and
were there at hand.
Queen Hetepheres’s mummified body had a “canopic chest”, meaning her internal organs were
removed and placed in four containers made of alabaster that had liquid solutions of natron in them.
Natron is comprised of sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, and sodium chloride. In layman’s terms,
it was basically baking powder and table salt.

Language and Literature

The Egyptian hieroglyphic scripts were one of the earliest writing systems ever to be used during the
history of the ancient Egyptian civilization to represent their language.
The hieroglyphic consists of three basic types of signs; Logogram represent word. Phonogram represent
sounds. Determinatives which to indicate its correct meaning. It was able to combine logographic,
syllabic, and alphabetic elements and create a total of 1000 signs which was later decreased to 750
signs.
Despite the language being able to survive on surfaces of materials such as ceramic, metal, clay, and
stone, papyrus remained the main portable writing manner in the whole Egypt.
The temple of Abydos displays a great deal of information using hieroglyphics, some of them are
numbers, others are believed to indicate the origin of the gods, it showcases information about the
administrative structure and decisions made related to the economic activities controlled by the ruler.
Medical Science:
The ancient Egyptians practiced medicine with highly professional methods. They had advanced
knowledge of anatomy and surgery. Also, they treated a lot of diseases including dental, gynecological,
gastrointestinal, and urinary disorders. They could diagnose diabetes and cancer.
Mathematics:
The ancient Egyptians utilized a numeral system for counting and solving written mathematical
problems, often involving multiplication and fractions. Evidence for Egyptian mathematics is limited to a
scarce amount of surviving sources written on papyrus.
Astronomy:
Like many ancient peoples, the Egyptians studied the night sky, taking measurements from the stars to
accurately align their pyramids and sun temples with the earth's four cardinal points.

Metallurgy:
The main metals used in ancient Egypt were copper, gold, silver, and iron. Copper and gold were more
abundant, while silver was relatively rare, and iron emerged very late in Egyptian history (only in the first
millennium BCE, although meteoritic iron was already in use as early as the fourth millennium BCE).
Art of the ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptian art includes painting, sculpture, architecture, and other forms of art, such as drawings
on papyrus, created between 3000 BCE and 100 CE.
Most of this art was highly stylized and symbolic. Much of the surviving forms come from tombs and
monuments, and thus have a focus on life after death and preservation of knowledge.
Symbolism meant order, shown through the pharaoh’s regalia, or through the use of certain colors.
In Egyptian art, the size of a figure indicates its relative importance.
Paintings were often done on stone, and portrayed pleasant scenes of the afterlife in tombs.
Ancient Egyptians created both monumental and smaller sculptures, using the technique of sunk relief.
Ka statues, which were meant to provide a resting place for the ka part of the soul, were often made of
wood and placed in tombs.

Faience was sintered-quartz ceramic with surface vitrification, used to create relatively cheap small
objects in many colours. Glass was originally a luxury item but became more common, and was used to
make small jars, for perfume and other liquids, to be placed in tombs. Carvings of vases, amulets, and
images of deities and animals were made of steatite. Pottery was sometimes covered with enamel,
particularly in the colour blue.
Papyrus was used for writing and painting, and was used to record every aspect of Egyptian life.
Architects carefully planned buildings, aligning them with astronomically significant events, such as
solstices and equinoxes. They used mainly sun-baked mud brick, limestone, sandstone, and granite.
The Amarna period (1353-1336 BCE) represents an interruption in ancient Egyptian art style, subjects
were represented more realistically, and scenes included portrayals of affection among the royal family.

The ancient Egyptians built their pyramids, tombs, temples

and palaces out of stone, the most durable of all building
materials. The architecture of ancient Egypt temple complexes,
including those of Karnak and Luxor, often had specific
religious reasons for their construction.

There are more than 100 pyramids in Egypt, but this was
the first, built during the reign of Pharoah Djoser
(2630 B.C. to 2611 B.C) as a grand mausoleum for
himself. Previous pharaohs’ tombs were flat-topped
mounds made mostly of mud, but Djoser’s chief architect,
Imhotep, came up with a more durable and attractive idea:
A “step pyramid” design, involving six successively
smaller layers of carved limestone rising some 200 feet high.
Imhotep, also a reputed healer, was later worshipped as
a god of medicine in Greco-Roman culture.
Say "the pyramids," and most people picture this famous trio towering dramatically above the desert
sand not far outside modern Cairo. The northernmost of the three, built circa 2551 B.C. for Pharoah
Khufu, is known simply as the Great Pyramid---and with more than 2 million stone blocks forming a
geometric pyramid 450 feet high (originally 481 feet), it certainly is. Although it is no longer the world's
largest manmade structure, as it was for over three millennia, it is the largest of all the ancient
pyramids. The ancient Greeks deemed it one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and it is the only one
of those seven that has survived to the present day.
Say "the pyramids," and most people picture this famous trio towering dramatically above the desert
sand not far outside modern Cairo. The northernmost of the three, built circa 2551 B.C. for Pharoah
Khufu, is known simply as the Great Pyramid---and with more than 2 million stone blocks forming a
geometric pyramid 450 feet high (originally 481 feet), it certainly is. Although it is no longer the world's
largest manmade structure, as it was for over three millennia, it is the largest of all the ancient
pyramids. The ancient Greeks deemed it one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and it is the only one
of those seven that has survived to the present day.