Egyptian civilisation
Also called: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Egyptian civilisation · Topic: Bronze Age Civilisations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China · NCERT: Class 6, Ch 6 "The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation"; Class 9, Ch 4 "Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation"
Meaning
Egyptian civilisation grew up along the river Nile. Every summer the Nile flooded and left behind rich black mud called kemet. So the Egyptians called their land Kemet, "the black". City-states arose there c. 3000 BCE. Farmers dug ditches and reservoirs to store floodwater. This shared work helped create local government and a class of officials. Egypt is known for pharaohs, pyramids, mummification, hieroglyphic writing, papyrus records and a 365-day calendar.
Example
The early pharaohs were buried under a flat, box-shaped tomb called a mastaba. Builders later stacked mastabas one on top of another to make a pyramid, such as the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. Egyptians believed in the ka, a spirit double that lived on only if the body was kept safe. So they preserved bodies by mummification.
Don't confuse with
- Mesopotamian civilisation: it grew between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It wrote in cuneiform on clay tablets, not in hieroglyphs on papyrus.