Egypt's New Technologies

Today in class, we took more notes on Egypt from the textbook. Below are the notes from the text.

• Slaves served in homes of the rich or toiled endlessly in gold mines of Upper Egypt.
• Egyptians weren't locked in the social class.
• If people wanted to be in a higher class, they would have to know how to read and write.
• Women held many rights as men held; they could own property and trade, propose marriage and seek divorce, and were entitled to 1/3 of their husband's property.
• hieroglyphics- an ancient Egyptian writing system in which pictures were used to represent ideas and sound; for example, a picture of a man symbolized a man.
• Hieroglyphics could be used almost like letters of the alphabet.
• They started writing it on stone, but then used papyrus.
• Papyrus- a tall reed that grows in the Nile delta, used by the ancient Egyptians to make a paper-like material for writing on
• When papyrus dried, the plant's saps glued into a paper-like sheet.
• They developed a calendar to help keep track of floods.
• the start, Sirius, appeared right before the floods came in.
• Egyptians developed a system of written numbers for counting, adding, and subtracting to help assess and collect taxes.
• They used geometry to help reset buildings after the floods came.
• Egyptian architects were the first to use stone columns for houses, temples, and other buildings.
• Their medicine was very famous in the ancient world.
• doctors checked heart rates by feeling pulses, set broken bones with splints, handed treatments for fevers, and sometimes performed surgery to treat the people.
• The pharaoh's power ended in around 2180 B.C.
• They regained power in the Middle Kingdom and restored law and order; the power didn't last.
• A group called the Hyksos came and ruled Egypt for a while.
• Egypt would rise again in the New Kingdom.
• About the same time as the Old and Middle Kingdom, civilization was emerging in the Indus River Valley.