11 Fascinating Facts from the History of Egypt

In May, I will be travelling to Egypt for the first time. In order to profit from my trip, I’ve been studying the history of Egypt. It is fascinating. As Herodotus said, “I will speak at length about Egypt because there is no other country like it, nor any other that possesses as many wonders.” I recommend Jason Thompson’s A History of Egypt, as an overview of the whole history. It keeps moving and doesn’t get bogged down yet covers every era in a helpful way. Here are 11 fascinating facts from the history of Egypt. These are the things that stuck out to me. I am curious to see if this list will change after I visit Egypt.

1. Djoser, the second king of the 3rd Dynasty, erected the Step Pyramid. It was the first great stone building in the world. “Described by one Egyptologist as a ‘subterranean palace,’ the underground dimension of the Step Pyramid was never equaled in subsequent pyramids” (22). There were many pyramids built subsequently, but it is interesting to note that there were twice as many pyramids were built in Nubia as in Egypt. You can see these today in North Sudan.

2. Hieroglyphs (not hieroglyphics), the writing of the Egyptians, began in the Old Kingdom. They considered it as a gift from the god of wisdom, Thoth. So, they wanted to keep using the same writing throughout their history. Even in ancient times, people were impressed with the appearance of this writing. It continued from the third millennium B.C. until the Byzantine Empire (around the 6th century A.D., when the last temple (Philae, near Aswan) was closed). Eventually, the knowledge of their meaning was lost. It was not rediscovered until they were deciphered in the 19th century after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.

3. The Old Kingdom (Ancient Egyptian history is commonly divided into Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms) had no slaves. They used the corvée, which was the drafting of individuals in the kingdom for a month of labor, to construct the great pyramids. The reason they could do this was “a widely shared ideology about the nature of society and how it should function” (34). “The pyramids were certainly designed as royal tombs. Doubts that any society would devote so much of its resources to such a purpose are based on misunderstandings of the Old Kingdom and its driving ideology” (36).

4. Pepy II was the last ruler of the Old Kingdom. He began to reign when he was six, and he reigned for 94 years. Pepy II is the longest reigning monarch in recorded history.

5. Thebes, modern day Luxor, was the religious capital of Egypt. “The largest temple in Egypt, indeed in the world, Karnak Tample, is actually a complex of temples that covers more than a hundred hectares [247 acres] and includes chapels and precincts to other gods, principally Mut, Montu, and Khonsu” (63). You can visit this temple complex today.

6. Amehotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten (“he who acts effectively for Aten”). He changed the religion and demanded that Egypt worship one god, Aten. Then, he changed the capital. He also seemed to abandon his military role. His capital was Amarna. It was abandoned after his death. However, it is very well-preserved. The royal letters from his time were found there and give us amazing insight into the life of the ancient Near East. Egypt was a very conservative country! His innovations were not only forgotten but actively expunged and left unknown until 19th century scholarship re-discovered them.

7. Every Pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty was named Ptolemy. Each one married his sister, following the tradition of the ancient Pharaohs in marrying their half-sisters. Many of them were named Cleopatra. The famous Cleopatra is actually Cleopatra VII.

8. Augustus moved some of the oblisks of Egypt to Alexandria. Caligula transported a 500 ton obelisk to Rome, and it now stands in St. Peter’s Square. Rome has more Egyptian obelisks than Egypt does! Two of the obelisks in Alexandria were moved to Western nations. One ended up in the Victoria Embankment in London. The other ended up in New York’s Central Park.

9. “The influence of Egypt to the development of Christianity is almost always underestimated or ignored by Christians in general. Egypt was one of the first and most fruitful fields for Christian conversion and the establishment of Christian institutions” (145). “Egypt was first a nursery and then a pillar of the early Christian Church” (145). There was some reason why Egyptians were open to Christianity. “The most fundamental ancient Egyptian myth of all, that of Osiris, Isis, and Horus could be taken as an allegory of the Holy family. . . . The pharaoh as the incarnate son of God prefigured Christ in the same role . . . Even the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, an alien concept to many non-Christian cultures, was comprehensible to the Egyptians because of their ancient practice of grouping deities into triads” (148). Plus, there was the similarity of the cross to the ankh, the ancient Egyptian symbol. The Egyptians converted Ethiopia. They also began monasticism.

10. The Aswan Dam was used to exploit the waters of the Nile. However, it submerged the temple of Philae and forever dimmed the bright colors of paint that had remained up until that time. The Aswan High Dam replaced it and was completed in 1970. The reservoir was filled in 1976. “The Aswan High Dam far exceeds any other dam in the world in magnitude” (300). There were big problems with loss of archeological finds in Nubia. However, modern-day Egypt is inconceivable without it. It increased arable land by 2.47 million acres. Upper Egypt produces 3 crops instead of one.

11. Gamal Abdel Nasser (15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970) was the first truly native Egyptian to rule in over 2,000 years.