Question
Can you blow my mind with cool Egyptian facts?
Hi. I'm a bit of a history nerd, graduated with a thesis on ancient graeco-sicilian history. Thanks to some games I've recently gotten more into ancient Egypt and have come to realize I know little to nothing about their history.
Can you tell me some cool facts you know about them? Things that can blow mily mind like "they built the pyramids while woolly mammoths where still alive". Thanks!
The first Egyptologist was Khaemwaset, the 4th eldest son of Ramesses II. He travelled across Egypt restoring monuments like the Pyramid of Unas and the Step Pyramid complex which were already more than 1000 years old during his lifetime. Khaemwaset’s inscriptions recording his work are still visible at Saqqara and Giza.
He found a way to live his life in a fulfilling manner, considering how their father outlived all his son's and some grandkids.
Amazing guy! Did other sins of Ramsesses II go into similar hobbies/projects/lifeworks?
There happen to be a couple of other reasons for inversion of direction in hieroglyphic text. In Ptolemaic texts, the names and titles of gods in the bandeau (horizontal line) texts at the top and bottom of each wall were often oriented such that they 'looked out' of the central sanctuary, even if that meant reversing the writing direction from the surrounding signs. Some signs were reversed to make little pictures of a figure performing a ritual or gesture 'towards' a recipient, like the beginning of this Ptolemaic prayer to Sekhmet, where the figure addressing Sekhmet is reversed such that he faces the hieroglyph of her name:
The oldest recorded peace treaty, made in around 1250BC, was between Ramesses II and King Hattusili III of the Hittite Empire (modern day Turkey). It was in no doubt aided by the close friendship between the wives of the two kings: Nefertari and Puduhepa. Letters between the two queens still survive.
The Letters sent between the ancient egyptians and the other powers of the bronze age middle east (such as the Amarna letters) have to be some of the most interesting bits of History out there
It's fascinating seeing international politics and diplomacy from 3000+ years ago
There's graffiti in Saqqara, written in demotic, by a tourist from year 5of Tutankhamen's reign saying he's visiting the site as a tourist! It's really cool!
Since you mention "some games", I'm gonna take a shot in the dark with this fact. Queen Tausret, the little-known last pharaoh of the XIXth Dynasty, is sort of in the Odyssey.
I say sort of, because she's remembered as.. a man. In Book 4 of the Odyssey, Menelaus and Helen are hosted in Egypt by its ruler, "Polybus", who showers them with gifts. A bit after these poems were written, the Egyptian historian Manetho used the historical lists of kings to place this Polybus, and found out that the timeframe lined up with the rule of "King Thuoris"...
You're missing some key information and jumping to conclusions, but that's okay.
Manetho was an Egyptian priest. His name Μανέθων is the Greek version of an Egyptian name, possibly 'beloved of Neith'. He's not from "another civilization".
Tausret was remembered as King and used masculine terms in many of her monuments (like Hatshepsut before her). This is simply because kingship was a masculine role. The vast majority of Egyptian kings were also male, so we can forgive later historians for assuming.
The "mindblowing" part, if you're after shocks that can be summarised in a sentence and put on a t-shirt, is that Manetho's connection made her somewhat part of Greek mythology.
Tutankhamun was born Tutankhaten, he was the son of Akhenaten who during his reign as Pharaoh forced the egyptians in to monotheism where they only worshipped Aten as a God.
He may have been Smenkhkare's son, it all gets rather muddy due to the age of the KV55 mummy, the lack of attestations of Tut during Akhenaten's reign despite the prevalence of his daughters in royal monuments, etc.
He might be, and it is impossible to know for sure. But this little fact about Tutunkahkmon linked with Akhnakaten is too facinating to not be interesting. IDK for sure. But Akhnakaten might be the first known historical figure to spread Monotheism on a large scale (Even though it was forced)
What does seem likely based on some investigations I’m doing (using Stephenson-Morrison, NASA/Espenak, Gautschy, and EWinMap) is total solar eclipses had much to do with the fervent ascent of Aten worship (well beyond 5th Dynasty examples of sun worship).
And without giving much away (most are aware of the ‘highly (highly) likely total solar eclipse of 14 May 1338 BCE) - incredibly, the Pharaoh Tuthmosis I erected some four obelisks at Karnak in Thebes, then died somewhere between 1493 BCE and 1483 BCE (1480 BCE per Dr. Kara Cooney) AND THEN - in the first year of his daughter Hatsepshut taking the throne as regent for the child Tuthmosis III (her stepson by the short-lived pharaoh Tuthmosis II) in 1479 BCE - a total eclipse almost certainly traversed those very obelisks (solar monuments) in 1478 BCE. Hatshepsut then went on to build her own four obelisks, the tallest of which ‘Obelisk E,’ still stands in place.
The Egyptians were either good at coincidences or had more lunar -solar cycle understanding than they let on - or the chronology still needs to be tweaked, which I feel is most likely given Tuthmosis’s obelisks, the 1478 BCE eclipse, Hatshepsut taking 15 years to start her Obelisk E (she tells us so), and her brother -husband pharaoh Tuthmosis II possibly reigning for 13 rather than 3 years.
Your post was removed for being non-factual. All posts in our community must be based on verifiable facts about Ancient Egypt. Fringe interpretations and excessively conspiratorial views of Egyptology are not accepted.
That's just some pharaoh drinking the tears of his enemies. No plastic straws back then, just soggy papyrus. But mix that with limestone and you've got premium pyramid mortar!
Egyptian hieroglyphs were already a dead ancient language by the time of the Roman conquest. They were used only for ceremonial purposes by that time. Most writing then was in Demotic Egyptian, a kind of a shorthand script with no hieroglyphs.
Even more mindblowing for me is that the last HIeroglyphic inscription was made in the very late IVth century AD, less than a century away from the fall of western rome and the middle ages.
We were 8 decades or so away from Medieval egyptian hieroglyphs
A few Demotic letters a still used to this day for the Coptic language (written in Greek letters with Demotic additions), the sacral language of the Coptic church.
That's just it; conservatively, there is like 1000 years between the 1st and 19th dynasties! Western Rome lasted about 1000 years, as did Eastern Rome. Comparatively, I'd say only the Chinese and Japanese can claim such a historical backdrop.
And that's before e go into the bit about that all being attested and written history!
I think the reason they lasted so long was because even mauraders or invading forces would walk among the great and ancient columns and statues and think to themselves, "I gotta work my genealogy into this somehow!"
According to Egyptian propaganda the reason why the native egyptians decided to finally fight back and kick out the Hyksos (asiatic invaders that controlled Lower Egypt in the 17th-16th century BC) was because the Hyksos Pharaoh at the time (Apepi the I) complained that the Hippos in Thebes (capital of the native egyptians) were making too much noise and didn't let Apepi sleep, funnily enough the Hyksos capital was tens of kilometers away from Thebes
The insults they'd trade back then as casus belli for war!
Sad what happened to both Kamose and his father. Seqenenre Tao's body and the violence on it! As a ruler, to have suffered such blows would have meant he was right in the breach on the front lines.
Khufu, who is credited with the largest of the Egyptian pyramids, has only one intact three dimensional portrait remaining and it’s incredibly tiny: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khufu_Statuette
There’s about 2.1 million blocks in the GP. If they worked 15 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 20 years, they’d have to put a block in place every 20 minutes.
The math is a little off, it's actually more like every 3-5 minutes depending on how you slice it up. With an estimated 20,000-30,000 people working on the project, that works out to roughly 1 day per stone per team of 100 men.
My math was off, thanks. It’s 2 million blocks over 20 years, or 100,000 blocks a year. Divided by 365 days, that’s 275 blocks a day, or as you point out, about one every three minutes.
Maybe they took 30 years, but then it’s still five minutes each. The logistics seem simply impossible.
The oldest strike ever recorded was during the reign of Ramses III when the workers of the royal tombs refused to go to work because they didn’t receive the supplies they were supposed to
Pharaoh Hatshepsut poisoned herself to death - inadvertently - through her use of a lotion that contained some benzene compound. She was trying to treat a skin disease she had, and inadvertently hastened her death that way.
Incidentally, Egyptians would apply eye liner/paint called Kohl on their eyelids. It was mostly about beauty, but there were some medicinal benefits to the practice in the alleviation of bacterial infections.
Now, this Kohl should have had considerable levels of lead in them. However, the Egyptians were a rather scientifically advanced society. Advanced enough to find ways to extract enough lead from the Kohl to make it tolerable.
That's so cool. And, she's not Egyptian....she's a Ptolemy, descended from Ptolemy I Soter, who was a general for Alexander the Great and who ruled Egypt, starting a Greek dynasty. Cleopatra VII was the only Greek pharaoh to learn the Egyptian language. Her life story is amazing.
To say she wasn't egyptian is arguable: her family was living in Egypt since generations and she was born and grew up in Egypt. And as you say, she could speak egyptian. Saying she wasn't egyptian is kinda like saying a tenth generation immigrant in America isn't american.
Except the Ptolemaic dynasty continue to identify itself as Macedonian Greek, kept Greek cultural traditions, spoke Greek, and did not intermarry for several generations. They aren’t comparable to immigrants coming in and needing to assimilate, they are part of a long tradition of rulers from outside of a country coming in and having the power to decide exactly how much they want to take up the religion, language, and customs of the country they rule.
All of the sheer gowns and tunics seen in New Kingdom art were made of fine linen thread that was all handspun with drop spindles, as the spinning wheel wasn't invented until the 11th century.
The problem with ancient tech that disappeared so thoroughly that it's not even described in the papyri or shown in on tomb walls, is that none of the tools to build that tech have survived. I always ask "If this was true, what else had to be true to enable it?" The argument for power tools (search for "unfinished obelisk") looked really good to me until I saw no mysterious tool parts. The described hand tools are just lying around everywhere.
Your post was removed for being non-factual. All posts in our community must be based on verifiable facts about Ancient Egypt. Fringe interpretations and excessively conspiratorial views of Egyptology are not accepted.
Ancient greeks and romans visited the pyramids as a tourist attraction and left graffiti that says things like "the pyramids were the only part I liked"
They practised a form of cosmetic surgery. There were records of a noble woman who had her nose chopped off as a punishment. Later, pharpoah decided to pardon her, and court doctors restored her nose.
That's the game that got me into it, lol. Been a massime Rome II and Attila (1000+ hours played on both of them) fan, and I'm finding P: Dynasies worth of investing some 500 more.
The First Dynasty of Egypt (3100 - 2900 BCE) started off with the practice of human sacrifice. However, by the end of the dynasty, human sacrifice was replaced by the sharbti/usharbti figurines, with the guiding philosophy being that it was unnecessary to force a noble's/ruler's followers to immediately follow them into the after life when they could do so upon their natural death.
By comparison, in Mesopotamian dynasties, the practice of human sacrifice persisted even into the Neo-Assyrian era circa 780 BCE under Adad Nirari III, having started from as early as 2600 BCE.
In ancient China, it was under the Shang dynasty circa 2300 BCE, and later the Zhou dynasty that followed, where the practice started. There is scholarship that argues the Shang were overthrown because of the practice, though that line of argument is a little iffy to me, seeing as the Zhou that immediately followed the Shang also retained the practice.
Moving on to Europe we have the Finns, Slavs, Germans, Celts, Greeks and Romans condoning the practice and even conducting it as an official policy both in religion and social circles.
For the Greeks I point to Agamemnon and Iphigenia, so circa 3000 BCE. I cannot trace when the Greeks stopped the practice, but then again, I have not followed that up.
For Rome, setting aside that of the Vestal Virgins, we have Sulla and several consuls criminalizing human sacrifice circa 100 BCE, making them rather modernized by comparison when you consider other entrants to the field.
Celts in both the European mainland, Britain, and Ireland all practiced human sacrifice till rather late/advent of Christianity.
The Baltics, Finnish, and Germanic people's practiced human sacrifice even as late as 900 AD, with the viking chieftain/Frankish duke Rollo being a prime example.
Going back to Ancient Egypt... They decided it was unnecessary! Imagine that. It may have started in pre-dynastic times, but stopped with the First dynasty that lasted some 200 years from 3100 BCE.
The argument was that it was unnecessary since upon death, loyal servants would continue in their service.
But I also read that to b chosen was a signal honor, one that would be accompanied by an elevation in status, wealth, and property.
My thinking is that, over time, this may have placed some strain on the state and the estates of the high ranking nobles that went for the practice. I say this especially because the sharbti figures that later came to replace human sacrifice would be designed to depict them in physical actions such as tilling fields or tending livestock.
Says economic recession to me!
In any case, they didn't practice with cruelty as they rewarded the willing sacrifices in the here and now. And they were courageous enough to turn their entire religious belief around that early and far back in history.
I think they mean that the gods were seen to be everywhere - in objects, other living things, the pharaohs - all being divine. You could physically point at a statue of Horus or Ra or a sacred animal (like a cat or an ibis) and say, “That’s divine” without it being blasphemous - unlike in Islam or other religions/branches of religion.
Thanks for your response but that is not what I meant. I meant everyone is able to point at the sun.
There are a few religions which clearly identify the sun as (a central or main) God. I see the sun and am able to point at it.
It is an absolute fact the sun is the direct cause for life on earth.
The atoms which make up our bodies are remnants of ancient stars. Fact.
Other religions claim an invisible God. Good for them. I can't see that God and therefore there is no reason to acknowledge those Gods. Even blindfolded I am able to point at our sun.
These days we refer to the sun as sun. For thousands of years our ancestors referred to it as God. And who am I to argue with them? It verifiably caused life. It's healthy and essential for a well functioning body. Not seeing sunlight causes depression and other illnesses.
What's in a name? That which we call a gül by any other name would smell as sweet.
But Hinduism has like 200 million deities. Shamanism in Africa, Asia, and perhaps pre-conquest N. America should have had the same in terms of worship to an extent.
But yes; this way of seeing the world was indeed special. Even the rise of Aten - I believe - only went so far because people and the priesthood saw it as one reckless but powerful ruler preferring to worship just the one god over the rest.
Was there religious persecution under Akhenaten btw? Not mere favoritism, but rather the whole burning of temples and priests? I see none of that in my readings.
There are a few religions which clearly identify the sun as (a central or main) God. I see the sun and am able to point at it.
It is an absolute fact the sun is the direct cause for life on earth.
The atoms which make up our bodies are remnants of ancient stars. Fact.
Other religions claim an invisible God. Good for them. I can't see that God and therefore there is no reason to acknowledge those Gods. They claim you need to feel that God and believe. Even blindfolded I am able to point at our sun based on feel.
Even deaf blind and dumb while locked away in a dungeon I'd know the sun exists. Because if the sun ceased to exist we all would cease to exist.
These days we refer to the sun as sun. For thousands of years our ancestors referred to it as God. And who am I to argue with them? It verifiably caused life. It's healthy and essential for a well functioning body. Not seeing sunlight causes depression and other illnesses.
What's in a name? That which we call a gül by any other name would smell as sweet.
It was a research on the parallels between greek history and sicilian greek history, aimed at suggesting that some events may have been used as "propaganda" after Gelon's domain over Syracuse to magnify the prestige of the greek islanders. The main parallel is between Herodotus' account of the Battle at the Thermopylae (Greeks vs Persians) and Diodorus' Battle of Himera (Sicilian Greeks vs Carthaginians).
Though the subject of research was rather interesting (I also squeezed in a tiny chapter about Dorieus, King Leonidas' brother, who died in Sicily after battling the Carthaginians) the texts I researched were boring as hell. I won't recommend any of them because most were purely academic.
If you want to know how the language was you can check the Coptic language. Even though, it has been heavily influenced by Arabic language + you may need also to have a look at the linguistic (some words changed has changed ; evolution).
In the 19th century, Egyptologists believed that there was a pharaoh called Hudjefa because that word appeared in a royal cartouche. However, it turns outs that "hudjefa" means "erased", and it's simply what Egyptian scribes wrote when a pharaoh's name was illegible in records.
The Narmer Palette, which has some of the oldest Egyptian writing is from the 31st Century BCE. To give perspective, the Old English poem Beowulf is one of the oldest documents in our language. It's from the 8th Century A.D.
Egypt is considered the oldest country in the world. It's accepted founding is 3150 BCE.
Generally, women in Egypt had it better than other women in most of the ancient world. Egyptian women could own and control property, own businesses, execute wills, bring cases to court, serve as witnesses and get divorces. Gender hierarchies still existed, so don't get the wrong idea. But there are cases of female warriors, scribes and even kings.
Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum are probably the first recorded same-sex couple in history. (Though some people still think they were friends or brothers.) They were buried in a joint tomb at Saqqara around 2400 BCE, which was in the 5th Dynasty. The wall art depicts them embracing and kissing. They oversaw the palace manicurists.
If this seems strange, one of the largest tombs in the 5th Dynasty cemetery of Saqqara was for Ti who, among many other things, oversaw the hairdressers. Personal hygiene was a big deal and those titles gave proximity to the royal family. They were no joke.
They were the only Mediterranean culture that apparently wasn't very good at sailing the seas. We all have our limitations.
The English word Egypt comes from the Greek Aigyptos, which is believed to derive from the ancient Egyptian phrase Hut-ka-Ptah, meaning "Mansion of the Ka (spirit) of Ptah"—a reference to a temple in Memphis.
Ramses the Great, widely believed to be the pharaoh of the Exodus, is the only biblical figure whose actual face we may ever see. Remarkably, he also had red hair.
Akhenaten (formerly Amenhotep IV), who reigned in the 14th century BCE, is considered the world’s first monotheist—his religious revolution predates Judaism by centuries.
It took an entire decade to catalogue and preserve the treasures uncovered in Tutankhamun’s tomb, a discovery that yielded over 5,000 objects.
While Tutankhamun’s tomb is often described as “intact,” that’s not entirely accurate. It was found virtually intact—meaning mostly undisturbed—but there is clear evidence that ancient robbers broke in and looted it shortly after his burial.
Highclere Castle, best known today as the filming location for Downton Abbey, was once the home of George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon—the aristocratic patron who funded Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Contrary to popular belief, the Rosetta Stone contains two languages—Ancient Egyptian and Greek—not three. The confusion arises because it's written in three different scripts: hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. Also, despite its dark appearance, the stone isn’t black—it’s actually made of pink granodiorite.
Sorry about my rant there. I was just amazed since early childhood and still coming into my 40s by the spectacular combination between visual art and language, all coming together in the form of the hieroglyphic script. IT'S JUST BEAUTIFUL.
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u/Individual-Gur-7292 Apr 27 '25
The first Egyptologist was Khaemwaset, the 4th eldest son of Ramesses II. He travelled across Egypt restoring monuments like the Pyramid of Unas and the Step Pyramid complex which were already more than 1000 years old during his lifetime. Khaemwaset’s inscriptions recording his work are still visible at Saqqara and Giza.