Ancient Egyptian technology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ancient Egyptian technology is a set of artifacts and customs that lasted for thousands of years. The Egyptians invented and used many basic machines, such as the ramp and the lever, to aid construction processes. Egyptian paper, made from papyrus, and pottery was mass produced and exported throughout the Mediterranean basin. The wheel, however, did not arrive until foreign invaders introduced the chariot. They also played an important role in developing Mediterranean maritime technology including ships and lighthouses.

Contents 1 Description 1.1 Structures and construction 1.2 Irrigation and agriculture 1.3 Paper and writing 1.4 Glassworking 1.5 Astronomy and astrology 1.6 Medicine 1.7 Other developments 2 See also 3 References and sources 4 External links

[edit] Description

Significant advances in Ancient Egypt include astronomy, mathematics and medicine.^[1] Their geometry was a necessary outgrowth of surveying to preserve the layout and ownership of farmland, which was flooded annually by the Nile river. The 3,4,5 right triangle and other rules of thumb served to represent rectilinear structures, and the post and lintel architecture of Egypt. Egypt was also a center of alchemy research for much of the western world.

[edit] Structures and construction

Many Egyptian temples are still standing today. Others are in ruin from wear and tear, while others have been lost entirely. The Egyptian structures are among the largest man-made constructions ever conceived. They constitute one of the most potent and enduring symbols of Ancient Egyptian civilization. King Tut's rock cut tomb in the Valley of the Kings was full of jewellery and antiques. Ptah was the primordial mound, and had called creation into being, he was considered the god of craftsmen, and in particular stone-based crafts. Ancient Egyptian architecture stretches over at least ten thousand years. Mediterranean peoples developed lighthouse technology and built large fire-based lighthouses, most notably The Lighthouse of Alexandria, built in the 3rd century BC (between 285 and 247 BC) on the island of Pharos in Alexandria, Egypt. The Nile valley has been the site of one of the most influential civilizations in the world with its architectural monuments, which include the Great Pyramid of Kafu and the Great Sphinx being are among the largest and most famous buildings in the world.

The most famous pyramids are the Egyptian pyramids — huge structures built of brick or stone, some of which are among the largest man-made constructions. Pyramids functioned as tombs for pharaohs. In Ancient Egypt, a pyramid was referred to as mer, literally "place of ascendance." The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest in Egypt and one of the largest in the world. The base is over 13 acres in area. It is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and the only one of the seven to survive into modern times. The Ancient Egyptians capped the peaks of their pyramids with gold and covered their faces with polished white limestone, though many of the stones used for the purpose have fallen or been removed for other structures over the millennia.

The Red Pyramid of Egypt (c.26th century BC), named for the light crimson hue of its exposed granite surfaces, is the third largest of Egyptian pyramids. Menkaure's Pyramid, likely dating to the same era, was constructed of limestone and granite blocks. The Great Pyramid of Giza (c.2580 BC) contains a huge granite sarcophagus fashioned of "Red Aswan Granite." The mostly ruined Black Pyramid dating from the reign of Amenemhat III once had a polished granite pyramidion or capstone, now on display in the main hall of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (see Dahshur). Other uses in Ancient Egypt, [3] include columns, door lintels, sills, jambs, and wall and floor veneer.

The ancient Egyptians had some of the first monumental stone building (such as in Sakkhara). How the Egyptians worked the solid granite is still a matter of debate. Dr. Patrick Hunt ^[2] has postulated that the Egyptians used emery shown to have higher hardness on the Mohs scale. Regarding construction, of the various methods possibly used by builders, the lever moved and uplifted obelisks weighing more than 100 tons. Any rigid object that is used with an appropriate fulcrum or pivot point to multiply the mechanical force that can be applied to another object. This is also termed mechanical advantage, and is one example of the principle of moments. The principle of leverage can also be derived using Newton's laws of motion, and modern statics. It is important to notice that the amount of work done is given by force times distance. The lever allows less effort to be expended to move an object a greater distance. For instance, to use a lever to lift a certain unit of weight with an effort of half a unit, the distance from the fulcrum of the spot where force is applied must be twice the distance between the weight and the fulcrum. For example, to halve the effort of lifting a weight resting 1 meter from the fulcrum, we would need to apply force 2 meres from the other side of the fulcrum. The amount of work done is always the same and independent of the dimensions of the lever (in an ideal lever). The lever only allows to trade effort for distance. Levers are one of the six simple machines.

Obelisks were a prominent part of the architecture of the ancient Egyptians, who placed them in pairs at the entrance of temples. In 1911, Encyclopedia Britannica wrote, "The earliest temple obelisk still in position is that of Senwosri I. of the XIIth Dynasty at Heliopolis (68 ft. high)". The word "obelisk" is of Greek rather than Egyptian origin because Herodotus, the great traveler, was the first writer to describe the objects. Twenty-seven ancient Egyptian obelisks are known to have survived, plus the Unfinished obelisk found partly hewn from its quarry at Aswan. The obelisk symbolized the sun god Ra and during the brief religious reformation of Akhenaten was said to be a petrified ray of the aten, the sundisk. It was also thought that the god existed within the structure. The Egyptians also used pillars extensively.

The Ancient Egyptians had knowledge to some extent of sail construction.^[3] This is governed by the science of aerodynamics. A primary feature of a properly designed sail is an amount of "draft", caused by curvature of the surface of the sail. When the sail is oriented into the wind, this curvature induces lift, much like the wing of an airplane. It is unknown if the Ancient Egyptians had kites, but a team lead by Mory Gharib raised a 6,900-pound, 15-foot obelisk into vertical position with a kite, a system of pulleys, and a support frame.^[4] Maureen Clemmons developed the idea that the ancient Egyptian used kites for work.^[5] Ramps have been reported as being widely used in Ancient egypt. A ramp is inclined plane, or a plane surface set at an angle (other than a right angle) against a horizontal surface. The inclined plane permits one to overcome a large resistance by applying a relatively small force through a longer distance than the load is to be raised. In civil engineering the slope (ratio of rise/run) is often referred to as a grade or gradient. An inclined plane is one of the commonly-recognized simple machines.

[edit] Irrigation and agriculture

Irrigation as the artificial application of water to the soil was used to some extent in Ancient Egypt. In crop production it is mainly used to replace missing rainfall in periods of drought, as opposed to reliance on direct rainfall (referred to as dryland farming or as rainfed farming). There is evidence of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhet III in the twelfth dynasty (about 1800 BCE) using the natural lake of the Fayûm as a reservoir to store surpluses of water for use during the dry seasons, as the lake swelled annually as caused by the annual flooding of the Nile.^[6]

[edit] Paper and writing

The word paper comes from the Greek term for the ancient Egyptian writing material called papyrus, which was formed from beaten strips of papyrus plants. Papyrus was produced as early as 3000 BC in Egypt, and sold to ancient Greece and Rome. The establishment of the Library of Alexandria put a drain on the supply of papyrus. As a result, according to the Roman historian Pliny (Natural History records, xiii.21), parchment was invented under the patronage of Eumenes of Pergamum to build his rival library at Pergamum. Egyptian hieroglyphs, a phonetic writing system, has served as the basis for the Phoenician alphabet from which the later Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Cyrillic alphabets were derived. With this ability writing and record keeping, the Egyptians developed one of the, if not the, first decimal system. The city of Alexandria retained preeminence for it's records and scrolls with its library, which was damaged by fire when it fell under Roman rule,^[7] being completely destroyed by 642.^[8][9] With it a huge amount of antique literature and knowledge was lost.

[edit] Glassworking

The earliest known glass beads from Egypt were made during the New Kingdom around 1500 BC and were produced in a variety of colors. They were made by winding molten glass around a metal bar and were highly prized as a trading commodity, especially blue beads, which were believed to have magical powers. The Egyptians made small jars and bottles using the core-formed method. Glass threads were wound around a bag of sand tied to a rod. The glass was continually reheated to fuse the threads together. The glass-covered sand bag was kept in motion until the required shape and thickness was achieved. The rod was allowed to cool, then finally the bag was punctured and the rod removed. The Egyptians also created the first colored glass rods which they used to create colorful beads and decorations. They also worked with cast glass, which was produced by pouring molten glass into a mold, much like iron and the more modern crucible steel.^[10]

[edit] Astronomy and astrology

Egypt was one of the most important places in the development of astrology, although astrology first originated in Babylon. Early Egyptian culture identified celestial objects with gods and spirits. They related these objects (and their movements) to phenomena such as rain, drought, seasons, and tides. It is generally believed that the first "professional" astronomers were priests, and that their understanding of the "heavens" was seen as "divine", hence astronomy's ancient connection to what is now called astrology. Ancient structures with astronomical alignments (such as Pyramids and temples) probably fulfilled both astronomical and religious functions. Egyptian astrology had star charts have been found in Egypt that go back as far as 4,200 BC. It is thought that some of the astrological signs of the zodiac originated in Egypt, although most did originate in Babylon. Aries the ram appears for the first time in an Egyptian zodiac, although the head of a goose was also used as a symbol by the Egyptians. It is also possible that the sign of Gemini the Twins first appeared in Egypt, named after the two bright stars Castor and Pollux, which were called the 'Two Stars' by the Egyptians. There is also evidence of a Babylonian origin for Gemini however, as the symbol of the twins appears there too. Leo the Lion is almost certainly Egyptian in origin, as the Babylonian name for the same constellation was the Great Dog. Virgo the virgin is quite likely to have originated with the Egyptian grain goddess Nidaba, as in Egypt the harvest began when the full moon was in Virgo.

Claims have been made that precession was known in Ancient Egypt prior to the time of Hipparchus. Some buildings in the Karnak temple complex, for instance, were allegedly oriented towards the point on the horizon where certain stars rose or set at key times of the year. A few centuries later, when precession made the orientations obsolete, the temples would be rebuilt. Note however that the observation that a stellar alignment has grown wrong does not necessarily mean that the Egyptians understood or even cared what was going on. For instance, from the Middle Kingdom on they used a table with entries for each month to tell the time of night from the passing of constellations: these went in error after a few centuries because of their calendar and precession, but were copied (with scribal errors) for long after they lost their practical usefulness. The Dendera Zodiac, a star-map from the Hathor temple at Dendera from a late (Ptolemaic) age, supposedly records precession of the equinoxes (Tompkins 1971). In any case, if the ancient Egyptians knew of precession, their knowledge is not recorded in surviving astronomical texts, which suggest they were not assiduous observers of the sky (Parker).

Thoth is credited with making the calculations for the establishment of the heavens, stars, Earth,^[11] and everything in them.^[12] Compare this to how his feminine counterpart, Ma'at was the force which maintained the Universe.^[13] He is said to direct the motions of the heavenly bodies. Without his words, the Egyptians believed, the gods would not exist.^[14] His power was almost unlimited in the Underworld and rivalled that of Ra and Osiris.^[15]

[edit] Medicine

The Edwin Smith papyrus is one of the first medical documents still extant, and perhaps the earliest document which attempts to describe and analyse the brain: given this, it might be seen as the very beginnings of modern neuroscience. However, while Egyptian medicine had some effective practices, it was not without its ineffective and sometimes harmful practices. Medical historians believe that ancient Egyptian pharmacology was largely ineffective. ^[16] According to a paper published by Michael D. Parkins, 72% of medical 260 prescriptions in the Hearst Papyrus had no curative elements.^[17] According to Michael D. Parkins, sewage pharmacology first began in ancient Egypt and was continued through the Middle Ages,^[18] and while the use of animal dung can have curative properties,^[19] it is not without its risk. Practices such as applying cow dung to wounds, ear piercing and tattooing, and chronic ear infections were important factors in developing tetanus.^[20] Frank J. Snoek wrote that Egyptian medicine used fly specks, lizard blood, swine teeth, and other such remedies which he believes could have been harmful.^[21]

Mummification of the dead was not always practised in Egypt. Once the practice began, an individual was placed at his/her final resting place through a set of rituals and protocol. The Egyptian funeral was a complex ceremony including various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in the dead's honor. The poor, which could not afford expensive tombs were buried in shallow graves in the sand, and because of the arid environment they were often naturally mummified.

[edit] Other developments

The egyptians developed a variety of furniture. There in the lands of ancient egypt the first evidence for stools, beds and tables (such as from the tombs like Tut-ench-Amuns). Recovered Ancient Egyptian furniture includes a 3rd millennium B.C. bed discovered in the Tarkhan Tomb, a c.2550 B.C. gilded set from the tomb of Queen Hetepheres, and a c. 1550 B.C. stool from Thebes.

Certain artifacts and records do not fit with conventional technological development systems. There is a question as to the sophistication of ancient Egyptian technology. There is not a neat progression to an Egyptian Iron Age and it is unkonwn why the Egyptians took so long to utilize iron. Some have suggested that the egyptians had some form of understanding of the electric phenomena ^[22][23], from observing lightning and interacting with electric fish (such as the Malapterurus electricus) or other animals (such as electric eels). Egyptologists exploring alternative theories of ancient technology have suggested that there were electric lights used in Ancient Egypt.^[24] Engineers have constructed a working model based on the relief and some authors (such as Peter Krassa and Reinhard Habeck) have produced a basic theory of the device's operation.^[25] Baghdad batteries, assuming they were galvanic cells, may also have been used but not fully understood.

[edit] See also

• List of Egypt-related topics
• List of unsolved problems in Egyptology
• Egyptian chronology
• History of ancient Egypt
• History of technology
• Egyptian mathematics
• History of science in early cultures
• Astrology and astronomy
• Archaeoastronomy
• Graham Hancock
• Egyptian pyramids
• Egyptian pyramid construction techniques
• Imhotep

[edit] References and sources

Citations and notes

1. ^ Homer's Odyssey stated that "the Egyptians were skilled in medicine more than any other art". [1]
2. ^ http://hebsed.home.comcast.net/hunt.htm
3. ^ Hatshepsut oversaw the preparations and funding of an expedition of five ships, each measuring seventy feet long, and with several sails. Various other instances of Egyptian sailing vessels exist, also.
4. ^ Caltech researchers successfully raise obelisk with kite to test theory about ancient pyramids
5. ^ Caltech researchers successfully raise obelisk with kite to test theory about ancient pyramids
6. ^ Amenemhet III. Britannica Concise. Retrieved on January 10, 2007.
7. ^ Plutarch, Life of Caesar 49.3.
8. ^ Abd-el-latif (1203): "the library which 'Amr ibn al-'As burnt with the permission of 'Umar."
9. ^ Europe: A History, p 139. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996. ISBN 0-19-820171-0
10. ^ Susan Hampton. Glassmaking in Antiquity. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved on March 21, 2007.
11. ^ (Budge Gods of the Egyptians Vol. 1 p. 401)
12. ^ Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians Vol. 1
13. ^ (Budge Gods of the Egyptians Vol. 1 pp. 407-8)
14. ^ (Budge Gods of the Egyptians Vol. 1 p. 408)
15. ^ Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians Vol. 1
16. ^ http://www.hom.ucalgary.ca/Dayspapers2001.pdf
17. ^ 10th Annual Proceedings of the History of Medicine Days [2]
18. ^ http://www.hom.ucalgary.ca/Dayspapers2001.pdf
19. ^ http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0838/is_n65/ai_12694466
20. ^ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=681065&dopt=Abstract
21. ^ http://spectrum.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/full/14/3/116
22. ^ Bruno Kolbe, Francis ed Legge, Joseph Skellon, tr., "An Introduction to Electricity". Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1908. 429 pages. Page 391. (cf., "[...] high poles covered with copper plates and with gilded tops were erected 'to break the stones coming from on high'. J. Dümichen, Baugeschichte des Dendera-Tempels, Strassburg, 1877")
23. ^ Heinrich Karl Brugsch-Bey and Henry Danby Seymour, "A History of Egypt Under the Pharaohs". J. Murray, 1881. Page 422. (cf., [... the symbol of a] 'serpent' is rather a fish, which still serves, in the Coptic language, to designate the electric fish [...])
24. ^ J. Norman Lockyer, "Dawn of Astronomy". Kessinger Publishing, 1992. 448 pages. ISBN 1564591123 Page 180. (cf., "[...] possibility that the electric light was known to the Ancient Egyptians.)"
25. ^ Krassa, P., and R. Habeck, "Das Licht der Pharaonen.". ISBN 3-548-35657-5 (Tr. The Light of the Pharaohs)

Books, journals, and magazines

• Leslie C. Kaplan, "Technology of Ancient Egypt. 2004, 24 pages. ISBN 0823967859
• Denys Allen Stocks "Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology: Stoneworking Technology in Ancient Egypt". Routledge, 2003. 336 pages. ISBN 0415306647
• Katheryn A. Bard" Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt By Katheryn A. Bard". Routledge, 1999. 968 pages. ISBN 0415185890
• R. J. Forbes, "Studies in Ancient Technology". 1966.
• Örjan Wikander, "Handbook of Ancient Water Technology". 2000.
• Patricia Blackwell Gary and Richard Talcott, "Stargazing in Ancient Egypt," Astronomy, June 2006, pp. 62-67.
• Evans, James. The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Pannekoek, A. A History of Astronomy. New York: Dover, 1961.
• Parker, Richard A. "Egyptian Astronomy, Astrology, and Calendrical Reckoning." Dictionary of Scientific Biography 15:706-727.
• Tomkins, Peter. Secrets of the Great Pyramid. With an appendix by Livio Catullo Stecchini. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1971.
• Budge, E. A. Wallis. Egyptian Religion. Kessinger Publishing, 1900.
• Budge, E. A. Wallis. The Gods of the Egyptians Volume 1 of 2. New York: Dover Publications, 1969 (original in 1904).

[edit] External links

• History of the Egyptian obelisks, egipto.com