Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics can be traced back to 3500 BC. At first, it used hieroglyphics such as birds and animals to represent place names and the names of kings. It is a square character similar to Chinese characters. A word can be composed of many radicals, and a word represents a meaning.

Today, most of the hieroglyphics we see in ancient Egypt are depicted in tombs and temples, which is a famous sacred writing. This writing format remained until the demise of ancient Egyptian civilization, mainly used in sacred occasions.

Another simplified writing format is the monk style, which is mostly used to write on papyrus, which is equivalent to the running script or cursive script of Chinese characters. After the Greeks occupied Egypt, the number of foreigners in Egypt gradually increased, and the ancient Egyptian characters also developed a more simple and secular style.

Ancient Egyptian script influenced many later scripts, such as Phoenician script and Arabic script. Interestingly, some ancient Egyptian characters such as "Sun, Moon, Mountain and Water" are very similar to ancient Chinese characters.

Moreover, the writing format of ancient Egyptian characters is similar to that of ancient Chinese, which is written from right to left and from top to bottom. The Copts gradually occupied Egypt in the first century A.D., and they gradually replaced the secular body of the ancient Egyptians with Coptic letters (a writing style similar to Greek letters).

According to records, it was not until the Roman emperor who converted to Christianity in the fourth century AD ordered the closure of all non-Christian temples that priests who could read ancient Egyptian characters disappeared, and no one could read ancient Egyptian characters since then.

2, weights and measures

The most important unit of length in ancient Egypt was the wrist ruler, which was about 20.62 inches from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. In hieroglyphics, it is represented by forearm and hand, which is pronounced meh. The wrist ruler is divided into 7 palms or 28 fingers, each palm is equal to 4 fingers.

A square with a length of one cubit and a diagonal of half (29. 16 inch) is called Leimen, which can be divided into 20 fingers. It is the second unit of length and the main unit for measuring land. There is also a wrist ruler, only 17.72 inches, divided into 6 palms.

The product of wrist ruler multiplied by 100 is called Arabic tea, which is the basic unit for measuring land. The square of this length, that is, 10000 square elbow, is also the unit of cultivated land area.

The main capacity unit of ancient Egyptians was Hanu, which was 29.0 0.3 cubic inches, and 65,438+00 Hanu was Hagardt. On this basis, various multiplication operations are carried out to form a larger grain capacity unit.

Another unit of capacity is the card, which is equal to 2/3 cubic cubits, or equivalent to the capacity of a container with a diameter of 9 palms and a depth of 1 elbow. There is a certain approximate relationship between capacity and water, because a Hanu's water weighs 5 debens.

It seems that the unit of capacity is derived from the unit of weight of water. Deben is the weight of an ankle ornament with the same name, and its110 is called Gardet, which is the weight of the ring.

3. Mummies

Mummies are well-preserved bodies after special treatment. In more than 3000 years, many changes have taken place in the way ancient Egyptians made mummies. However, most scholars and experts believe that the anti-corrosion method reached its peak around the tenth century BC.

The whole mummification process is expensive, except for various drugs, spices, evil spirits, amulets and so on. , only wrapped in a corpse, sometimes with 1000 meters of high quality linen.

Therefore, only kings, royalty, nobles and the rich can afford it, and the poor can only be simple and even sloppy. Herodotus talked about two other cheaper mummification methods, although it is difficult to ensure the integrity of the body.

But it can give spiritual comfort to the poor, perhaps because of these cheap production methods, the tradition of mummification can be spread and continued.

It was not until the 4th century AD that Christianity ruled Egypt that the custom of mummies was abolished. There was a group of people in ancient Egypt who made mummies as their profession. They have mastered this technology and passed it on from generation to generation.

In ancient Egypt, mummification and related necessities were undoubtedly very important. Large-scale industrial system. The existence of this industry shows that ancient Egyptians have mastered scientific knowledge in physics, chemistry and medicine.

The sodium oxide they used as a desiccant was a mixture of sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, salt and sodium sulfide according to modern scientific analysis, indicating that the chemical action of these substances was known at that time.

4. pyramids

The Egyptian Pyramid is the imperial mausoleum in the pyramid shape of the slave society in ancient Egypt, and it is one of the seven wonders of the world. They are numerous and widely distributed. Memphis, the ancient city on the west bank of the Nile in the southwest of Cairo, is the most densely populated area.

There are three famous Libyan deserts 8 kilometers south of Giza, called the pyramids of Giza. Among them, the tomb of the fourth dynasty Pharaoh Khufu is the largest, built in the 27th century BC, with a height of 146.5m, which is equivalent to a 40-story skyscraper.

The bottom side is 230 meters long and is made up of 2.3 million large stones weighing about 2.5 tons, covering an area of 53,900 square meters. There are corridors, stairs, halls and rooms as well as various valuable decorations in the tower. The whole project lasted for more than 30 years.

There is a huge sphinx in the southeast of the tower (in front of King Harvard's tomb). The pyramid of khufu (the largest) in Egypt is the most famous. It is the tomb of the Pharaoh (the king of ancient Egypt).

5. astronomy

Ancient Egypt had a considerable level of astronomical knowledge. By observing the movement of the sun and Alpha Canis (Sirius, known as "Sopdet" in ancient Egypt, which is the feminine noun form of the verb "sharp"), they made a calendar, that is, the Coptic calendar.

The ancient Egyptians set a year as 365 days, 12 months a year, 30 days a month, and the remaining 5 days were festivals. The practice of using the solar calendar in ancient Egypt was the earliest in the world, and this calendar is similar to what we use today.