For our cyberday assignment, we need to find five inventions/breakthroughs from Egypt. I am writing this in the pattern of most importantly ranked to least importantly ranked.
One invention of ancient Egypt is an ox-drawn plow. Even though it's not the technology we have nowadays, it was Ancient Egyptian technology. It appeared at around 2500 B.C. Skilled metal working and animal cultivation were probably required in order to form a workable plow. Even though most of the Egyptian land was dessert, the nation also had rich soil along the banks of the Nile River. This soil makes a very good environment for growing crops such as wheat and a large number of vegetables. Egyptian inventions, such as the ox-drawn plow, made farming much easier and more profitable.
Everyone knows Egyptians for their unique writing system. Cave paintings date all the way back to 30,000 B.C, but drawings and paintings didn't develop into the first written language until the first writing systems appeared in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Their writing system began with pictograms, the first dating back to 6,000 B.C. Pictograms were simple pictures of the words they represented, but it had restrictions. Over time, Egyptians added other components to their writing system, like alphabet-like symbols that stood for certain sounds and other characters, allowing them to write names and theoretical ideas.
The Ancient Egyptians also have the honor of having not only invented the 365 day calendar, but also the leap year system. Ancient civilizations recorded and marked time using a lunar calendar system. Our modern day calendar, established by the solar system with twelve months with thirty days each and five extra days, was first made by the Egyptians. They also invented the leap year calendar of adding an extra day every fourth year in 238 B.C. Without the calendar, we wouldn't have known how to track the days, weeks, or months.
One breakthrough was the fact that illnesses were no longer treated by magicians and medicine men. There is evidence that people existed who were referred to as physicians and doctors. An Ancient Egyptian love poem written in abut 1500 B.C says,
"It is seven days from yesterday since I saw my love,
And sickness has crept over me,
My limbs have become heavy,
I cannot feel my own body.
If the master-physicians come to me,
I gain no comfort from their remedies.
And the priest-magicians have no cures,
My sickness is not diagnosed.
My love is better by far for me than my remedies.
She is more important to me than all the books of medicine."
Physicians were very clean and feared illness and disease. They did all they could to prevent illness, including bathing and purifying patients bodies habitually, shaving off men and women's head and body hair, and staying with a diet that excluded "unclean" animals, like fish.
The Egyptian's inventions also included sails. Since they lived so close to the Nile River, it would have been important that they devise productive methods of water transportation. Enough said.
There are more, but I was only told to put what I thought were the most important.
Here are the websites I used:
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