The culture of Ancient Egypt

Egyptian writing was one of the oldest in the world. At first each word was written as a picture. The Greeks called it “hieroglyphs” (“sacred carvings”), because it was mostly carved on tomb and temple walls and on statues of the gods. It was hard to learn, so literate scribes were respected. People wrote with reed pens and mineral paints on papyrus, “paper” made from papyrus stems. In 1799 a stone was found near Rosetta (Rashid) with the same text written in hieroglyphs, Demotic (the everyday script) and Greek. Relying on the Greek text, the French scholar Jean-François Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs in 1822. The stone is now in the British Museum in London. By watching the stars the Egyptians began astronomy; they set the year at 365 days, divided into 12 months of 30 days plus 5 extra days. Land measuring led to geometry, and they also worked with fractions. The main unit of length was the “royal cubit” (about 52.5 cm); time was measured with water clocks.