What achievements did ancient Egypt make in architecture, medicine, writing and calendar?

Ancient Egypt is the birthplace of world civilization. Its architecture is divided into three main periods: ① The architecture in the ancient kingdom period is represented by the world-famous pyramids. Ancient Egyptian architects used huge scale, simple and steady geometric modeling, clear symmetry axis and profound spatial layout to show the majestic, solemn and mysterious effect of the pyramids. (2) The buildings in the Middle Kingdom period are represented by grottoes and mausoleums. During this period, the beam-column structure was adopted, which can create a spacious indoor space. The tomb of Manduhetup III, built around 2000 BC, is a typical example. (3) The architecture in the New Kingdom period is represented by temples. It mainly consists of three parts: the inner courtyard surrounded by colonnades, the large column hall dedicated to subjects, and the secret room of the shrine that only pharaohs and monks can enter. The biggest ones are Karnak Temple and Amon Temple in Luxor.

Ancient Egypt has made brilliant achievements in architecture, sculpture, painting and arts and crafts.

Some people in Egypt are willing to believe that people can continue to "live" in another world after death. Just like plants die in winter and can be regenerated the next year. One of the great gods they worshipped, Osiris, was in charge of the "nether world" and the flood that brought Su Sheng to the plants. Osiris himself was killed by the enemy and reborn under the spell of his wife and children. Therefore, Egyptian priests believed that as long as the Pharaoh's body was preserved, they could continue to "live" inside and outside the mausoleum. In this way, the famous "mummy" (a corpse soaked, wrapped and sealed by drugs), as well as luxuriously decorated coffins and solid pyramids were produced.

The religious thought of ancient Egypt also preached that the human soul is everywhere. The bigger and more stable the pyramid is, the Pharaoh will live forever. Mechanically speaking, this square pyramid with a wide base and huge volume is indeed the most stable, and it really makes people feel "unshakable" in psychological feelings.

Next to the Pharaoh's pyramid in Kuvli, there is a huge stone carving "The Sphinx", which is 20 meters high. Under the attack of war and sandstorm, this monster's face presents a hazy mystery, so people often regard "Sphinx smile" as a synonym for a mysterious expression.

The uniqueness of sculpture and painting in ancient Egypt is clear at a glance, which leaves a deep impression on people. The worship of gods and kings is required to be as complete and perfect as possible according to what they should be, rather than what they actually see, which has caused a certain format. For example, the statue of Pharaoh often has his left foot in front, and the sitting image must be that his hands are on his knees, his right hand is clenched, and his left hand is horizontally extended to keep the so-called "right method" from turning sideways.

The work La Holt's Portrait of Princess Novelty, who popularized his wife, is the original representative of the two-seater statue in ancient Egypt. According to the practice of portrait carving in ancient kingdoms, statues made of limestone are usually colored. Because men are often outdoors and exposed to the sun, their bodies are painted brown. The woman lives in seclusion and her body is painted light yellow. The lines of these two statues are soft and stretched. In order to pursue the lifelike appearance of characters, Egyptian statues are good at highlighting the vividness of characters' eyes with various materials, such as copper eyelids, ivory corneas, transparent crystals for iridescence and polished ebony for pupils, so that they shine in the transparent crystals.

The Statue of Queen Nefertiti is a representative work with innovative spirit in the new kingdom of Egypt, which emphasizes that art should be liberated from idealized expression and truly depict people and the world around them. The works get rid of the long-term deification tendency, try to express human characteristics, and truly depict an ancient oriental beauty image, which is natural and vivid, full of vitality and feminine beauty, and completely get rid of the old technique that the queen statue only emphasizes her noble position in the past.

Because the ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun god "La" and the local god "Amon", many temples were built for them, among which the temple of Amon in Karnak is the most famous. Built in BC 1800 years ago, it covers an area of 24.28 hectares and consists of many parts, the most important of which is the column hall, which stands in the middle of the hall and is surrounded by huge forest-like stone pillars, giving people a mysterious and profound feeling.

Abu Simpo Temple is a masterpiece of Egyptian cave temples, which was dug on a cliff by the Nile. There are four cliff colossus in front of the temple, 2 1 m high, which are the statues of Ramses II himself in the new kingdom period. The statue faces the east and sits against the mountain as if it had grown from a cliff.

Lunar ephemeris

This is the early calendar of ancient Egypt, which was optimized by combining the seasonal changes of astrology (especially Sirius). The change period of the latter is a sidereal year, which can be approximately regarded as rejuvenation, with a difference of only 10 minute. However, due to a series of problems caused by the failure to abide by the agreement between the lunar calendar and the tropic year, the calendar was gradually abandoned by political activities, which was rarely seen in historical documents and was only used for religious affairs. At the same time, the Egyptians also guided production according to the relationship with the seasons.

The first month of the lunar calendar begins with the new moon and lasts for 29 or 30 days each month. Every day has its own name, some of which are related to the moon phase. Every year consists of 12 or 13 months. You can refer to the name of the month here, but little is known about the arrangement of1March. Different from the common phenomenon in other areas where the lunar calendar is used, the lunar calendar in ancient Egypt began in the morning rather than at night.

Civil calendar

The civil calendar in ancient Egypt was the so-called vagal year ("wandering year"), with 365 days each year, divided into three quarters, 12 months, three weeks each month, and 10 days each week. At the end of the year (or at the beginning of the year), there are five extra days as the festival time, corresponding to Osiris, Horus, the sun god, and darkness in turn. It is generally believed that the ancient Egyptian calendar is the origin of the Gregorian calendar. One question is, why do many calendars have similar arrangements, and five days are not in any month?

As the basis of folk calendar, the Nile water level is divided into three quarters: Akhet (flood), Proyet (growth, equivalent to winter) and Shomu (harvest, equivalent to summer). This is because the Nile flooding can make the soil more fertile, which is of vital significance to the people's livelihood in Egypt. From this point of view, the ancient Egyptian calendar is not so much a solar calendar or a Sirius calendar as a Nile calendar. Month only refers to the first month of a quarter, for example, I Akhet is the first month of each year and II Proyet is the fourth month. A date is only represented by a day in a month.

Pictographic representation of season names in ancient Egypt

During China and New Korea, I had my own name every month, because I am Akhet, Tekh(Dhwt), Menhet(Pa-n-ip.t), Hwt-hwr(Hwt-hwr), Ka-hr-ka(hwr), Ka-hr-ka) and SF-BDT. Hnsw(Pa-n-hns.w), Hnt-htj(Pa-n-in.t), Ipt-hmt(Ipip), Wep-renpet(Msw-r'), in which the names in brackets belong to the new dynasty.

Folk calendars followed the previous lunar habits, starting with Sirius rising together (Gregorian calendar 19 July or so), which was first seen in the historical records of the first dynasty in the third century BC, and actually adopted earlier. The rise of Sirius marks the Nile flooding in Memphis, the capital of the old kingdom.

Because 365 days is about 1/4 days shorter than the actual regression, every four years, the new year will be 1 day earlier than the actual regression, and every 1460 regression years will be one year earlier. This is called the Sirius cycle. It is said that the difference between the calendar year and the tropic year in ancient Egypt is the origin of the name "Wandering Year".

In the 3rd century BC, Ptolemy III ordered the establishment of a leap year every four years. But this reform was opposed by farmers at that time, because the old calendar was closely related to agricultural production. It was not until 1 century BC that the leap rule was really adopted in the reformed Alexandria calendar, and it was first adopted in 22 BC. Leap day does not belong to any month, but is attached to rest day.

A day in the ancient Egyptian civil calendar also began in the morning, perhaps at sunrise, but the exact time is uncertain. The length of a day is not fixed. Every day is divided into day 12 hours and night 12 hours.

There is nothing difficult about the above. Personally, the real difficulty lies in the chronology of ancient Egypt. The time longer than one year is expressed by the year after the old throne, that is, the format of "Pharaoh's Year" is expressed as follows: the first year, the first month of a quarter, belongs to the reign of a Pharaoh. In the year when the old and new pharaohs alternate, after the new pharaoh ascended the throne, the number of years immediately changed from the last year of the old pharaoh to the first year of the new pharaoh, and the following year was the second year of the new pharaoh, and so on. In addition, there are several more troublesome situations. One is that there were two pharaohs in power at a certain time, and there were two parallel titles. For example, Ptolemaic X from 14 to 17 and Cleopatra III from 8 to10/year were the same period, and this happened five times. Another possibility is that the Pharaoh of Egypt also served as the ruler of Syria, and the dates of the two countries were separated, as was the case during the reign of Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra VII. These problems should be regarded as a headache in the modern conversion procedure, and a detailed understanding of Egyptian history must be made first. This is probably why few people use the ancient Egyptian calendar to express today's date.

Quasi-lunar calendar

Quasi-lunar calendar is based on the civil calendar, but it does not depend on Sirius. Its main function is to determine the time of religious festivals. Its leap rule is that if the Lunar New Year is earlier than the civil year, a leap month will be set, and then there will be a leap rule of 25 years.

In addition, ancient Egypt also had similar modern fiscal year settings, which can be seen from Ptolemy II 19 to 27 and Ptolemy IV's reign. The fiscal year begins on 1 day of II Peret and ends on 30th of I Peret. Another calendar is the same as the civil calendar. In Ptolemy's Astronomical Masterpieces and other astronomical records, there are also some specific periods that do not need to be represented by old year numbers, which are very complicated and will be ignored for the time being. ...

In addition to the setting of 365 days a year later derived from the Gregorian calendar, another contribution of the ancient Egyptian calendar is the division of the zodiac. During the New Kingdom, they already knew more than 40 constellations, and archaeologists obtained records similar to "star maps" in cemeteries and temples.

The Egyptians made a calendar very early (starting date is 424 BC1,4236 BC, etc. ) Marx said: "The need to calculate the fluctuation of the Nile water level gave birth to astronomy in Egypt." The ancient Egyptians set the day when the Nile began to flood every year (the tide reached Memphis around June 15) as the beginning of the year, which happened to be the time when Sirius and the sun appeared on the horizon of Lower Egypt (the lower part of the Nile in ancient Egypt). According to the law of Nile water fluctuation and crop growth, the ancient Egyptians divided a year into three seasons (flood season, farming season and harvest season), and each season was divided into four months, with a year of *** 12 months, 30 days per month, and five festivals were added at the end of the year, totaling 365 days. This is the first solar calendar in human history. However, compared with the tropical year, that is, the solar year (the time for the earth to revolve around the sun once), there is a quarter-day error, and there will be a month difference every 120 years, so the progression after 1400 years can be repeated. The ancient Egyptians already knew the shortcomings of this calendar, but because it was difficult to correct it for a long time, they had to make some temporary adjustments by the government. In the/kloc-0th century BC, ancient Rome formulated the "julian calendar" ("julius" or "Caesar calendar") according to the Egyptian calendar. In the16th century, the reform was carried out, resulting in the Gregorian calendar, which is also the origin of the Gregorian calendar widely used in most countries in the world today.

Ancient Egyptian characters

The evolution of ancient Egyptian characters can be divided into four stages: 1, hieroglyphics: the earliest known ancient Egyptian writing material is hieroglyphics, which was produced in 3000 BC. 2. Tribute: For practicality and convenience, the scribe simplified the symbol shape of hieroglyphics and created a memorial. 3. Secular writing: it is a cursive form of sacrificial writing. Compared with sacrificial scripts, secular scripts have simpler link forms and no picture features, and the writing direction retains the tradition of sacrificial scripts. Fixed from right to left. 4. Coptic writing: It is the last stage of the development of ancient Egyptian writing, deeply influenced by Greek and biblical literature. Egyptian characters are composed of ideographic symbols, phonetic symbols and qualifying symbols.

Ideographic symbols are used to express the meaning of words, which is characterized by the close relationship between graphics and the meaning of words. For example, drawing wavy lines represents water, and drawing a five-pointed star represents the concept of "star".

Phonetic symbols are used to express the pronunciation of words and obtain sound values. For example, if the figure of an owl is used as a note, the pronunciation [m] has lost the meaning of "owl". The graphic symbol representing the bolt represents the sound, and another symbol representing the hillside is used to represent the sound [k].

Qualifier is a new graphic symbol, which is purely ideographic and placed at the end of a word to indicate which category the word belongs to. The qualifier itself is not pronounced. For example, the notes of the words "plow stick" and "Zhu Diao" in hieroglyphics are exactly the same, both of which are composed of two consonants, pronounced hb. The way to distinguish the meaning of words is to add the limiting symbols representing "plough stick" and "Zhu Diao" after hb respectively. A complete sentence can be formed by properly combining ideographic symbols, phonetic symbols and qualifying symbols.

Weights and measures in ancient Egypt

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 the basis of quality classification, various multiplication operations are carried out to form a larger particle volume 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.

Developed ancient Egyptian astronomy

In the Nile valley of Africa, there is a prosperous ancient Egyptian civilization. The work of observing the sky in Egypt was originally done by monks, who paid attention to the movement of the sun, the moon and the stars, and knew the method of predicting solar and lunar eclipses from very ancient times. Unfortunately, this method is strictly confidential and the details are unknown.

The ancient Egyptians made their own calendars. Marx said: "The need to calculate the fluctuation cycle of Nile water gave birth to astronomy in Egypt." In other words, the knowledge of astronomy comes from the observation of nature. Every June, the Nile floods and the fertile soil is washed away from the upper reaches, so that crops can thrive. Thus, the Egyptians produced the concept of "season".

The calendar of ancient Egypt was obtained by observing Canis Canis. Canis Canis is called Sirius in China and Sobud in ancient Egypt, which means the star on the water. As mentioned above, the civilization of ancient Egypt is closely related to the flood of the Nile. They found that while the Nile rose in the delta, the sun and Sirius also rose on the horizon. They set the time between these two events as one year, ***365 days. Divide the whole year into 12 months, with 30 days each month and the remaining 5 days as festivals; At the same time, a year is divided into three seasons, namely "flood season", "valley season" and "harvest season", with four months in each season. Herodotus said, "The Egyptians were the first human beings to put forward the method of timing the solar year ... In my opinion, their timing method was better than that of the Greeks, because the Greeks had to insert a leap month every other year to make the seasons coincide ...".

In the era of three or four thousand BC, whenever Sirius rose from the east before dawn in summer, the Nile began to flood. The Egyptians regarded this as a warning of the flood in the holy river, so they regarded Sirius as a god and worshipped it. They built temples, offered sacrifices to Sirius and prayed for a bumper harvest. The door of the Egyptian goddess "Islamic State" is facing the rising direction of Sirius. Others think that the famous Egyptian pyramids are used to observe Sirius.

It is very interesting that Sirius's Egyptian hieroglyphics are also triangular, much like the shape of a pyramid. The ancient Egyptians regarded the time between this time when Sirius rose from the east before dawn and the next time when Sirius rose from the east before dawn as a year, and set the day before dawn as the beginning of a year, which was called the Year of the Wolf Star. The length of a year of Wolf Star is 365.25 days, which is very close to today's exact figure of 365.2422 days. This is the earliest solar calendar in human history and the ancestor of the current Gregorian calendar.

The Egyptians divided day and night into 12 parts, and each part was the time from sunrise to sunset or from sunset to sunrise112. The Egyptians used a stone bowl to calculate time. There is a small mouth at the bottom of the stone bowl, and water drops leak out of the bowl at a fixed speed. The stone bowl is engraved with various marks to mark the time of different seasons.

Astrology in ancient Egypt was very developed. Just like the characteristics of ancient Egyptian civilization, their twelve constellations are also represented by the gods of ancient Egypt.

In addition to knowing the stars near the North Pole, Egyptians can also determine from the images painted on the unearthed coffin cover that they also know the stars such as Cygnus, Capricorn, Cassiopeia, Orion, Scorpio, Aries and the Pleiades. The biggest feature of Egyptian star recognition is that the stars near the equator are divided into 36 groups, each group may be a few stars or a star. Each group of tubes lasts 10 days, so it is called ten-day star. When a group of stars rises before dawn, it marks the arrival of this ten-day holiday. The earliest ten-day star cultural relics discovered now belong to the third dynasty. Note: From 3000 BC to 332 BC, Egypt experienced 3 1 dynasties.

The largest pyramid in ancient Egypt was built by the fourth Pharaoh Qi Apps near Cairo. The tower height 146.5m, the length of each side of the tower bottom is 230m, covering an area of about 52,900 square meters. The whole tower used 2.3 million cubic meters of boulders, and each boulder weighed about 2.5 tons on average. The stones used in the tower surface have been finely polished, all stacked, with tight gaps and no putty, and even a thin knife can't be inserted. The Great Pyramid of Qi is not only magnificent in appearance, but also carefully calculated in terms of angle, line and earth-rock pressure. Therefore, despite four or five thousand years of wind and rain, it still stands tall today. This is a miracle in the history of human architecture in the middle of the 3rd century BC, when it was still in the Bronze Age. According to the Egyptian legend recorded by the Greek historian Herodotus, in the process of building the Great Pyramid, Qi Apps recruited all Egyptian manpower in stages. Just to pave the road for transporting stones, 654.38+10,000 people were requisitioned, paving the road for 10 years. The construction of the pyramid doppelganger took another 654.38 million people and 30 years.

However, apart from the magnificence and magic of the pyramid, what is more intriguing is that all four sides of the pyramid correctly point to the southeast, northwest and southeast. In ancient times, four or five thousand years ago, when there was no compass, the orientation could be determined so accurately. There is no doubt that astronomical measurement was used, perhaps the Polaris-Tianlong constellation was used to orient! In the north of Qi Apps Pyramid, a tunnel with an angle of 27 degrees with the horizontal plane was left. At that time, from the center of the pyramid, through the tunnel, looking at the sky, you can just see the dragon constellation that hardly moved overnight. The Egyptians first used the Polaris at that time to determine the true north direction of the pyramid, and the other three directions were not difficult to determine.

ancient egyptian architecture

ancient egyptian architecture

Ancient Egypt is the birthplace of world civilization. Its architecture is divided into three main periods: ① The architecture in the ancient kingdom period is represented by the world-famous pyramids. Ancient Egyptian architects used huge scale, simple and steady geometric modeling, clear symmetry axis and profound spatial layout to show the majestic, solemn and mysterious effect of the pyramids. (2) The buildings in the Middle Kingdom period are represented by grottoes and mausoleums. During this period, the beam-column structure was adopted, which can create a spacious indoor space. The tomb of Manduhetup III, built around 2000 BC, is a typical example. (3) The architecture in the New Kingdom period is represented by temples. It mainly consists of three parts: the inner courtyard surrounded by colonnades, the large column hall dedicated to subjects, and the secret room of the shrine that only pharaohs and monks can enter. The biggest ones are Karnak Temple and Amon Temple in Luxor.

Look up words

1798, General Napoleon went on an expedition to Egypt. This expedition to the Nile Valley was disastrous. However, it made the world see the Goshen treasure lost in 2000 again. 1799, French explorer bouchard found an unusual black basalt stone tablet near Rosetta. The stone tablet is polished basalt with three paragraphs engraved on it, which consists of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Arabic cursive scripts and Greek. Scholars boldly assume that these are three versions of the same document. Among them, Greek is well known. After translating Greek correctly, we try to find the relationship between Greek and hieroglyphics, thus uncovering the mystery of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Shang Bo translation

Hieroglyphs are a very complex and ever-changing writing system. After ten years of hard work, Champa finally started with the name of the king (that is, the famous king circle in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics), and first translated the Egyptian word "Cleopatra". You will be familiar with the meaning of this word, which is Cleopatra who conquered Caesar. Any great discovery is simple in hindsight, but at that time, the research work in this field was very difficult, because there were many variants of hieroglyphics in the past 3000 years. Modern people already know these variants very well, knowing that "ancient" Egyptian is different from "new" and "new" is different from "modern", but no one knew these changes before champollion, a great linguist and archaeologist.