Bell Work

1. Bell Work • Like other cultures the Egyptians developed many innovations, name one and describe its importance today

2. The Gift of the Nile Chapter 4 Section 1

3. The Gift of the Nile • Near the Mediterranean Sea the Nile River divides into several branches and spreads out over a wide area

4. The Gift of the Nile • There it drops the soil that it has carried from far upriver

5. The Gift of the Nile • Every year the Nile flooded, depositing a fresh strip of rich, black soil along each bank

6. The Gift of the Nile • Farmers would sprinkle seeds on top of the soil • They would produce a huge amount of food by doing this

7. The Gift of the Nile • The Nile was Egypt’s main transportation route • The Egyptians developed sails and began to rely on wind for power

8. A Source of New Ideas • Without the Nile River, people in Egypt would not have been able to survive

9. A Source of New Ideas • The Nile also took life away • When too much rain fell upstream, the Nile would flood and drown people, livestock, and crops

10. A Source of New Ideas • Over the centuries, the ancient Egyptians worked out ways to predict, or tell ahead of time, when the river would flood

11. A Source of New Ideas • By studying the skies, they observed that the yearly flooding, or inundation, began soon after the star Sirius reappeared after month of being out of sight

12. A Source of New Ideas • Using careful observations such as this, the Egyptians developed a calendar with 365 days in a year

13. A Source of New Ideas • The Egyptians created seasons based on the Nile River: Inundation, Emergence, and Harvest

14. A Source of Religion • The ancient Egyptians believed in many different deities, or gods, each with a different responsibility

15. A Source of New Ideas • The people of ancient Egypt used stories about their gods to explain why flooding, drought, and other acts of nature took place

16. A Source of New Ideas • Most Egyptians prayed to their gods and believed in a life after death, or afterlife • A book of the dead was placed in a tomb when someone died

17. A Source of New Ideas • The ancient Egyptians believed that they would need their bodies in the afterlife • Because of this, they developed ways to preserve dead bodies

18. A Source of New Ideas • Making a mummy, or a preserved body, took about 70 days

19. A Source of Unity • Most of the small farming settlements in ancient Egypt developed on the Nile Delta and along the Nile River between the delta and the first six cataracts, or waterfalls

20. A Source of Unity • The settlements on the Nile Delta became part of a kingdom known as Lower Egypt • The South of Nile was Upper Egypt

21. A Source of Unity • Stories passed down from generation to generation say that Kind Menes of Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt in about 3100 B.C.

22. A Source of Unity • He then united the two kingdoms and formed the world’s first nation-state • A nation-state is a region with a united group of people and a single government

23. A Source of Unity • Some experts believe that a king named Narmer may have been the one who brought the two regions together

24. A Source of Unity • Many experts also believe that it was Narmer who began the first Egyptian dynasty • A dynasty is a series of rulers who belong to the same family