Egypt Background & Literature

Worl Literature: EGYPT

1. EGYPT

2. Mosque of Ibn Tulun Built between 876 and 879 AD, the Mosque of Ibn Tulun is one of the oldest mosques in Cairo. 

3. Siwa Oasis It  is one of Egypt’s isolated settlements, with 23,000 people, mostly ethnic Berbers. Located on an old date trade route, Siwa was an oasis vital to the trade route, as the natural springs and shade giving palm trees gave travelers respite from the desert. 

4. Egyptian Museum Home to at least 120,000 items of ancient Egyptian antiquities, and one of Cairo’s top attraction. On the ground floor there is an extensive collection of papyrus and coins used in by the ancient Egyptians. On the first floor there are artifacts from the final two dynasty. Highlights include the objects from the Tomb and 27 royal mummies from pharaonic times.

5. Abu Simbel It is an archaeological site comprising two massive rock-cut temples in Southern Egypt and on the western bank of Lake Nasser. The twin Temples were originally carved out of the mountainside during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses The Great in the 13th century BC , as a lasting monument to himself and his queen Nefertari.

6. River Nile Cruise The Nile River has been Egypt’s lifeline since ancient times and there is no better way to trace the passage of Egypt’s history than to follow the course of the Nile.

7. Red Sea Reef One of the most beautiful places in the world to go diving.

8. Karnak It is the largest ancient religious site ever built , and represents the combined achievement of many generations of Egyptian builders.

9. Pyramids of Giza Situated in the immediate vicinity of the southwestern suburbs of Cairo are the undisputable top attractions in Egypt.

10. Great Sphinx Located at the Giza Plateau, The Great Sphinx is one of the largest and oldest monuments in the world, but basic facts about it, such as who was the model for the face, when it was built, and by whom, are still debated. It is the largest monolith statue in the world although it is considerably smaller than the Pyramids around it.

11. Most Impressive Ancient Egyptian Temples

12. HEIROGLYPHS

13. Egyptian hieroglyphs were a formal  writing system used by the  ancient Egyptians  that combined  logographic  and  alphabetic elements . Egyptians used  cursive hieroglyphs  for  religious literature   on papyrus  and wood.

14. Historical Background Egypt and the Nile are of course an important foundation of Western civilization, were in they have done some work on Ancient Egypt Period. Mesopotamian civilization seems to predate Egyptian civilization, but the two developed in contact . The earliest known written date comes from an Egyptian calendar -4241 BC. Ancient Egyptians is divided into 30 dynasties, organized into the Old , Middle , and New Kingdoms (3400-332 BC)

15. Egypt's Old Kingdom was one of the most dynamic periods in the development of Egyptian art. During this period, artists learned to express their culture's worldview, creating for the first time images and forms that endured for generations. Architects and masons mastered the techniques necessary to build monumental structures in stone. Sculptors created the earliest portraits of individuals and the first life-size statues in wood, copper, and stone. They perfected the art of carving through keen observation of the natural world, produced detailed images of animals, plants, and even landscapes, recording the essential elements of their world for eternity in scenes painted and carved on the walls of temples and tombs.

16. These images and structures had two principal functions: to ensure an ordered existence and to defeat death by preserving life into the next world.   Although much of their artistic effort was centered on preserving life after death, Egyptians also surrounded themselves with beautiful objects to enhance their lives in this world , producing elegant jewelry, finely carved and inlaid furniture, and cosmetic vessels and implements in a wide variety of materials.

17. A  mummy  is a deceased human or animal whose  skin  and  organs  have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to  chemicals , extreme cold, very low humidity or lack of air, so that the recovered body will not decay further if kept in cool and dry conditions.

18. Egypt's Middle Kingdom began when Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II reunited Upper and Lower Egypt, setting the stage for a second great flowering of Egyptian culture . Thebes came into prominence for the first time , serving as capital and artistic center during Dynasty 11. The masterful design, representing a perfect union of architecture and landscape unique for its time (royal statues) , included painted reliefs of ceremonial scenes and hieroglyphic texts. 

19. Egypt’s New Kingdom was he time of great prosperity. There was an explosion of creativity, wealth and power in Egypt that would make it the envy of the world. After defeating the Hyksos invaders, successive  Pharaohs  expanded and maintained their Empire through both force and diplomacy. In the process, they won Egypt vast amounts of gold, influence and respect. Like other kings, the pharaoh sat at the top of the social and political order, acted as commander-in-chief and controlled all military occupations. But the pharaoh was much more than just the head of state. He also helped maintain the divine order in the world. Without the pharaoh, The Egyptians believed that the world would descend into chaos .  To the south, in the deserts of Nubia, gold mines gave Egypt the unimaginable wealth that formed the real power behind the throne. The same gold also saw the start of a golden age for Egyptian  art and architecture , as Pharaohs built magnificent temples and tombs for themselves and their families. 

20. CONSTRUCTION OF SUEZ CANAL

21. The construction of the Suez Canal by a British-French group made Egypt of great strategic importance to the Europeans. Egypt had been fought over by the British and French in the Napoleonic Wars even before the construction of the Canal. After construction, Suez would figure in both world wars and be the prize in the post-War Suez War (1956). A joint stock company (England, France, and Egypt) completed the Canal (1869). This provided a direct route for British shipping to India, their major colony. The Egyptian ruler, Ismail Pasha, owned the Egyptian shares personally. He o wned 44 percent of the shares in the Canal. Due to escalating debt, he was forced to sell. The British Government during the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought Ismail's shares for £4 million (1875 ). This gave Britain control the strategic waterway . After having Difficulty working with the khedive , the British occupied the country when a nationalist uprising threatened to Suez control (1882). 

22. EGYPTIAN LITERATURE

23. Ancient Egyptian literature  was written in the  Egyptian language  from  Ancient Egypt 's  pharaonic period  until the end of  Roman domination . It represents the oldest corpus of  Egyptian literature , along with  Sumerian literature , it is considered the world's  earliest literature . both   hieroglyphic  and  hieratic —first appeared in the late 4th millennium BC during the late phase of pre-dynasty in Egypt. By the  Old Kingdom   , literary works included funerary text, epistles  and letters, hymns and poems, and commemorative autobiographical texts recounting the careers of prominent administrative officials.

24. How early the Egyptians began to cut and press the stalks of the papyrus plant in order to make a material for the use of the scribe, it is impossible to say. But we know that material to have been already employed for literary purposes in the time of the Third Dynasty, that is to say, some three thousand eight hundred years before the Christian era . When we speak of the literature of a nation, we are not thinking of inscriptions graven on obelisks and triumphal arches. We mean such literature as may be stored in a library and possessed by individuals. In a word, we mean  books  –books, whether in the form of clay cylinders, of papyrus rolls, or any other portable material.

25. The Egyptians were the first people of the ancient world who had a literature of this kind: who wrote books , and read books ; who possessed books , and loved them . And their literature, which grew, and flourished, and decayed with  the language in which it was written, was of the most varied character, scientific, secular, and religious . It comprised moral and educational treatises ; state-papers ; works on geometry , medicine , astronomy , and magic ; travels , tales , fables , heroic poems , love-songs , and essays in the form of letters ; hymns , dirges , rituals ; and last, not least, that extraordinary collection of prayers, invocations, and religious formula known as   The Book of the Dead .

26. Some of these writings are older than the pyramids; some are as recent as the time when Egypt had fallen from her high estate and become a Roman province. Between these two extremes lie more than five thousand years. The two most important subjects in the literature of a nation are, undoubtedly,: its history and its religion ; and up to the present time nothing in the shape of an Egyptian history of Egypt has been found . We have historical tablets, historical poems, chronicles of campaigns, lists of conquered cities, and records of public works sculptured on stelæ , written on papyrus, and carved on the walls of temples and tombs. But these are the materials of history–the bricks and blocks and beams with which the historian builds up his structure.

27. Islamic Egyptian literature By the eighth century Egypt had been conquered by the  Muslim   Arabs . Literature, and especially libraries, thrived under the  new Egypt brought about by the Muslim conquerors .  Several important changes occurred during this time which affected Egyptian writers. Papyrus was replaced by cloth  paper , and  calligraphy  was introduced as a writing system. Also, the focus of writing shifted almost entirely to  Islam . The earliest  novel  written in Egypt was  Ibn al- Nafis '  Theologus Autodidactus , the earliest example of a  science fiction and   theological novel .

28.  The concept of a "brief statement praising a literary product", now known as a  blurb , also dates back to medieval Egyptian literature from the 14th century, and was known as  taqriz  in medieval  Arabic literature . [8] Many tales of the  One Thousand and One Nights   ( Arabian Nights ) can be traced to medieval Egyptian storytelling traditions. These tales were probably in circulation before they were collected and codified into a single collection. Medieval  Egyptian folklore  was one of three distinct layers of storytelling which were incorporated into the  Nights  by the 15th century, the other two being ancient  Indian   and Persian  folklore, and stories from  Abbasid -era  Baghdad . [9]

29. The Story of Sinuhe , written in Middle Egyptian, might be the classic of Egyptian literature. Also written at this time was the Westcar Papyrus , a set of stories told to Khufu by his sons relating the marvels performed by priests. The Instruction of Amenemope is considered a masterpiece of near-eastern literature. Towards the end of the New Kingdom, the vernacular language was more often employed to write popular pieces like the Story of Wenamun and the Instruction of Any . From about 700 BC, narrative stories and instructions, such as the popular Instructions of Onchsheshonqy , as well as personal and business documents were written in the demotic script and phase of Egyptian. Many stories written in demotic during the Graeco -Roman period were set in previous historical eras, when Egypt was an independent nation ruled by great pharaohs such as Ramesses II.

30. Modern Egyptian literature In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the  Arab world  experienced  al- Nahda , a  Renaissance - esque movement which touched nearly all areas of life, including literature .  One of the most important figures from this time was  Naguib Mahfouz , the first Egyptian to win the  Nobel Prize in Literature . In 1914  Muhammad Husayn Haykal  wrote  Zaynab , considered the first modern Egyptian as well as Islamic novel.

31. Naguib Mahfouz(11 December 1911 – 30 August 2006) was an  Egyptian  writer who won the 1988  Nobel Prize for Literature . He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of   Arabic literature , along with   Tawfiq el-Hakim , to explore themes of   existentialism . He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into   Egyptian  and foreign films.