Egypt Vocabulary
Terms
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- ankh
- cross-like symbol carried by many of the gods, symbolized eternity
- bureaucracy
- a group of people who worked for the government administration (includes tax collectors, scribes, engineers, and priests)
- canopic jars
- small jars each with a god's head on teh lid, enclose organs taken from a dead body, placed in the tomb
- rosetta stone
- inspired the translation of hieroglyphics by Jean Francois Champollion, used as a metaphor for breaking a code
- monotheism
- belief in one god. new kingdom=aten-sun god
- Shabti
- small tomb figures, servants to the deceased in the after-life
- papyrus
- plant from which egyptians made paper and other things
- hathor
- cow's head, goddess of love and childbirth
- inundation
- season of flood (egyptian word)
- osiris (god)
- vegetation god who is the god of rebirth
- Ba
- after-death concept, phsyical embodiment of the dead person
- regent
- an adult who serves as a temporary monarch when the successor is a child
- cartouche
- oval shape with a pharaoh's name inside used in tomb walls, used in hieroglyphics
- mercenary
- soldier who hires himself to a state or government for a fee
- thoth
- represented as a baboon, god of wisdom and patron god of scribes
- mortuary temple
- temple dedicated to a dead person who was not a god, usually only pharaohs
- isis
- wife to osiris, mother goddess of egypt
- nomes
- regions in pre-dynastic Egypt
- hyksos
- people who invaded egypt that beganthe 2nd intermediate period, they ruled as pharaohs in lower egypt and exacted tirbute from royal families in thebes
- vizier
- pharaoh's assistant (jobs= organizing the collection of taxes, overseeing irrigation, supervising consturction projects,etc)
- shaduf
- mechanical device that consists of a long pole on a crossbeam, used for transferring water
- mummification
- process of preserving the body
- udjat eye
- eye of horus, symbolized healing and protection
- Ma'at
- goddes and a concept, roughly means justice, order and truthfulness, ethical concept
- mastaba
- precursors of pyramids, box-shaped tombs built above ground
- scarab
- beetle shaped ornament, sacred to egyptians, represented rebirth
- sarcophagus
- elaborate coffin decorated with symbols and hieroglypics
- Ka
- after-death concept, soul
- nomarchs
- ruled nomes
- geometry
- mathematics of measurments learned by egyptians, applied to pyramid construction
- Book of the Dead
- book of prayers, chants, etc, from which sections would be chosen to be written on tomb walls
- pharaoh
- he was literally a god-king
- delta
- new land formed by a river discharging sediment into the sea, silt forms new land
- horus
- son of osiris and isis, falcon-headed god represented seasons of drought and rebirth, all pharaohs took his name as part of theirs
- anubis (god)
- jackal god of mummification
- obelisk
- tall monument favored by new kingdom rulers
- necropolis
- city of the dead (in egypt= valley of the kings and queens, was devoted to burial)
- hieroglyphics
- egyptian writing
- pyramid
- a mastaba with layers on top= formed a pyramid