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The Egyptian Glossary - History and culture glossary Category: History and Culture Date & country: 12/11/2010, UK Words: 120

Abydos
probably the most important religious site in Egypt. There was a very famous temple there dedicated to Osiris. It is in southern Egypt, about 80km northwest of Luxor.

Afterlife
the life that may come after death. The Egyptians believed that the soul could be re-born after death and have another life, the afterlife.

Ammut
the demon that ate the heart if it did not balance the feather of Maat. Maat was part crocodile, part lion and part hippo. She is often shown in the weighing of the heart scene watching and waiting for the heart to fail the test.

Amulet
a kind of charm, which was supposed to bring luck or protection to the wearer. The Egyptians often had amulets of gods and goddesses.

Amun
the most important and powerful god of the New Kingdom. He was sometimes shown as a human and sometimes with a ram's head. In the New Kingdom, the priests of Amun became very powerful in politics as well as in religion.

Animal mummies
the mummified bodies of animals. The Egyptians often mummified animals that were sacred to their gods. There are several animal cemeteries in Egypt.

Antiquities
a general name for anything that is very old.

Archaeologist
a person who excavates and studies ancient remains.

Architect
a person who designs and draws the plans for new buildings.

Assyrians
a fierce race of people who lived in the north western area of modern Iraq. The Assyrian king, Esarhaddon, conquered Egypt but could not hold it. Another Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, also conquered it in 669 BC but again failed to hold his conquest for long.

Asyut
a place that was sacred to the jackal god, Wepwawet. It is about halfway between Aswan and Cairo.

Atef Crown
the crown traditionally worn by the god, Osiris. It is the same shape as the Crown of Upper Egypt but decorated with two feathers - one on either side of the centre. It is easy to identify Osiris because this is one of his special symbols.

Babylonians
a people who lived in Babylonia, in the modern area of southern Iraq.

Banquet
a big fancy meal or feast - often for a special occasion.

Beaker
a distinctive kind of pottery associated with the people who placed them in graves.

Bitumen
a black tar-like substance. It was not used in mummification, as is often stated. The material used was resin, which is the sap from trees. Over time this became very black and was mistaken for bitumen.

Bronze Age
a name given to the period in history when bronze was the most widely used metal. Its dates vary from place to place.

Burials
places where dead bodies have been placed in the ground and covered over.

Burnished
something that is polished until it shines. In pottery it means allowing the clay to dry a little and then rubbing it with a smooth stone to give a shiny finish to the surface.

Cartonnage
layers of plaster mixed with linen or papyrus. This could be moulded to shape for mummy masks and casings. It was often painted and gilded.

Cast
when metal is melted and poured into a mould to make something into a particular shape.

Celtic
relating to the Celts, a people who gradually settled in Britain, having arrived from Europe from about 500 BC.

City States
in the Near East, people began to live in cities with a ruling class from about 3000 BC. These individual cities ruled the land around them and are known as city states.

Civil War
when different groups of people from the same country fight against each other.

Coptic
a language based on hieroglyphic words and grammar but written in Greek letters. It was important in the decipherment of hieroglyphs because it never went completely out of use and it gave clues as to how the hieroglyphic language had been put together.

Courtiers
important people who were attendants to the pharaoh at his court or royal palace.

Crook and Flail
two symbols that showed that the person carrying them was the king. Their exact meaning is uncertain but the flail was used to prepare grain for grinding and was probably to show that the pharaoh was a provider for his people. The crook may simply be a kind of sceptre to show power. They were carried from very early times and were very important parts of a royal costume.

Decipherment
working out what something (often a language) means.

Deir el Medina
modern name for the site of a village that, from the early New Kingdom, was home to the men who built the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Their families also lived there.

Deities
gods and goddesses.

Delta
the northernmost part of Egypt, where - before flowing out to the sea - the Nile splits into many small streams with marshy land in between. It marked the border area between Egypt and the hostile tribes to the north.

Democracy
a system where the people decide who will run the country. The people are involved in making decisions about how their country should be ruled.

Demon
an evil spirit.

Dendera
a place in southern Egypt, about 60 miles north of Luxor, the site of an important temple of the goddess Hathor.

Dynasty
a family. It usually refers to one group of kings who were all from the same family. Several dynasties ruled during each kingdom and intermediate period.

Egyptologist
a person who studies ancient Egypt.

Embalming
another word for mummification, where a body is preserved artificially to stop it from rotting.

Empire
lots of countries, or states, all ruled by one very powerful country.

Etruscan
a race of people who lived in Italy before Rome was founded and who may have influenced Roman culture.

Excavate
to dig something up, usually using scientific methods.

Eye of Horus
also known as the wadjet eye. The eye of Horus was a protective symbol because the god Horus had lost his eye in a fight with his enemy, Seth. His mother, Isis, restored the eye and so it represents healing.

Faience
a material, a bit like clay, made from sand and other materials. It was shaped when soft then coated with a glaze that was often bright blue, although many other colours were used. The material was then fired to make the glaze shiny. It was in very common use, especially for jewellery and small amulets. It was much cheaper to copy semi-precious stones in faience than it was to use the real thing.

Feather of Truth
the feather worn by the goddess Maat, in her hair. It was used in the weighing of the heart.

Fields of Reeds
the place where Egyptians believed they would go after death. This was just like the Egyptian countryside but without any of the hardships or dangers.

First Dynasty of Ur
Ur was a city founded by a group of people known as Sumerians. It was in the area of modern Iraq. The First Dynasty of Ur dated approximately to 2650 BC and was one period at which the site was occupied.

Flint
a type of stone used to make tools, especially blades.

Forts
buildings that are designed to house soldiers and which are strongly built to withstand attacks. They are often built near country borders or other important places.

Funerary
anything to do with death and funerals.

Gebelein
a place in southern Egypt, about 30 km south of Luxor. There was a temple of Hathor here, along with settlements, from early times to the Ptolemaic period.

Gilded
covered with a very thin layer of gold for decoration and to show how rich a person was.

Giza
a suburb of Cairo, where the Sphinx and three of the most famous pyramids, including the Great Pyramid of Cheops, are to be found.

Granaries
special buildings used to store grain. Egyptian granaries usually had a domed top.

Hatshepsut
a queen who ruled Egypt in the 18th Dynasty. She took the titles of a pharaoh and ruled as a man.

Herbs and Spices
plants, seeds which have been ground, and bark of plants used to flavour food and also used for medicine.

Herodotus
a Greek traveller who visited Egypt in about 450 BC. He wrote a history of Egypt and is one of the few writers to describe the process of mummification. However his work is full of fantastic tales and is not always to be trusted as correct.

Hieroglyphs
the name for the picture writing symbols of ancient Egypt. They are not hieroglyphics - the correct word is hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphic is used to describe a text that is written in hieroglyphs.

Hill Fort
a settlement built on a hilltop and protected by one or more ditches dug around the hilltop.

Hittites
an aggressive race who occupied an area in modern Turkey and Syria. They were enemies of the Egyptians and were defeated at the battle of Qadesh by Ramesses II, although the Hittites also claimed that they won.

Hymns
songs sung to praise or worship gods and goddesses.

Intermediate Periods
The times between the Old and Middle and Middle and New Kingdoms, when Egypt was unstable and ruled by many different kings, some of them at the same time, in different parts of the country.

Invasion
when people of one country come into another country and try to take it over, usually by force.

Irrigation
watering the land by artificial means. The Egyptians used canals and banks of earth. They also had a device called a shaduf. This was a bucket on the end of a long pole, mounted on a stand. The bucket was dipped into the Nile. They are still used in Egypt today.

Karnak
the largest and probably most important temple in Egypt, certainly in the New Kingdom. It was the centre of worship for Amun, and also a centre of political power, based on the priests of Amun.

Kilt
a skirt-like garment with folds of pleated linen and worn by Egyptian noblemen.

Kingdoms
used in a particular way by Egyptologists to mean one of the three periods (Old,Middle and New Kingdoms), when Egypt was wealthy and peaceful and had stable government resulting in developments in areas such as language, religion and building styles.

Mastaba
name for the earliest type of brick or stone tomb found in Egypt. They were built before the pyramids and have a flat top and sides that slope inwards. The word mastaba means a bench in Arabic.

Mediterranean
the name of the sea which borders the southern countries of Europe such as Italy and Spain, and also the name used to describe countries in that area.

Memphis
the capital city of Egypt from about 3000 BC. It is located about 30 miles south of modern Cairo, although there is very little left to see. It was the centre of worship for the god Ptah.

Minoan
name for the Bronze Age civilisation on the island of Crete.

Moisture
dampness. In such a dry country as Egypt, dampness was very important. This is why it was worshipped as a god.

Mummification
a process of preserving a body by drying. In Egypt, it was the process of drying a body, wrapping it in linen bandages and treating it with oils, resin and spices to stop it from rotting.

Mummy
a body that has undergone mummification.

Mycenae
a town in mainland Greece, which was a very important centre of Greek Bronze Age culture. Mycenaean pottery has been found in Egypt.

Naqada
a small village in Upper Egypt. The site of a huge and very important predynastic cemetery and also a settlement. It was the first predynastic site to be discovered and excavated. The whole predynastic period is sometimes called the Naqada period because of the site where it was first discovered. Naqada I is earlier than Naqada II.

National gods
also called State gods, these were the gods and goddesses worshipped all over Egypt and with their own very important temples. There were also gods who were only important locally. Some, although known throughout Egypt, were only worshipped by people in their homes and not in large nationally important temples.

Natron
a salty substance, which was found in Egypt. It was this that was used to dry the body for mummification. The body had to be packed with natron then buried in it for seventy days.

Near East
the lands to the north and east of Egypt, including the modern countries of Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey.

Negative confession
part of The Book of the Dead which had to be recited to the 42 judges of the underworld and which said that you had not done anything wrong in your life.

Niche
a little gap or hole cut in a wall.

Noblemen
men from the top level of society, often friends or relatives of the pharaoh.

Nubia
a country to the south of Egypt, approximately in the modern country of Sudan. Egypt tried, not always successfully, to control it because it was an important source of gold. The word 'nub' means gold in ancient Egyptian.

Obelisk
a tall granite tower with a pyramid-shaped top. It was important in the worship of the sun.

Olmec
a people who lived in Mexico from about 1200 BC.

Ostraca
pieces of broken pottery or flakes of stone used for writing or painting and drawing practice.

Overseer
a man who is in charge of workmen.

Palette
a flat, smooth, stone used for grinding and preparing colours for paint or make-up. In prehistoric Egyptian times they were very precious and owning one showed that you were very important. They probably had religious significance.

Papyrus
an early kind of paper made from the soft inner flesh of the papyrus plant which used to grow on the edges of the river Nile.

Peasant
the ordinary people of Egypt were peasants. This means they owned small plots of land, which they farmed. They were not very rich but their farms usually provided them with a reasonable living in the countryside.

Persians
a race of people from the area of modern Iran. In 525 BC, Cambyses the Persian king, captured Memphis and Persia ruled Egypt for a short period.

Pharaoh
name used for an Egyptian king. It comes from two Egyptian words meaning great house (per wer), so he was named after his palace.

Pharaonic
anything that belongs or relates to the time when pharaohs ruled Egypt.

Philae
a place in southern Egypt, close to Aswan, an island with a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis.

Potsherd
a special name used by archaeologists for a piece broken from a whole pot.

Predynastic
the Egyptian name for prehistoric, ie, a time before any written records exist.

Preserve
to treat something to stop it from becoming rotten.

Priest
a person who has been especially trained to work in a temple and who knows the correct way to carry out tasks to praise the gods. There were different levels and kinds of priest. Girls also trained to be priestesses.

Protective
something that looks after you.

Pyramid
the word is Greek and means a little honey cake. It was used to show that the Greeks were not impressed with the pyramids. The huge buildings were used as tombs for the royal family and especially for the pharaoh. Their ancient Egyptian name 'mer' probably meant something like a place to climb up or ascend.

Quarry/quarried
a quarry is where stone blocks are cut out of the rock. Quarried stone is stone that has been cut in this way.

Religion/religious
belief in god(s) and wanting to worship god(s) by doing things to please them such as going to the temple, praying and giving them praise.