The history of ancient Egypt does not fit into the scientific scheme of the world’s past. The remains of its impressive culture still confuse scientists, while temples, tombs, and pyramids hide their secrets and overshadow many achievements of modern civilization.
The officially accepted history of Egyptian culture is counted from around 4000 BC, and the first period is called the predynastic era. After that, from 3100 to 2686 BC, follows the archaic period, and then the period of organized empire, divided into the time of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. The period after that is called the “late period” and no longer represents typical Egypt, because after the XX dynasty of Ramesses, this culture dies, and the country becomes an ordinary superpower of that time. At the end of the New Kingdom, foreseeing the decadence of Egypt’s cultural identity, hierophants destroyed or hid everything that should not fall into profane hands. The future they envisioned is illustrated by the words of the priest Nefertiti: I saw that land submerged in pain and Misery. Now, only those who would have never succeeded are succeeding. Weapons are being raised for battle, as the land lives in chaos. Copper spears are being made to procure bread with blood. People are grinning with corruption. There are no tears at funerals… Everyone attacks each other. I show you a son converted into your enemy, a brother turned into a rival. A man kills his own father… Hatred rules among nations and cities. Words are like flames to the heart and it cannot support anything that any mouth says… The state is becoming less valuable, and its rulers are becoming more numerous… The sun hides from people.
Claims about the slave society in Egypt, about a land of dark magic, belief in animals, superstitious cult of the dead, etc., can, although only partially, apply to the decadent period of the first millennium BC. The negative image of ancient Egypt was created by authors who drew their data precisely from this period of decadence. It would be the same as describing the Roman Empire based on the way of life in the middle ages. One more important reason for the negative writing about ancient Egypt is the scientifically accepted theory of continuous progress, according to which everything that is historically older is also more primitive. That is why many scientists could not accept the fact that in the third and second millennium BC, the Nile Valley was at a significantly higher cultural level than a thousand or two thousand years later.
To say something about Egyptian culture, it is necessary to consider the Egyptian worldview, according to which everything that exists consists of two parts: the heavenly, eternal, invisible on one hand, and the earthly, transient, visible on the other hand. The Egyptians believed that the integrity of an entity depends on the harmony of its earthly and heavenly nature, so they strove for their land to be as faithful as possible to the ideal they called heavenly Egypt. Cultural and civilizational structure of Egypt was built on this premise and lasted for centuries. By acting in accordance with Maat, the principles of the Egyptian goddess of righteousness, truth, and justice. Maat represented the fundamental ethical values of Egypt and until the end of the New Kingdom (1085 BC) she was, in a sense, the true ruler of the authentic Egyptian culture based on principles of transcendent morality.
For the ancient Egyptians, culture consisted of four basic aspects: science, art, social order, and religion. These four aspects of culture were vividly depicted in the image of a four-sided pyramid, whose separate sides join at the top in one transcendent point. Therefore, science, art, religion, and social order should all strive towards the same overarching cultural goal. None of these aspects were in conflict with each other, but rather, all four were harmonized with one another. This encouraged progress in all necessary human activities and allowed for the flourishing of this ancient civilization. Many magnificent works and the longevity of Egyptian culture testify to that.
>Science
Egyptian science developed some disciplines to perfection for its time. Many of its achievements, from medicine to astronomy, are still unexplainable to us. We will mention one ancient science whose application we encounter in the construction of some ancient buildings and Gothic cathedrals. This is the sacred architecture of temples, tombs, pyramids…
Let’s take, for example, the so-called Pyramid of Khufu, for which it is still not reliably known how and when it was built. This building has a volume of two and a half million cubic meters, and its outer shell, with an area of five hundred thousand square meters, consists of twenty-five thousand stone blocks. The enormous stone blocks inside the pyramid are connected to each other with gypsum that dries in a few minutes. Thanks to a construction made of vertical supports, the pyramid did not lose stability with its size and height.
Through its measurements, the distance from Earth to the Moon and the Sun, as well as the diameter of the Sun, are expressed. This pyramid is impressive. With its precise orientation relative to the cardinal directions and certain stars in the sky. Likewise, it symbolically represents the squaring of the circle because the perimeter of the square base is equal to the circumference of the circle with a radius equal to its height. It is also a mysterious and intricate construction of a pyramid, which has only been partially discovered so far.
Nowhere else have such impressive structures been found, requiring knowledge and skill that, even with all modern technology, is unknown and unattainable to us.
Art
Egyptian art captivates equal attention and is portrayed as completely different from what it is today. Since Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt and the subsequent exploration, Egyptian art has been considered idealized, stylized, and disconnected from reality. Nowadays, art historians realize that this art was a form of real art that aspired to perfection and the ideal. To illustrate this, let’s take the example of the Egyptian canon in depicting human figures. g. The body. While our art is based on depicting the personal experience of the artist’s visual perception, the Egyptians had a more holistic approach to depicting the human figure. Egyptian artists did not adhere to the laws of perspective in depicting characters because it only allows for a partial representation of reality. Just as there is a difference between regular and holographic photography, there is also a difference between today’s realistic portrayal of the human figure and the Egyptian one. The Egyptians believed that the reality of the human figure should be presented in four dimensions. They depicted different parts of the human body in their most characteristic form – the face and legs were shown in profile, while the torso and magnified eye were shown as they appear from the front. By doing so, they aimed to depict humans as seen by the spiritual eye, disregarding the perception of sight and its illusions, which we commonly refer to as perspective.
Egyptian art was not an end in itself; each artwork had a symbolic function. hadrijski državljanski povjerenik ili općinski povjerenik ili općinski činovnik ili gradska činovnika pokazuje osviještenost i posjedovanje djelo koje bi povoljno utjecalo na živote ljudi. Primjerice, skulpture su služile kao trodimenzionalne simbole s jasnom porukom, jer svaka umjetnička tvorevina je imala i pedagošku i duhovnu svrhu. Osnovni cilj i svrha ove umjetnosti bili su poučavanje ljudi umjetnosti življenja. Kroz nju se izražavalo sve što je lijepo i važno, što uzdiže ljudsko biće i približava ga samom sebi, čineći njegov život bogatijim i dostojanstvenijim.
Drutveni poredak u to doba bio je također značajno drugačiji nego što je to danas, jer su socijalni odnosi bili različito uspostavljeni. U Egiptu nije bilo ropstva sve do kraja Nove države. Imali su patrijarhalno društvo u kojem je otac unutar obitelji imao ulogu sličnu vladarstvu faraona u carstvu, ali žene, kao supruge, majke, sestre ili kćeri, nisu bile podređene muškarcima ni u jednom pogledu. Naprotiv, bile su izuzetno cijenjene u svim svojim društvenim ulogama. Nema sačuvanih zapisa ni u jednoj drevnoj civilizaciji koji The values of women were praised so much as they were in Egypt. Egyptian society consisted of three classes: the class of priest-kings, their advisers and students; the class of experts and officials; the class of artisans and farmers. Until the reign of the Ramses dynasty, when a regular army appeared, there was only one officer corps and smaller police forces. The workers were organized into brotherhoods or associations, within which specific rights and duties of each member were determined. The structure of society was pyramid-shaped with the pharaoh at the top. However, it was not a cruel authoritarian order as it was usually considered, but the application of a universal model of organization that exists in nature. The Egyptians, who respected the laws of nature, applied them in social relations as much as possible. In human society, we find this model in all situations when people’s existence directly depends on the ability, conscience, and responsible behavior of individuals, such as in an airplane, on a ship, in a hospital. etc.
For the same reason that people today trust the captain of a ship, an airplane, or the chief surgeon, the Egyptians had trust in their pharaoh and the state apparatus. In addition to the skills required to fulfill their role within the state, everyone was accountable to their own conscience, as the state was not an anonymous and irresponsible society. This means that anyone who held a social function had to stand behind their actions, leading by personal example.
Analogous to the role of a father within a family, the pharaoh was the father of the Egyptian people and served as their role model. In addition to intense upbringing and education received from an early age at the court, the pharaoh had to undergo trials that practically proved his ability to serve the Egyptian people. He needed to govern his instincts, passions, desires, thoughts – his entire personality, which could only be subordinated and sacrificed for the sake of his duty to the people. He needed to first learn to govern oneself properly in order to be able to govern Egypt. He was not an absolute ruler, but rather a representative of the goddess Maat, the celestial justice on earth, and was the center that connected earthly and heavenly Egypt. Once a year, he had to confirm his abilities and responsibilities before the highest hierophants in the temple, thereby further ensuring just rule in Egypt.
Religion
The Egyptians believed in a single universal and unknowable deity to which they did not give a specific name, but simply referred to as Neter, which means divinity. They believed that there was one universal Life that manifested itself through a multitude of forms of different living beings. A large number of different deities, each with their own names and symbolical forms, usually in zoomorphic or anthropomorphic forms, represented natural forces, laws, and principles. The Egyptians did not worship animals. The animal figures were used as symbols that vividly depicted the forces and principles of nature. When take, for example, someone wanted to symbolically represent faithfulness, one way would be to draw a dog. So, just as we use phonetic writing and chemical formulas today, the Egyptians used pictorial writing, hieroglyphics, and their language of symbols.
Egyptian religion was based on the sense of life that works through creation and maintains the unity of beings in the Universe. A key role in this was played by the pantheon of basic gods, who express themselves in the Universe through four principles: polarity, rhythm, cause and effect, and birth, which are the principles of action in the real world. In the human world of change and duality, life and death, pleasure and pain, man is stretched in the space of his consciousness and seeks to know and perfect himself.
Man’s destiny was symbolically associated with the journey of the Sun in the sky. It is born in the east and travels through the sky with its daytime boat to the west, where it switches to the nighttime boat and travels from west to east. Man’s soul imitates the daily journey of the Sun and, like it, travels is crucial for understanding the evolution of human existence.