Egypt Egypt is situated in the north east of Africa. Fertile green land along the river nile, big
deserts, the coasts of the mediterranean an the red sea and the the beautiful underwater
world, these are the different landscapes there. egypt covers an area of about
1.001.049 km² but only 4% of it are habitable and cultivable. More than 63.000.000
people live in this region.
the other 96% of Egypt consist of hot deserts. There’s a part of the Sahara, the biggest
desert worldwide, in Egypt and in the western desert there are 5 oases with some
hotels and restaurants. Well, the capital of Egypt is Cairo. It is also Africa’s biggest
city. Most people are deeply shocked when they visit Cairo for the first time because
it’s full of chaos, rubbish, traffic, noise and it seems to be ungovernable. Lots of
people have to live on the big graveyard there. So you can see Cairo as a synonym for
nightmare.
Something that surely everyone has heard about are the hieroglyphics. it started in the
year 1799 when french soldiers found a stone with letters which were scribed in.
There was 3 times the same text written in 3 different languages: in Grecian,
Hieroglyphic and the everyday speech of the Egyptian people. So jean Francois
Champollion could finally decode the hieroglyphics. they are images and letters
together. So you sometimes have to read a symbol as a whole word and sometimes as
one letter. You can read them top down, from the left to the right and the other way
round. The name of a pharaoh was always highlighted by a circle round the name.
Egypt was ruled by the pharaohs. A pharaoh was something like a king in the ancient
egypt and seen as a kind of god by the normal people. A very famous pharaoh is
Tutenchamun. His golden mask was found on his mummy. After the death of a
pharaoh his body was mummified by taking out the viscera and wrapping up the body
into cloths. Altogether it took 2 months of work.
The pyramids were of use as tombs and they were seen as stairs to heaven for the
kings. Egyptian people believed in a life after death and the pharoahs wanted to save
their tombs from the forces of nature. So the pyramids were built very high. It took
about 20 years of work and more than 100.000 workers were needed. The most
famous pyramids are the 3 pyramids of Giza. They are the first of the seven world
wonders. The biggest and most mysterious one is the Cheops pyramid. it’s 146m high.
Interesting is that nearly all of the pyramids are built to the west of the river nile. it’s
because the sun goes down there and the people thought there’s the beginning of the
underworld.
To the east of the river nile there were mostly temples which were also built for the
pharaohs. they often brought a sacrifice and prayed to the gods to get help.
An other well-known building is the Sphinx of Giza. It’s 70m long and 20m high
statue. Sphinx are mythical creatures with the body of a lion and the head of a
pharaoh. The Sphinx of Giza has the head from the Pharaoh Chephren. Noticeable is
that this sphinx hasn’t got a nose. People invented lots of different things why the nose
isn’t there and today they still don’t know it. But this is just one of the numerous
mysteries of Egypt..
