Egypt (englisch)
Egypt
Egypt is situated in the north east of Africa. Fertile green land along the river nile, bigdeserts, the coasts of the mediterranean an the red sea and the the beautiful underwaterworld, these are the different landscapes there. egypt covers an area of about1.001.049 km² but only 4% of it are habitable and cultivable. More than 63.
000.000people live in this region.the other 96% of Egypt consist of hot deserts. There's a part of the Sahara, the biggestdesert worldwide, in Egypt and in the western desert there are 5 oases with somehotels and restaurants. Well, the capital of Egypt is Cairo. It is also Africa's biggestcity.
Most people are deeply shocked when they visit Cairo for the first time becauseit's full of chaos, rubbish, traffic, noise and it seems to be ungovernable. Lots ofpeople have to live on the big graveyard there. So you can see Cairo as a synonym fornightmare.Something that surely everyone has heard about are the hieroglyphics. it started in theyear 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 FrancoisChampollion could finally decode the hieroglyphics. they are images and letterstogether. So you sometimes have to read a symbol as a whole word and sometimes asone letter. You can read them top down, from the left to the right and the other wayround. 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 ancientegypt and seen as a kind of god by the normal people. A very famous pharaoh isTutenchamun. His golden mask was found on his mummy. After the death of apharaoh his body was mummified by taking out the viscera and wrapping up the bodyinto cloths. Altogether it took 2 months of work.The pyramids were of use as tombs and they were seen as stairs to heaven for thekings.
Egyptian people believed in a life after death and the pharoahs wanted to savetheir tombs from the forces of nature. So the pyramids were built very high. It tookabout 20 years of work and more than 100.000 workers were needed. The mostfamous pyramids are the 3 pyramids of Giza. They are the first of the seven worldwonders.
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'sbecause the sun goes down there and the people thought there's the beginning of theunderworld.To the east of the river nile there were mostly temples which were also built for thepharaohs. 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 highstatue. Sphinx are mythical creatures with the body of a lion and the head of apharaoh. The Sphinx of Giza has the head from the Pharaoh Chephren. Noticeable isthat this sphinx hasn't got a nose. People invented lots of different things why the noseisn't there and today they still don't know it.
But this is just one of the numerousmysteries of Egypt..
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