Running head: OLD KINGDOM EGYPT

Old Kingdom Egypt

KeErah Hutchings
Salt Lake Community College
ANTH 1030, World Prehistory
Tiffany Collins
April 24, 2015
Old Kingdom Egypt
The Old Kingdom was the golden age of Egypt; it was the age of the Pyramids. It began
during the third dynasty and lasted until the eighth dynasty. This research paper will focus on the
Old Kingdom in Egyptian history, and will go into detail about the pyramids and how they were
built and the burial practices of the time.
Old Kingdom History
The third dynasty was the start of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. Egypt is located in Africa
by the Mediterranean Sea. They had the Nile River as their main source of water and centered
their civilization and their agriculture all along the river. The capital was called Ineb-hedg, the
Egyptian name for Memphis. They worshiped kings; it wasnt until the New Kingdom period
that rulers were called pharaohs. The first king was Djoser. As king, he had certain

responsibilities. He was considered the human incarnation of the falcon god Horus, and upon his
death he would become the incarnation of Osiris, the god of the dead. While in power, the kings
had Maat a concept that combines the virtues of balance and justice (Chazan, 2014, p. 297).
They has this power to keep the kingdom from plunging into chaos. After Djoser, three more
kings ruled in the 3rd dynasty. The kings controlled the state though the agency of scribes. Scribes
also had an important role in Egypt. They used two basic forms of writing. The first was
hieroglyphs, which according to Worlds Together Worlds Apart, served in temples, royal and
divine contexts and were usually written on papyrus, pottery, or other absorbent material with
ink. Then there was demotic cursive writing; that was more commonly used for record keeping,
narratives, literary works, and business transactions (Tignor et al., 2011,).
Religion was important to the Old Kingdom. Their belief system was split into three
groups: gods, kings, and the rest of humanity. The gods were usually depicted as a humanoid
figure with an animal head. Some of the main gods were Ra, the sun god; Horus, the hawk god;
Osiris, god of the dead; Hathor, goddess of love; and Amun, a creator god. The kings duty was
to serve, protect, pay respect, and communicate with the gods. And humanity served the kings,
who were considered to be incarnations of gods. The common people also believed in certain
kinds of magic, such as amulets that brought good fortune and protected the wearer from evil
(Tignor et al., 2011,).
As the Old Kingdom expanded without unifying or dominating cities around it the
Egyptian state became more dispersed, and started feuding among political factions. The
expansion and decentralization eventually brought the weaknesses of Egypt to light which
eventually caused the decline of the Old Kingdom. Droughts and extensive irrigation systems are

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thought to be another cause of the fall of the Old Kingdom according to World Together Worlds
Apart (Tignor et al., 2011,).
The Pyramids
During this time they also built pyramids; according to Michael Chazan, author of World
Prehistory and Archaeology, The pyramids of Old Kingdom Egypt are among the most
impressive monuments ever built (2014). King Djoser of the 3rd dynasty built the first pyramid
at Saqqara. His architect was Imhotep, the Leonardo da Vinci of the pyramid Age (Ladouceur,
2014). He was a sculptor, builder, royal treasurer, and administrator of the great palace. Because
of his accomplishments, he became the patron saint of scribes and the god of healing. According
to Moress, the Egyptians used the pyramid itself as a ramp and employed counterweights to slide
the stones up, creating an Egyptian elevator; sand pours into a sled on the left, and pulls up the
stone that is tied up to the ramp on the right (Moress & James, 2014, p. 28). Using this technique,
they would not have had to use a second ramp. If they had, it would have had to be very large
and they would have had to find a way to make it maneuverable, which would have been highly
unlikely at that time. It would have taken great effort to build an exterior ramp instead of doing it
the way Moress suggest (Moress & James 2014).
Another way they might have built the pyramids, according to Peter James is that the
pyramids were constructed using internal ramps, combined with some additional scaffolding, and
not with enormous external ramps, which is a theory currently favored by many archaeologist
(Moress & James, 2014, p. 31). He goes into further detail, stating that pyramids consist of three
layers, two internal ramps that zig-zagged across the internal width of the pyramid, and one
outside that was used to smooth the outside appearance and ensure its true pyramid shape. Many
pyramids were built during the 3rd and 4th dynasties. King Snefru, ruler of fourth dynasty, built

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the first true pyramid according to Chazan (2014). He built a pyramid with a slope of sixty
degrees, but it was reduced to 40 degrees during construction, causing the pyramid to look bent.
The final pyramid built by Snefru was called the red pyramid. Khufu, another ruler of the fourth
dynasty, constructed the Great Pyramid at Giza and more were built later, until pyramid building
became less elaborate and diminished probably due to lack of resources (Tignor et al., 2011,).
Mummification
For burials in Egypt when any one with wealth, such as the king, died they did a process
called mummification. According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia it was a type of
preservation of the deada long process of embalming an extravagance reserved for pharaohs
("Mummification," 2012). This process took many steps to properly mummify a human body.
According to the My Learning website, they would pull the brain out from the nose using a hook
tool, then make a cut on the left side of the body near the stomach to remove all internal organs
except the kidneys and the heart. They would dry the lungs, intestines, stomach, and liver, and
place them into canopic jars. They rinsed the inside of the body with wine and spices. Then they
covered the body with natron (salt) for seventy days; after forty of those days, they stuffed the
body with linen or sand to give it a more human form. After the seventy days were up, they
wrapped the body head to toe in bandages, placed the body in a sarcophagus, and finally took it
to the tomb in the pyramid built for the king, along with all his canopic jars ("My Learning,"
n.d.).
The reason they did it this way was because they believed that the body was the house
for the soul and that their spirit could only live on if their body was preserved forever. Ancient
History Encyclopedia claims that the spirit was made up of three parts: the ka, the ba, and the
akh. The ka remained in the burial tomb, using the offerings and objects placed within it. The ba

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was considered the soul of the person, and it was free to fly outside of the confines of the tomb.
And it was the akh that traveled to the Underworld for judgment, and to gain entrance into the
Afterlife ("Mummification," 2012). For the poor people of Egypt, it was harder to afford the
mummification process. They would have to bury their dead in the sand, which sometimes,
depending on where and how dry or arid the area was, the bodies still mummified, but not as
thoroughly as the full mummification process. Today, we study mummies to get a better
understanding of how diseases, medical treatment, and other things affected the body in ancient
times, and how it relates to us now ("My Learning," n.d.).
Conclusion
By looking at ancient civilizations and examining how they lived and built their lives, we
can discover things about ourselves and where we are coming from. By looking at how the
Egyptians built their pyramids, we can see how they built monuments and other important
buildings. Examining how they buried their dead can help us see them as people and how they
interpreted the world they saw around them, as well as what they thought would happen beyond
this world.

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6
References

A step by step guide to Egyptian mummification. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.mylearning.org/a-step-by-step-guide-to-egyptian-mummification/p-1681/
Chazan, M. (2014). World prehistory & archaeology: Pathways through time (3rd ed.). Boston,
MA: Pearson.
Ladouceur, D. J. (2014). Old kingdom period in Egypt. Salem Press Encyclopedia. Retrieved
from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.dbprox.slcc.edu/eds/detail/detail?sid=ba1b8b18-58a04070-9458-5426306a8f3e
%40sessionmgr4001&vid=0&hid=4105&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU
%3d#db=ers&AN=89454337
Moress, G., & James, P. (2014). How were the pyramids built? Ancient Egypt Magazine, 15(2).
Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.dbprox.slcc.edu/eds/detail/detail?
vid=2&sid=2fa10c43-9705-40de-bd932f04caa93dd1%40sessionmgr4002&hid=4105&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU
%3d#db=edo&AN=98841075
Mummification in ancient Egypt. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.ancient.eu/article/44/
Tignor, R., Adelman, J., Brown, P., Elman, B., Liu, X., Pittman, H., & Shaw, B. (2011). Worlds
together worlds apart (3rd ed.). New York, NY: W.W. Norton.