Hunting cats, hippos, and honey
Published in · 10 min read · Jul 20, 2020
--
Undoubtedly one of the most famous civilizations in the entire world, the Ancient Egyptians are both distant and near to us today. It’s an oft-repeated adage that Cleopatra is closer in time to us today than the construction of the Pyramids, which is true by the way, but that fails to capture the distance between us today and the Ancient Egyptians.
The period we know as ‘Ancient Egypt’ takes place from about 2600BC — 30BC. The beginning of this period saw the construction of the Pyramids. This is about 1000 year before the Trojan War, which was, partly due to its age, considered semi-mythical. Likewise, the mythical Yellow Emperor was ruling over China at this time, while the early Mesoamericans were beginning to domesticate maize, and Stonehenge was being erected over in England.
It’s a testament to the Egyptian builders that their monuments have stood the test of time, and it’s largely thanks to them that we have any information about Ancient Egypt’s rulers, culture and history. Despite their intimate relationship with early writing, they did very little of it, especially when compared with their later Greek counterparts. Much of what we know about them comes from the imagery they left behind and from archaeology, which has proven especially useful when it comes to…
