The history of Egypt is divided into the following periods:
6000-3200 B.C. Pre-dynastic Periods
3200-2685 B.C. Archaic Period: I-II Dynasties
2685-2180 B.C. Old Kingdom: III-VI Dynasties
2180-2040 B.C. First Intermediate Period: VII-X Dynasties
2040-1785 B.C. Middle Kingdom: XI-XIV Dynasties
1785-1560 B.C. Second Intermediate Period: XV-XVII Dynasties
1560-1085 B.C. New Kingdom: XVIII-XX Dynasties
1085-330 B.C. Late Dynastic Period: XXI-XXX Dynasties
330 B.C.-342 A.D. Greek and Roman Periods
The dry climate of Egypt has preserved many of the artifacts of the civilization, including its written records. The Egyptians wrote on Papyrus, a plant from which the word “paper” derives. By 3000 B.C., the Egyptians had developed an alphabet representing sounds, but they continued to use ideographic symbols representing ideas that were based on earlier pictographic ones that represented objects. This made up their writing, called hieroglyphics (Greek meaning sacred carvings). The idea of writing was probably inspired by contacts with the Sumerians, but the form of writing was an Egyptian creation.
The key to reading ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics dates back to 1799 during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. Near the western Delta city of Rosetta (Rashid) at the mouth of the Nile, some of Napoleon’s men digging a fort found a stone of black basalt three feet nine inches long on which three languages were written. The first was classical Greek, the second hieroglyphics, and the third demotic, a cursive script from the period of the New Kingdom, all three being used in Egypt in the second century B.C. when the stone was carved. It was first in the possession of a group of French scholars Napoleon had taken on the expedition, but in 1801, when the British drove the French out of Egypt, this Rosetta Stone fell into British hands and now sits in the British Museum in London. The Rosetta stone dates back to the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes (196 B.C.) during the time of the Macedonian/Greek rule. This explains why it contains Greek, the language of the Ptolemaic kings, the first of whom was one of Alexander’s generals. By studying the bilingual inscriptions of the names of the rulers (which were made phonetically in hieroglyphics), and with a knowledge of ancient Coptic (an Egyptian dialect developed from the ancient Egyptian demotic script and used liturgically by Egyptian Christians from the time of the preaching of Mark in Alexandria), a translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics was made possible. A French scholar, Jean-François Champollion, who knew both classical Greek and Coptic, deciphered the hieroglyphs in 1822.
These records, combined with the accuracy of the ancient Egyptian calendar allows for a rather detailed account of Egypt’s ancient history. The Egyptians developed a solar calendar of 365 days, at a time when other civilizations employed the less accurate lunar calendar. This Egyptian solar calendar, introduced to Europe by Julius Caesar, is the calendar used in the West today, as modified by Caesar (Julian Calendar) and then by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 (Gregorian calendar, based on the work of Luigi Giglio).
Finally, accounts of ancient Egypt written by the Greek historian Manetho in the 3rd century B.C. and incorporated into still extant works gives the traditional division of Egyptian history into dynasties (families of kings).
The dry climate of Egypt has preserved many of the artifacts of the civilization, including its written records. The Egyptians wrote on Papyrus, a plant from which the word “paper” derives. By 3000 B.C., the Egyptians had developed an alphabet representing sounds, but they continued to use ideographic symbols representing ideas that were based on earlier pictographic ones that represented objects. This made up their writing, called hieroglyphics (Greek meaning sacred carvings). The idea of writing was probably inspired by contacts with the Sumerians, but the form of writing was an Egyptian creation.
The key to reading ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics dates back to 1799 during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. Near the western Delta city of Rosetta (Rashid) at the mouth of the Nile, some of Napoleon’s men digging a fort found a stone of black basalt three feet nine inches long on which three languages were written. The first was classical Greek, the second hieroglyphics, and the third demotic, a cursive script from the period of the New Kingdom, all three being used in Egypt in the second century B.C. when the stone was carved. It was first in the possession of a group of French scholars Napoleon had taken on the expedition, but in 1801, when the British drove the French out of Egypt, this Rosetta Stone fell into British hands and now sits in the British Museum in London. The Rosetta stone dates back to the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes (196 B.C.) during the time of the Macedonian/Greek rule. This explains why it contains Greek, the language of the Ptolemaic kings, the first of whom was one of Alexander’s generals. By studying the bilingual inscriptions of the names of the rulers (which were made phonetically in hieroglyphics), and with a knowledge of ancient Coptic (an Egyptian dialect developed from the ancient Egyptian demotic script and used liturgically by Egyptian Christians from the time of the preaching of Mark in Alexandria), a translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics was made possible. A French scholar, Jean-François Champollion, who knew both classical Greek and Coptic, deciphered the hieroglyphs in 1822.