Life on the Nile: Exploring Ancient Egypt

Imagine living in a vast, burning desert where almost nothing grows. You have no supermarket, no tap water, and no rain for months at a time. How would you survive? Around 5,000 years ago, millions of people did survive — right in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Their secret? One extraordinary river. Can you guess which river it was?

Ancient Egypt was one of the world's first great civilisations. It began around 3100 BCE — that is more than 5,000 years ago — and it lasted for over 3,000 years. That is longer than the time between the Roman Empire and today! Ancient Egypt grew up along the River Nile in north-east Africa. Every year the Nile flooded its banks, leaving behind rich black mud called silt. This silt made the soil perfect for growing crops such as wheat and barley. Without the Nile's floods, farming would have been almost impossible and Egypt could never have grown so powerful. At the top of Egyptian society was the pharaoh. The pharaoh was the all-powerful ruler — a king or queen who was also considered a god. Below the pharaoh were priests, scribes, farmers, and craftspeople. Scribes were specially trained writers who used a picture-based writing system called hieroglyphics to keep records of everything from taxes to religious stories. The Egyptians believed in many gods and in life after death. They built enormous stone tombs called pyramids to bury their most important rulers. The most famous are the pyramids at Giza, near modern-day Cairo. Workers — not slaves, but mostly paid labourers — hauled millions of stone blocks into place with incredible skill. We know so much about ancient Egypt because so much survived. The dry desert air preserved writings on papyrus (a paper made from reeds), carvings in stone, and even mummified bodies — called mummies — wrapped tightly in bandages to preserve them after death. Archaeologists — scientists who study objects left by people in the past — have pieced together a rich picture of Egyptian life.