It’s the year 2490 B.C. Wooden boats cruise along the Nile River in Egypt as thousands of workers stack giant stone blocks into a pyramid. This 200-foot-tall structure honors a pharaoh named Menkaure. This pharaoh’s father, Khafre, ordered construction of a 450-foot-high pyramid nearby, and his grandfather Khufu built the Great Pyramid at Giza—the largest of the three—at about 480 feet. Covered in polished white limestone, the pyramids seem to glow in the sunlight.
The Egyptians working on the pyramids are helping create a culture that will last more than 3,000 years—it will be one of the longest-lasting civilizations in the world. During that time, ancient Egyptians created works of art and engineering that still amaze us today.
History of ancient Egypt
People settled in Egypt as early as 6000 B.C. Over time, small villages joined together to become states until two kingdoms emerged: Lower Egypt, which covers the Nile River Delta up to the Mediterranean Sea in the north, and Upper Egypt, which covers the Nile Valley in the south. (The Nile River flows from south to north, so for the ancient Egyptians, the southern part of the country was "up.")
Around 3100 B.C., a king (later called a pharaoh) united these two lands to be one country, and so historians begin the long history of ancient Egypt here, dividing it into different periods. (They don’t always know the exact date of historical events. So that’s why you’ll see a "ca" next to some of the years. It stands for "circa" meaning "around.")
Early Dynastic Period, about 525 years (ca 3100 B.C. to ca 2575 B.C.): These early pharaohs worked to keep the two lands under their control. To do this, they claimed they were being watched over by the falcon god Horus, and so the people of Egypt should respect them. They also used record keeping in the form of hieroglyphic writing to record things like royal decrees and the taxes that the people paid in the form of grain.
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