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 In
Egyptian mythology, Ptah was the chief god of Memphis, who created the Moon,
the Sun, and the Earth. One tradition held that he had created all things
from mud; another, that he spoke the names of all things and his will created
them from his words. Ptah was the patron of artisans and was identified
by the Greeks with the god Hephaestos.
His
soul, (or alternatively the soul of Osiris) was incarnated in Apis (the
sacred bull of Memphis) and believed to have been conceived by lightning
on a moonbeam. The Greeks and Romans worshipped Apis as Serapis.
Outside the modern village of Mitrahine lie a few traces of the once vast
Temple of Ptah (8000 BCE), built to honour the primary deity of Memphis.
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Early
Egyptian Woven
linen Fishing Agriculture Neolithic
Painting Technology |
Early
Egyptian 10000 BCE
 A
statue made out of Basalt (10,000 BCE) of the earliest known Egyptian, showed
him with a beard and a short kilt covering his private parts.
The remarkable
thing about this statue is, it looks like one of the male servants of The
Benin culture's statues, of West Africa, proving they are of the same family.
Woven
linen 7000 BCE
has been known in Egypt since about 7000 BCE. The oldest depiction of a
loom was found at Badari on a pottery dish dating from the middle of the
5th millenium BCE while the first known pictures of weavers were drawn during
the Middle Kingdom.
The loom was horizontal with a wooden support for the
warp beam and a cloth beam that could be rotated, to which the ends of the
warp threads were tied and onto which the woven cloth was wound. |
The
warp yarns were lifted with two little sticks (lease rods) in order to pull
through the weft with the help of a shuttle, which according to a depiction
was already known in the Old Kingdom. The weft was beaten in with a bent
stick.
Two women generally worked the loom, in early times crouching, as the looms
were very low. But sometimes looms were made for three or even four weavers.
The linen they produced could be exceedingly delicate. By 3000 BCE the Egyptian
weavers were capable of weaving the finest of cloth with 64 warp threads
and 48 weft threads per centimetre. |
Fishing
6000 BCE
Fish were caught with woven dragnets and weir-baskets made from willow branches,
fishing nets for smaller fish, harpoons and hook and line, the hooks having
a length of between eight millimetres and eighteen centimetres.
Pre-dynastic petroglyphs about 6,000 BCE have been interpreted as depicting
fish traps in the form of fences set up in the water, leading the fish to
a central cage where the could be caught easily.
Agriculture
4500 BCE
Village culture at Merimde-Beni-Salame in the Nile Delta: a mixture of hunting,
fishing and agriculture, with a central corn store. Primitive oval mud huts,
dogs, sheep, goats and donkeys have been domesticated. First weaver's loom |
Neolithic
Painting 4300 BCE
Renaissance of the Neolithic Naturalistic Painting:
Pottery painted with white and later with red colours.
4221 BCE.
The (Theoretical) base year of the Egyptian calendar |
Technology 4000 BCE
Cold worked, gold, silver and copper jewellery. Use of the fire drill and
glass pearls. The magical adoration of the Earth mother, matriarchy, lack
of personal possession of the soil and relative absence of strife is at least
partially replaced by the worship of male gods, accompanied by the production
of metal tools and weapons and the securing of the supply of the raw material
and technical-rationalistic thinking.
Beginning
of the Copper Age in Egypt. One generally distinguishes the Badari, Tasa,
and Amratia and Gerzeen cultures in pre-dynastic Egypt. Villages join to form
greater political units. The production of copper was detected through the
faience glazing with Malachite, which contains copper and use of (Meteoric
Iron).
Furnaces
3700 BCE
Silver, gold and copper is smelted in blowpipe furnaces. |
Ceramics 3300 BCE
Negade I period in Upper Egypt: re-polished black-rimmed ceramics with geometric
or descriptive ornamentation (hunting motifs). Negade II period: white ceramics
with red ornamentation, vessels in the form of animals (connection to the
agricultural societies of Syria and Palestine) Agricultural implements: wooden
hoe, cattle drawn ploughs worked by two men, wooden sickles with flint edges.
Corn: barley (used for beer production), Emmer wheat Flax: used for spinning
and weaving Papyrus: made from papyrus reeds. |
Sailing
3200 BCE
Linen production and earliest record of sailing. Unification of village cultures
in Upper Egypt. Worship of many local gods, mostly depicted as having a human
body and an animal head, who are replaced by universal gods: Atem who created
Shu (Air) and his twin sister Tefnut (Moisture) by self-fertilisation. Shu
and Tefnut gave birth to Geb (Earth) and Nut (Sky). Monumental statues of
animals, buildings made of hewn stone (until then only unburnt bricks were
used). Harp, flute and double-clarinet, the choir claps rhythmically, as a
solitary singer describes the movement of the melody with his hands. |
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