Thousands of years ago, one of the world's greatest civilisations grew up along a river in Africa. It was Ancient Egypt, and it lasted for a very long time, about 3,000 years.
The gift of the Nile
Egypt has lots of hot, dry desert, so how did people live? Every year the River Nile flooded and left rich, dark mud perfect for growing crops. Without the Nile there would have been no Egypt.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pharaoh | the king or queen who ruled Egypt |
| Pyramid | a giant stone tomb for a pharaoh |
| Hieroglyphs | writing made of little pictures |
Pharaohs, pyramids and picture-writing
Egypt was ruled by a pharaoh, believed to be almost a link to the gods — famous ones include the boy king Tutankhamun and Cleopatra. When an important pharaoh died, workers built a giant stone tomb, often a pyramid, dragging millions of heavy blocks into place with ropes, sledges and teamwork. Egyptians wrote using hieroglyphs: tiny pictures that stood for sounds and words, read and written by trained scribes. Most ordinary Egyptians were farmers who worked the fields by the Nile, cooked bread, made linen cloth and wore jewellery.
Cracking the code
For a very long time, nobody could read hieroglyphs — the secret was lost. Then a special stone was found, called the Rosetta Stone, with the same message written three times, once in Greek, which scholars could still read.
Put these steps in order:
- The Rosetta Stone is found, with its message in three writings
- Scholars read the Greek part they already knew
- Champollion compares the Greek to the hieroglyphs next to it, for years
- The code is finally cracked — hieroglyphs can be read again