Unit Study: Let’s Study Ancient Egypt Pt. 4
by Belinda Mooney
I hope you are enjoying this unit study as much as I enjoyed putting it together for my children. So far we have done Part I, which got us started andPart II where we learned about the Pharoahs and their queens andPart III where we learned more about Pharaohs and pyramids. Now on to part 4 where we will learn about what they believed in.
Religion
There was literally hundreds gods and goddesses. Several of them were both human and animals of Ancient Egypt. Egyptians often thought they took the shape of animals or birds. Some of the gods were worshipped in temples and some were considered part of the Underworlds. Not all the animals the gods showed themselves as were considered holy though. The god Ptah was shown as a bull called Aphis. But in order for the bull to be considered to be sacred he had to have certain markings.
The Sun god was always considered the most important of all the gods. He was pictured in many different ways. One of these was a scarab beetle, Khepri. He was the creator god when he was pictured this way. At one point in Egyptian history he was combined with Amun and called Amun-Re, King of the Gods.
* Make a list of the major Egyptian gods or goddesses and what they each represented.
*Research Apis and find out what they did with this bull they considered sacred.
*Egyptians had many myths regarding life and how it was started. Read about some of these and tell about some of these in your notebook. Add drawings.
The Egyptians had priests and priestesses who took care of the temples. There were small and large temples. The high priest had a lot of power in the land. It was he who was in charge of the money that came in from temple lands.
Priestesses were very powerful also. They provided the temple music many times. They both had special jobs to do and their was always a priest on duty in the temples.
* Make a list of the jobs that priests & priestesses were expected to perform.
* Why did they not wear animal hair at all? (Exception one kind of priest wore a panther skin over his robes.)
The common people were not allowed in the temples at all. They were not considered pure enough. Even though many of them provided the things needed for the temples. Only at religious festivals could they even hope to get a glimpse of these things. Many of the major gods & goddesses were not even important to the common man. They worshipped whatever god could help them in their daily life. They were very superstitious and believed very much in magic. They called upon the different gods for whatever was occurring. Sickness, childbirth, snake bites all had their different gods to help with these problems. They used magic wands to “heal” scorpion and cobra bites. They also used magic spells and stones to cure things or even as love charms.
*Make a list of Religious festivals held by the Egyptians.
* What does the Bible say about false religions and magic or spells. Write down the Bible verses that tell you this.
*Here is a partial list of Egyptian gods and goddesses to get you started.
NUT ~~~ NE ~~~~OSIRIS~~~~ANUBIS ~~~~NEITH~~~~ PTAH
AMUN~~~~TAWERET~~~~KHONSU~~~~ISIS~~~~MA’AT~~~~MITHOS
Review your unit study on Egypt:
Let’s Study Ancient Egypt Part I
Let’s Study Ancient Egypt Part II
Let’s Study Ancient Egypt Part III
Let’s Study Ancient Egypt Part IV
Build an Egyptian Pyramid
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