Tuesday, December 16, 2008

The Inventions



The Egyptians had many amazing inventions, but here are just a few and how they worked.




First is the shaduf. This invention was definitely one of the most helpful, in my opinion. It was used to draw water for irrigation for the Egyptians' crops. Without it, there wouldn't be much as much farm land, which means more work, less food, and every single person would have to be a farmer (that would be SO boring!), and the civilization wouldn't be as diverse and developed as it was, and all the people would starve! You can see from the picture on the left, it was on the shore of the Nile, and the Egyptians would dip the bucket of the end into the river, and the weight on the end would balance the water's weight, and the farmer could pull it up, fill containers or use the water for whatever you need it for, and you had water. Not as easy as a garden hose, but hey, it was an ancient civilization!




Another useful invention was papyrus. This allowed a way for records and stories to be recorded in scrolls. This invention also brought another job to Egypt: scribes! Just imagine how their life would have been if they couldn't even record their history!!!!




The water clock was an invention that was very valuable to the religious leaders of Egypt. The citizens of Egypt weren't too concerned about clocks for their own time. So why would they need clocks? For their religious ceremonies, of course! The religious leaders needed a better and more specific way to tell time than how high the sun was in the sky. Why did they need to tell the time more precisely? Well, they had certain ceremonies that they believed they had to do in order to please their gods. So they invented the water clock. It was a large funnel that was marked into 12 sections for their hours, and it dripped down. The leaders just measured the water to tell the time. (However,I still prefer a watch. Well, at least the these clocks didn't need any batteries!)




So, what was one of the most important things to the Egyptians? Take one guess. The Nile, of course! Why? Well, its floods gave them fertile soil, which was the only thing that gave them food and livable conditions (I mean, they were in a desert!). The Egyptians needed a way to schedule and predict the time of the floods. I mean, you didn't want to be caught by surprise. And so the Egyptian solar calender was made! It was 365 long, with 3 seasons. And by the way; those seasons were not Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Of course, you can expect that living in a desert has pretty much the same weather year round, but they had Flood, Planting, and Harvest seasons. That way, they knew about when to expect the flood.




So obviously, the Egyyptians were very intelligent people who invinted tools and gadgets to help them meet their needs. That's kind of like what we still do today, right?

4 comments:

  1. You did a really good job of researching all of the inventions and then writing them out using voice. Everything is really well explained

    ReplyDelete
  2. WWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!! That is a LOT of information and it must have taken forever to research it! Nice job!:)

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is an awesome place to know our ancient events behind inventing tools and strategies in Egypt. Thanks.

    Online English Classes

    ReplyDelete