Ancient Egyptian Marvels

• Memphis Dam is the first recorded dam in history , It did not survive antiquity.

• The historian Herodotus attributed this construction to Menes, the first king of the initial Egyptian dynasty (about 3000 B.C. )

• It is reported was composed of cut-stone masonry to have reached a height of about 50 feet and a crest length of 1475 feet.

• Elsewhere in Egypt, well-preserved remains of other ancient dam , The Sadd el-Kafara Dam , about 20 miles south of Cairo.

• It was built about 2900-2877 B.C

The first dam in history :

Giza The Great Pyramids:• The Great Pyramid, built by Khufu

in 2550 B.C ., stands an impressive 481ft high.

• the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years , It towers over monuments like the Statue of Liberty and Big Ben.

• It is the oldest of the seven wonders of the world , and the only one to remain largely intact .

• Its sides have a slope of 51 degrees, with an average length of 754ft ,vary by less than 2in !

• The sides of the pyramid along the four Cardinal Points with extreme accuracy !

• A total of over 2.3 million blocks of limestone and granite were used in its construction with the average block weighing 2.5 tons and none weighing less than 2 tons.

• The blocks used in the ceiling of the King's Chamber weigh as much as 9 tons. 

• The estimated total weight of the structure is 6.5 million tons ! And The base of the pyramid covers 13 acres .

• The first Step of the pyramid rests on a platform of finely finished limestone blocks, This platform is so flat that the official survey of the Egyptian Government found that it was less than ½ of an inch from being level !

The Great Giza Pyramids(cont.):

• Drawings and paintings wouldn't evolve into the first written language for thousands of years, when the first writing systems arose out of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

• The Egyptian writing system began with pictograms, the first of which date back to 6000 B.C.

• The pictograms were simple depictions of the words they represented, but they had limitations. Over time, Egyptians added other elements to their writing system.

• Today, everyone knows the Egyptians for the creation of hieroglyphics, which contained a mixture of alphabetic, syllabic symbols , as well as ideograms.

• No one will deny that the Chinese changed the world with the invention of paper around 140 B.C., but what many people don't know is that the Egyptians had developed an admirable substitute thousands of years earlier from the papyrus plant.

The first writing system in history :

• It is thought that the Egyptians introduced the earliest fully-developed base 10 numeration system at least as early as 2700 BC (and probably much early).

• The Rhind Papyrus, dating from around 1650 BC, it demonstrations how multiplication and division was carried out at that time. It also contains evidence of other mathematical knowledge, including unit fractions, composite and prime numbers, arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means, and how to solve first order linear equations as well as arithmetic and geometric series

• The Berlin Papyrus, which dates from around 1300 BC, shows that ancient Egyptians could solve second-order algebraic (quadratic) equations.

Egyptian Mathematics :

Rhind Papyrus

Egyptian Mathematics (cont.) :

• Earliest recorded date in Egyptian calendar (4241 B.C.), The Egyptians divided their year into 365 days .The Egyptian Calendar had 12 months of 30 day each, plus 5 additional days , between the harvest and inundation seasons.

• The measurement of time began with the invention of sundials in ancient Egypt some time prior to 1500 B.C.

• the Egyptians where first to divide the day (and night) into 24 temporal hours , 12 for the day and 12 for the night. Each hour was named instead of numbered like we do today.

Measurement of time :

(Ancient Calender)

(Sundial)

• Egyptians have been measuring the height of the river for more than 5,000 years.

• A simple example of it is a vertical column submerged in the waters of the river, with marked intervals indicating the depth of the water , like the one on the island of Rhoda in central Cairo ,it is relatively new 715 AD.

• Another Nilometer design comprises a flight of stairs leading down into the water, with depth markings along the walls like the one in  Elephantine Island , Aswan.

The world's oldest, continuous weather record (The Nilometer):

• The Noria )700-600 BC( (Egyptian Water Wheel) is A wheel with buckets or clay pots along its circumference , it is different from the Persian “Sakia” , that it was powered by an external force (animals).

•  the Noria wheel was turned by the current of the river.

• The flow filled buckets by immersion and as it rotated the upper buckets are emptied by gravity into a trough or aqueduct, the empty buckets then returned to be refilled.

• The Noria provided the ancient world with its first non-human operated lifting device.

The First non-human operated lifting device

( Noria ):

• The  ancient Egyptians were probably the first civilization to develop special tools to make rope.

• Egyptian rope dates back to 4000 to 3500 B.C. and was generally made of water reed fibres.

• The use of such ropes allowed the Egyptians to move the heavy stones required to build their monuments.

The first Civilization to manufacture ropes :

• The first Door Lock , he earliest such device, created around 4000 B.C.

• It was basically a Pin- tumber lock, in which a hollowed-out bolt in the door was connected to pins that could be manipulated by insertion of a key. When the key pushed upward on the pins, they slipped away from the bolt shaft, allowing it to be withdrawn.

The first Door Lock in History :

• The earliest reports of Surgical suture date back to 3000 BC in ancient Egypt.

• Needles were made of bone or metals.

• Sutures were made of plant materials (flax, hemp and cotton) or animal material (hair, tendons , arteries , muscle strips and nerves, silk, catgut)

The first Surgical suture :

(Ancient Egyptians

Surgical tools)

• Ancient Egyptians were the first to invent eye makeup as far back as 4000 B.C.

• Even more impressive, some cosmetically-minded cultures still create makeup using the same techniques pioneered by the Egyptians thousands of years ago

• They combined soot with a mineral called galena to create a black ointment known as kohl, which is still popular today.

The First to use cosmotics :

(Kohl was kept in these pots.)

• According to the Guinness Book of Records, the oldest known measure is the beqa , used in ancient Egypt as far back as 3800 B.C.

• The oldest dress in the world ,The linen dress dates from c. 2800 BC, making it almost 5,000 years old – arguably the oldest surviving garment in the world.

• Egyptians invented the first mints , thousands of years ago which were a combination of frankincense, myrrh and cinnamon boiled with honey and shaped into pellets.

Some other Achievements :