History of Western Civilisation - Wednesday 5th Period: Discussion 2: Egypt and Crete

[prof-methos.livejournal.com]

Greetings and Salutations, class. Now that your hands are throughly exhausted from taking notes on yesterday's lecture, I'm going to make you talk until your jaw is tired as well.

For your homework, due next Tuesday but turned in to this thread, I'd like you to comment in at least 100 words on some aspect of Egyptian or Cretan civilisation. Bonus points for comparing something between the two.

[[OCD comment threads are up. Comment away!]]

Comments

DISCUSSION 1: Egypt

[prof-methos.livejournal.com]

Discuss Egypt and its contribution to Western Civilisation.

Re: DISCUSSION 1: Egypt

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

"The first formalized alphabet was developed by the Eygptians. It had 22 hieroglyphs that represented individual consonants of the langauge and a 23rd that represented initial word or final word vowels. These glyphs were used as pronunciation guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections, or to transcribe loan words and foreign names. But the system wasn't used for purely alphabetic writing. That was developed around 2000 BCE for Semitic workers in central Egypt. Over the next five centuries it spread north, and all subsequent alphabets around the world have either descended from it, or been inspired by one of its descendants."

Re: DISCUSSION 1: Egypt

[blueskin-mystiq.livejournal.com]

"I don't know how direct the transmission was, but the idea of the ka influenced ideas about the soul."

Re: DISCUSSION 1: Egypt

[janet_fraiser]

"Except the Egyptians had a concept of nine souls," said Janet. She's pretty damn sure that the Goa'uld had influenced that little bit of mythology. "At least I believe it was nine. We've apparently refined the concept a bit in the intervening millenia."