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.

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Comments

Re: HOMEWORK: Egypt/Crete

[psi16.livejournal.com]

Having come from a time so far removed from Ancient Egypt and Crete, completing the homework took a great deal more research than Lyta had first thought. Because the idea of mummies had always been something of a curiosity, she chose to research the methods used to create and preserve them in the ancient times.

In Egypt,[i]n order to enter the afterlife, it was important that the deceased have a proper burial with all the correct rituals and traditional funerary equipment. First, the body had to be preserved through mummification, a process by which it was artificially dehydrated and then wrapped in linen bandages. The invention of mummification may have resulted from the practice of burying bodies directly in the ground during the Predynastic Period. The preservative properties of the hot, desiccating sand may have suggested to the Egyptians that survival of the body was necessary for continued existence in the afterlife. Later, in the Early Dynastic Period, when the body was no longer directly surrounded by sand, but was placed in a specially constructed burial chamber, the natural processes of decay set in. When they observed this effect, the Egyptians developed a method for keeping the body intact using resins and natron, a naturally occurring salt.

[The Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta has some great images of their collections -- both permanent and on loan -- on their website. I snatched this bit of text from there. The text was from here (http://carlos.emory.edu/COLLECTION/EGYPT/egypt08.html) and more images can be found here (http://carlos.emory.edu/COLLECTION/).]