1.
Osorkon IV
–
Usermaatre Osorkon IV was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh during the late Third Intermediate Period. Traditionally considered the very last king of the 22nd Dynasty, he was de facto little more than ruler in Tanis and Bubastis, in Lower Egypt. He is generally – though not universally – identified with the King Shilkanni mentioned by Assyrian sources, during his reign, he had to face the power, and ultimately submit himself—to the Kushite King Piye during Piyes conquest of Egypt. Osorkon IV also had to deal with the threatening Neo-Assyrian Empire outside his eastern borders. Osorkon IV ascended to the throne of Tanis in c.730 BC, at the end of the reign of his predecessor Shoshenq V of the 22nd Dynasty. Osorkons mother, named on a electrum aegis of Sekhmet now in the Louvre, was Tadibast III, Osorkon IVs realm was restricted only to the district of Tanis and the territory of Bubastis, both in the eastern Nile Delta. His neighbors were Libyan princes and Meshwesh chiefs who ruled their small realms outside of his authority, around 729/28 BC, soon after his accession, Osorkon IV faced the crusade led by the Kushite pharaoh Piye of the Nubian 25th Dynasty. Nevertheless, Osorkon IV and the others were allowed to keep their former domains, the Kingdom of Israel ceased to exist, and many Israelites were brought to Assyria as exiles. Assyrian sources claim that time the Egyptian king did send a turtanu called Reʾe or Reʾu as well as troops in order to support his neighboring ally. However, the coalition was defeated in battle at Raphia, Reʾe fled back to Egypt, Raphia and Gaza were looted and Hanno was burnt alive by the Assyrians. In 716 BC, Sargon II almost reached Egypts boundaries, the Assyrian king appreciated his gifts and did not take action against Osorkon IV. Shortly after, Osorkon IV and his dynasty vanished into obscurity, kahn believed that this pharaoh was Shabaka, who might have previously deposed Osorkon IV, guilty for being too philo-Assyrian. A few decades later a man called Gemenefkhonsbak, possibly a descendant of the dynasty, claimed for himself the pharaonic royal titles. It is believed that Shilkanni is a rendering of shilkan, which in turn is derived from sorkon – hence Osorkon IV – as first proposed by William F. Albright in 1956 and this identification is accepted by several scholars while others remain uncertain or even skeptical. In the same way, the Piru of Musri to whom Hanno of Gaza asked for help in 720 BC could only have been Osorkon IV, the identity of the biblical King So is somewhat less definite. Osorkon IV is attested by Assyrian documents and probably also by the Books of Kings and he is undoubtedly attested by the well-known Victory Stela of Piye on which he is depicted while prostrating in front of the owner of the stela along with other submitted rulers. Pharaohs in the Bible for other historical or conjectural pharaohs cited in the Bible Albright, further Synchronisms between Egypt and Asia in the Period 935-685 BC. Mainz am Rhein, Münchner Ägyptologische Studien 46, petits monuments royaux de la XXIe à la XXVe dynastie
2.
Ancient Egypt
–
Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is one of six civilizations to arise independently, Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh Narmer. In the aftermath of Alexander the Greats death, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter and this Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province. The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture, the predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world and its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history, nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the climate of Northern Africa became increasingly hot and dry. In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was less arid than it is today. Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazing ungulates, foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, and this is also the period when many animals were first domesticated. The largest of these cultures in upper Egypt was the Badari, which probably originated in the Western Desert, it was known for its high quality ceramics, stone tools. The Badari was followed by the Amratian and Gerzeh cultures, which brought a number of technological improvements, as early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes. In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan, establishing a power center at Hierakonpolis, and later at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile. They also traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the desert to the west. Royal Nubian burials at Qustul produced artifacts bearing the oldest-known examples of Egyptian dynastic symbols, such as the crown of Egypt. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines. During the last predynastic phase, the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a system of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language. The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early Sumerian-Akkadian civilisation of Mesopotamia, the third-century BC Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the long line of pharaohs from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a system still used today
3.
Serapeum of Saqqara
–
The Serapeum of Saqqara is a serapeum located north west of the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, a necropolis near Memphis in Lower Egypt. It was a place of Apis bulls, which were incarnations of the deity Ptah. It was believed that the bulls became immortal after death as Osiris Apis, the most ancient burials found at this site date back to the reign of Amenhotep III, the ninth pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty during the 1350s B. C. A second tunnel, approximately 350 m in length,5 m tall and 3 m wide, was excavated under Psamtik I of the twenty-sixth dynasty and later used by the Ptolemaic dynasty. The long boulevard leading to the site, flanked by 600 sphinxes, likely was built under Nectanebo I. The temple was discovered by Auguste Mariette, who had gone to Egypt to collect coptic manuscripts, in 1850, Mariette found the head of one sphinx sticking out of the shifting desert sand dunes, cleared the sand and followed the boulevard to the site. After using explosives to clear rocks blocking the entrance to the catacomb, unfortunately, his notes of the excavation were lost, which has complicated the use of these burials in establishing Egyptian chronology. Mariette found one undisturbed burial, which is now at the Agricultural Museum in Cairo, the other 24 sarcophagi of the bulls, had been robbed. Because the average lifespan of a bull was between 25 and 28 years, egyptologists believe that more burials should have been found, furthermore, four of the burials attributed by Mariette to the reign of Ramesses XI have since been retrodated. Most scholars rebut that it is far more likely that some burials of sacred bulls are waiting to be discovered and excavated
4.
Nile Delta
–
The Nile Delta is the delta formed in Northern Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the worlds largest river deltas—from Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the east, from north to south the delta is approximately 160 kilometres in length. The Delta begins slightly down-river from Cairo, from north to south, the delta is approximately 160 kilometres in length. From west-to-east, it covers some 240 kilometres of coastline, the delta is sometimes divided into sections, with the Nile dividing into two main distributaries, the Damietta and the Rosetta, flowing into the Mediterranean at port cities with the same name. In the past, the delta had several distributaries, but these have been lost due to flood control, one such defunct distributary is Wadi Tumilat. The Suez Canal runs to the east of the delta, entering the coastal Lake Manzala in the north-east of the delta, to the north-west are three other coastal lakes or lagoons, Lake Burullus, Lake Idku and Lake Maryut. The Nile is considered to be a delta, as it resembles a triangle or flower when seen from above. The outer edges of the delta are eroding, and some coastal lagoons have seen increasing salinity levels as their connection to the Mediterranean Sea increases, topsoil in the delta can be as much as 70 feet in depth. People have lived in the Delta region for thousands of years, the Delta River used to flood on an annual basis, but this ended with the construction of the Aswan Dam. The Rosetta Stone was found in the Nile Delta in 1799 in the city of Rosetta. The delta was a constituent of Lower Egypt. The Biblical Land of Goshen was located in an area on the west bank of the Pelusiac distributary. There are many sites in and around the Nile Delta. About 39 million people live in the Delta region, outside of major cities, population density in the delta averages 1,000 persons/km² or more. Alexandria is the largest city in the delta with a population of more than 4.5 million. Other large cities in the delta include Shubra al Khaymah, Port Said, El-Mahalla El-Kubra, El Mansura, Tanta, during autumn, parts of the Nile River are red with lotus flowers. The Lower Nile and the Upper Nile have plants that grow in abundance, the Upper Nile plant is the Egyptian lotus, and the Lower Nile plant is the Papyrus Sedge, although it is not nearly as plentiful as it once was, and is becoming quite rare. Several hundred thousand birds winter in the delta, including the world’s largest concentrations of little gulls
5.
Thebes, Egypt
–
Thebes, known to the ancient Egyptians as Waset, was an ancient Egyptian city located east of the Nile about 800 kilometers south of the Mediterranean. Its ruins lie within the modern Egyptian city of Luxor, Thebes was the main city of the fourth Upper Egyptian nome. It was close to Nubia and the desert, with their valuable mineral resources. It was a center and the wealthiest city of ancient Egypt at its heyday. The Ancient Egyptians originally knew Thebes as Wose or Wase A was was the scepter of the pharaohs, a staff with an animals head. Thebes is the Latinized form of the Greek Thebai, the form of the Demotic Egyptian Ta-pe. This was the name not for the city itself but for the Karnak temple complex on the northern east bank of the city. As early as Homers Iliad, the Greeks distinguished the Egyptian Thebes as Thebes of the Hundred Gates, as opposed to the Thebes of the Seven Gates in Boeotia, from the end of the New Kingdom, Thebes was known in Egyptian as Niwt-Imn, the City of Amun. Amun was the chief of the Theban Triad of gods whose other members were Mut and this name appears in the Bible as the Nōʼ ʼĀmôn of the Book of Nahum and probably also as the No mentioned in Ezekiel and Jeremiah. In the interpretatio graeca, Amun was seen as a form of Zeus, the name was therefore translated into Greek as Diospolis, the City of Zeus. To distinguish it from the other cities by this name. The Greek names came into use after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great. Thebes was located along the banks of the Nile River in the part of Upper Egypt about 800 km from the Delta. It was built largely on the plains of the Nile Valley which follows a great bend of the Nile. As a natural consequence, the city was laid in a northeast-southwest axis parallel to the river channel. Thebes had an area of 93 km2 which included parts of the Theban Hills in the west that culminates at the sacred 420-meter al-Qurn, in the east lies the mountainous Eastern Desert with its wadis draining into the valley. Significant of these wadis is Wadi Hammamat near Thebes and it was used as an overland trade route going to the Red Sea coast. In the fourth Upper Egyptian nome, Thebes was found to have neighboring towns such as Per-Hathor, Madu, Djerty, Iuny, Sumenu, according to George Modelski, Thebes had about 40,000 inhabitants in 2000 BC
6.
Memphis, Egypt
–
Memphis was the ancient capital of Aneb-Hetch, the first nome of Lower Egypt. Its ruins are located near the town of Mit Rahina,20 km south of Giza, according to legend related by Manetho, the city was founded by the pharaoh Menes. Capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom, it remained an important city throughout ancient Mediterranean history and it occupied a strategic position at the mouth of the Nile delta, and was home to feverish activity. Its principal port, Peru-nefer, harboured a high density of workshops, factories, during its golden age, Memphis thrived as a regional centre for commerce, trade, and religion. Memphis was believed to be under the protection of the god Ptah and its great temple, Hut-ka-Ptah, was one of the most prominent structures in the city. The name of temple, rendered in Greek as Aί γυ πτoς by the historian Manetho, is believed to be the etymological origin of the modern English name Egypt. The history of Memphis is closely linked to that of the country itself and its eventual downfall is believed to be due to the loss of its economic significance in late antiquity, following the rise of coastal Alexandria. Its religious significance also diminished after the abandonment of the ancient religion following the Edict of Thessalonica, the ruins of the former capital today offer fragmented evidence of its past. They have been preserved, along with the complex at Giza. The site is open to the public as an open-air museum, Memphis has had several names during its history of almost four millennia. Its Ancient Egyptian name was Inbu-Hedj, because of its size, the city also came to be known by various other names that were actually the names of neighbourhoods or districts that enjoyed considerable prominence at one time or another. For example, according to a text of the First Intermediate Period, it was known as Djed-Sut, the city was also at one point referred to as Ankh-Tawy, stressing the strategic position of the city between Upper and Lower Egypt. This name appears to date from the Middle Kingdom, and is found in ancient Egyptian texts. At the beginning of the New Kingdom, the city known as Men-nefer. The name Memphis is the Greek adaptation of this name, which was originally the name of the pyramid of Pepi I, in the Bible, Memphis is called Moph or Noph. The city of Memphis is 20 km south of Cairo, on the west bank of the Nile. The modern cities and towns of Mit Rahina, Dahshur, Abusir, Abu Gorab, the city was also the place that marked the boundary between Upper and Lower Egypt. The island of the city is today uninhabited, the closest settlement is the town of Mit Rahina
