CLAA05H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Narmer Palette, Djer, Prehistoric Egypt
Document Summary
Herodotus (histories) called it a gift of the river which was mistranslated. Nile is the longest river in the world and the lifeblood of egypt and other countries. Egypt called kemet ( black land ) which symbolized the fertile nile valley and. Desret ( red land ) refers to the deserts east and west of the nile, representing chaos, storms, foreign lands, seth. Egypt comes from greek aigyptos egyptian hikuptah, a name for memphis from the temple of ptah, hewet-ka-ptah; related to coptic . Egypt had a sense of self as opposed to mesopotamia (fragmented city states with own culture, traditions, languages, e. t. c. ) even if it was politically segregated. Egypt is north of the first cataract (rapids); to the south is nubia (modern sudan) which was considered foreign by the egyptians. Lower egypt to north and upper egypt to south due to flow of nile.
