What does the word „pharaoh“ literally mean?
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great house
Only from the New Kingdom did it become a form of address for the king himself.
💡 Did you know? Similarly we say „the White House“ today when we mean the president.
All questions with answers
Which crown stood for rule over Upper AND Lower Egypt?
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the double crown
It combines the white crown of the south with the red crown of the north.
💡 Did you know? Not a single example survives: we know it only from images.
What is the striped headcloth of the pharaohs called?
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nemes
Tutankhamun's golden death mask shows it especially strikingly.
💡 Did you know? The Great Sphinx of Giza wears a nemes too.
Which two symbols did the pharaoh hold crossed over his chest?
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crook and flail
The crook stands for the shepherd of his people, the flail for provision.
💡 Did you know? Both originally belonged to the god Osiris.
Which creature reared up on the king's brow?
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a cobra (uraeus)
It was to destroy the king's enemies with its fire.
💡 Did you know? It embodies the goddess Wadjet, protector of Lower Egypt.
Where were the pharaohs of the New Kingdom buried?
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in the Valley of the Kings
Hidden rock-cut tombs were to protect what pyramids had failed to.
💡 Did you know? It barely helped: nearly all tombs were robbed already in antiquity.
What is the oval frame enclosing a royal name called?
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cartouche
The ring symbolises everything the sun encircles; that is, the world.
💡 Did you know? These very frames helped decipherment: royal names had to be inside them.
Preserving which order was every pharaoh's chief duty?
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Maat
Without it, so the belief went, the world sinks back into chaos.
💡 Did you know? At the judgement of the dead the heart was weighed against Maat's feather.
Who first arranged the Egyptian rulers into dynasties?
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Manetho
In the 3rd century BC he wrote a history of Egypt in Greek.
💡 Did you know? His work is lost: we know it only from quotations by later authors.
How many dynasties does the usual division of the pharaonic era count?
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31
They run from unification to the conquest by Alexander the Great.
💡 Did you know? The 27th and 31st dynasties were Persian great kings: Egypt was a province then.
Which king is regarded as the unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt?
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Narmer
Around 3100 BC the line of pharaohs begins with him.
💡 Did you know? The Narmer Palette shows him with both crowns: the world's oldest political monument.
Who was the last ruler of pharaonic Egypt?
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Cleopatra VII
With her death in 30 BC Egypt became a Roman province.
💡 Did you know? She lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.
Which find made the decipherment of hieroglyphs possible?
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the Rosetta Stone
It carries the same text in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek.
💡 Did you know? Napoleon's soldiers found it in 1799 while building fortifications: purely by chance.
Who deciphered the hieroglyphs in 1822?
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Jean-François Champollion
He realised the signs render not only images but also sounds.
💡 Did you know? After some 1400 years the script could be read again.
Why did Queen Hatshepsut also wear a strapped-on beard?
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because it was part of the pharaoh's regalia
It was not a sign of masculinity but of office.
💡 Did you know? On Tutankhamun's mask it broke off in 2014 and was at first glued back wrongly.
Into which three great flowering periods is Egyptian history divided?
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Old, Middle and New Kingdom
Between them lie the „Intermediate Periods“: phases of fragmentation.
💡 Did you know? The pyramids belong to the Old Kingdom, the Valley of the Kings to the New.
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