Technology and Agriculture

Senusret III, who ruled Egypt during a period of wealth and prosperity, was one of the most powerful rulers of the Twelfth Dynasty. Among his many notable accomplishments, Senusret III is credited with the construction of a canal which allowed trade and travel to pass beyond the first cataract on the Nile River. The cataracts were a series of shallow, white water rapids that prevented travel along the Nile River to the south of Egypt.

Most Egyptian houses were built using mud-baked bricks. These houses were common throughout the span of ancient Egyptian history.

The ancient Greeks were accomplished mathematicians and probably developed many of their earliest innovations on the backs of ancient Egyptian scholars. The ancient Egyptians, however, generally used mathematics for practical purposes, such as accounting. Whereas the ancient Greeks were more inclined to pursue mathematics for its own sake and the illumination it could provide about the nature of the world. This intellectual curiosity is one of the hallmarks of Greek civilization and distinguishes it from the slightly less intellectual civilization of ancient Egypt.

Due to a widespread lack of wood, Ancient Egyptian engineers and architects primarily relied upon stone and brick as their main building materials. Bricks were formed out of the Nile River’s fertile mud and then left to bake beneath the sun until they had been scorched hard and solid under its fiery rays. As for stone, multiple varieties were quarried and utilized; granite, limestone, and sandstone were the most abundantly favored. Generally speaking, stone was mainly used in the construction of pyramids, temples, tombs, and sculptures, while bricks were used much more ubiquitously, to build everything from temple walls, palaces, and civic complexes.

The Turin Papyrus Map is the earliest known example of a topographical survey found anywhere in the world. It shows the location of various metal mines in the Wadi Hammamat. It was used during a quarrying expedition of Ramasses IV to locate gold reserves.

According to archeologists, the earliest documented sample of papyrus paper dates all the way back to the First Dynasty, sometime during the Predynastic Period. As a writing medium, papyrus was infinitely preferable to stone, due to its strength, lightness, durability, and portability. Over time, Ancient Egyptian craftsmen fine-tuned their rigorous process of transforming the raw marsh weed into a suitable piece of writing paper. Papyrus’s inherent versatility allowed it to also be utilized in the formation of chairs, tables, boxes, ropes, and even boats. Astonishingly, several papyrus documents and scrolls have survived to this day – such as the famed Edwin Smith Medical Papyrus and the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus.

Ancient Egyptian civilization arose on the African continent. The earliest Egyptian people had to contend with all manner of threats that emerged from the natural world. One such threat that plagued Egyptians in ancient times was the impact of hippopotami on crops. The animals constantly destroyed the crops of Egyptian farmers by trampling on them or by digging them up. As a result, they were extensively hunted. Even after hippopotami were no longer a threat to Egyptian agricultural communities they were still often hunted as part of a ritualistic ceremony.

Prior to the Neolithic Revolution in Egypt, nutrition was obtained in one of three ways — hunting, gathering, and fishing. After the advent of agriculture, both fishing and gathering continued to be both profitable and common, however, hunting (as a means of providing sustenance) largely died out. Archaeological evidence suggests that hunting still retained a ritualistic purpose throughout much of ancient Egyptian history.

The Egyptians used a flight of steps, constructed on the banks of a river, to measure the rise in the Nile’s water level during the season of inundation. This instrument is called a “Nilometer” because it is used to measure the depth of the Nile.

During the Old Kingdom, the heavy materials needed for the construction of monuments were transported from quarries on sledges pulled by men or beasts of burden. Of course, it would have been much easier to use a wheeled-device, like a chariot, but the wheel was not commonly used or known in Egyptian society until after the invasion of the Hyksos.