In the globalized world, it is undoubted that all early civilizations have contributed in some ways to the development of the modern civilization. There are several ancient civilizations that made huge contributions to today's society, like The Indus Valley or the Ancient Egyptian civilization. These ancient civilizations have influenced the modern day life in many ways, they invented many innovative and useful materials. Moreover, their religion also has a big impact on many beliefs in the modern world. This essay will show how the Ancient Nile River Civilization has a massive domination to the modern world's society.
First of all, Ancient Egyptians are innovative thinkers. Their inventions and beliefs have influenced a countless number of our modern technology in many ways, including mathematics, architecture, science, medicine, written language, agriculture, and religion. Egypt is well-known for their extraordinary Pyramid, which is one of the seven wonders of modern world. Their architecture of the pyramid and other monuments, such as monolith has influenced the modern architecture, for example, The Washington monument. The original pyramids are the testament to Egyptians mathematical skill. The construction required advanced mathematics, including geometry, and Pythagoras since pyramids structure are very complex and needed to be constructed correctly ti bo be a success. Their ways of building these monuments are fascinating since highly sophisticated craftsmanship and mathematics weren't developing much during that period of time. Geometry is also used on building irrigation systems.
Egyptian's social structure is arranged like pyramid's shape, seven classes, at the top were the gods, such as Ra, Osiris, and Isis, and that the gods controlled the universe. Pharaoh, as the king who ruled Egypt is believed to be gods in human form, they have the absolute power over everything and they take all of the responsibilities in Egypt, such as controlling the army and judging the laws. Below the pharaoh were the government officials, nobles, and priests, who are responsible for religious activities, such as pleasing the gods. Vizier or pharaoh's assistance made sure that the local governors were doing their jobs, following by Scribes, who are mastered in a specific skill, reading and writing, they collected taxes, kept records of the government, and monitored the food supply. Soldiers that protected the kingdom and supervised the peasants, farmers and slaves that were involved in building pyramids and palaces is in the next class. The middle class consisted of craftsmen, merchants and other skilled workers such as physicians. Next was peasants composed of farmers, servants, and workers. Lastly, at the bottom were slaves, who were captured as prisoners of war. Today, the social classes are assumed to be separated in three categories based on the income, education, occupation, and social status, the upper class with powerful, highly educated and wealthy people, middle class with workers, or employees, and lower class with people with low-paying wage jobs, or unemployed people. But, at the highest class comparing to Egypt as Pharaoh is the leader of the country, each country has different ruler based on their government, for example, The United Kingdom has the queen of the royal family as the head of the country, but it is run by the government, or the United States is ruled by the president.
Egyptian religion and beliefs created a massive impact on the modern world's beliefs about the afterlife. They made us question about the afterlife, what happen after you died, whether gods, heaven or underworld existed or not. Egyptian had complex beliefs about the life after death. Death wasn't the end of life, but it was considered to be a process they had to go through to enter the dimension of complete bliss and eternity. Those souls have to go through the underworld, where they confronted with dangerous creatures, gods, and gatekeeper in order to reach the Hall of Final Judgement. However, the place they will end up depends on how they lived their lives. In the process of going to the afterlife, Anubis will weight the heart of one with the feather of truth on the scale. If the heart of good is lighter than the feather then they would be able to enter the blissful afterlife in the Field of Offerings. On the other hand, the heart that was heavier than the feather, due to the bad deeds they have done, the goddess named Ammus would eat it, and they the souls will be cast into darkness, which caused the Egyptians to worship their gods and do good deeds while they're alive. This has influenced many religion in the modern world, including Christianity and Buddhism about the beliefs of afterlife and karma, if you do good deeds, you would go to heaven, but if you do bad deeds, you would go to hell. Furthermore, they also believed that the body of the dead had to be preserved, by mummification, which is the process of embalming, or treating the dead body by using special methods, usually with Pharaohs, because the soul is not fully detached from the body and in order for the souls to live well in the afterlife, the body should be preserved in the best way possible, also as burying treasures and valuable items, such as jewelry made from silver or gold, also as essential things essential items that would help them survive in the afterlife. During the mummification process, most of the organs were removed, which provided opportunities for examination and observation of human anatomy through the years in the pursuit of medical knowledge. Egyptian contributes the knowledge of medicine for the modern world, especially how to preserved the dead body, also as influencing other civilization such as Chinese civilization on the burial of their dead. By passing on this knowledge to other civilization, they created the first form of paper called papyrus, made from the papyrus plant to record information, religious texts, and important documents, by using their writing system called Hieroglyphics. Additionally, others inventions that are useful to us such as calendar, sundial clock, makeup and black ink was also invented by the Egyptian.
In conclusion, Nile river civilization or the Egyptian has given us many knowledge and inventions, which are useful to us and influenced the culture and technology in the present world. They made such a truly huge remarkable contribution to our modern society, almost as impossible to ignore the impact they have on us, and we will be more affected by the Egyptian ways in the future than it is now.
