Houghton Mifflin Social Studies
Chapter 7, Lesson 2, Life in Ancient Egypt (pp. 191-198)
I. The Egyptian Religion
B. Egyptians placed possessions in tombs for use by the dead person in the afterlife.
C. Egyptians believed in many gods. Some gods had created the world and ran the
afterlife, and others oversaw everyday life.
II. A Writing System
B. Decoding the Rosetta Stone, in A.D. 1822, allowed modern people to
translate Egyptian texts and to learn about Egyptian life and beliefs.
C. Only a few people knew how to read and write. They were called scribes.
III. A Social Pyramid
B. Below the king, royal family, and nobility were the priests, government
officials, and scribes. Below scribes were the craftsmen and skilled workers.
C. Farmers formed the large base of the Egyptian social pyramid.
Lesson at a Glance Outline
A. Egyptians believed in an afterlife, and that after death,
each person needed an undecayed physical body to keep his or her spirit alive.
A. The earliest Egyptian writing was called hieroglyphics and used
pictures to represent objects, ideas, and sounds.
A. Egyptian society was like a pyramid, with only one person at the top,
the king. The king was believed to be a god.
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