Top 5 Ancient Egyptian Facts
They built some of the world's most enduring monuments and have captured our imaginations for centuries. Welcome to WatchMojo's Top 5 Facts. For this instalment, we're counting down the 5 most mystifying things you probably didn't know about Ancient Egypt.
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#5: Ancient Egypt Survived a Very, Very Long Time
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Ancient Egypt was founded long before Ancient Rome or Greece and it lasted for a lot longer. There are multiple events that you could argue marked the end of the culture, so nailing its length is tough, but 3000 years is a pretty good estimate. That’s three millennia of Ancient Egyptian Awesome! That’s more than 12 times as long as America has been a country and about twice as long as the Roman Empire would exist. Speaking of Greeks, Cleopatra, the famous queen of the Nile, wasn’t really an Egyptian–she was Greek! She was the great, great, great granddaughter of Alexander’s favorite General, and she was born in the Greek city of Alexandria. She was Greek. End of story
#4: Ancient Egyptian Artists Helped Scientists Learn About Animal Extinctions
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And they didn’t even need a time machine! Researchers from the University of California used animal pictures in Egyptian art to discover the extinction patterns of large mammals in the Nile region. Ancient Banksy for the win! Some paintings have been connected with times of major environmental change and instability. This has helped the researchers learn when each animal died out and how it affected the ecosystem. This may help them learn more about the effects of ancient civilizations on the environment and maybe some stuff about even modern civilizations. And maybe the future, and maybe aliens–I don’t know, I’m not a scientist
#3: Boys Needed a Big Bundle
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One Ancient Egyptian custom was for a man to bring his "Bundle" to the house of a woman he was interested in. The bundle was basically all of a man’s things. Like, his belongings. If the woman accepted the bundle the man would start living with her. There’s no evidence that there was any kind marriage ceremony beyond this. It was just done, and it was often done pretty quickly after a short dating period. If they even dated at all. Kind of the Ancient equivalent of showing up to a blind date with a U-Haul. The one catch is that if the bundle wasn't big enough to please the woman and her family, they could throw the guy out back on to the street.
#2: The Ancient Egyptians Invented the Nudie Mag
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The Turin Erotic Papyrus is a 3,000 year old Document that shows 12 couples in… shall we say... compromising positions. Researchers don’t know what the document was for, though they think it was probably satirical in some way. But Ancient Egyptians did kind of like sex. Both men and women had casual sex before marriage and they were probably encouraged to do so. Even their religious stories were full of sex. One Egyptian Myth has Amen, the first god, creating the Nile from his own ejaculate. Pharaohs would later masturbate into the Nile as a religious ritual believed to help keep the river flowing.
#1: 8 Million Dog Mummies Were Found in a Catacomb
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…or should I say a Dogacomb? Researchers found millions of mummified animals in a crypt dedicated to Anubis, the god of the afterlife. It was the biggest single finding of mummified animals in history, but it definitely wasn’t the first. In the Egyptian pantheon, different gods were linked with different animals, and being buried with a mummified animal, including a crocodile or a baboon, was thought to bring favor from its associated god. And so, a whole industry of sacred animals developed. Animals were often kept in temples and for a price they could be ceremonially killed and buried with you. So, did we miss anything? What’s your favorite Egyptian Fact? For more vintage Top 10s and incredible Top 5s, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com
