Professor Bacon's Journal
I awoke Tuesday morning to the sound of violent ripping. My journal! I immediately panicked, as all my notes are in this book. Some animal must have gotten to it in the nighttime! I leapt up and frantically spotted my journal laying on the ground next to my sleeping bag. "DIE, PLANTS, DIE!!" Professor Smorez was frantically beating a pile of papyrus to the ground. "What are you DOING?" I asked incredulously. "I was trying to make paper," she replied. "That's not how you make paper!" I rolled my eyes. "I was trying to make something "Egyptian" to take home," she said in disgust, "but the only thing I know is paper, or papyrus, whatever."
That gave me an idea. "I can find out what other things the Egyptians made," I said.
After Professor Smorez left (it was her turn to use BOB for research), I scrounged around our campsite for any materials the Egyptians might have used. I made a list of them below.
- Small myrrh plants
- Cinnamon plants
- Papyrus
- A HUGE sycamore tree
- A HUGE bee hive in the HUGE sycamore tree
- Many different types of grain, such as barley and wheat
- Some Boswellia sacra trees, which you can drain resin out from and dry to use as frankincense
- Many different kinds of rock, including igneous rock like pumice
There were a lot of things, and I remember reading about the different inventions that Egyptians created. I made a list of those somewhere... wait a second. There, found it! It's glued below, because I had to take it out from a different notebook.
That gave me an idea. "I can find out what other things the Egyptians made," I said.
After Professor Smorez left (it was her turn to use BOB for research), I scrounged around our campsite for any materials the Egyptians might have used. I made a list of them below.
- Small myrrh plants
- Cinnamon plants
- Papyrus
- A HUGE sycamore tree
- A HUGE bee hive in the HUGE sycamore tree
- Many different types of grain, such as barley and wheat
- Some Boswellia sacra trees, which you can drain resin out from and dry to use as frankincense
- Many different kinds of rock, including igneous rock like pumice
There were a lot of things, and I remember reading about the different inventions that Egyptians created. I made a list of those somewhere... wait a second. There, found it! It's glued below, because I had to take it out from a different notebook.
Early ingredients included the powder of ox hooves, ashes, burnt eggshells and pumice, which probably made for a less-than-refreshing morning tooth-care ritual (see Bibliography for source). I read from a book I had brought from Modern times. Carefully, in a little plastic bowl that we had used to preserve some salad, I put glue, burned some wood to get ashes along with some eggshells, and smashed up the pumice into a powder. When I mixed everything together, the result was a thick, gooey gray paste. I placed some on the toothbrush I had taken out of my bag. Apprehensively, I put it into my mouth. Two seconds later, I was gasping for water. It was repulsive! No wonder the people who used this needed breath mints. After gulping down what seemed like two gallons of water, I set to work on making the mints. I hoped these would taste like orange Tic-Tacs, like they were supposed to, instead of burnt, tasteless, glue.
I had thought about the plow. It wasn't on the list, but I remembered that Ancient Egyptians invented it. I evidently couldn't make one, but I knew it was important to history in general. The plow came along with the invention of the wheel, and it was one big technological step for humanity. This proved that people could invent something to do something for them as
well as doing it themselves. The shadoof also helped this way, so that people didn't have to carry water by hand. Suddenly, Professor Smorez ran up to me holding a large, lumpy brown thing that I think was... bread.
I had thought about the plow. It wasn't on the list, but I remembered that Ancient Egyptians invented it. I evidently couldn't make one, but I knew it was important to history in general. The plow came along with the invention of the wheel, and it was one big technological step for humanity. This proved that people could invent something to do something for them as
well as doing it themselves. The shadoof also helped this way, so that people didn't have to carry water by hand. Suddenly, Professor Smorez ran up to me holding a large, lumpy brown thing that I think was... bread.
"Look!" she said excitedly. "I snuck into - I went to an Egyptian village in Lower Egypt and stole - I mean, bought us some bread."
I looked at it warily. "Okay." I took a bite, and then yelped in surprise. Tiny grits grinded between my molars. "There's sand in this!" I spat. "Gross!"
"I guess it could wear down your teeth," Smorez murmured. "And expose the pulp of your tooth, leaving it vulnerable to infection..."
"Maybe that's a reason why they had breath mints!" I exclaimed. "They invented something that covered the smell that emitted from their rotting mouths!"
The professor wrinkled her nose. "I was in a village full of people who had absolutely no oral hygiene?!"
I mixed together frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon, to get a good smell. Then I frowned. It may smell good, but really, I don't think they have just cinnamon in the red cinnamon Tic-Tacs. I needed something sweet, like sugar, but had a liquid or cytoplasmic consistency to boil it in. Then I spotted the bee hive in the sycamore tree. Perfect.
After smashing the hive and then jumping into a deep pool of water that had formed near the Nile, the bees buzzed off to another tree and I was able to get half a gallon of honey. I boiled it, mixed it in the powder, and shaped the goo that remained into little pellets. Then I popped a dry one in my mouth. It tasted tangy, but very sweet, like tea.
ack ink by mixing a lot of soot into water, making a black, permanent mark on the ground when I dipped a rock into it and dragged the rock across it.
I was unusually lucky when I tried to make papyrus. I first had to find some, and I would have to visit a pyramid. I stepped into BOB, but as I did, I saw something buried in the sand. I picked it up, and I found that it was a piece of papyrus, with hieroglyphs on it!
I decided that I would decode the message that was written on the papyrus. Hieroglyphs were like pictographs, and each one represented a letter or word.
I looked at it warily. "Okay." I took a bite, and then yelped in surprise. Tiny grits grinded between my molars. "There's sand in this!" I spat. "Gross!"
"I guess it could wear down your teeth," Smorez murmured. "And expose the pulp of your tooth, leaving it vulnerable to infection..."
"Maybe that's a reason why they had breath mints!" I exclaimed. "They invented something that covered the smell that emitted from their rotting mouths!"
The professor wrinkled her nose. "I was in a village full of people who had absolutely no oral hygiene?!"
I mixed together frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon, to get a good smell. Then I frowned. It may smell good, but really, I don't think they have just cinnamon in the red cinnamon Tic-Tacs. I needed something sweet, like sugar, but had a liquid or cytoplasmic consistency to boil it in. Then I spotted the bee hive in the sycamore tree. Perfect.
After smashing the hive and then jumping into a deep pool of water that had formed near the Nile, the bees buzzed off to another tree and I was able to get half a gallon of honey. I boiled it, mixed it in the powder, and shaped the goo that remained into little pellets. Then I popped a dry one in my mouth. It tasted tangy, but very sweet, like tea.
ack ink by mixing a lot of soot into water, making a black, permanent mark on the ground when I dipped a rock into it and dragged the rock across it.
I was unusually lucky when I tried to make papyrus. I first had to find some, and I would have to visit a pyramid. I stepped into BOB, but as I did, I saw something buried in the sand. I picked it up, and I found that it was a piece of papyrus, with hieroglyphs on it!
I decided that I would decode the message that was written on the papyrus. Hieroglyphs were like pictographs, and each one represented a letter or word.
Using the key that I made above, I decoded the message on the papyrus. (I found a strange "I" at the end. I ignored that; I think it was one of the many symbols that historians haven't uncovered yet.)
Since pictures are worth a thousand words, I put a little slideshow in that wasn't part of my journal to go in greater depth in the inventions.
Jobs in Ancient Egypt
I surmised that being an Egyptian scribe was not as easy task.
"Few ancient Egyptians could read and write hieroglyphics. Some Egyptian men, however, attended special schools to prepare for careers as scribes in government or business. The Egyptians did not write on clay tablets like the Mesopotamians. For their daily tasks, Egyptian scribes developed a simpler script that they wrote or painted on papyrus. There same scribes carved hieroglyphics onto stone walls or monuments." (Discovering our Past, see Bibliography)
On Wednesday, I tried being a scribe for a whole day. All I did was write on the papyrus that I had made with the ink, and when I found large, flat stones I used my pocketknife to carve writing into it. Since hieroglyphics were the Egyptians' native language, I wrote English as to represent the toughness of the work that they did.
As I mentioned in Geography, Egypt is a very hot place. Unless you were near the Nile, which had cool, humid air blowing over it due to the cold rush of water below it. The scribes only recorded what was going on in their daily life, not made-up stories. Even though I write in a journal every day as well, I include my personal thoughts, ideas, and stories. Their writing was thoughtless, in first person objective point of view. This gave us historians a lot of information, but was very dull for the scribes back in Ancient Egypt. My hand started to hurt and blister, and sweat rolled down my face. The only time I had ever sweat so hard was during a basketball game, and I wasn't even doing any physical activity just sitting here and writing. I hated the job.
The next day, Thursday, I practiced the art of medicine, the Ancient Egyptian way. In Cairo, I saw a dead rat near the airport and removed all the organs in my lab before we left. I sprinkled it with a salt called natron, and I had stored it up until now. "The natron dries up the water in the body, causing it to shrink." (Discovering Our Past, See Bibliography) I took my rat out of its plastic bag (with sterilized gloves, because of course, even as I wanted this to be as realistic as possible, I didn't want to get poisoned with whatever had killed that rat), and saw that it had indeed shrunk in a grotesque little wrinkled skin. "The shrunken, dried body was then filled with burial spices and tightly wrapped in linen." I did this as well. There I had it; my mummy... of a rat.
"The Egyptians learned much about the human body from embalming. This knowledge helped them to develop basic medical skills. Egyptian doctors sewed up cuts and set broken bones. They were the first to use splints, bandages, and compresses. Egyptians also wrote down medical information on papyrus scrolls. These records were the world's first medical books." (Discovering Our Past, See Bibliography)
"Few ancient Egyptians could read and write hieroglyphics. Some Egyptian men, however, attended special schools to prepare for careers as scribes in government or business. The Egyptians did not write on clay tablets like the Mesopotamians. For their daily tasks, Egyptian scribes developed a simpler script that they wrote or painted on papyrus. There same scribes carved hieroglyphics onto stone walls or monuments." (Discovering our Past, see Bibliography)
On Wednesday, I tried being a scribe for a whole day. All I did was write on the papyrus that I had made with the ink, and when I found large, flat stones I used my pocketknife to carve writing into it. Since hieroglyphics were the Egyptians' native language, I wrote English as to represent the toughness of the work that they did.
As I mentioned in Geography, Egypt is a very hot place. Unless you were near the Nile, which had cool, humid air blowing over it due to the cold rush of water below it. The scribes only recorded what was going on in their daily life, not made-up stories. Even though I write in a journal every day as well, I include my personal thoughts, ideas, and stories. Their writing was thoughtless, in first person objective point of view. This gave us historians a lot of information, but was very dull for the scribes back in Ancient Egypt. My hand started to hurt and blister, and sweat rolled down my face. The only time I had ever sweat so hard was during a basketball game, and I wasn't even doing any physical activity just sitting here and writing. I hated the job.
The next day, Thursday, I practiced the art of medicine, the Ancient Egyptian way. In Cairo, I saw a dead rat near the airport and removed all the organs in my lab before we left. I sprinkled it with a salt called natron, and I had stored it up until now. "The natron dries up the water in the body, causing it to shrink." (Discovering Our Past, See Bibliography) I took my rat out of its plastic bag (with sterilized gloves, because of course, even as I wanted this to be as realistic as possible, I didn't want to get poisoned with whatever had killed that rat), and saw that it had indeed shrunk in a grotesque little wrinkled skin. "The shrunken, dried body was then filled with burial spices and tightly wrapped in linen." I did this as well. There I had it; my mummy... of a rat.
"The Egyptians learned much about the human body from embalming. This knowledge helped them to develop basic medical skills. Egyptian doctors sewed up cuts and set broken bones. They were the first to use splints, bandages, and compresses. Egyptians also wrote down medical information on papyrus scrolls. These records were the world's first medical books." (Discovering Our Past, See Bibliography)
Social Structure in Ancient Egypt
I had studied so much about Ancient Egypt, I already knew about the social pyramid.
"The Egyptians were fiercely loyal to the pharaoh because they believed that a strong ruler unified their kingdom. The pharaoh held total power. He issued commands that had to be obeyed. Egyptians believed that a pharaoh's wise and far-reaching leadership would help their kingdom survive such disasters as war and famine."(Discovering Our Past, See Bibliography)
Professor Smorez leaned over my shoulder and peered down at my work. "If you chose to be anyone in Egyptian society, who would you be?" she asked, munching on an apple. "I went to the town again today. I steered far away from the people, 'cause I really don't want to see their teeth, but I saw the pharaoh. He was all grand and high-and-mighty. I would love to be a pharaoh."
I shrugged. "I guess anyone would." Then I thought for a moment. "If you could choose anyone but the pharaoh, who would you be?"
"Whatever's the next most important," Smorez said indifferently. Then she walked away, leaving me to ponder this question.
Priests and nobles were the second most important in the society. I thought that I would like to be that. Then I remembered this afternoon, and the rat. I shuddered. Weren't priests the ones who were in charge of mummification? I wouldn't like being a priestess, anyway, because of all the responsibility. A lot of people would be depending on me.
I would like to be an artisan, because I would be doing something I'm okay at and that I love. I would say that I'd like to be a scribe, but I remembered all the strenuous toil I had put in. If I was writing fiction stories, it would be another thing completely. An advantage of being an artisan would be that I would get a reasonable amount of money and respect for doing something that I really love to do. If I was anything below that, I would be poor and I would hate my job. A disadvantage of my status would be that I would have to work really hard on my work to earn all this money and respect, while the priests and nobles do much less work but they get paid much more.
Professor Smorez leaned over my shoulder and peered down at my work. "If you chose to be anyone in Egyptian society, who would you be?" she asked, munching on an apple. "I went to the town again today. I steered far away from the people, 'cause I really don't want to see their teeth, but I saw the pharaoh. He was all grand and high-and-mighty. I would love to be a pharaoh."
I shrugged. "I guess anyone would." Then I thought for a moment. "If you could choose anyone but the pharaoh, who would you be?"
"Whatever's the next most important," Smorez said indifferently. Then she walked away, leaving me to ponder this question.
Priests and nobles were the second most important in the society. I thought that I would like to be that. Then I remembered this afternoon, and the rat. I shuddered. Weren't priests the ones who were in charge of mummification? I wouldn't like being a priestess, anyway, because of all the responsibility. A lot of people would be depending on me.
I would like to be an artisan, because I would be doing something I'm okay at and that I love. I would say that I'd like to be a scribe, but I remembered all the strenuous toil I had put in. If I was writing fiction stories, it would be another thing completely. An advantage of being an artisan would be that I would get a reasonable amount of money and respect for doing something that I really love to do. If I was anything below that, I would be poor and I would hate my job. A disadvantage of my status would be that I would have to work really hard on my work to earn all this money and respect, while the priests and nobles do much less work but they get paid much more.