Industry in ancient Egypt | Ancient Egyptian Economy – Pharaohs, Wood crafts, Shipbuilding, Weaving, Perfumes, what are the oldest handicrafts and the most famous ornamental tools of the ancient Egyptians, The art of the goldsmith and more about Ancient Egypt History.
The facts and history of all the cottage industries of the Pharaonic era, which were prevalent in Ancient Egyptians art among the Pharaohs and the secrets and culture of the Pharaonic civilization.
Mining, handicraft design, carpentry, porcelain, glass industry, papyrus and textile industry, pottery, leather industries, perfumes and more.
Industry in ancient Egypt
The industries and crafts of ancient Egypt passed from father to son, some were sponsored by rulers, others were not, and these industries and trades can be classified as follows:
What was mining like in ancient Egypt?
It is one of the oldest industries, copper mining and conversion from raw materials was one of the most important professions requiring precision and effort, and the Sinai Peninsula was the region of copper mines.
- Copper is easily extracted from its surface layers and drilled towards it when it is deep.
- Grind the mixture and clean.
- Mix with charcoal and put the mixture in shallow pits and set it on fire.
- Air passes to the pits in special tubes to increase the flames and can use a fan.
- The slag melts and descends to the bottom of the pits and separates the coal.
- Cut the molten copper into small pieces used for various purposes.
- These pieces are transformed by forging into easy-to-form sheets, and some can knock or pour into wooden molds to make statues, ornaments, utensils, weapons, knives, huge door shutters, cones, etc.
Bronze was used more widely over time for the same purposes we mentioned, and there are signs of the use and import of iron before The New Kingdom, but its widespread use appeared at Late Period.
Remnants of burning and smelting iron were found in the vicinity of Nocrates in the Delta, and it was used in Industry in ancient Egypt as weapons, especially for The army in ancient Egypt.
The Egyptians excelled in the manufacture, extraction and use of Gold in Ancient Egypt, the treasures of the Egyptian Pharaohs kings were decorated with gold artifacts, and there were gold mines in the land of Egypt, especially between the Nile River Valley and the Red Sea, especially in the ancient regions of Koush. With gold and silver, we move on to the art of gold smithing.
The Evolution of Goldsmithing Techniques ancient Egypt
Most of the goldsmiths belonged to the state as in Ancient Egyptian Government or to the Egyptian Temples, where they had various metal jewels necessary for palaces, Mortuary Temples, The Egyptian Gods and statues, and they had workshops belonging to palaces or temples, and yet there are drafts working in small popular workshops that offer people their jewels as amulet, of ornaments and the like, and the profession of The Mummification of the Pharaohs encouraged goldsmiths to produce many works of amulets and shapes as Pharaonic Scarab and Pharaonic Ushabti Statues placed in the strips of Mummy in The Coffins in Ancient Egypt.
The wording was not limited to ornaments and small works but concerned the decoration in gold and silver on wood, chairs, doors, tools and utensils, and in the attached form the process of production and delivery of gold by the goldsmith responsible for it to the jeweler who drew and decorated the pots.
It was, for the most part, a consecration text engraved with decorations of a particular person, and the discussion used sharp contrast.
Gold was added with a little silver and sometimes a little copper, and burnt nitron or wine was used as a melting aid. There are jewelry nails on the golden enamel welded to larger gold leaves and containing fine grains and very perfect quality.
How did the ancient Egyptians make their jewelry?
Jewelry was the top class among metal makers, followed by pot, copper, and bronze makers. At the bottom is the fish layer, which is ridiculed by the owner (industrial bags), and bronze manufacturers appear in the shape to the left of the gold and silver formulation.
They are made with bronze doors accompanied by a crowd of workers to operate the furnaces, and three workers are seen carrying bronze ore, one carrying a large mass of bronze and the other carrying a basket filled with bronze fractures topped with an inscription that reads: copper imported from Asia, which His Majesty requested.
When he triumphed over the land of Ertono, so that the gates of Karnak Temple “the temple of Amun” in Luxor, after being covered with gold, would be left behind in the form of the horizon of heaven.
This minister Rekhmire was arranged by the governor of Thebes, During the period of King Thutmose III and King Amenhotep II, the era of the New Kingdom in ancient Egypt “Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt“, the Tomb of Rekhmire – TT100 was discovered in the Tombs of Sheikh Abdel Gorna among Tombs of The Nobles in Luxor | The Pharaonic Tombs from Thebes.
The workshop is full of activity, and in the successive stages of the two doors, and in the four-tone image: the first is shipped with coal from a stake above, while two workers with them blowers protect it, the second has just lifted a pottery crucible with flexible threads, the third is about to put a crucible on it, and the fourth is an incandescent fire with a crucible that may have been used in the final alloy flowing into the pottery mold of the door visible to the right of the drawing.
Wood industries in ancient Egypt
What did carpenters make in ancient Egypt?
Egyptian trees (sycamore, acacia, palm, buckthorn, willow) were not suitable for extensive carpentry, so they imported good wood such as cedar, cypress, and ebony from the outside, especially from the Levant, while Egyptian wood was a resource for ordinary wood necessary for everyday life from which carpenters made household items known as doors and beds.
Imported wood was used to make the doors of temples as in Ancient Egyptian religion, grand palaces, ship masts, sacred boats, royal Funerary Equipment and furniture of the upper class of society, and the Egyptian carpenter used traditional carpentry tools such as saw and dredge (to come), an axe whose sides meet in a sharp angle, various axes, blades, chisels, drills, wood polishing tools, polishing and staining, nails. There were countless artifacts made by carpenters from royal furniture, including statues.
What is Shipbuilding in ancient Egypt?
The great Egyptian Mythology gives us an idea of the size of the naval Industry in ancient Egypt and its unique type and continuous development, it began the boat industry since prehistoric times start from Predynastic Period and Naqada III from Papyrus rods and then from the connection of wood, and then evolved into small ships to transport materials between the cities of the Nile and its branches.
With the beginning of the rule of King Sneferu of Fourth Dynasty of Egypt, the era of the Old Kingdom in Pharaonic Egypt, there was a commercial fleet of ships carrying wood from the Phoenician coast, which were used for various purposes, including ships whose woods were found south of the Great Pyramid of Giza, more than 43 meters long, whose wood may have been used to build The Pyramids of Giza “Pyramid of Khufu , Pyramid of Khafre, Pyramid of Menkaure, The Sphinx of Giza” and their interior facilities.
Among the shipbuilding Industry in ancient Egypt was the manufacture of oars, sails, masts, and rudders. The types of ancient Egyptian ships that were manufactured were: commercial, military, and public transport and use in Trade in Ancient Egypt.
Faience making in ancient Egypt
Porcelain and earthenware is a type of ceramic floor or wall tiles on which the required decorations and shapes are painted. It was known by the Egyptians before the dynasty “Dynasty 00, Dynasty 0” and rose in ancient times, where small blue earthenware plates were used to decorate the walls and gates of the Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, the amphitheater, and The Southern Tomb of King Djoser funeral complex from Third Dynasty of Egypt.
The porcelain and earthenware Industry in ancient Egypt were not limited to walls and floors, but was used in the manufacture of amulets, rings, pots, necklaces, pearls, animal statues and funerary statues called Pharaonic Ushabti Statues.
There were many factories for production of pottery and glass-based on quartz stone, from which they grind and make a paste placed in pottery molds and exposed to high temperatures,” and archaeologists have found many of these molds in pottery, which dates to the eighteenth dynasty and beyond.
More than 10,000 pottery molds were found among the remains of tiles factories in the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt Its founder King Ramesses I and Twentieth Egyptian Dynasty “The Ramesside Period“, where the rest of the dough was still stuck, and the Industry in ancient Egypt was scattered throughout many parts of the country, with evidence of the discovery of such molds in the oldest regions, such as Tell el-Amarna, Memphis and The city of Naucratis or Naukratis from the late era, the beginning of the rule of the kings of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty of Egypt.
The manufacture of ceramics and faience:
included chemical mixing of quartz stone and melting it with silicon sand, then adding natron and glass materials, and it referred to a group of delicate processes that came from a long experience in this field.
- Glass chemistry also needs to dissolve siliceous sand, quartz sand, natron, ash and colors.
- The chemistry of industrial colors used to deal with stable ores such as:
- Black color: compounds of copper, manganese or iron
- Blue color: cobalt or iron and copper compounds
- Green: copper or iron compounds
- Red color: red copper oxide
- White color: tin oxide
- Yellow color: lead oxide
How was glass made in Ancient Egypt?
The Egyptians made glass from silica sand and quartz sand, which contained calcium carbonate, which was added to tarantulas, plant ash, and other colored materials.
The glass factories transformed the glass foundry into what the manufacturer wanted by placing it around the clay body that is supposed to look like it and, in the colors wanted like tractors and utensils, and the decoration was sometimes done by turning the fluid glass bars into stained glass bars where they decorated what they wanted and fed it.
Papyrus making in ancient Egypt
How did ancient Egyptians make papyrus?
Egypt was rich of papyrus (which is now almost extinct). Papyrus is a long plant with a leg ranging from two to three meters, other than a solid exterior and a soft pulp, and papyrus is made by cutting the stems and getting rid of the outer bark using the soft pulp to form long strips on which to place other strips.
Then hit the slices with wooden hammers and place on them a cloth absorbing the soft pulp juice, then integrate the lamelles in a special way and let dry and become suitable for writing.
Egypt became the main center of the papyrus Industry in ancient Egypt in the ancient world, on which its cultural heritage and official and popular transactions are written.
The paper Industry in ancient Egypt in the strict sense was made by the Chinese in the first century AD from bamboo stalks, worn rags, fishing nets, cannabis and weed, not papyrus.
Egyptian papyrus packages were distinct and stable over time if kept in private jars and away from the wet sky. Papyrus has also been used in the manufacture of small boats, baskets, ropes, inventory, and others.
What handicrafts did ancient Egypt have?
Inventory, basket, and rope Industry in ancient Egypt:
It is one of the ancient industries practiced by the ancient Egyptians, They were used to cover the floor, sofas and chairs and sometimes used as curtains for doors and windows.
The basket Industry in ancient Egypt is mainly palm leaves and is also decorated with colorful decorations and is of different sizes. The ropes were made of different plants, flax and palm fibers.
What was the textile production in ancient Egypt?
The first textiles were linen, then wool, silk and then cotton fabric appeared. The method of weaving linen, for example, was combed, wired, struck, spinning and the fibers were pulled in pegs on the floor in parallel, and then the vertical fibers were woven on it by weavers using two wooden sticks for this purpose.
Vertical combs supported by two pillars appeared on the floor, and women made fabric as skillfully as men. Ancient Egypt only knew about wool, silk and cotton weaving in later times, such as the Hellenistic period and beyond.
How was fabric made in ancient Egypt?
At the beginning of the dynastic era First Dynasty of Egypt The beginning of the rule of King Narmer, the brown tartan fabric was found in Tarkhan, perhaps due to the obsolescence of time, because the information we had confirmed that the use of colors had begun since the Third Dynasty, and the dyes of the clothes were made based on dust (clay consisting of iron oxide or rust) and when it was heated.
It becomes smaller, or based on vegetable dyes, and the dye of the clothes has been fully purified or preserved because the color is distributed in the form of regular and irregular spots on the coat using clay or honey. There was a method of pigmentation called double dyeing, where clothes were colored in a specific color and then dyed in another color for the stream in a third different color.
What were bricks used for in ancient Egypt?
The houses were built with clay bricks or raw brick made of clay and a little sand or hay to make it coherent and were placed in wooden molds and dried under the sun, a simple Industry in ancient Egypt that was meticulously recorded by craftsmen in the cemetery (Rekh Mi Ra) in the 18th dynasty.
Red or burnt bricks were not used in ancient Egypt until Greek-Roman era, The brick Industry in ancient Egypt has been linked to construction activity.
How did ancient Egyptians make pottery?
Pottery is made of silt in both types (dark and light) or (brown and gray), and prepares the silt paste and can be added a little hay to make it coherent, then be formed by hand or in the pottery wheele, then dried and then burned in wood-burning ovens, hay and thumbs. Sometimes the time is refined before drying it with pieces of hard and soft stone and uses colors, decorations, inscriptions, braids, etc.
Manufacture of stones and stone pots:
It is one of the oldest industries, and it was carved from hard stone or alabaster or small stones such as diorite, shist and sandstone, and the pots were drilled with metal-headed drills.
We must not forget the virtue of this Industry in ancient Egypt and its craftsmen in the manufacture of the stones from which the pyramids were built to know more about The Secrets of Pyramid Construction, as well as the stones of columns, Obelisks as Obelisk of Senusret I and The unfinished obelisk in Aswan, Egyptian Antiquities, etc. Pots were widely used in homes for various purposes such as storage, grinding, cooking and others.
Leather Work in Ancient Egypt
There have been many leather industries that rely first on tanning and dyeing leather, and then make what man needs from them, such as belts, clothing, shoes (slippers) and special cans, and animal skins have been used to transport water and save liquids, some of which have also been used in writing.
Food Industries:
The ancient Egyptians knew many types of food industries such as baking, cakes and sweets, extracting oils from cereals or seeds, drying grapes to make raisins, drying dates and figs, extracting perfumes from flowers, drying, and salting fish.
The most important of these food industries were the barley bean beer industry and the grape wine Industry in ancient Egypt, dates, pomegranates, figs, and palm trees.
The alcoholic food Industry in ancient Egypt
was beer (beer) and wine, and beer was based on the fermentation of barley, while wine was based on fermenting types of fruits, the most important of which were grapes and palm tree wine, which was used for embalming, and date wine, which is the undistllled arak, and wine from the fruits of the stitches, and perhaps pomegranate wine and figs.
Non-alcoholic food industries
such as sugar, cane sugar, honey, date juice, grape juice, and others. Milk, butter, cheese and other industries.
Drugs and medicines, and we will discuss them in detail on the topic of medicine and pharmacy.
The chemistry of metals and metallurgy
which is the largest and most basic type of chemistry.
How did ancient Egyptians make wine?
Beer In pre-dynastic times, the beer Industry in ancient Egypt appeared, and drawings were engraved on the walls of Egyptian Tombs of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt with a central cemetery from the time of the Middle Kingdom during rules Eleventh Dynasty of Egypt Mir village in Asyut and a cemetery in Thebes of the 18th dynasty illustrating the manufacture and circulation of beer. Religious and funeral rituals were particularly accompanied. Beer was also used as a medicine and as an antiseptic.
Did the pharaohs drink wine?
In a wooden sculpture of the Eleventh Dynasty, found in the site of Deir El Bahari, we see the stages of beer making from beginning to end: the stages of the beer Industry in ancient Egypt were.
How was beer made in ancient Egypt?
- Soak the barley in water, then dry and remove its crust as it causes a bitter taste.
- Soak again for five hours.
- Make a soaked yeast paste and add baking yeast.
- Store in a warm place and after brewing separate the liquid from the solid with a sieve.
- The liquid is added to the liquid with solids such as lupine, apple fruit, bitter orange peel, etc.
How was beer brewed in ancient times?
Ingredients
- A loaf of barley.
- A liter of water.
- Amount of lupine.
Method
- Soak the bread in water for a day, then drain it and place it in the sun for another day to dry.
- Soak the bread in water for five hours and place it in a warm place until fermenting.
- Add the lupine until it acquires the bitter taste, then serve.
How did ancient humans make wine?
Wine was made from many sugar fruits, the most famous of which were grapes, and was used as an offering to the gods and as sugar syrup or taken with food, and scenes of its preparation appeared in many inscriptions as in Agriculture in Ancient Egypt.
The Egyptians called grapes and vines several vocabularies (kem, erert, wons, erb, hes.)
When it was time to collect, people have grapes in small baskets carried by the boys while large baskets were placed on the ground, and the ancient Egyptians did not use the range to pick bunches, but picked them with their fingers and filled their pickers with great caution so as not to spoil the grapes, for the extracts were not the kind of water that escaped from them.
They then sing, carrying their baskets on their heads, emptying them into large tans, and then returning to the vineyards. The animal was in no way used to transport the harvesters, but in the country where the vines were widely cultivated, it would have been better to move the grapes from the vines to the distillation site in boats to avoid injuring them and wasting this precious juice.
Industry in ancient Egypt. The preparation of the wine was easy, because the bunches of grapes cleaned the suspended solids and left the grapes to ferment by the yeast that was mainly stuck on their crust, and the grains were trieded and trampled until their juice was extracted, and the grapes were placed in a warm place to ferment, then drained the liquid by placing the whole fermented grapes in bags. Egyptian wines were generally dark and some were red or white. Wine preparations were carried out with the grape picking season before the end of summer. Fermentation was carried out in a sealed tractor. Wine was filled in semi-conical pottery pots or in swollen amphorized
Wine was present at daily tables as part of food and drink, public and religious celebrations, and funeral events. The Egyptians liked to drink wine, the best of which was “mariote” and “teiuti”, and palm wine was used in embalming operations to wash the abdominal cavity of the body, and sewn wine was also used as “Egyptian plum” and possibly pomegranate wine and figs.
Sometimes the Egyptians may have kept the bodies of their dead in Shahad. Grape juice was also made in Egypt.
Perfumery in ancient Egypt
The perfume Industry in ancient Egypt was advanced and pioneering, and there were two ways to make perfumes:
How do you make perfume in ancient Egypt?
- Put the flowers in a large plate of papyrus or grind the aromatic plant or flowers and squeeze them and put them in canvas bags and squeeze their components, and the leaves or bags have two ends that are pressed by two women, then put roses with a little water inside the board, then each woman rotates the part that holds her in front of the other direction and the rose water is pressed and filtered from the rose water into a vase that has been placed under them to absorb the pinched amount, then kept in ceramic and pottery pots, then run and distributed in bottles. This was the method adopted for the perfume Industry in ancient Egypt for all. The aromatic plant or its flowers can be cooked with animal fats and converted into aromatic fats and oils.
- The flowers were placed in a small pottery pot and burned to give a fragrant smell to the atmosphere, and this type of perfume was part of the offerings provided to the gods or to say goodbye to the deceased, not for ornamental purposes but religious perfumes.
The volumetric units used in the perfume Industry in ancient Egypt are Ro = 15 mm, Ja = 320 mm, hen = 480 mm.
Ancient Egypt did not know alcohol as a pulp for the petals and aromatic parts of plants, but oil was the substance in which these substances work, sometimes boiled with oil, then pressed and separated from the oil by perm and plunger into a cloth or bag, this method is called (pressure at the cold) where the flowers or perfume raw material are placed in a linen cloth and two women squeeze it in opposite directions with the help of sticks, and at the bottom the pottery tractor is placed to collect the extracted essential oil.
The Gardens of the Pharaohs:
The Egyptians took care of the gardens from a religious point of view, believing that the gods rejoiced in them, and this was the beginning of the emergence of public gardens for decoration and comfort when the rich began to use the trees for shade and their aesthetic form, and there are indications that since 1500 BC. the manifestations of decorative gardening and the design of the botanical landscape were active.
The lotus swamps were walled with rows of palm trees and trees, and the gardens included other types of trees such as figs, walnuts, willows, and grapes, and the gardens were decorated with flowers, chrysanthemums, and lotuses.
The Egyptian kings were eager to have coordinated and beautiful gardens in their palaces as Palace of Malkata who built by King Amenhotep III, and these palaces were surrounded by gardens and orchards.
Industry in ancient Egypt. The gardens of the house were usually present, “and some traces of the houses of Amarna refer to the house, which disappears completely behind a huge garden and is surrounded by a square plot on almost all sides, a high wall with openings and shaded by rows of trees. The main door leads to the vineyard garden, where luxurious vines with large bunches of blue grapes climbing on built barriers.
The garden was usually home to water pools that housed geese and ducks. They included birds in their trees. It included common vegetables such as onions and leeks, and the gardens were walled, with a fishpond in the middle and surrounded by in finely carved sycamore.
One of the most important private ornamental gardens is a model found in a tomb that was in grain stores called “Neb Amun“.
Facts about the pharaohs:
In the lower left corner of the image, a vine can be distinguished without accessories, and in the upper right corner of the image we see a scene that reminds us of the image, as close to reality as it is, is still part of the funerary texts as in “Book of Amduat, The Book of the Heavenly Cow, The Book of the Dead,Book of Caverns , Book of Gates“. The scene depicts a woman who represents the incarnation of the God Nut or the God Hathor, the lady of West Sycamore, who was carrying supplies as if she had taken over the owner of the tomb in the afterlife.
The engineer in charge of houses and palaces is responsible for the design of his gardens, while the gardener focused on irrigating plants and trees through direct watering or the use of shaduf an ancient irrigation instrument. The planting basins were divided into squares separated by runoff grooves.
Industry in ancient Egypt. Lotus flower ponds were sometimes surrounded by plants such as poppy, amber, and other climbing plants. There are some plants imported from Asia or Africa such as fig trees, incense of Punt, pomegranate trees and others, and there were in the royal gardens who is responsible for the preparation of flower courses as with Tomb of Nakhtamon – TT341 during the reign of King Amenophis III, who was also called (gardener of holy offerings provided to the God Amun), that is, he was the gardener of the temple.
Perhaps the most beautiful gardens of the gods are the Garden of the Sun dedicated to the God Aton at the time of Akhenaten and his wife Queen Nefertiti in Amarna.
The garden was adjacent to the Temple of Aten and surrounded by a range of trees planted in ponds and the garden was penetrated by a gallery described as papyrus columns and in front of each tree column and on both sides of the gallery regular rows of palm trees and pomegranate trees, domes and vines growing among them almond and olive trees and the garden consisted of sections of herbs and flowers.
In addition to the gardens of houses, palaces and decorations found (medicinal herb gardens) in the time of King Ramses II and his Wife Queen Nefertari containing chamomile, linden, bear, cedar (buckthorn) and cotton, the garden contained other medicinal herbs and these pharmaceutical gardens were usually attached to the temple and supervised by specialized priests.
References Industry in ancient Egypt: The Book of Egyptian Civilization, Egypt
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