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Primary Source

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Artifacts: Shabtis, Mummification, Online Exhibits, Exhibits, Spurlock Museum, U of I

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Even in the afterlife the deceased had work to do. To avoid these chores, shabtis, small, model servants, were placed in the tombs. The earliest shabtis come from the Middle Kingdom. These figures were mummiform in shape, made of wood or wax, and often placed in model wooden coffins.

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Children's Book

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Sample Lesson Plan

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Subjects

Grade

Brief Description

Learn about the history and science of mummification by making an apple (or chicken) mummy.

Objectives

Students

learn about the history of mummification.

follow instructions to create an apple mummy.

explain in their own words what the experiment taught them about the process of mummification.

Keywords

mummy, mummification, ancient, Egypt, apple, chicken

Materials Needed

apples (one for every four students)

plastic cups

baking soda

salt

a bowl for mixing the baking soda and salt

measuring cups

a scale capable of precise measurement (for weighing apple slices before and after)

Lesson Plan

When students hear of mummies, they might immediately think of ancient Egypt. But the fact is that many cultures mummified their dead. Mummies have been uncovered in China, Mexico, and many other places around the world. In many of those cultures, mummification was thought prepare the dead for a happy afterlife.

The process of mummifying a body is a time-consuming one. All water must be removed from the body. In ancient Egypt, that was accomplished by covering the body with a salt called natron and wrapping the body in bandages. In later years, the process became more sophisticated; body organs were removed and the body was packed with natron before it was wrapped.

Share with students more information about the histories of mummies and the mummification process. You might use textbooks or library books. The following Internet resource offers an overview of the process.

Mummification
This authoritative resource comes from the British Museum.

In order to help students understand how the mummification process works, students can turn an apple slice into a mummy! Here are the simple steps they should take. Students might work in groups of four to complete this activity.

Cut through the top of an apple to slice it in half, and then in half again. Each student in the group will take one of the quartered apple slices.

Instruct each student to precisely weigh her/his apple slice.

Put the apple slice in a plastic cup.

Have each student thoroughly mix cup of baking soda and cup of salt.

Pour the baking soda/salt mixture over the apple in the cup so that the apple is completely covered.

Store the covered apples away from light and moisture for one (1) week.

Note: You might store one apple slice, uncovered, alongside the students' buried apples. Students will be able to compare what happens to their "mummified" apples to what happens to an apple that isn't treated with the salt mixture.

A week later, have students uncover their apple slices. What do they see? (The mummified apple will be shriveled up and its skin will have turned brown.)

Re-weigh the apple slice. How much does it weigh now? Why? (The apple weighs less because "mummification" dried up the water inside it.)

If you would like to explore more deeply the science of mummification, the following links will provide some ideas for doing that:

Extend the Lesson

Have students research and create for their apple mummies a sarcophagus (coffin) like the one in which a mummy might have been stored.

Have students create a "life history" for their mummies. For example, what was the mummy's family life like, what did s/he do for work, and how did s/he die?

If you are up for a more involved (and more fun) experiment, involve students in Making a Chicken Mummy. (Alternate source.)

Assessment

Have students write a summary of the results of the experiment they performed. What did they learn about the mummification process from doing this experiment?

Lesson Plan Source

EducationWorld.com

Submitted By

Gary Hopkins

National Standards

SCIENCE
GRADES K - 4
NS.K-4.1 Science as Inquiry
NS.K-4.2 Physical Science
NS.K-4.3 Life Science
NS.K-4.6 Science in Personal and Social Perspectives
NS.K-4.7 History and Nature of Science
GRADES 5 - 8
NS.5-8.1 Science as Inquiry
NS.5-8.2 Physical Science
NS.5-8.3 Life Science
NS.5-8.6 Science in Personal and Social Perspectives
NS.5-8.7 History and Nature of Science
GRADES 9 - 12
NS.9-12.1 Science as Inquiry
NS.9-12.2 Physical Science
NS.9-12.3 Life Science
NS.9-12.6 Science in Personal and Social Perspectives
NS.9-12.7 History and Nature of Science

SOCIAL SCIENCES: World History
GRADES 5 - 12
NSS-WH.5-12.3 Classical Traditions, Major Religions, and Giant Empires

See more Lesson Plans of the Day in our Lesson Plan of the Day Archive. (There you can search for lessons by subject too.)

For additional history lesson plans, see these Education World resources:

For additional science lesson plans, see these Education World resources:

Education World®
Copyright© 2006 Education World

10/17/2006

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Make a Mummy: The Science of Mummification

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Learn about the history and science of mummification by making an apple (or chicken) mummy. Students learn about the history of mummification. follow instructions to create an apple mummy. explain in their own words what the experiment taught them about the process of mummification.

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Interactive source for students

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Enter the embalmer's workshop, where you are to prepare the body of Ramose, officer to the king, for burial.The chief embalmer, Kha, will be watching your work closely.

Complete your task perfectly, or he will be denied paradise.

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Enter the embalmer's workshop, where you are to prepare the body of Ramose, officer to the king, for burial.The chief embalmer, Kha, will be watching your work closely. Complete your task perfectly, or he will be denied paradise.

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Mummification video

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Alexander The Great Primary Source

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Alexander the Great (*356; r. 336-323): the Macedonian king who defeated his Persian colleague Darius III Codomannus and conquered the Achaemenid Empire. During his campaigns, Alexander visited a.o. Egypt, Babylonia, Persis, Media, Bactria, the Punjab, and the valley of the Indus. In the second half of his reign, he had to find a way to rule his newly conquered countries. Therefore, he made Babylon his capital and introduced the oriental court ceremonial, which caused great tensions with his Macedonian and Greek officers.

Source Criticism

Coin from Byblus: Heracles-Melqart with the features of Alexander the Great

For historians, the distinction between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources is fundamental. A primary source is contemporary with the events it describes: e.g., newspapers, the parliamentary records, diaries, and tape recordings. Primary sources are usually kept in archives and are not what one calls nice reading.

A secondary source is essentially an afterthought of someone who wanted to find out what really happened and has researched the primary sources in the archives. An example is the biography of a king. Publications like these are, depending on the literary qualities of the author, a lot more entertaining, but the reader has to take the writer's word for it that he has used all relevant primary sources. A surprisingly large part of the debates of historians are devoted to accusations of selective use of archival material.

Secondary sources are used to write tertiary source s, which have a larger scope and ignore the details. They are also called syntheses. An example is Syme's The Roman Revolution (1939).

The distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary sources is artificial; there are many works that can be classified in two categories. Nonetheless, the distinction is useful because it offers a tool to establish the relative historical merit of these texts. When a primary and a tertiary source contradict each other, it is better to rely upon the primary source and to explain why the tertiary source has another point of view, than the other way round.

A contemporary source: the Astronomical diary

Astronomical Diary mentioning the Battle of Gaugamela

If we ignore a handful of inscriptions and a passing remark by the Athenian orator Aeschines, the only contemporary, primary source on Alexander is the Astronomical Diary that was kept in the Esagila, the temple of the Babylonian supreme god Marduk. It contains a day-by-day account of celestial phenomena, but also mentions other events, such as the level of the Euphrates, meteorological phenomena, food prices, incidents concerning Babylon and its temples, and political events. After all, celestial phenomena were believed to be omens of important political changes.

Those who want to study Alexander the Great have access to four tertiary sources (written in Greek and Latin), many quotes from secondary sources (all written in Greek) and one primary source. It is written in Babylonian and is also interesting because it offers a non-Greek perspective.

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeologists have excavated hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets in Mesopotamia and Iran, and it has been impossible to publish them all. As a consequence of this backlog, the Astronomical diary still contains lacunas. Nonetheless, it contains very interesting information, such as the prizes of commodities when Alexander's army was in Babylonian (sky high: the governor of the city had to close the market), an otherwise unknown invasion by Arabian tribesmen, and the correct dates of certain events (e.g., Alexander died on 11 June 323 BCE; more...).

The most intriguing information from the Astronomical diary, however, is related to the battle of Gaugamela, which was fought on 1 October 331. It suggests that the Persian soldiers were demoralized and states that they left their king and fled during the battle ( text). This is exactly the opposite of what we read in the four tertiary sources, Diodorus, Curtius Rufus, Plutarch and Arrian: they write that Darius left his soldiers.

Roman portrait of Alexander

The difference is easily explained. The battle was fought on a very dusty plain and it was impossible to see what was going on. At the end of the day, the Macedonians found themselves masters of the field, tried to reconstruct what had happened and assumed that Darius had fled. The official account of the battle was written by Callisthenes of Olynthus ( below) and as we will see, the stories of Diodorus, Curtius Rufus, Plutarch, and Arrian are derived from this account. Modern reconstructions of the battle of Gaugamela that ignore the Astronomical diary are therefore nothing but reconstructions of what the Macedonians thought that had happened, and not of the battle itself.

The Astronomical diary is a very important source, and we can be confident that similar sources are waiting to be discovered in the storage rooms of the modern museums. Lack of money, the present political situation in Iraq and the fact that archaeologists and assyriologists belong to different disciplines, are factors that explain why so many cuneiform tablets remain unpublished.

Zoroastrian texts

Even today, the Zoroastrians (that is, the followers of the legendary prophet Zarathustra) tell stories about a serious religious persecution by "the accursed Alexander", who killed the Iranian priests and ordered the holy book of Zoroastrianism, the Avesta, to be burned. One of these sources is the Book of Arda Wiraz, a description of heaven and hell by a religious scholar who wrote commentaries on the Avesta in the third or fourth century of the common era.

This is a very problematic text because it presumes that there were written Zoroastrian texts in the age of Alexander: after all, you can not burn a copy of the Avesta if it was not a written one. Several modern scholars have argued that in the fourth century BCE, there were no written Avestas, and that religious traditions were transmitted orally. In their view, the writing of the Avesta did not take place before the Sasanian dynasty ruled in Persia, i.e. after 224 CE and probably even later.

Alexander, portrait from Pergamon

In the opinion of the author of this article, this is exaggerated. The texts from the Sasanian age and later additions contain too many statements about the writing of the Avesta in the Achaemenid age to deny the existence of books categorically. The truth may be that in the days of Alexander, the Zoroastrians had a few written texts, and that Alexander has indeed tried to destroy them. (Acceptance of this hypothesis has the additional advantage that it also explains how the Gâthâs have survived, poems from the last quarter of the second millennium BCE that are too well-preserved to be transmitted orally.)

That there were texts that Alexander could destroy, does not mean that oral traditions were not important. Texts like the Book of Arda Wiraz were written long after the events they describe, and contain information that was certainly orally transmitted.

Although oral traditions can be extremely unreliable, it is not wise to ignore them whatsoever. The Jewish Mishna, a large collection of rabbinical wisdom, offers a splendid parallel. It was written down at the end of the second century CE, long after illustrious Pharisee teachers like Hillel had died. For generations, the teachings of the Pharisees had been transmitted orally. However, no modern scholar has ever claimed that the Mishna is not a reliable source for the study of Hillel's teachings. The same holds for the Zoroastrian traditions; although they contain anachronisms and miracle stories (like the Mishna), it is likely that they contain reliable information.

Of course, they are tertiary sources and must be used with caution; nonetheless, they are useful to reconstruct the Persian side of the story, something about which our Greek sources tell us next to nothing.

This page was created in 2004; last modified on 17 January 2017.

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Alexander the Great (*356; r. 336-323): the Macedonian king who defeated his Persian colleague Darius III Codomannus and conquered the Achaemenid Empire. During his campaigns, Alexander visited a.o. Egypt, Babylonia, Persis, Media, Bactria, the Punjab, and the valley of the Indus.

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Children's Book By Jackie Gaff

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Sample Lesson Plan

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ancient civilizations/world history lesson plan

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Alexander The Great | Free Lesson Plans | Teachers

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The Lesson Plan Library offers high school lesson plans covering all major school subjects and special interests.

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Interactive source for students

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Conquer the ancient world in this real time strategy warfare game.

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Alex. The Great Video

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He is one of history's most influential rulers and conquered Asia before his 30th birthday. Join http://www.WatchMojo.com as we count down our picks for the Top 10 Fascinating Facts about Alexander the Great. Subscribe►►http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=watchmojo Facebook►►http://www.Facebook.com/WatchMojo. Twitter►►http://www.Twitter.com/WatchMojo Instagram►►http://instagram.com/watchmojo Suggestion Tool►►http://www.WatchMojo.com/suggest Channel Page►►http://www.youtube.com/watchmojo For this list, we're looking at the most interesting tidbits regarding one of the greatest military minds the world has ever seen.

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Primary Source

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Ancient Egyptian Agriculture, Farming, Diet, Animals - Crystalinks

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Children's Book by

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Sample Lesson Plan

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Inside The Pyramids | Free Lesson Plans | Teachers

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The Lesson Plan Library offers high school lesson plans covering all major school subjects and special interests.

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Interactive source for students

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Nile River Video

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Primary source

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﻿ There are many primary sources to illustrate Ancient Egypt's detailed and powerful beliefs towards the afterlife. The afterlife was not just one of many options for the Egyptians - it was the...

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Children's Book

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Sample lesson plan

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Submitted by: Rachel Zindler

In this multi-day lesson plan, which is adaptable for grades K-5, students use BrainPOP Jr. resources to explore basic knowledge of Ancient Egyptian traditions. Students will also become familiar with the historical period of Ancient Egypt and work in small groups to complete several different activities related to Ancient Egypt.

Note - This series of activities is not designed to be taught in a single day. It is best to spread it out over the course of a week or two, depending on your schedule. This is also meant to be part of a larger study on Ancient Egypt, and should be considered a supplement to a unit, not a complete unit in itself.

Students will:

1. Gain basic knowledge of Ancient Egyptian traditions.

2. Become familiar with the historical period of Ancient Egypt.

3. Work in small groups to complete several different activities.

Materials:

Computer(s)

Access to BrainPOP Jr.

Interactive Whiteboard (optional)

Project the Talk About It KWL chart onto an interactive whiteboard, or create your own KWL chart

Print or project the Belly Up comic

Print (enough for the whole class) or setup computers with the Quiz (only a ¼ of the class will need computers at the same time for this)

A blank timeline spanning from approximately 3500 BC to the present day

Vocabulary:

pharaoh; papyrus; ruins; artifact; hieroglyphics

Preparation:

Log on to BrainPOP Jr. and preview the Ancient Egypt movie. Read all related features, including the Lesson Ideas for adults. Print up suggested materials and set up computer and interactive whiteboard if you plan to use one. Create a simple timeline on the blackboard or make one from a sentence strip or other long paper. Borrow as many books from the library on Ancient Egypt as possible to have in your classroom for student reference. You can find some great books to get you started in the Read About It feature.

Lesson Procedure:

1. As an introduction to the BrainPOP Jr. movie on Ancient Egypt, hand out copies or project the Belly Up cartoon. Ask volunteers to read the characters' speech bubbles to the class and then have them turn and talk about the comic strip. What do they think a pharaoh is? Why is the comic funny or not? Ask the students if they know where pharaohs lived? Tell the class they will be studying Ancient Egypt, where pharaohs lived thousands of years ago.

2. Print, project onto the whiteboard, or make your own KWL chart from the Talk About It feature. Ask students what they know about Ancient Egypt already. They may bring up Mummies, King Tut, or the Pyramids. Ask them to elaborate as much as possible on any of the topics and fill in the first column of the chart (What do you know about Ancient Egypt?) as they discuss. Then ask them about what they'd like to know as you fill in the second column (What do you want to know about Ancient Egypt?). Save the KWL chart for later discussion.)

3. Show your class the timeline you created and ask them to add familiar dates. Most dates will be related to their lives and the history they may have already studied. Ask the class to figure out how far back 100 years would be on the timeline. Then ask them to figure out how far back 1000 years would be. 2000 years? Mark the year 0 on the timeline. Then mark the year 3150 BCE (be sure to maintain correct scale to give students an understanding of how long ago it was). Tell your class that that was when Ancient Egyptian civilization began. Some students may be able to do the math to figure out that it was about 5000 years ago! Tell them to listen as they watch the movie to find out when the civilization ended.

4. Tell students that you will be screening the Ancient Egypt movie twice. They will have a chance to listen and watch the first time and the second time they will pause and discuss the movie. Remember that you can turn on the closed captions to show a larger version of the movie and support students who learn best when reading (click the button marked cc underneath Annie's notebook). Pause at various points for discussion when screening the movie the second time. These are good opportunities to prompt students to turn and talk about new concepts as they arise. For example, you may want to ask students if what they knew about pyramids, King Tut, or other concepts they added to the KWL chart were correct.

5. Afterwards, project the Word Wall feature and ask students to review the vocabulary. After clicking each of the words and displaying the definitions, you may want to reverse the activity and see if students can remember the vocabulary words based on the definitions. If you're using an interactive whiteboard, students can come up and sketch or jot down definitions in their own words. You can also print up copies of the Word Wall sheet and have students work independently or in pairs to complete them.

6. Set up 4 stations in the classroom. Students can rotate through the stations over the course of one day (if you have a large block or time) or throughout a week.

STATION 1: Students take the online or printed quiz. Students can differentiate for themselves by choosing the Hard Quiz or the Easy Quiz, or they can take both quizzes.

STATION 2: Students can do the Write About It feature, either online or on paper.

STATION 3: Students try to figure out the secret hieroglyphic message using the Activity page.

STATION 4: Students can begin by drawing an artifact or ruin on the Draw About It feature and then print out their creations and label them. Then they can play the Game.

7. After all students have rotated through the each of the four stations gather the class together and have students share what they've learned.

8. Finally, guide a class discussion to complete the KWL chart from the Talk About It feature, to list what students have learned about Ancient Egypt. If you used an interactive whiteboard to start the KWL chart you can print up copies of the incomplete version and have students fill in the final column on their own as a form of assessment.

Extension Activities:

This BrainPOP Jr. movie provides a good introduction to Ancient Egypt, but there's tons more to learn about this rich culture! Be sure to give students opportunities to research Ancient Egyptian civilization in more depth. You may want to capitalize on the groups you created to have students work together to read and report on individual gods, various occupations in Egyptian society (nobility, priests and priestesses, merchants, musicians, farmers, slaves etc.), important landmarks, artifacts, or specific pharaohs and their periods of rule. It's also fun to have students research and then write and act out skits about the discovery of King Tut's tomb.

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Ancient Egypt Lesson Plan: Traditions and History | BrainPOP Educators

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In this multi-day lesson plan, which is adaptable for grades K-5, students use BrainPOP Jr. resources to explore basic knowledge of Ancient Egyptian traditions. Students will also become familiar with the historical period of Ancient Egypt and work in small groups to complete several different activities related to Ancient Egypt.

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Interactive source for students

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Events Timeline video

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By April Gabor and Jenna Gilio

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Block C Lesson Plan Form   Date: September 21, 2017				 Grade: 6th Subject: Social Studies Lesson Length: 50 minutes Name: Jenna Gilio & April Gabor  Lesson Title: Introduction to Ancient Egypt Lesson Source: Readworks.org    KCCR Social Studies Standard(s) Standard/Benchmark: Discipline. Kn...

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By April Gabor and Jenna Gilio