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Description words for ancient Egypt. https://www.wordclouds.com/

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How ancient Egyptians prepare mummy's for afterlife.

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How ancient Egyptians prepare mummy's for afterlife.

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This gallery explores death and the afterlife, something which held particular significance and meaning for the ancient Egyptians.

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What caused the ancient Egyptians to decline 

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What caused the ancient Egyptians to decline 

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What caused the decline of ancient Egyptian civilization? The empire on the Nile river reached the peak of its power, wealth and influence in the New Kingdom period (1550 to 1070 B.C.), during the reigns of iconic pharaohs like Tutankhamun, Thutmose III and Ramses II, who may have been the biblical pharaoh of the Exodus story.

At its height, the Egyptian Empire controlled an expansive territory stretching from modern-day Egypt up through the northern Sinai peninsula and the ancient land of Canaan (which encompasses modern-day Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan and the southern portions of Syria and Lebanon).

But starting with the murder of Ramses III in 1155 B.C., the once-great Egyptian Empire was slowly brought to its knees by a centuries-long drought, economic crises and opportunistic foreign invaders.

Ramses III, the Last Great Egyptian Pharaoh

Ramses III ruled Egypt for 31 years and is widely considered the last of the "great" pharaohs. His reign coincided with one of the most turbulent and challenging periods in ancient Mediterranean history, known as the invasion of the "Sea Peoples."

The precise identity of the Sea Peoples is still unknown, but most scholars believe they were an ethnically diverse band of refugees from the western Mediterranean displaced by drought and famine, who came east looking for new lands to conquer and inhabit. Marauding fleets of Sea Peoples may have attacked Egypt at least twice during the reigns of Merenptah and Ramses III.

In 1177 B.C., Ramses III and the Egyptian navy successfully repelled the second massive Sea Peoples invasion, and the pharaoh memorialized the victory on the walls of his temple and tomb complex in Medinet Habu.

But the celebration was short-lived, says Eric Cline, an archaeologist and historian of the Bronze Age, who wrote 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Ramses III was able to fight off the Sea Peoples, but not an assassination plot by a jealous secondary queen in his harem. According to CT scans of Ramses III's mummy, the pharaoh was stabbed through the neck and murdered in 1155 B.C.

"That was the beginning of the end," says Cline. "After Rameses III, that's it. Egypt is never the same again."

Domino Effect of Bronze Age Collapse

In the 12th century B.C., the entire Mediterranean region went through a cataclysmic event known as the " Bronze Age Collapse." For the kingdoms that fell to the Sea Peoples-or to other contemporaneous calamities like drought and famine-the collapse was swift and absolute. The Mycenaeans of Greece and the Hittites of Anatolia, for instance, saw their cities, cultures and even written languages essentially wiped out.

In part because Ramses III was able to repel the Sea Peoples, Egypt lasted longer, says Cline. But it eventually fell prey to the same problems afflicting the broader region: a "megadrought" lasting 150 years or more and the disintegration of a once-thriving Mediterranean trade network.

"The international connections that had been so prominent and prevalent during the late Bronze Age are all cut," says Cline. "In Egypt, the 12th century after Ramses III is marked by food shortages and political infighting, and also a rapid decline in Egypt's role as a major international power."

Disease, Lost Resources and Tomb Robbing

After the death of Ramses III, Egypt was ruled by a string of ineffectual pharaohs also named Ramses. (Ramses XI, who died around 1070 B.C., was the last pharaoh of the New Kingdom.) Archaeological records from this period give clues to why and how Egypt entered such a rapid decline.

For example, the mummy of Ramses V appears to have smallpox scars on his face. While historians can't be sure if he actually died from smallpox, records indicate that Ramses V and his family were buried in newly dug tombs, and also that there was a six-month moratorium on anyone visiting the Valley of the Kings after the burials.

Some scholars suggest this may have been one of the first disease-inspired isolation orders on record-and a possible sign that Egypt was plagued by a smallpox outbreak at that time.

In addition, during the reigns of Ramses V and Ramses VI, Egypt appears to have lost control of important copper and turquoise mines in the Sinai peninsula, since their names were the last of the Egyptian pharaohs inscribed on the sites. Egypt had probably withdrawn completely from Sinai and Canaan by 1140 B.C., says Cline.

Then, under Ramses IX, who ruled at the end of the 12 th century B.C., Egypt was rocked by a string of tomb robberies. The economic conditions were so desperate-and the respect of the pharaoh's authority so low-that thieves brazenly raided the tombs of fallen pharaohs for gold and treasure.

"It's a shocking crime, but the reign of Ramses IX is just the beginning of a sustained period of royal tomb robberies," says Cline. "At one point, during the reign of Ramses XI, they had to move some of the royal mummies for safekeeping."

Foreigners on the Throne

After the New Kingdom, Egypt was ruled by a succession of foreign powers, further evidence of its decline as an independent empire.

First came the Libyans, a nomadic people from the western frontier of Egypt, whose influence and culture gradually took over the seats of power. Shoshenq I, a pharaoh of Libyan descent, was the first pharaoh of the 22nd Dynasty, who tried to restore the glory days of Ramses III by invading the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the 10th century B.C.

Then, in the 8th century B.C., the Nubians or Kushites peacefully claimed the Egyptian throne during a time of political turmoil. A succession of Kushite pharaohs ruled Egypt for nearly a century as the 25th Dynasty before being pushed out by Assyrian invaders.

"Once the Kushite kings took over, that was really the end of Egypt as an independent power," says Cline. "Then the Assyrians came in, followed by the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans and then Islam. If you're talking about ancient Egypt being a power unto itself and being ruled by Egyptians, it was never the same again."

Egypt experienced its last gasp of greatness under the Ptolemaic Dynasty (305 to 30 B.C.), a succession of Macedonian Greek pharaohs who ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great. Cleopatra VII is the best-known of the Ptolemaic pharaohs, who constructed a magnificent Hellenistic capital in Alexandria.

When Cleopatra and Marc Antony were defeated by the Roman Emperor Octavian ( Augustus) in 30 B.C., Egypt became a province of the Roman Republic, bringing an end to the last of the ancient Egyptian dynasties.

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What Caused Ancient Egypt's Decline? | HISTORY

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The once-great empire was slowly brought to its knees by a centuries-long drought, economic crises and opportunistic foreign invaders.

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How the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids 

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How the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids 

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Researchers in Egypt discovered a 4,500-year-old ramp system used to haul alabaster stones out of a quarry, and reports have suggested that it could provide clues as to how Egyptians built the pyramids. Yet while the ramp system is a significant technological discovery, the pyramid connection is still a bit of a stretch.

Archaeologists from the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo and the University of Liverpool discovered the ramp system's remains in an ancient alabaster quarry at Hatnub, a site in the Eastern Desert. The ramp system dates at least as far back as the reign of Pharaoh Khufu, who built the Great Pyramid at Giza.

Ministry of Antiquities

"This system is composed of a central ramp flanked by two staircases with numerous post holes," Yannis Gourdon, co-director of the joint mission at Hatnub, told Live Science. "Using a sled which carried a stone block and was attached with ropes to these wooden posts, ancient Egyptians were able to pull up the alabaster blocks out of the quarry on very steep slopes of 20 percent or more."

It's difficult to tell the significance of this discovery since the archaeologists haven't yet published their research on it, says Kara Cooney, a professor of Egyptian art and architecture at the University of California, L.A., who is not involved in this research.

"It's a stretch to take an alabaster quarry and say this is how the pyramids were built, because the pyramids weren't built out of alabaster," she says. "The way that the ancient Egyptians cut and moved stone is still very mysterious."

Alabaster is a softer mineral, different from the heavy stone blocks with which Egyptians built the outer structure of the pyramids.

"We actually don't know [their] mechanism of cutting hard stones like red granite," she says. "And we still don't know how the ancient Egyptians lifted blocks weighing hundreds of tons up the sides of the pyramids."

Most Egyptologists already think that Egyptians used ramp systems to build the pyramids, but there are different theories about what types they used. Cooney says experts have theorized they could've used straight ramps that went up the pyramid's outside walls, ramps that curved around these walls or ramping systems inside the pyramid itself.

So although the ramp system discovery in the alabaster quarry does tell us something about Egyptians' technological knowledge, it doesn't answer the big questions about how they built the pyramids. And that's exactly the way the ancient Egyptians would've wanted it.

Just as "any authoritarian regime is going to hide their secrets as long and as best as they can," Cooney says, the Egyptians purposefully left no record of how they built their pyramids.

"The pyramids are there as mountains of stone proving the otherworldly nature of their god-kings. You stand in front of those pyramids and you feel it's impossible to build such a thing." That means, she says, that "the propaganda is still working."

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How Did Egyptians Build the Pyramids? Ancient Ramp Find Deepens Mystery

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Researchers in Egypt discovered a 4,500-year-old ramp system used to haul alabaster stones out of a quarry, and reports have suggested that it could provide clues as to how Egyptians built the pyramids. Yet while the ramp system is a significant technological discovery, the pyramid connection is still a bit of a stretch.

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King Tutankhamun (Tutankhamen or simply King Tut) ruled Egypt as pharaoh for 10 years until his death at age 19, around 1324 B.C. Though his rule was notable for reversing the religious reforms of his father Akhenaten, Tutankhamun's legacy was largely negated by his successors. He was barely known to the modern world until 1922, when British archaeologist Howard Carter chiseled into the intact tomb of King Tut. The tomb's hoard of treasure, intended to accompany the king into the afterlife, revealed an incredible amount about life in ancient Egypt, and made Tutankhamun the world's most famous pharaoh.
WATCH: The Egyptian Book of the Dead on HISTORY Vault
Who Was King Tut?

Genetic testing has verified that King Tut was the grandson of the great pharaoh Amenhotep III, and almost certainly the son of Akhenaten, a controversial figure in the history of the 18th dynasty of Egypt's New Kingdom (c.1550-1295 B.C.). Akhenaten upended a centuries-old religious system to favor worship of a single deity, the sun god Aten, and moved Egypt's religious capital from Thebes to Amarna.

After Akhenaten's death, two intervening pharaohs briefly reigned before the nine-year-old prince, then called Tutankhaten, took the throne.

Did you know? Carter's patron, Lord Carnarvon, died four months after first entering the tomb, leading journalists to popularize a "Curse of the Pharaohs," claiming that hieroglyphs on the tomb walls promised swift death to those who disturbed King Tut. More than a dozen deaths have been attributed to the curse, but studies have shown that those who entered the tomb on average lived just as long as their peers who didn't enter.

Tutankhamun reversed Akhenaten's reforms early in his reign, reviving worship of the god Amun, restoring Thebes as a religious center and changing the end of his name to reflect royal allegiance to the creator god Amun. He also worked in concert with his powerful advisers Horemheb and Ay-both future pharaohs-to restore Egypt's stature in the region.

How Did King Tut Die?

There are many theories as to what killed King Tut at the age of 19. He was tall but physically frail, with a crippling bone disease in his clubbed left foot. He is the only pharaoh known to have been depicted seated while engaged in physical activities like archery. Traditional inbreeding in the Egyptian royal family also likely contributed to the boy king's poor health and early death. DNA tests published in 2010 revealed that Tutankhamun's parents were brother and sister, and that King Tut's wife Ankhesenamun was also his half-sister. Their only two daughters were stillborn.

Because Tutankhamun's remains revealed a hole in the back of the skull, some historians had concluded that the young king was assassinated, but recent tests suggest that the hole was made during mummification. CT scans in 1995 showed that the king had an infected broken left leg, while DNA from his mummy revealed evidence of multiple malaria infections, all of which may have contributed to his early death.

King Tut: Mummy and Tomb

After he died, Tutankhamun was mummified according to Egyptian religious tradition, which held that royal bodies should be preserved and provisioned for the afterlife. Embalmers removed his organs and wrapped him in resin-soaked bandages, a 24-pound solid gold portrait mask was placed over his head and shoulders and he was laid in a series of nested containers-three golden coffins, a granite sarcophagus and four gilded wooden shrines, the largest of which barely fit into the tomb's burial chamber.

Because of his tomb's small size, historians suggest King Tut's death must have been unexpected and his burial rushed by Ay, who succeeded him as pharaoh. The tomb's antechambers were packed to the ceiling with more than 5,000 artifacts, including furniture, chariots, clothes, weapons and 130 of the lame king's walking sticks.

The entrance corridor was apparently looted soon after the burial, but the inner rooms remained sealed. The pharaohs who followed King Tut chose to ignore his reign, as despite his work restoring Amun, Tutankhamun was tainted by the connection to his father's religious upheavals. Within a few generations, the tomb's entrance had been clogged with stone debris, built over by workmen's huts and forgotten.
READ MORE: 9 Fascinating Finds From King Tut's Tomb
Howard Carter

By the time he discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter had been excavating Egyptian antiquities for three decades. At the time of the discovery, archaeologists believed that all the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, across the river from ancient Thebes, had already been cleared.

Excitement about the new tomb-the most intact ever found-quickly spread worldwide, igniting a global fascination with the boy pharaoh and the powerful civilization of ancient Egypt. It took Carter and his team a decade to catalogue and empty the tomb.

Grand Egyptian Museum

Artifacts from King Tut's tomb have toured the world in several blockbuster museum shows, including the worldwide 1972-79 "Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhibitions. Eight million visitors in seven U.S. cities viewed the exhibition of the golden burial mask and 50 other precious items from the tomb.
READ MORE: 14 Everyday Objects of Ancient Egypt
Today the most fragile artifacts, including the burial mask, no longer leave Egypt. Tutankhamun's mummy remains on display within the tomb in the Valley of the Kings in the KV62 chamber, his layered coffins replaced with a climate-controlled glass box. His golden mask is on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but the Tutankhamun collection will eventually move to the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, located near the Pyramids of Giza.

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King Tutankhamun (Tutankhamen or simply King Tut) ruled Egypt as pharaoh for 10 years until his death at age 19, around 1324 B.C. Though his rule was notable for reversing the religious reforms of his father Akhenaten, Tutankhamun's legacy was largely negated by his successors.