Glossary
- afterlife - the essential part of an individual's stream of consciousness continues to exist after the death of their physical body
- alabaster - a mineral and soft rock light in color, translucent and soft such that it can be carved and sculpted
- amulet - an object believed to confer protection upon its possessor
- ancient Egypt - a cradle of civilization along the Nile River in northeast Africa
- ankh - hieroglyphic symbol used to represent the word for "life" and as a symbol of life itself
- bent pyramid - early pyramid built by Sneferu
- canopic jar - funerary vessels used to house embalmed organs removed during the mummification process
- cartouche - an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name
- cataract - shallow lengths of the Nile, between Khartoum and Aswan, where the surface of the water is broken by many small boulders and stones
- causeway - a raised road or path built across a body of water or wetland
- Copts - Egyptian Christians
- crook and flail - symbols of the pharaoh's authority; the shepherd's crook stood for kingship and the flail for the fertility of the land
- dahabiya - a shallow-bottomed, barge-like vessel with two or more sails used as a passenger boat on the Nile
- deir - an Arabic word meaning "monastery" or "convent"
- double crown - combined the white crown (tall and conical with a bulbous end) of Upper Egypt and the red crown (a squat, squarish cap with a tall tapering projection rising from the back with a curly protuberance similar to a bee's proboscis) of Lower Egypt; represented the pharaoh's power over all of unified Egypt
- false door - a threshold between the worlds of the living and the dead and through which a deity or the spirit of the deceased might enter and exit
- flooding of the Nile - annual event, the result of heavy rains in Ethiopian highlands and carried fertile sediment
- funerary practices - rituals to ensure immortality after death
- hieroglyphics - writing system combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements
- Hyksos - the first foreign rulers of Egypt
- hypostyle - a hall with a roof which is supported by columns
- Kemet - the ancient name of Egypt; means black land, likely referring to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains
- Kush - ancient kingdom in Nubia, centered along the Nile Valley in what is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt
- lotus, white - considered a symbol of creation
- Lower Egypt - the northernmost region of Egypt, i.e. the Nile Delta between Upper Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea
- madrasa - Arabic word for any type of educational institution
- mammisi - small chapel attached to a larger temple; a birth place
- mastaba - a type of ancient Egyptian tomb in the form of a flat-roofed, rectangular structure with inward sloping sides, constructed out of mudbricks or limestone. These edifices marked the burial sites of many eminent Egyptians during Egypt's Early Dynastic Period and Old Kingdom.
- Memphis - first capital of Lower Egypt
- mortuary temple - temples erected adjacent to royal tombs designed to commemorate the reign of the pharaoh
- mummy - a dead human or animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved usually by exposure to chemicals so that the recovered body does not decay further
- Narmer palette - a stone tablet with some of the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions ever found (circa 31st century BC); thought to depict the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under king Narmer
- necropolis - large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments
- nefer - perfect, complete, good, pleasant, well, beautiful
- Nile - major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa
- Blue Nile - a river originating at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and along with the White Nile, forms the Nile River; the larger of the two main tributaries of the Nile
- White Nile - a river in East Africa; the smaller of the two main tributaries of the Nile
- nilometer - a structure for measuring the Nile's clarity and the water level during the annual flood season
- nomarch - a provincial governor in ancient Egypt
- Nubia - the area encompassing the Nile Valley south of the first cataract (south of Aswan) to the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (Khartoum in central Sudan)
- obelisk - a tall, slender, tapered monument with four sides and a pyramidal top
- pharaoh - the title of the monarch (king) of ancient Egypt
- pylon - in ancient Egyptian architecture, a pylon is a monumental gate of an Egyptian temple
- pyramid - a structure whose surfaces are triangular in outline and converge toward the top
- Rosetta stone - a stela inscribed with three versions of a decree issued during the Ptolemaic dynasty; the top and middle texts are in hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts while the bottom is in ancient Greek thus enabling translation of the Egyptian scripts; found near the town of Rosetta in the Nile delta
- sarcophagus - a stone coffin, as part of a larger tomb, decorated with carvings and/or hieroglyphs and containing a body or coffin
- scarab - symbol of rebirth
- speos - an ancient Egyptian cave temple or tomb
- sphinx - a mythical creature with the head of a human and the body of a lion
- stela - an upright stone or wooden slab with commemorative enscriptions often serving as a gravestone
- Thebes - the capital of Egypt during the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom; it was a religious center and its ruins include the temples of Karnak and Luxor
- Upper Egypt - the southern portion of Egypt, i.e. the Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake Nasser; "the Land of Reeds"
- Upper and Lower Egypt - Upper Egypt was from Aswan to Memphis; Lower Egypt was the Nile River delta; the terminology "Upper" and "Lower" derives from the flow of the Nile from the highlands of East Africa northwards to the Mediterranean Sea
- Valley of the Kings - an area where rock-cut tombs were excavated for pharaohs and powerful nobles during the New Kingdom, for nearly 500 years from the 18th Dynasty to the 20th Dynasty
- vizier - the highest official to serve the pharaoh
- wadi - a river valley or a riverbed that contains water only when it rains heavily
history of ancient Egypt