kidsology lectures

We provide in-house lectures on ancient Egypt as well as interactive seminars to help in knowing the history of our Country Egypt

Here are samples of our lectures:

RELIGION IN ANCIENT EGYPT

What is religion? It is what enhances the relationship between humans and God as well as amongst human beings. When life started in ancient Egypt thousands of years ago, when the ancient Egyptians realised that the river Nile would provide them with the water they needed to survive, when they decided to settle
 on the banks of the river, when they learned stability, when they realised that the wonderful life they had was coming to an end sooner or later, they realised that there must be another life coming after death, which was the greatest motive for them to believe in a higher power to provide them with a secure journey to the afterlife. The community in Egypt started as a tribal community, each tribe formed a village later on. In addition to the chief of the tribe, they had a wise man. The wise man, or the magician, had some knowledge in healing and protecting the members of the tribe, as in the rest of Africa. They started forming some religious festivals and ceremonial rituals to celebrate their local gods and as they wanted to make their gods look different from human beings they used to give them different figures for their heads. That idea was born by the wise men, when they used to wear different masks of animals and birds for certain rituals. They also used to have statues for their local gods represented by either the most powerful or the most common animal or bird in that territory….

WOMEN IN EGYPT THROUGHOUT HISTORY

Egypt – the true definition of this word means the dawn of civilisation, thousands and thousands of years ago. When the Egyptian civilisation was well established, everything went hand-in-hand. Religion, construction, language, art, astronomy, medicine, social studies and human rights. Very early,                                                         

the ancient Egyptians realised how important the woman was. The English dictionary says the word ‘woman’ originally came from ‘wife of man’, which means that the women formed half of the civilisation, if not even more, as we will see. In ancient Egypt, they had a large number of gods; we can easily mention some of them here, noticing that there were many female gods, such as, Isis, Hathor, etc…..

FESTIVALS IN EGYPT

Although Egypt is considered a religious country both in ancient and modern times, we have to admit that traditions are much stronger than religions. In ancient Egypt there were more than 2000 gods and goddesses that were worshipped, whilst in the modern time, there are 2 main religions which are:  Islam 92% and Christianity (Coptic) 8%

We can feel the roots of  the ancient civilisation in the way the modern Egyptians practise their religions, which makes Egypt very different from all the other countries, either Islamic or Christian.

In ancient Egypt, whilst they worshipped such a large number of gods, they believed in only one main god, whilst the others, we can now call them ‘angels’. Worshipping all these gods required a large number of festivals for each one of them. Of course, we understand that some of the festivals were more important than the others. After many years those festivals became part of the lifestyle and converting to later religions never stopped the locals from celebrating those festivals but maybe in a slightly different way. Each one of the local gods in ancient Egypt had his own festival, which we find nowadays the modern Egyptians celebrate under the name al-moulid (which means birthday). These moulids are found in Christianity as well as in Islam. Also, according to the Islamic traditions, the birth or the death of anyone is not considered to be a memorable moment. Beside those festivals – the so called al-moulid - we find other religious festivals practised in Egypt for certain events, such as the beginning of the Spring season, which is a very special event for both Muslims and Christians, the festival is usually held on the Monday which comes after Easter and therefore does not occur on the same day each year….

EVOLUTION OF CONSTRUCTION

We don’t know when life started on earth. We are quite sure now that there was a form of civilisation in the Nile valley about 1 million years ago. There is some evidence found in the Nile valley, in a place called al-fayoum and the pictures here show some of the early tools used by those people, especially for hunting.       

We are also sure that mankind developed civilisation in Egypt over thousands and thousands of years and the Nile itself was their first teacher of civilisation. When life started in ancient Egypt it was more or less like a Bedouin life. They were travelling all over looking for food and water, hunting and fishing and fighting for survival.  When the Nile started flowing from south to north (the main sources of the river Nile are in East Africa in Lake Victoria in Uganda) it covered a distance of almost 4100 miles to reach the Mediterranean at the end. The Nile comes in a great inundation ( flood ) every year during the second half of July ,which provided them with water to irrigate the land and made the land fertile as the water covered the banks and deposited large amounts of silt. Then the ancient Egyptians realised that there was no need to travel. They could settle down by the river and they would have enough water and food. To do this they needed shelter and the materials available were mostly Nile silt or clay and wood. 
They started building very small primitive wood huts and after a while they realised that they had everything they needed and they started facing the reality and the true fact in this life, which is death. A question has been asked – ‘What happens when we die?’ and the answer to the question was given that it will be another life, another form of life, that we may call the second life or life after death. They imagined that going from the first life to the second life was like a journey, for that journey, they needed guidance, so they started forming holy figures and local deities, what we now call gods. To worship those gods, they needed to build houses for all those local gods; those houses were what we may call today ‘temples’.
  Humans are mortal, whilst gods are immortal, so if the houses for humans were built of mud brick and wood, so the houses of the gods should be built of a much better material, like stone, which would be used as well for the tombs or what we may call the Houses of Eternity  . This is the reason why we don’t find many examples of houses or even palaces left in modern times whilst we have a large number of 
temples and tombs. Although Egypt is dry and doesn’t have much rain, the mud brick houses couldn’t survive……

CHRISTIANITY IN EGYPT

Egypt has always been a pioneer. When it comes to Christianity we find it very different in Egypt than the rest of the world in the way the religion was introduced, the way it was accepted and the way the Egyptian Christians are practising it until now. Long ago, since before the time of Jesus, the idea of Christianity has always been there, maybe even from the start of civilisation. Early Egyptians had their own legend of divine birth with the story of Osiris, Isis and Horus. 

The Holy Family escaping from the Romans travelled all the way from the Holy Land to Egypt     whilst Jesus was still a baby and spent almost 3 ½ to 4 years in Egypt. During that time they were met by many Egyptians who listened to the story of the divine birth and unlike in other countries, they were able to understand and to accept the birth of Jesus as the same idea had always been there in their religions. What united the Egyptians at that time with the Holy Family was the fact that the Romans were treating the Egyptians badly and they felt they should support Jesus and the Holy family as much as they could. Following the news from the Holy Land later on and knowing what happened to Jesus on the Cross, they had to wait until the year 61AD when St Mark officially introduced Christianity to the Egyptians….

The Coming of the Israelites to Egypt

To study the history of Egypt, we have 3 sources. The first one is all the writings of the ancient Egyptians themselves; either on papyri or on the walls and temples of the tombs or the statues and carvings. The second source is the Greek writings by the early Greek travellers and historians. The third source is the Holy Books, like the Old Testament and the Quran.

Reading the Old Testament and the Quran they both tell us stories about the Israelites in Egypt. So we know that the boy who was called Joseph – later known as the Man of the Coat of Many Colours was brought to Egypt as a child by some travellers after he was left alone by his brothers in a deep well. He was brought up in Egypt by one of the elite families as their own child. Later on, he was assigned as a high official by the vizier of Egypt. Later, he invited his family, including all his brothers and his father, to come over to live in Egypt, especially because at that time his family was suffering from the lack of food and they were buying food from Egypt, so it was a good chance for them to settle down in the wealthy country, supported by Joseph – the Man of the Coat of Many Colours.

The Lotus Revolution

The original meaning of the term Revolution is to change the Government and the Governor, as well as the political system but there are other meanings of the word as well. The best meaning of the Egyptian revolution is not to change the President and his corrupt regime and shuffle all the ugly faces around but it strives to change the way of life and thinking of the average Egyptian.

At the beginning of the revolution we all watched what the Egyptian people from all walks of life had done, which was quite unique by all means. A beautiful picture of the Egyptian people, a complete artist’s portrait of the great civilisation of mankind. The ordinary meaning of revolution is very different from what the Egyptians have asked for. The revolution in Egypt was not against the president, a presidential regime, the corrupt party but it was a revolution against ignorance and corruption. In spite of the poverty in Egypt, the revolution was not to fight poverty but to call for human rights and justice, to call for lost dignity. The revolution was a cry for clean streets and great schools, where a new generation will be educated to build the future civilisation of Egypt. It was a cry for clean hospitals where people can be well treated. It was a cry for policemen who work to serve both the country and the people who pay taxes, not to act as their masters. For a police force that is respected because they represent the country and the law and do not abuse their power…..