A message in hieroglyphs. Credit: Public Broadcasting Service
This lesson introduces students to the writing, art, and
religious beliefs of ancient Egypt through hieroglyphs, one of
the oldest writing systems in the world, and through tomb
paintings. Hieroglyphs consist of pictures of familiar objects
that represent sounds. They were used in ancient Egypt from
about 3100 BCE to 400 CE. In the first part of this lesson, the
class creates a pictorial alphabet of its own and then learns
and uses the symbols of the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet. In
the second part of the lesson, students identify and represent
in their own drawings figures from the Book of the Dead, a
funereal text written on papyrus and carved on the walls of
tombs to help guide the deceased through the afterlife. What are
some ways people have used to communicate in the past and the
present? What writing systems have been developed in other
cultures at other times? What can tomb paintings tell us about
ancient religious beliefs in Egypt? The a