There are several creation myths which developed in various locations in Egypt. The myths all had at the center of their story a primordial mound know as the "Island of Creation." It was the goal of religion to recreate this time which caused the Egyptians to be very traditional in their beliefs. Each of the major creation myths claimed that the temple of their local god/s was the physical location of the island. Three major stories which developed in the Old Kingdom were the Heliopolitan Myth, the Memphite Myth, and the Hermopolitan Myth. Each was named after the city where the myth developed respectively.1. First of all, I learnt how the blogs work. I didn´t know anything about how to write blogs or customize them. Now, I think that I have got a few ideas and I am sure I would be able to do another blog by myself.
2. One aspect that is really important for me...I learned what a podcast is! When I wrote the post Egyptian Multimedia, I thought the blog was going to drive me mad. I didn´t know what a podcast was and I couldn´t find any material about that. But finally (and with a lot of hours of investigation) I discovered the meaning of podcast and I found a really good material.
3. I have understood what plagiarism means...I looked for information but I couldn´t copy it, and sometimes I was tempted but I realized that if I want to be a professional, I have to elaborate my work, don´t copy it from others.
4. I have learnt that Wikipedia has not got enough answers for all my questions.
5. Writing in this blog has opened my eyes. I mean, I have discovered another way of writing and being read by a lot of people around the world. Maybe I keep my fountain pen appart and I start to write in a blog instead of in my notebook.
6. Besides, this blog has just got a follower. That means people like that we write about. I have realized that being read by other people because they like your articles ir really gratifying.
7. I have learnt how upload a video from youtbe (perhaps this is a silly thing, but it took me a while to do it)
8. Of course, I have increased my knowledge about the "cybervocabulary". Blogroll, blogosphere, podcast, wiki...all of them were new, I had never listened them, but now their definition don´t mean any problem for me.
9. I have also discovered that, if you want to do good articles and be original, you must read other blogs, comments, web pages, etc. If you don´t do that, your work won´t be recognized by other bloggers.
10. And last but not least, I have learnt that the real editors, writers and publishers of multimedia contents aren´t university prestigious professors, experts or business men. They are people like you and me, whose only purpose is sharing their knowledge with all the world.
I´ve found an interview with a egyptologist maybe it´s too long but I think that it´s very interesting. The interview has been taken of a scientific website called: “Nova science programming”
In this interview, Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo, speaks about the mummification was practiced in ancient Egypt, what the ancients thought the afterlife would be like, and why—of some 70 million mummies made—very few remain intact today.
NOVA: Why do you think people are so fascinated by mummies?
Salima Ikram: Part of it is, of course, all that horror movie business. The idea of the supernatural, which is very linked with ancient Egypt, attracts a lot of attention. And children love going to mummy galleries because they think, "Oooh, it's really creepy. They might jump up and get us!"
NOVA: What's the allure of mummies for Egyptologists?
Ikram: Well, I think one reason is very basic: here we are, studying Tuthmosis III, reading his words on temple walls, and you can actually look at him! You can see the man himself—his hair, his arms. It's quite amazing to look at the face of someone who lived so many thousands of years ago. It's quite thrilling.
There's also a lot that we can learn from mummies about ancient disease, medical practices, technology, health, diet, as well as religious beliefs. So we are filling in a huge amount of cultural and social history.
NOVA: Is it fair to say that the ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death?
Ikram: No. I think they were obsessed with life! They knew that the life they had on Earth was going to be of limited duration. Most Egyptians died by the time they were 40. So they wanted to have a better afterlife. What you see in the tombs is a really careful preparation for eternity, so that everyone would have a very good time.
NOVA: What did they think the afterlife would be like?
Ikram: It varied depending on whether you were royal or nonroyal. If you were nonroyal, you would have all the best things available in the Egypt that you lived in, with none of the nastiness. And if you were poor, you could come back much wealthier.
For kings, though, while they could enjoy all the best food and drink and entertainment, they also became one with the gods. They would sail across the sky with the sun god, Re, fighting against the powers of evil and darkness, trying to make the world safe for mankind and making sure that Egypt continued on forever.
NOVA: What did they want in their tombs to take with them to the afterlife?
Ikram: In both royal and nonroyal tombs, you get a lot of everyday items—all kinds of furniture, beds, chairs. There'd be jewelry, clothes, makeup, and lots and lots of food and wine and beer. In Tutankhamun's tomb, there's even one of his camping beds that folds up so he could take it when he was going out into the desert.
NOVA: Did they bury pets in their tombs?
Ikram: Sometimes. Sometimes a dog is buried with a person, even in the same coffin. At other times, the animals outlived their owners, and so they were buried outside the tomb. We have baboons and other monkeys and even horses buried in the courtyard of their owners' tombs.
NOVA: Did they also bury—even sacrifice—servants?
Ikram: During the First Dynasty of Egypt [c. 2920-2900 B.C.*], you actually have servant burials. This was only done for kings. Some of the chosen servants would be put to death and buried around the king's tomb. These people were supposed to be very privileged, because they would have a super afterlife with the king and the sun god. After the First Dynasty, instead of killing off people, they would have images—statues of their servants. Or they would write down the names of the people who were to come join them in the afterlife.
NOVA: Why did the ancient Egyptians mummify bodies?
Ikram: According to their religion, when you died, your soul continued. But unlike in a lot of modern religions, your soul was not just a formless thing. It actually could animate a statue of the dead person, or much better, the body of the dead person. And that's why mummification took place, so that the body would be preserved to host the soul.
NOVA: How do we know about the techniques they used?
Ikram: People always talk about "the secret of mummification." And in a way, it's true, because the Egyptians never left behind an instruction manual telling us the step-by-step method of how you go about embalming someone.
Some of what we know about how people and animals were mummified comes from the fifth-century B.C. historian Herodotus, who wrote in detail about mummification. And, of course, you can learn a lot by looking at mummies themselves, and by doing chemical
analyses on
resins and other materials used in the embalming process.
NOVA: Did the techniques vary over time?
Ikram: Mummification lasted over 3,000 years, and over time, there were several developments. Also, during some periods, you could have two or three different kinds of mummification; it just depended on what style you chose or how much you wanted to spend. Sometimes people would be completely eviscerated, sometimes they wouldn't. In some instances, instead of making an evisceration cut and removing organs by hand,embalmers used an enema of juniper oil to dissolve the internal organs. So there was a vast variety of ways of mummifying people.
NOVA: Can you date a mummy by looking at it?
Ikram: To some extent, it is possible. Obviously one can't always be 100 percent sure. But there are stylistic clues. Arm positions, where the embalming incision is, the size of the incision, what's used inside the body, if they stuff the body, if they don't stuff the body, if they gild the face, and details like that do tip one off.
NOVA: Was everyone in ancient Egypt mummified?
Ikram: Everyone wanted to be mummified as elaborately as possible and be put in nice tombs, so they could go to the afterworld. Now, of course, not everyone could afford an equal kind of afterworld. The elite got to have a very plush existence. And poorer people would probably compensate by having prayers and incantations said at the funeral that would speed them to a wonderful afterlife.
NOVA: How many human mummies were made in ancient Egypt?
Ikram: Some people estimate 70 million mummies, but I think that's an underestimate. Mummification was carried out in Egypt, as I mentioned, for over 3,000 years. I'm sure more human mummies were made during this time period. If you look at animal mummies, several hundred thousand mummies have been found even in one cemetery.
NOVA: Where does the word "mummy" come from?
Ikram: It comes from the Persian and Arabic words "mum" and "mumya," which describe wax or bitumen. Bitumen is this black substance that comes from the Mumya mountain in Persia. When Arabs saw mummies for the first time, they assumed that the black goo that covered them was mumya or mum, and so they called them "mumya." And that word then passed into European languages.
NOVA: Were mummies actually made with bitumen?
Ikram: Occasionally, from about 1100 B.C. onward, they were made using bitumen from the Red Sea coast. But most mummies are not made using bitumen; they're made using resins and oils.
However, unfortunately, bitumen was regarded as a medicine. And from the 12th century onwards, both in the Middle East and especially in Europe, mummies were ground up for the bitumen that they were supposedly made with and sold as medicine. There are a lot of Materia Medica books listing mummy as an important treatment for when you have problems with your joints, blood flow, and, indeed, longevity.
NOVA: Mummies were used as medicine?
Ikram: Medical recipes list "mummy" as an ingredient. It was even taken straight. King Francis I of France, in fact, took a pinch of mummy every day with rhubarb. And who says what's worse, rhubarb or mummy? He believed that it would make him stronger and invincible, and would stop assassins from killing him.
NOVA: Did this notion that mummies made good medicine lead to a lot of them being destroyed?
Ikram: Hundreds and thousands of mummies were destroyed for medicine. Others were burned as kindling or wood, because there aren't that many trees in Egypt. There are 19th-century accounts of travelers who say, "Oh, it's unseasonably cold and we've run out of wood, so we have to throw a mummy on the fire."
NOVA: Amazing. And the Victorians also had "unwrapping" parties, didn't they?
Ikram: Mummies were considered very Gothic. And in the Victorian era, when anything neo-Gothic was cool, unwrapping mummies became very stylish. So people would bring back or buy mummies from Egypt and have unwrapping parties. We have invitations saying, "Come to Lord Longsberry's at 2 p.m., Piccadilly, for the unwrapping of a mummy from Thebes. Champagne and canapés to follow." A lot of mummies were destroyed in that way.
However, there were some people, such as a man called Thomas Pettigrew, who was later called Mummy Pettigrew. He was a trained medical doctor, and he did a lot of unwrappings to understand how mummies were made. In the 19th century, he published one of the first scholarly works on how mummies were produced.
NOVA: Were many mummies destroyed in the search for amulets in their wrappings?
Ikram: Yes. Lots of mummies were destroyed by robbers looking for gold and jewels on the bodies, and also the amulets. Heart scarabs attracted particular attention because a lot of tourists collected them, and tomb robbers knew where they would be located. So we often have mummies with big holes in their chests where the robbers took away the heart scarabs.
A great many mummies were lost because people didn't really think of them as artifacts, or even as human beings deserving of respect. They were regarded as merely the carriers of objects such as jewelry and amulets, and then later on they were seen as medicines or kindling or what have you. It's only very recently—in the past 40 years—that people have started to look at mummies in a different way and to treat them with respect.
NOVA: Do you think we are now giving mummies, particularly the royal mummies, an afterlife of sorts?
Ikram: Taking mummies out of tombs is disturbing their rest. On the other hand, if you put them in museums, take care of them, and remember to recite the name of the deceased, then they are, in fact, having the kind of afterlife they wanted, because the whole point of an afterlife is to be remembered. And they are now being remembered by everyone. 
to publish a post talking about an interview that I made to a friend who went on holidays last summer to Egypt. She went there for a week with her family. They stayed in a hotel in El Cairo, which is not very expensive but really comfortable and nice.
professor in Zaragoza´s university, he was really interested in visiting the Museum of Egyptian Antiquiteis. My friend Maria , who does not like museums told me that she found it a bit boring, but of course, her father was absolutelly impressed by it.
ad seen in Zaragoza, who have taken a few lessons and still call this dance Bellydance instead of Oriental Dance, which is its real name, so she suggested her family going to a restaurant to have dinner where they could all see a bellydancer. She was astonished by the capacity of that girl of moving her stomach and hips following the rythm of the music as if it was sounding inside herself.
of Geography and History, gave us this amazing interview about the tomb of Sen en Mut, architect and lover of the pharaoh Hatshepsut. Sen en Mut was a so powerful man that he made build two monuments in his honor. Some historians (who are specialized on Egypt culture) have confirmed that one of that monument is his tomb.
tomb has some specific characteristics like: funeral chapel, septic tank and chamber, and this room hasn´t got a chapel.
er day, but nobody make something to build an specific department. We should be at the same level as other countries like France or England, which own Universities specialized in this branch.
Although this is not a piece of multimedia it contains a lot of multimedia elements, like hipertexts, images, maps, etc, so I have decided to analyze this article.
User oriented:
Formats:There are hypertexts in the other sections like: World News, Science Culture...
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=351194206329726584&postID=5609533465766610936
Podcasts about Egypt
Finding videoblogs and podcasts about egyptian culture is a really difficult work. This wonderful art is usually transmitted by pictures and texts, but I have searched through the Internet and I have found some interesting podcasts.
This one is about the the role of the scarab beetle in Ancient Egyptian religion.
This podcast talks about the role of the scarab beetle in Ancient Egyptian religion and funerary art as both the Egyptian god Khepri and an iconographic motif of resurrection.
Scarab beetle (or Kepher in hieroglyphic writing) is identified with Ra as a creator-god. The locutor tells the story about Ra or Re, his meaning in funerals (the example of the picture 2:03) where he appears with his mother.
Scarabs are used as amulets in necklaces too. They appear in the new and ancient Egypt painted in blue or green. They also were used to decorate temples and mommys.
If you want to know more about scarabs and his meaning listen to this podcast!
Changing the subject, I have found another podcast about the pyramids and the city of the Cairo. This adventurer who visited the city relate us his experience, here he goes!
Videoblogs
This is the vblog of an institute of archaeology. Here you can find some sources to learn more about Egypt through the video support. A group of students make this vblog as a project to be enjoyed by archaeologists or people like you or me. They are not focused on the Egyptian culture, but on Egyptian excavations, the Egyptian desserts and all related with Egyptian territory. How can we speak about culture if we don´t know anything about the country we are talking about? Have a look to this page, it could be interesting:
http://www.ioa.ucla.edu/multimedia-resources/egypt
Finally, although I haven´t been able to find a vblog about Egypt (this is a difficult topic to search videos!) I have looked for a web where it appeared videos about Egypt and I have found it:
http://sobreegipto.com/category/egipto/videos-de-egipto/
You can cross the Nile river, visit the Philae Temple or even the Keops Pyramid. Don´t loss this opportunity to travel around Egypt without going out from home!
Around 2500 BC the first stone pyramid was built, during Zoser´s reign. The capital of the civilatation moved during all this time from Tinis to Menfis, later to Listh, Avari, Thebes and Tanis.
Around 332 BC Alexandre the Great arrived to Egypt and he set up Alejandría.During the roman period (30BC until 395 AC) Egypt became a roman province with Octavio Augusto. Cristianism is declarated the official religion of the state. The byzantine period started in 395 AC and finished in 640, the year when Egypt became a province of the khalifat and converted to the islamism.
Fluvial civilization: the importance of the Nile
The egyptian culture is a fluvial civilization which stands around 
the Nile, the longest river in the world. It appears in Burundi and
it has two main tributaries, the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The
river mouth goes into the Mediterranean Sea.
The Nile was the fundamental element of agriculture and economy for the whole Egypt during the pharaonic period. Every July the monzonic rain in Etiopy increases the level of water of the river and it floods the fields. Egyptians used to say that this wonderful phenomenon was caused by Hapi, a god with a human appearance which came with lots of plants and fishes. The truth is that this flood was great for the egyptians and when the water dissapeared again, there was a black mud over the ground which made it rich and fertile.
The Egyptian culture was based on the agriculture, and that´s why the annual calendar takes its form from the different stages that the river follows.
From July to November the fields were completely submerged by the Nile. Because of this reason July means the start of the egyptian year, our 1st of January.
Then, from November to March, the fields appeared again under the water and it was time to cultivate.
Finally, from March to July it was the dry season.
Geography
Egyps is an heterogenean land. It suddenly changes from the “Black Ground” (Kemet), which is the fertile zone, to the desertic sand, property of Red God Seth.
The confines of the ancient Egypt were conformed by the Valley of the Nile, the delta of the Nile and the Fayum, an oasis besides a lake in the western part of the Valley and at the south of Menphis. It could also be complemented in different periods by some desserts, which were only controled by the most powerful governments.
The Valley and the delta covered 3400 square kilometers. 
Society
In the Ancient Egypt ehre were big cities such as Menphis, Buto or Thebes. They were very populated and inside them we can differenciate different types of buildings:
All these buildings were made of bricks manufactured with mud from the Nile, baked in wooden ovens and dried by the sun.
The population hadn´t got the same rights. In fact, this society was extremely hierarchical.
The
pharaon was on the top of the society, which can be imagned as a ppyramid. He had to make sure that there was order ( Maat) in the city. His wife, the queen, was also very prestigious, she went with her husband to the religious ceremonies. She could take part in the government activities, but there is no constance of many queens who were interested on it.
The vizier was a employee of the government which only was subordinate of the Pharaon.
There also was a regular army, conformed by four different infantry divisions. These four divisions had the name of the 4 most important gods of the state, which were Ra, Amon, Ptah and Set.
In this society we could also find more government employees, farmers and traders or merchants.
ropolis.
's been found a representation of an orchestra of seven harpists).
it´s difficult to make sure when they appeared, the first hieroglyphs dated to about 3000BC, in the Predynastic Period. The hieroglyphic language has suffered six periods during the History. After the Roman Empire began, hieroglyphs faded from popular use. When Napoleon invaded Egypt and discovered the Rosetta stone, hieroglyphic writing started to be known among the population. This stone was written in two Egyptian symbols: demotic and hieroglyphic. The second one was developed towards the end of the ancient language´s use and utilized a cursive script. If you want to write as the ancient egyptian gods did, follow these instructions.
More ideas to understand hieroglyphs:
If you follow these rules you are prepared to decipher a hieroglyph as a good egyptologist! And that is not all, you can also write your name in this ancient language, click here!
