Geography
What does the "Fertile Crescent" mean? (Double points if you can name both river valley societies and their rivers)
a curved area of land with soil good for farming (location of major river valley societies: Egypt on the Nile and Mesopotamia on the Tigris-Euphrates)
What is polytheism? (Double points if you can give 2+ examples of ___)
belief in many gods (ex. Ra, Anubis, Osiris, Isis, etc)
What was Egyptian medicine like?
a mix of science (based on work with living and dead bodies) and magic (healing spells)
What job did MOST people have in Egypt?
Farming (food is essential to survival, and Egypt was an agricultural society based on farming crops like wheat)
What was Mesopotamia's writing system called?
Cuneiform
How did deserts help Egyptians?
The Nile River Valley was surrounded by deserts that were hard for invaders to cross (hot, dry, not much food, dangers like sandstorms, etc.)
What were priest's jobs?
offered guidance, rituals, and festivals; part of the upper class (priests who worshippeds gods the current pharaoh favored had more power; if the pharaoh didn't like a god, those priests would lose power, money, and resources)
How and why did Egyptians invent a calendar?
observed location of the stars to determine times of year; helpful for farming calendar as well as other record keeping and religious rituals (360 days of 12 months + 5 festival days)
What do merchants do?
traders: they traveled around by land and by sea to exchange materials (ex. gold, papyrus, linen, and grain for cedar wood, ebony, copper, iron, ivory, and lapis lazuli)
What does domesticating animals mean?
to train and breed animals to live with humans and meet human needs (answer may explain that domesticated is the opposite of wild) (both Mesopotamians and Egyptians domesticated animals.
What is the difference between Upper and Lower Egypt?
"upper" and "lower" refer to the stream of the Nile (explain)
How did Egyptians use the Book of the Dead?
The Book of the Dead is a collection of spells that explains what the soul should do in the afterlife. Egyptians used this to learn what their souls would do when they died.
What was the Egyptian writing system like? (A correct answer includes specific vocab words!)
Hieroglyphics are a pictographic writing system. Papyrus is a kind of paper made of reeds (a water plant!). Egyptians (scribes!) used these to write and keep records (may give specific examples!).
What do artisans do?
Artisans are craftspeople who make things. Examples of these crafts include pottery, painting, carpentry, jewelry making, weaving, metalwork, leatherwork, etc.
What inventions helped peope trade in both societies? (Name 2+)
wheels, sails, other boat technology, math needed for buying/ selling/ measuring/ pricing, also writing systems for communication and record keping
How did Egyptian adapt to the Nile's flooding by using irrigation and agriculture? (Define the vocab in your answer!)
Nile floods predictably each year; irrigation means systems to manage water (explain); agriculture means farming (explain)
How and why did Egyptians mummify people? (explain as much of the process as you can)
They preserved bodies to prepare people (pharaohs and some nobles) for the afterlife (believed physical body was necessary) (used salt to dry them out, removed organs and stored them in canopic jars, wrapped in linen cloth for protection, placed in a sarcophagus, sometimes has a mask too)
How and why did Egyptians build the pyramids?What methods did they use?
Pyramids built as large tombs for Pharaohs; took many people and many years; they used boats to transport stone from quarries; they using water pumps, wet sand, and sled to move the stones around.
Who were the pharoahs? Define their social role and give one specific example!
Pharaohs were the supreme leaders of Egypt; they were considered to be gods as well (may share other facts and details). They led powerful armies, built impressive structures, and funded inventions/art/trade/etc. (ex. Hatshepsut, Ramses, Akhenhatan, Tutenkhamun, etc.)
What was Hammurabi's Code?
a code of laws written and enforced by King Hammurabi and his government. Answer may paraphrase an example law we studied and make an inference about power, violence, strictness, in/equality of social roles (age, gender, class, other), etc.