From the painting and the statuary we picture the ancient Egyptians appearanceas as a physically vigorous people, muscular, broad-shouldered, thin-waisted, full-lipped, and flat-footed from going unshod.

The upper classes are represented as fashionably slender, imperiously tall, with oval face, sloping forehead, regular features, a long, straight nose, and magnificent eyes.

Their skin was white at birth (indicating an Asiatic rather than an African origin), but rapidly darkened under the Egyptian sun;

their artists idealized them in painting the men red, the women yellow; perhaps these colors were merely cosmetic styles.

The man of the people, however, is pictured as short and squat, like the "Sheik-el-Beled," formed by heavy toil and an unbalanced ration; his features are rough, his nose blunt and wide; he is intelligent but coarse.

Perhaps, as in so many other instances, the people and their rulers were of different races: the rulers of Asiatic, the people of African, derivation.

The ancient egyptians appearance of the hair was dark, sometimes curly, but never woolly.

Women bobbed their hair in the most modern mode; men shaved lips and chin, but consoled themselves with magnificent wigs.

Often, in order to wear these more comfortably, they shaved the head; even the queen consort (e.g., Ikhnaton's mother Tiy) cut off all her hair to wear more easily the royal wig and crown.

It was a matter of rigid etiquette that the king should have the biggest wig.

HOUSES

For the most part ancient Egypt houses were constructed using materials that were handy and plentiful. This meant that the design of houses in ancient Egypt varied little, even among the wealthy. This makes it very easy to imagine what Egyptian houses look like.

Wood was extremely scarce, almost non-existent in ancient Egypt. The two construction materials that the ancient land of Egypt seemed capable of producing in multitude was sand and papyrus reeds; with some stone quarries. Therefore, for the most part, the majority of ancient Egyptian houses were constructed of mud brick. Ancient mudd houses in Egypt were made by first mixing a compound of mud and straw. The mixture could then be formed into bricks that were allowed to bake and dry under the hot Egyptian sun. While the mud might be plentiful, it was not particularly sturdy. In a very short amount of time, usually just a few years, an ancient Egyptian house constructed of mud brick would begin to deteriorate and crumble. Ancient mudd houses in Egypt were primarily constructed and lived in by the commoners on the lowest social strata in Egypt, who could afford little else.

In Egypt ancient houses constructed by the wealthy nobles were much different than those built by commoners. Those who could afford to do so built their ancient Egypt house of stone taken from stone quarries. Ancient Egypt houses constructed of stone were much sturdier and solidly built. The wealthy could afford to fill their homes with far more luxuries than poorer families. In Egypt ancient houses built by wealthy families, were likely to contain tiled floors and beautifully painted walls.

While ancient Egypt houses built by commoners and nobles might have differed in many respects, in many others, they were quite similar in order to survive the burning heat of the Egyptian climate as comfortably as possible. Almost all ancient Egypt houses were constructed with a flat roof. Not only did this most likely make the construction process simpler, but the flat roofs also offered a welcome respite from the burning Egyptian sun. Families often lounged, ate and slept on the roofs of ancient Egypt houses.

Another similarity in a typical ancient Egyptian home and houses was the presence of a hearth. Even in wealthy ancient Egypt houses, there was a need for a hearth in order to prepare food. Due to the arid climate of the Egyptian nation, it is not likely the hearth of a house of ancient Egypt, although quite common, would have been needed for heating.

The abundance of furniture was not common in most ancient Egyptian houses, due to the lack of wood. The most common furnishings were three legged stools and chests; even in wealthier Egyptian homes.

CLOTHING

Ancient Egypt clothing ran through every gradation from primitive nudity to the gorgeous dress of Empire days.

Children of both sexes went about, till their teens, naked except for ear-rings and necklaces; the girls, however, showed a beseeming modesty by wearing a string of beads around the middle.

Servants and peasants limited their everyday wardrobe to a loin-cloth.

Under the Old Kingdom free men and women went naked to the navel, and covered themselves from waist to knees with a short, tight skirt of white linen.125 Since shame is a child of custom rather than of nature, these simple garments contented the conscience as completely as Victorian petticoats and corsets, or the evening dress of the contemporary American male; "our virtues lie in the interpretation of the time.

Even the priests, in the first dynasties, wore nothing but loin-cloths, as we see from the statue of Ranofer.

When wealth increased, clothing increased; the Middle Kingdom added a second and larger skirt over the first, and the Empire added a covering for the breast, with now and then a cape.

Coachmen and grooms took on formidable costumes, and ran through the streets in full livery to clear a way for the chariots of their masters. Women, in the prosperous dynasties, abandoned the tight skirt for a loose robe that passed over the shoulder and was joined in a clasp under the right breast.

Flounces, embroideries and a thousand frills appeared, and fashion entered like a serpent to disturb the paradise of primitive nudity.

MATHEMATICS

The sign for 1,000,000 was a picture of a man striking his hands above his head, as if to express amazement that such a number should exist.

The Egyptians fell just short of the decimal system; they had no zero, and never reached the idea of expressing all numbers with ten digits: e.g., they used twenty-seven signs to write 999-187 They had fractions, but always with the numerator i; to express % they wrote l/2 -+- y.

Multiplication and division tables are as old as the Pyramids.

The oldest mathematical treatise known is the Ahmes Papyrus, dating back to 2000-1700 B.C.; but this in turn refers to mathematical writings five hundred years more ancient than itself.

It illustrates by examples the computation of the capacity of a barn or the area of a field, and passes to algebraic equations of the first degree.

Egyptian geometry measured not only the area of squares, circles and cubes, but also the cubic content of cylinders and spheres; and it arrived at 3.16 as the value of ir.

We enjoy the honor of having advanced from 3.16 to 3.1416 in four thousand years.

MEDICINE

Like almost everything else in the cultural life of ancient Egypt, it began with the priests, and dripped with evidences of its magical origins.

Among the people amulets were more popular than pills as preventive or curative of disease; disease was to them a possession by devils, and was to be treated with incantations.

A cold for instance, could be exorcised by such magic words as: Depart, cold, son of a cold, thou who breakest the bones, destroyest the skull, makest ill the seven openings of the head! ...

Go out on the floor, stink, stink, stink! a cure probably as effective as contemporary remedies for this ancient disease.

From such depths we rise in Egypt to great physicians, surgeons and specialists, who acknowledged an ethical code that passed down into the famous Hippocratic oath.

Some of them specialized in obstetrics or gynecology, some treated only gastric disorders, some were oculists so internationally famous that Cyrus sent for one of them to come to Persia.

The general Medicine practitioner was left to gather the crumbs and heal the poor; in addition to which he was expected to provide cos¬metics, hair-dyes, skin-culture, limb-beautification, and flea-exterminators.

INVENTIONS

·         Black Ink

·         First Ox-Drawn Ploughs

·         365 Day Calendar and Leap Year

·         Paper

·         First Triangular Shaped Pyramids

·         Organized labour

·         Hieroglyphics as an early system of writing

·         Sails

GAMES

They played many public and private games, such as checkers and dice; they gave many modern toys to their children, like marbles, bouncing balls, tenpins and tops; they enjoyed wrestling contests, boxing matches and bullfights.  At feasts and recreations they were anointed by attendants, were wreathed with flowers, feted with wines, and presented with gifts.