Ancient Egypt

The grade 5 class has been learning about Ancient Egypt this term. We learned important historical things like how important the Nile River was to their culture and agriculture. We learned about the pharaohs and their fascinating burial rituals, mummification and pyramids.

One of the things that we enjoyed most was learning what the Ancient Egyptians believed happened once they died: They thought that their hearts would be weighed on a scale against “Maat’s feather of truth.” If the heart was lighter than this feather, it meant that they had lived a good life, and would be allowed to live in the afterlife. They did however have to provide their own body and materials for the afterlife, which is why they carefully preserved the corpses and buried them with many of their belongings.

We also learned how the Ancient Egyptian culture is most likely evidence of an Ancient Church culture: they started out making statues to help them to remember different attributes of the Lord. Eventually though, they forgot that they represented the Lord and began to worship the images, or individual gods, themselves.
We went on a field trip to the ROM which has an excellent display of Ancient Egyptian artifacts, including a mummy or two. Each student also made a small model of an Egyptian tomb or burial chamber, the photos of which are shown here