History 9A, Assignment Two, Early River Civilizations

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What can we tell about ancient civilizations from the artifacts they left?

Description

When we discuss ancient river civilizations we generally talk about the Yellow River, the Indus River and the Tigris and Euphrates civilizations. Truly all of these civilizations were great, and their contributions cannot be ignored. At the same time, they all become a bit lost in the shadow of Egypt. As far as time is concerned, Egypt is one of the more recent of the ancient river civilization. It flourished along the Nile River, and its greatness has long dominated the study of ancient cultures. In large part this fascination is closely connected to the abundant artifacts left by the early Egyptians. Egypt has fascinated historians, acheololgists, and the world for thousands of years. Even today we marvel at what the ancient Egyptians accomplished with very basic technology. For this assignment, you will explore one facet of ancient Egypt.

Objectives

To identify and describe the key characteristics relating to one aspect of ancient Egyptian life.

For this assignment, you will explore ONE facet of ancient Egypt. Choose a topic, such as the cult of Pharaoh, pyramid building, mummification, temple building, artwork, an individual Pharoah, or the like. If you wanted to have a bit of an adventure, you could also choose a location and modify the questions below to fit your location.When you have selected a topic, answer the following questions related to it.

Essential questions

1. What caused your chosen topic to flourish?
2. What caused it to decline?
3. What significant developments occurred in your topic of study?
4. What artifacts do we have to teach us about their accomplishments relating to your topic?
5. How and when did the artifacts about your topic become generally known to the modern world?
6. What is current research saying about their development, findings, etc.?

Special instructions

You will create a well-written newspaper-like article about your topic. It should be about 500 to 750 words. It needs to include at least two pictures with captions. 

You need to include at least two properly formattted citations.

You will share the document with anyone who has the link and then send the URL to me. I will post it below.

You are free to choose the topic of your choice, but the general categories on the BBC Egypt site should work out pretty well. That link is located here.

Rubric

100% Possible

Does the article answer all the questions?
Does the article employ proper use of grammar, syntax, etc.?
Does the article have proper citations - if needed?
Does the article include at least two photos with explanatory captions?

80% Possible

The article answers all but one or two of the questions.
Does the article generally employ proper use of grammar, syntax, etc.?
Does the article have proper citations - if needed?
Is one of the photos missing or are the captions absent? 

65% and lower

The article answers all but three or more of the questions..
Grammar and syntax contain frequent errors.
Required citations are absent or badly formatted.

Links

Printed files

To come

Media files

Click here to access the Power Point file we used in class at the beginning of the unit.
Here is a link to the notes page that accompanies it.

Click here to view the timeline ancient and classical civilizations we used in class.

Here is the link to the overview video about the Egyptian empire we used in class.

Here is the link to the overview about Egyptian archaeology we used in class.

Here is a great link to a tomb tour with the most well known Egyptian archaeologist alive today.

Online files

Ancient Egypt
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

This seems like a pretty good index of sites about ancient Egypt.

This is a great site about Egypt hosted by the National Library of New Zealand.

Sound files

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