Many of ancient Egypt's contribution to society not only advanced them as a civilization but left an impressionable impact on the accomplishments of the modern day. Nestled within the fertile valley of the Nile, Egypt was protected on all sides from invasion and at the same time uninfluenced by many outside cultures. Although its overall isolation by the expanse of the surrounding desert to the west and the red sea to the east, this thriving culture's achievements went beyond the imagination of even the most seemingly advanced world. This allowed the Egyptians to not only live peacefully and without an active army but also provided them with the security and time to concentrate on what is known today as the foundation of an effective way of life. One of the gifts that the Egyptian empire had bestowed on the heathens of modern society was the beginning of an elaborate alphabetic system. It was from this system of writing that many other contributions such as an accurate calendar and mathematical equations that the Egyptians were able to move forward with architectural wonders, specialized doctors and the practices of justice and religious rituals.
The Egyptians established a form of writing known as hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics was a style of writing which incorporated the three characters of pictographic, syllabic, and alphabetic. Both pictographic and syllabic characters were primarily established within Sumerian cuneiform. It was later that the Egyptians combined the Sumerian cuneiform along with an alphabetic system all into one that became the rough foundation for what is now known as the modern day alphabet. Although the Egyptians were but a step away form establishing a complete alphabet by separating the alphabetic system from the syllabic into 24 symbols they were to become ingenious for their advancement from the unrefined system of their predecessors. The hieroglyphics are the basis for which all civilized alphabetic systems are founded upon. Once a form of writing had been established it was necessary to uncover all means of keeping their scripts and scrolls. The Egyptians needed something not only light and readily available to write on, it also needed to be easily storable. Due to the abundance of the Papyrus reed this natural resource was exactly that. The Papyrus reed, also known as the symbol for lower Egypt, could be rolled into scrolls, and stored safely to keep all of Egypt's official business on record as well as many of their intellectual secrets.
Once the Egyptians established a way to record their work they were able to document the elements of their second greatest accomplishment, an accurate calendar. The calendar, that deadly thing you forget to look at whenever your girlfriend's birthday comes around can now be blamed on someone. The Egyptians created one of the first most accurate ungodly creations. They calculated their calendar by the rising of the star Sirius. Once a year on the seventeenth of July Sirius would rise in a direct line with the sun, marking the beginning of the rising of the Nile. This allowed the Egyptians to not only plant their crops on time to ensure large harvests but to also avoid the hazards of the rising waters. As for the modern day, this calendar created a way for getting into trouble when forgetting birthdays and other events such a paper due dates.
Not all of the Egyptian's creations were trouble-making. The Egyptians established a mathematical system for the purpose of civil engineering. They used the elements of geometry and trigonometry to enable them to calculate the volumes and areas of triangles and cylinders in order to create some of the greatest architectural achievements of their time and ours. The Egyptians were the first to find the formula for the circumference of a circle now know as "pi". This knowledge added to their architectural capabilities and aided them in the construction of such mysteries as the Pyramids.
From the remarkable pyramids of the Egyptian civilization to the towering skyscrapers of New York, the Egyptian's applications of mathematics helped them in another of their great contributions, that of architectural accomplishments. They introduced the Corbel form of arching found in the construction of all the pyramids including the Khufu pyramid. Standing at exactly 482 feet in the air, the Khufu pyramid is one of ...