After watching the documentary, I have to say, this documentary is great. As a fan of archaeology, I have watched many Documentaries, and some books about the ancient Egypt. What disappointed me was that all of them have the problems of unilateral or too simple, and some even overstate the mystical part that far away from the truth. This documentary not only avoid these problems, but has the right mix of the rigorous academicand simple words which make this documentary is easy to be understood.
At the same time, the logic of this documentary is also clear and logical. All the ten discoveries have connection with each other, and the transitionis natural. In addition, the screen is very beautiful too. All of these factories make this documentary great.
The documentary introduces ten greatest discoveries of ancient Egypt, from theses ten discoveries, a relative authentic ancient Egypt is shown in front of us, and change our minds. Normally, for most of us,the ancient Egypt is equal to mummy, pharaoh, pyramid, and that’s almost all. We think the little part we know is almost all, but the real ancient Egypt is much better than our thoughts.
All of we modern people believe that the ancient means ignorance and drop behind. How can we imagine that several thousands years ago, ancient Egyptians were already knew to use the nature cracks to mine huge stones, and to use the flame to cut the stone faster. Although they had no equipment but human labor, they still made the amazing sculptures, obelisks and buildings that surprise the people after several thousands years. Of course, what amazing is not only the art work they made, but also their serious attitude and pure relief. The unfinished obelisk is the best example, it is so huge that over 1000 tons, and we can see it already has the shape of a obelisk, but just as a crack, the whole obelisk was abandoned. It seemed stupid foe me, a modern people, but not for them. Ancient Egyptians had very strong relief, that they could not stand even a little mistake on their religion objects, and that is what we modern people lack, a serious attitude to work, a pure and strong relief to life.
If I have no watched this documentary, I would never imagine that the pyramids were made by workers, and there had complex social stratum ,what’s impressed me more is that hey even had benefits for worker. Truth is louder than words, ancient Egypt is more development than what I thought before. According to the documentary, there are still so many sites buried under the city in mid-part of Egypt, which means the real ancient Egypt might be more development and lager than what the academic circle know now. Unfortunately, due to the city above the buried sites, some excellent buildings like the lost temple of Akhmim will not be dig out soon.
Young Tutankhamun is my favorite pharaoh. He is really famous all around the world from the day he was found, so I knew him when I was in primary school. The murder theory, and his “death curse” really attracted me at that time, and the cute face on his golden mask made me interested in him. In my imagination, should be a handsome king, but the fact is that he had obvious buck teeth! And his face is not like his golden mask at all. In addition, according to the documentary, Tutankhamun was not dead by murdering. As to the death curse, it is not be mentioned, so I don’t know it’s truth or not. Although I don’t want to admit, the fact is that most of my information about Tutankhamun were wrong.
Ancient Egyptians had very strong relief, so did pharaoh. Pharaohs regarded them as the son of the god. When they died, they and their people thought they should be the gods to protect the world, so, many pharaohs’ tombs have the draws of their after life. Such as pharaoh Seti. His tomb is just like a magic spell, all the draws tell him how to resurrection and be the god. The tomb is just like a resurrection, all the draws have function and aim, just like computerprogramming. Ramses II is a different pharaoh with the other pharaohs. He had two roles at first, one is the protector of country, and the other one is the king of the god and human. After Ramses II defeated his enemies, he declared himself as a god. He also construct a temple of himself which is known as the great temple at Abu Simbel.
Ancient Egypt had prosper period, but also had decline period. Over the centuries, Egypt was invaded by so many empires, but the Egypt civilization was still lasting at that hard time. In addition, Egypt civilization changed the intruder’s civilization. The valley of golden mummies of Roman is a supporting evidence.
Egypt civilization was one of the most successful civilizations of the world, although the glorious old days were gone, but the civilization still last. Egypt civilization-- the mother of other civilization, has been influenced world, and the great ancient Egypt civilization will take new surprises to the world.
