--- title: Ancient Egypt: pyramids, mummies and hieroglyphs — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Ancient Egypt: pyramids, mummies and hieroglyphs», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Egyptians believed life went on after death, and that the body was still needed there. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / Ancient Egypt: pyramids, mummies and h… # Ancient Egypt: pyramids, mummies and hieroglyphs Lesson 6 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/0/) — Egyptians believed life went on after death, and that the body was still needed there. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/1/) — That one belief explains the pyramids, the mummies and much of what we know about them. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/2/) — The Great Pyramid was built about 4,500 years ago for the pharaoh Khufu, not by slaves or aliens but by paid workers and farmers taking turns, who lived in a town nearby. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/3/) — Think of moving a fridge across a sandy beach: you would put it on a sledge and wet the sand so it slides. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/4/) — Egyptian workers did just that with blocks of stone, then dragged them up ramps. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/5/) — Bodies were dried with a special salt and wrapped in linen to make mummies, nothing like the walking mummies of films. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/6/) — Egyptians also wrote with hieroglyphs, which nobody could read for over a thousand years until the Rosetta Stone gave the key. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/7/) — The Great Pyramid of Giza was built about 4,500 years ago for the pharaoh Khufu and was the tallest building in the world for nearly 4,000 years. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/8/) — The pyramids were built by paid workers and farmers taking turns, who lived in a nearby town; not by slaves, and certainly not by aliens. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/9/) — Workers cut stone blocks with copper tools, dragged them on sledges over sand wetted to make it slippery, and moved them up ramps. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/10/) — The Great Sphinx is a huge statue with a lion's body and a pharaoh's head, carved from the rock next to the pyramids; its nose was damaged long before Napoleon's soldiers came. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/11/) — Egyptians believed the body was needed in the afterlife, so they dried it with a special salt, wrapped it in linen and placed it in a decorated coffin. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/12/) — Egyptians also mummified millions of animals, such as cats, birds and crocodiles, often as gifts to the gods. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/13/) — Egyptians believed that after death your heart was weighed against a feather, and a heart not heavy with wrongdoing could pass to a happy afterlife. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/14/) — Later pharaohs were buried in hidden rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings, because robbers could easily find the pyramids. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/15/) — Hieroglyphs were Egyptian writing with hundreds of signs; some stood for sounds, like letters, and some for whole words. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/17/) — The Rosetta Stone, found in 1799, has the same message in hieroglyphs, another Egyptian script and Greek; scholars could already read the Greek, so they could compare it with the hieroglyphs. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/18/) — In 1822 Jean-François Champollion used the Rosetta Stone to read hieroglyphs again. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/6-ancient-egypt-pyramids-mummies-and-hieroglyphs/19/) — Egyptian doctors set broken bones, stitched wounds and wrote medical books; some cures worked and others were spells. - ← previous: [Ancient Egypt: the Nile and the pharaohs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/5-ancient-egypt-the-nile-and-the-pharaohs/) - next →: [Ancient India: the Indus cities and the first kingdoms](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/7-ancient-india-the-indus-cities-and-the-first-kingdoms/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)