Architecture and Engineering

The early dynasties of Kmt, having stone to work with, left a memorial that, fifty centuries after the Great Pyramid of Giza was raised over the mummified body of Cheops, is still the most magnificent tomb in the world. Among the temples at Thebes, there stands the Great Hall of Karnak, still the world's largest colonnaded room (329 x 170 feet) that covers as much space as the cathedral of Notre Dame.  In the course of 600 years the pharaonic architecture (3400-2800) experienced a transition from its modest beginnings of brick, wood, and woven mats into the mighty stone edifice in which the king was to reside in death. Since the Kmtians believed that a dead person had the same need for a house as a living person, a mastaba, or box-like structure of mud brick, was erected over a subterranean tomb. The early mastabas had the burial pit divided into compartments for the body and the dead person's treasured possessions. Inside the larger structure above ground, there were compartments for food, drink, a wooden boat for travel in the afterlife, and other necessities.  

The African people from Upper Kmt (south central nile valley region) had a custom of burying the dead with a mound of sand above the grave. the land of Kmt was built up from the alluvial deposits from the Upper Nile.. The mound of sand over a grave came to be equated with this primeval hill, and was thought to have life-giving power. As such, it came to be considered an indispensable part of the tomb. It was Djoser who in Dynasty III established his kingdom at Memphis, the symbolic balance of Upper and Lower Kmt, and thus combined the burial customs of the north and south in the form of the first pyramid. Djoser was the royal sponsor of this technological and artistic wonder and his chief architect, Imhotep, brought into being the Step Pyramid of Saqqara, west of Memphis. Imhotep transformed the old mound of sand, incased in a stepped arrangement of bricks, into a massive structure that covered and enclosed the complete tomb. The Step Pyramid was a stone replica of the ‘primeval mound' that emerged at the moment of creation from the chaotic waters to serve as the basis for the ordered cosmos, according to Kmtian cosmology. Thus, its visual effect was the replication of a moral event. Djoser and Imhotep experimented with several tomb designs, beginning the tomb as a mastaba. At Saqqara, they built a stone mastaba of unusual size and shape. It was square instead of oblong like its predecessors, and it was over 200 feet on a side and 26 feet high. They later enlarged this mastaba twice by adding stone to the sides. Before the second of these enlargements was completed, the king decided to make it into a layer of four square mastabas of decreasing size piled one atop the other.

Kmt Engineering Sciences

The foundations of the exact natural sciences were, therefore, first worked out by the Black Africans in African Kmt 2500 years before Greece, Rome, and later European and Arab metaphysicians invaded the North African region, seized the torch of scientific extradition along with millions of square miles of land, hundreds of millions of lives, and untold wealth in mineral resources, labor, and human intellectual thought matter stored up in ancient temples and libraries. The initial analysis of the universe into its individual parts; the embryonic mastery of astrophysics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, anthropology, archaeology, geology, mathematics; the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes; the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms; the classification of populations of the world as were known; animal husbandry, urban planning, civil engineering, astrology, advanced architecture, law, family organization, government, federal organization of states and cities (nomes), their stages of development---these are the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides that ancient African Kmt had made before the destructive invasions tore the heart of African civilization, culture, and intellect from its initial centers along the Nile River.

African Kmt civilization was actually situated in an era period when science, philosophy, ethics, and religion were not yet departmentalized or separated from the mainstream of scientific thought. This form of thinking was not merely spiritual in nature---it was cosmological, it was all-embracing, it encompassed a system of thinking and living that not only embraced matters of faith, morality, honor, righteousness but also religion, philosophy, sociology, psychology, justice, and the natural sciences.

Science, therefore, was synthesized with spirituality, matter with antimatter, fact with myth. Historically, Western interpretations of KMTic thought has constantly bastardized any scientific theories or methods by labeling them as "religion" as opposed to philosophy, science, or theory. They know that religion did not build the scientifically precise great building structures in African Kmt---structures that are unmatched in size and splendor in the world. Even with such advanced KMTic scientific documents as (1) the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, (2) Ebers Medical Papyrus, (3) Papyrus of Moscow, (4) Medical Papyrus Adwin Smith, (5) Berlin Papyrus, and (6) Demotic Papyrus Carlseberg 1 to 9, Western science continues to propagandize the fabrication that African Kmt never had science or advanced philosophy, even though some of these indigenous African documents are over 2000 years older than documents of lesser scientific extradition in Greece or Rome. It is clear, however, that such a historical fraud could not continue if morally sound African scientists independently deciphered and published their own ancient indigenous documents. At present, only a minute few are capable of such necessary tasks.

Before constructing a pyramid, the pyramid site was chosen at a location on the edge of the desert plateau that was above the the high-water mark of the annual flood.

The bedrock was inspected to ensure that it did not contain dangerous cracks that might create an unstable foundation under the weight of the huge construction.

The rock foundation was then leveled very accurately using methods developed from experience in smoothing cultivated fields for irrigation. A low ridge of mud was built around the area, then filled with water and divided into small grids, in which the top of each grid should have been on the same level above the water.

The spaces between the grids were then leveled after the water evaporated or was drained. Part of an abandoned trench system for leveling is found near the second pyramid of King Khafra to the north of Giza. The site would be on the west side of the Nile, where the sun sets and where the spirit of the king could accompany the sun god through the underworld. It was not far from the royal residence and was easily reached by boat from the Nile so the king and his courtiers could visit the site. This also allowed for the easy transportation of building stone and other material and for the royal funerary equipment. The base of the pyramid was as square as possible. Each side directly faced one of the four cardinal points.

The east was fixed with the help of astronomical observation at sunrise and sunset on the two days of the equinox every year. The east-west axis was drawn first and the north-south axis was then determined using a setsquare and observing a circumpolar star. The pyramid was built using stone blocks transported to the western side near the plateau. Then with the help of oxen, they were dragged on sledges up ramps made of stone chips and mud. The building usually began by laying the first course horizontally and then ensuring that it was level. The ramps then were gradually raised around the structure to build the second course and so on. The stone blocks were laid on top of each other and a kind of mortar was used to fill the gaps with stone chips to form a level surface. The pyramid was encased in a layer of polished white limestone from the Muqattam hills on the eastern side of the Nile. On top of the pyramid, the pyramidion, or capstone, was placed. The pyramidion was made of the same stone or a harder stone.

The ancient Kmtians were able to complete sophisticated engineering projects such as the great pyramids and massive temples with primitive tools. They developed methods for quarrying and moving massive stone blocks and then placing them in position. Pyramids were built on a perfectly horizontal base, aligned with the stars. Masons, engineers, and construction workers used parts of their bodies as a system of measurement. Their basic unit was the cubit, the distance between the elbow and the tip of the middle finger. Despite variances in the size of body parts of different workers, this system was fine for small projects. The royal cubit, which was 52.5 centimeters (20.6 inches) was set as the standard for temples and pyramids, which required greater precision. Architects, surveyors, and construction workers used special tools and instruments to observe the stars and orient the structures according to the four directions and to make accurate straight lines and right angles.Several theories exist regarding how the ancient Kmtians created a perfectly horizontal base for the pyramids. Early Kmtologists believed the Kmtians first cut a grid of shallow trenches into the foundation rock then flooded them with water. The intervening "islands" of stone could then be reduced to an even height. More recently, it is thought they simply made sure the perimeter strips around the edges of the pyramid were as perfectly horizontal as possible. The massive stone blocks were cut from quarries located relatively near the building projects. Limestone was the most common and quarries have been found at Saqqara, Giza, and Dashur.

Granite was quarried at Aswan. Stone blocks were marked out with just enough space for workers to stand between them. No saws or drilling equipment have been found to date, but tomb paintings provide some information about the techniques used to cut and refine the limestone or granite boulders. Workers used iron and copper saws, drills, pickaxes and chisels and granite hammers. The hard stone would have worn down the copper drills and saws used at the time, but it is speculated that the Kmtians added sand to the grooves between the stone and the tools. The sharp sand crystals would have increased the tools' cutting power. After they were cut, the stones were moved down the Nile on large wooden barges and then transported to the site on large wooden sledges pulled by hundreds of men or oxen. The sledges were pulled along a path made slick with Nile mud or by wetting the sand, which made it easier to move the heavy blocks. The ancient Kmtians used several different types of ramps, both internal and external to the pyramid, to drag the huge stones into place. They probably used wooden and bronze levers to move the blocks into position.

To raise the obelisks, the largest of which weighed about 500 tons, ancient Kmtians would first raise a high mound of rubble and sand near where the obelisk was to stand. The obelisk would be dragged horizontally onto the mound with its base facing the foundation. Around the foundation, a large, square stone box-like structure was built and filled with sand. The obelisk was dragged to rest on the sand, which workers began to remove from an opening at the bottom of the box. As the sand was removed, the obelisk would slowly move down into the box until it stood upright.

The ancient Kmtians had the earliest examples of the holistic health practitioner. They treated the whole person, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Many of the medicinal herbs we use today were first used by the ancient Kmtians and our knowledge of anatomy was handed down to us by these ancient healers from their experience with mummification. The Kmtians started practicing medicine as a science very early, around 4200 BC. Evidence from this time suggests that the green eye paint, malachite, was used to prevent a certain parasitic eye disease. The Kmtians are credited for being one of the first civilizations to have practicing physicians, the earliest one being Imhotep, a great healer.  Doctors and some priests were taught medicine through years of training at the temples. Kmtian medical practitioners knew a lot about the human body, even though there were no medical schools as now commonly known. Their knowledge came primarily through the process of mummification, in which they removed and examined different parts of the body after death. Those internal organs were often placed in what is known as the canopic jars. They knew about the various fluids of the brain, the exact location of the heart, and that the arteries were hollow and that blood circulated throughout the body. They also performed a number of surgical operations, as evidenced by discoveries of some skeletons.The Kmtian physicians were also excellent observers and they knew the importance of listening to their patients. Generally, the most important fields of medicine were caring for women and children and treating sterile patients. Tests were performed on women to check their ability to become pregnant or to determine the sex of the fetus. Doctors also invented many methods to facilitate difficult deliveries. Those methods were passed down through generations, as a medical manuscript from the sixteenth century BC recorded 13 methods of delivery.  Gastroenteritis, stomachaches, coughs, toothaches and eye diseases were common in Kmt. Physicians used natural materials for most treatments. Physicians were able to count the heartbeats using the water clock. The practice of medicine in Kmt flourished from 3200bc-900bc.

Kmt Holistic Medicine: This selection discusses the heart in a serious effort to clarify its physiology-the way it moves and functions, as well as its anatomy

• African Kmt knew about the vascular system inside the human body. They discovered that the heart was the main motor of the human body, the starting point for the irrigation of the whole organism.
• After this discovery, it became possible for doctors, no matter what their fields of specialization, to sense body pulses related to the beating of the heart by using their hands to palpate the form of an organ, and their fingers mainly to feel pulses in organs more distant from the heart
• The pulse was taken on different parts of the body to measure the pulse in the temple, the carotid artery, the radial pulse, the pulse of the heart, the humeral pulses, pulses in the tibia and other pulses;
• The fact that medical practitioners in African Kmt could diagnose breakdowns in the functioning of the heart and vascular system by taking pulses from outlying parts of the body implies that they knew about cardio-vascular pathology
• African Kmt doctors understood that pulses transmitted rhythms of the heartbeats to all members of the body, and therefore they evaluated the heart through its members
• the medium by which these messages were transmitted is the blood
• There existed the capacity to measure heart rate: (1) there was the practice of taking the heartbeat; (2) there was the existence of an instrument adaptable for measuring the number of heartbeats per unit of time
• African Kmt experienced a period of intense scientific development-365-day calendar was introduced at least by 4200bce; by 3300, had developed a system of writing and numbering; and by 1850bce had developed a formula for calculating the quadrilateral pyramid
• The Papyrus Ebers is the first medical encyclopedia, and contains the first reference to measuring the pulse; in addition, diagnoses and prognoses are given in this text; the circulation of blood was described as a one-way process, with blood flowing from the heart toward outlying areas
• There was an anthropological character to the practice and understanding of KMTic medicine-psycho-somatic; scientific remedies were combined with affirmations and incantations to heal the whole person
• As part of the process of understanding psychological issues in a person, dreams were induced and interpreted
• Treatments also included aromatherapy, garlic, onion, scilla bulbs, incense, yoga, hypnotherapy
• Their doctor-priests possessed tremendous self-discipline and self-control-had an extraordinary capacity for mental concentration and self-mastery
• Humans are considered to consist of a combination of material and spiritual forces, intimately intertwined
• The body-khet-has organs and instincts, organic impulses and desires
• Ka is the vital force which gives the body life. It is conceived as a sort of specific, astral double of the individual being and expressed the intimate essence of the ego; the psychologically conscious self, aware of reality and engaged with the outside world as it perceives and knows it, and whose normal function is to explore ways and means for satisfying the Khet
• The Ba is a principle of divine origin, placed above the Khet and Ka; moral consciousness, source of obligations, taboos, a product oof education
• Akh-after death the human being was destined to become Akh, that is to say a higher form of consciousness and conscience; to become akh was to become luminous with the very light of the sun
• Illness was not the result of moral and personal disorder or as a punishment for sin, rather it was a material reflection of a constant, universal struggle between health-giving forces and toxic ones
• Human beings were conceived as total entities-beings which, while prone to suffering in their tangible flesh, have an essence whose vocation is to create conditions for the growth of the spiritual, divine aspect of humanity; everything came from the demiurge and all returns to it
• African Kmt philosophy posits that humanity is divine; the human being, as god, is born, lives, dies, but is god nonetheless, connected to all that exists in the universe. The practice of mummification is linked with this conception
• Its meaning (divinity of humans) is the unending exaltation of life, an invocation of the hope that certain people will continue living forever, energized by the sun itself, which, after every nocturnal interval, resumes the cycle of life again for its own self, every day.
• Living with the energy of the creative Sun, human beings were expected in turn, every day, to regenerate that sacred, divine temple which was not only inside them, but was their very being
• Medical science in African Kmt was a total science with the expectation that human beings could reach beyond their earthly nature to attain the sacred
• In the art of healing, an array of objects, practices and strategies was deployed to aid the effort of healing-drugs, medicines, oils and fragrances, rituals and sacred ceremonies, the development of mental powers, ancestral myths, magic, religion, the natural sciences: all contributed to the practice of the healing arts
• African Kmt doctors were able to determine whether or not a woman was pregnant
• Doctors were not only highly skilled, but also were able to specialize in various fields of medicine, including ear, nose and throat, eyes, digestive system, gynecology, head, dentistry
• Various diseases and conditions afflicting the head, heart, eyes, etc., were understood and treated using a variety of methods
• In treating psychological/psychic disorders, doctors used various techniques in their temple practices including incubation, revelation, dreams and fantasies, hypnosis, water cures, psychotherapy, and other techniques considered useful at the time
• A Lesion of the Spinal Column:This case deals with a fracture entailing a dislocation of the cervical vertebrae
• Precise observations of symptoms, conditions, the body's physiology demonstrates that KMTic surgeons established anatomical connections between injuries to the central system and damage to peripheral organs.
• That means that they recognized the unity of the nervous system and the interconnection of central and peripheral nerves
• they also identified direct links between upper and lower levels of nerve networks. They understood that lesions in the upper regions cause corresponding lesions in lower regions of the spinal cord.
• Dissection
• Demonstrated anatomical knowledge of the masseter muscle, the outer corner of the lower jaw, the temporal bone, and the ascending portion of the lower jaw, all deployed to explain a contraction of a lower jaw muscle caused by an attack of tetanus in the region of the head, indicates that ancient Kmtian surgeons were thoroughly familiar with the masseter muscle.
• the strict scientific reality is that the only way to locate and identify this masseter muscle is through dissection for explicitly medical purposes
• Impaired Comprehension and Speech Due to Brain Damage: Significant in this text is: it appears that the crushing of the temple has resulted in a compound fracture, with several apparent consequences, including an internal swelling of a ruptured blood vessel which has exerted pressure on the left part of the temporal-parietal region; secondly a swelling extending beyond that space touches the area of the brain where the main fissure through which the sylvian artery passes is located. The result is that the patient suffers double injury-an impaired comprehension of language and loss of the motor ability to articulate language
• This is evidence that the KMTians were familiar with 2 variants of a condition of aphasia; which demonstrates their clear understanding of anatomical connections between the central nervous system and peripheral nerves

The main sources of knowledge of ancient Kmtian medicine are papyri dating back to the Pharaonic age. Some of the most famous are from Smith and Ebers, named after their discoverers and interpreters. They contain pathological cases, surgical procedures, and prescriptions to treat many diseases and wounds, mostly dependent on natural materials, but also including magical spells dating back to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties. These papyri appear to be copies of earlier texts.Medicine was not separated from magic and moral rituals in ancient Kmt. Therapy through drugs and medications was used in treating patients.

Organization of Labor Like the two great provinces on which the First Dynasty pharaonic state rested, revenue were drawn from control of the water supply, taxation of landowners and peasants, and tribute formicary service. The Pharaoh took over and reshaped the administrative services of the two pre-dynastic states and developed a large corps of clerks, tax gatherers, commanders, governors, artists, and technicians. . Pyramid building, certainly in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, served as a dominant activity around which Kmtian society was organized.---how the pyramids built Kmt' might be more interesting than ‘how the pyramids were built'. Old Kingdom is not only the period in which pyramids are built, but also the time that was defined and indeed ‘created' by the pyramids - as planning time, building time, cult time, and eternal time.  It was a time when collective construction of gigantic structures caused laborers from all over the country to speak the same language in order to plan, agree, and live together. In this sense, Kmt as a culture and as a nation was created. The sequence of early pyramids were giant public works projects designed to mobilize the population during the agricultural off-season and to reinforce the idea and reality of the state of ancient Kmt.  Monumental building was therefore a kind of institutional muscle-flexing by the early Kmtian state, somewhat akin to the arms industry today.  The colossal marshaling of resources required to build the three pyramids at Giza - which dwarf all other pyramids before or since - shaped the civilization itself" 

A vast slave class did not build the pyramids. After extensive studies of geological history, the living arrangements, bread-making, animal husbandry and remains it is fact that free Black construction workers who built the pyramids were part of a rotating labor force in a modular, 2,100-3,000 person, team-based organization. The workers' graffiti revealed team names, such as ‘Friends of Khufu,' and ‘Soldiers of Menkaure,' True Believers of Ra.  These workers lived in a barracks style setting near the site of the pyramid being built, and were fed prime beef. These were not common laborers, but skilled workers.  Along with these skilled workers from all over the country, the manual labor of quarrying and hauling massive stone blocks was done by unskilled labors.  A surplus of idle agricultural workers available seasonally for three months a year during the Nile floods provided the labor pool.   Forced slave labor did not build the pyramids, but labor was conscripted (like military conscription today) and organized in work teams/obligatory labor---everyone owed service, even the highest officials owed service. The massive public expenditure entailed in the development of the pyramids was not solely for the glorification of a king, but rather for the welfare of the state.  Since the Kmtians believed that the king's creative powers held together the very order of the world and had to be preserved even beyond death, the construction of a pyramid was a communal moral effort on the part of Old Kingdom Kmtians.

Dimensions of a Middle Kingdom Ship

• Dimensions of a ship: The funerary ark of (Cheops) unearthed in 1954; it was a complete ship, from keel to the matted covering on the deck; the hull was built of cedar boards, carefully matched and bound together with twine
• An apparent shipbuilding technique used for ships of considerable size was-different parts of ships' hulls were attached to each other, not by nails hammered into rib joints, but literally by sewing planks together with cords through holes drilled very close together along edges of boards to be assembled
• Papyrus reeds were used for making most ropes, rigging, and sometimes sails
• there were giant cargo ships for freighting grain, stones, bricks, and huge obelisks hewn from the quarries of Aswan
• There were small skiffs used for day-to-day household errands and individual fishing; there were massive ferries transporting people and goods form one bank of the Nile to the other at numerous stations near towns and villages
• there were war fleets, pleasure boats, stable boats and boats serving as cowsheds
• the ships were manned by stalwart, organized crews of trained sailors, at home on the Nile or on the ocean. Some were expert weathermen, who monitored the ship's progress and plotted the course ahead, steering clear of shoals
• Teams of oarsmen labored to propel the ships; some boats were towed with papyrus ropes from the banks; practically all boats carried masts, so that whenever a favorable wind rose, sails were unfurled
• The most capacious ships had cabins; they were built of timber, decorated and painted
• As early as the Neolithic period, KMTians were building boats

Construction of a Recreational Lake

• Engineers were required for the conception, design, organization and management of such complex projects
• Record of achievements in various fields including hydraulic, engineering, especially their irrigation system; inter-ocean canal construction (linking the Red Sea with the Mediterranean), development of nilometers, instrumental observatories for tracking flood levels on the Nile; construction of sacred lakes inside walled compounds; inter-urban roads; and large highways connecting cities of the living with necropolises
• KMTic architects developed techniques for constructing vaults without arches or frames
• To move huge blocks of stone needed for construction, KMTians knew advanced knowledge of the laws of balance
• To erect obelisks, a sophisticated system of inclined planes using unbaked bricks was developed

• Textile Related Chemical Industries
• The national cloth was linen
• Varieties of flax produced yarn of more or less fine quality
• Women spun and wove blue, purple and scarlet fabrics by hand
• Chemicals were used to dye fabric; they had knowledge of the effects of acids and a number of insights into chemistry
• Chemical analysis of fabrics indicate that indigo, henna, and red carthamis were used as dyes. In addition, the red tincture used to dye fabrics came from rose.
• Historical implications-It is possible to trace the evolution of African textiles from prehistoric times to the present, via African Kmt
• Philosophical implications-to those capable of deciphering the arts of weaving and dyeing are media for nothing less than a complete code, a style of social communication

POLITICO-GEOGRAPHY

• The socio-historical setting of Maat reaches back to pre-dynastic Kmt from 7706 years ago, at the time when the Kmtian state was established out of two kingdoms- Upper and Lower Kmt- in two successive unions.
• The political, being the state, or the nation of Kmt, also has a moral dimension. An example of this would be the Peraa institution. This is why the Peraa was called "Sa-Ra (The son-0f-the-Sun)." Which is why the state in ancient Kmt was divine.
• Meant that the society had to have a moral imperative in order to have social order. Meaning, they had a moral dimension to social order.
• Even the royalty in Ancient Kmt had a cosmic dimension. Not only a moral dimension, but the entire universe. So Peraa was not only the ruler of the state, but was responsible for the entire universe. Because the state belongs to Maat. So Royalty was also cosmic. Society also had its own cosmic dimension as a result of Maat, along with the moral dimension. And with this understanding, it brings to humanity Immortality and the cosmic light. In African Kmt, they believed that man did not die, but that you become a part of the Cosmic-Dimension of the universe when you past on. That was the meaning of immortality in ancient Kmt. That you belong to the cosmic-dimension of the universe.
• Is the SUN-Political dimension of the state dealing with humanity is know as the study of Political Science. The states Political dimension of Maat was called the "JA-TI", which was the administration. Which was presided over by the king himself, who was the chief administrator of the state or country. He was in charge of the management of the state, i.e., the Nile, the resources and the distribution of the resources. The society in its political dimension as far as Maat is concerned, was not only moral, or political, but also cosmic. As far as humanity and his political dimension, he must totally depend on the State. There was no such thing as revolution in Ancient African Kmt. For to be against the State, is to be against the divine. So one must obey the state. No revolution, no violence, etc., because this leads to disharmony, disorder, and hence the breakdown of Maat. There was no aggressiveness because this destroys the divine order, the political order, the moral order and the cosmic order.
• Ethics, morals, values, are mandated by our Creators. This is the social dimension of our Creator as far as Maat is concerned. That the values are guaranteed by our Creators in the social dimension. In other words, you can't acquire values or morals just-like-that. It had to come from our Creator who was also involved in the society. Which in turn affected the behavior of man.
• In the social dimension of politics, the Peraa in dealing with Maat, must protect the country. So when he went to war, it wasn't to conquer other lands, but to repel others away from the state who knew nothing about Maat. It was not to colonize. It was to protect the country against chaos. So they had to accomplish the will of Maat by protecting the country.
• Humanity in its social dimension, as far as Maat is concerned, has to have a sense of community in the form of solidarity. Integration harmony, all had to be done by the order of Maat. Your responsible for your community is based on social memory, consciousness. Meaning you must know your parents, mother's family, father's family-your ancestors. This was very important for Maat. You must have cultural memory. To have this is to link you to Maat. There can be no Maat without it. You must have knowledge of your values, your art, your language, your culture etc. The ancients of African Kmt said that death, life, old age, etc., are cosmic phenomena. It is a part of the cosmic process. This is why they didn't fear death. They believed that when you died, you became a part of the cosmos. Beauty was also worshipped under Maat, which they called "Neferu". The arts, architecture, crafts, etc. had to be beautiful in ancient African Kmt because of Maat. Where they used herbs in pharmacology. But the herbs had to have a Cosmic Dimension before they could be used to heal. In other words; they selection of certain herbs is based on the position of the sun, or the moon at a certain time of day. Or when the "Star Sirius" is at a certain point in the sky. Or the picking of herbs at a certain time of day or night. This is Maat Cosmic Dimension of pharmacology. There is also the Social Dimension to Healing. Certain prayers or hymns or giving libation to the ancestors in the form of good speech in asking for help in healing, was used to cure the sick.
• It was an adaptation to, rather than of, nature. It was a passive adaptation; only a very partial use of the land was made while it let the bulk of the Nile water run to waste in the sea. It limited agriculture to one-third of the year and did not permit any substantial extension of the cultivated area.19 Following a similar logic of discontent, African Kmt in the nineteenth century converted to a perennial irrigation system that required expensive storage reservoirs, more canals and headgates to regulate the passage of water, artificial fertilizers to replace sediment trapped in the reservoirs, and considerable disruption of rural life. In its favor, the new system made possible several crops a year, including cotton for exporting to the world markets. So African Kmt abandoned its time-tested ways and became rich -- or at least some of its citizens did. It shipped its products abroad until it no longer raised enough food to feed itself. And step by step it came to confront a mounting ecological backlash: salinity poisoning, degraded benign in its riverine impact, the old KMTian basin plan still required a high degree of coordinated control. A network of river watchers kept their eyes on the "nilometers" (depth scales engraved on stone pilings) that measured the water level at Memphis, Cairo, and other settlements. Up and down the Nile other officials stood ready to divert the rising current as it reached them.
• Laws and regulations to ensure an orderly apportionment of the flood had to be established. A program of water and agricultural planning, including food storage for drought years, helped give the capital city and its long succession of Peraas a great influence over local people. The authority of the Government in an absolutely rainless country like African Kmt becomes gradually . . . autocratic, as dispersed tribunals are more and more forced to admit its absolute supremacy. The efficient running of the basin system depended entirely on a strong, centralized government, for every upstream basin could endanger the riparian rights of those downstream."
• African Kmt, throughout most of its history, resembled one of its pyramids: there was a lofty pinnacle where the rulers sat and a broad base where an anonymous, voiceless peasantry toiled. Irrigation was the main factor, the means of production, creating that pyramid. Irrigation necessitated political centralization in African Kmt. When it was lacking and the water or food supply failed, the society collapsed into violent civil war, starvation, rotting corpses in the Nile, cannibalism, roving bands of marauders, and civil chaos that left the country vulnerable to outside aggressors.
• Governments, no matter how strong, could not always avoid such calamities, but it stands to reason that most of them tried desperately to do so and that they justified their power accumulation on the premise of preventing them. Human knowledge; the last six treated of anatomy, of pathology, of affections of the eye, instruments of surgery, and of medicines. No subsequent people has been so proficient in geometry as the builders of the Pyramids, the further back we go into history, the better and finer become the arts. In the temple of Dendera, which contained the renowned zodiacs, every one of the stones is covered with hieroglyphics; and the more ancient they are the more beautifully we find them chiseled. We can judge of the lofty civilizations reached in some periods of antiquity, yet in that epoch the arts and sciences were considered to be degenerating, and the secret of a number of the former had already been lost.
• In the excavations of Marietta Bey, at the root of the Pyramids, statues of wood and other relics have been exhumed, which show that long before the period of the first dynasties the KMTians had attained to a refinement and perfection which is calculated to excite the wonder of even the most ardent admirers with no barbarous customs, but a sort of stationary civilization from the most remote periods."

Kmt's Civilizing Role

Kmt planned cities good water supplies, drainage systems, fine government buildings, increasingly comfortable and luxurious houses, labor-saving inventions, and important advances in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.

A careful study of the history of technology shows that, rather than it being the driver of society, indeed society's values, motivations, beliefs, and worldview drive and shape the evolution of technology. Also, it is possible see abstract science standing on the foundation of historical techniques and technological innovation given that so much pillage and theft of culture (in written form) has taken place in history.  What is and what is known are two separate things, one necessary for the other.  What we know, i.e., scientific knowledge, and what we don't know but try to explain, i.e., belief systems form a people's worldview.   If a population's world view consists mostly fairytales, gossip, will savior stories, worthless mythical mess, and the useless fraudulent fabrications of people who have made a living enslaving innocent people they will not be able to build their own roads, feed themselves, heal their bodies, build their own homes and schools, create their own educational and moral systems, make their own computers and robots---create their own material culture.  No wonder Africans are the riches in mineral wealth in the world and the poorest in material, mental, martial, and moral wealth in the world.  We have nothing because we do not know how to do anything with what we have.  Science/technology is at the center of this---not magic or religions.  Skilled populations do not starve. Martial artists do not crawl or beg.  Architect/engineers are not homeless.  People who know how do not beg, they do what they know. 

Black cultural values are what drove Kmt civilization.  Now it is driven by Arab cultural values which do not value anything Black.  Black people are to forever be their slaves and eunuchs.  Ancient Kmt shows us, the technology of monumental construction, calculation, record keeping, and organization, and especially what society does with these techniques, is a matter of cultural values and societal choice. In the Kmtians' case, the cultural values centered on Maat principles and the societal choice was one of maintaining an African-centered world complete with a model replication of the universe as they saw it---a flowing, cyclic, ever changing, becoming, process of struggle between opposites driving by an overriding will to justice via moral perfection.  This was Maat.  This was the path of the Great Ones, this was the goal of the travelers of the underworld, this was what made this great civilization last for over 7000 years.  They, of course, unified with the wrong opposite: brown with white as opposed to brown with Blacks in the interior of the African continent. 

As seen in Kmt, techniques of math was used for organizing labor and trade, geometry can be used for construction, and astronomical observation can be used to produce calendars and the determination of ideal planting cycles. In this sense, it can be sometimes viewed as applied science. Technology relies very heavily upon basic scientific knowledge in addition to existing technologies.

Then Djoser, or Imhotep acting on his behalf, changed his mind again. The novel feature that Imhotep added was the layering of six successive stages of lesser lengths, and those layers were in permanent stone, rather than mud brick. These six successively smaller layers of stone blocks gave it a ‘stepped' look, which rose to over 204 feet. The massive stone mound encompassed a rectangular area 596 yards long and 306 yards wide. It had an elaborate network of shafts, tunnels, ramps, corridors, and chambers in its substructure. It also had a central chamber for the king's body and other chambers to accommodate members of the royal family. The king's chamber was built entirely from pink granite from Aswan and was located at the bottom of the shaft. The entire compound was surrounded by an enclosure wall of glistening white limestone that was about 33 feet in height and over a mile in circumference. Within the wall was a festival court, where Djoser could celebrate an unending series of sed festivals of renewal, and chapels for his mortuary cult. A life-size statue, which was walled up in a chamber on the north side of the pyramid, depicted Djoser in his festival regalia. Even ceiling beams and half open doors were made of imperishable stone.

The use of stone as a medium, plus the geometrical symbolism of the pyramid tomb as a place of ascent to heaven marked a change in the Kmtian moral symbolism.. Consider the immensity of the Great Pyramid that sits on the west bank of the Nile just above Cairo. It is the largest stone structure ever built. "The cathedrals of Florence, Milan, St. Peter's at Rome, St. Paul's in London, and Westminster Abbey could all be placed at once on an area the size of its base," it was the largest single human construction of antiquity. It required 94 million cubic feet of masonry (2.6 million cubic meters), made up of 2.3 million blocks averaging 2.5 tons each. Its total weight is 6 million tons. It stands 485 feet high in 210 layers of stone, with 763 feet on each side, and covers 13.5 acres---almost 44 stories high. The outer façade is polished stone and its interior has chambers, buttresses, and passageways. The architects and engineers who built the Great Pyramid and the others like it commanded advance architecture, mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, construction engineering, materials/structural engineering, city planning, and project management.  The Great Pyramid was laid out true to the axes within 2.5 to 5.5 minutes of an angle, the sides of the base come to within seven inches of forming a perfect square,10 and, in spite of its enormous 53,077 square meters, is almost perfectly level with a maximum error of only 21 millimeters. The pyramids were symbolic as well as literal exercises in state building

As Kmt consolidated from local chieftainships into regional kingdoms, into regional urban centers and states into the world's first national state, it developed the royal tomb as its symbol of political to build the pyramids. Tool marks on stone, quarries with blocks half detached, ancient tools found at work sites, and ancient paintings give one the indication that the Kmtians used intensive and careful use of the instruments and devices they had, such as sleds, barges, ramps, and ropes; unlimited manpower and the ability to organize and command it; and, no need for haste.. Perhaps, Ahmose I constructed the last one. By this time, about seventy pyramids dotted the Kmtian landscape. None were as grand and as well built at the Great Pyramid and, therefore, many have eroded away (De Camp 28-29).

• Quotes passage underlies African Kmt's role as a civilizing society
• Text summed up by author in two words. The first, (mnh)w) embraces both the practical, hands-on activity of the accomplished sculptor, and the intellectual, moral activity of a trained professional committed to the search for perfection, efficiency, virtue, in the work he does with his chisel
• Arts, technology, perfection, the virtues, excellence, and writing spread from African Kmt to Phoenicia
• [essentially, obenga establishes that writing began in African Kmt; the evidence he uses is a translation by a Phoenician)
• Objective facts:
• Cuneiform of Mesopotamia left no historical progeny
• A book-the Bible of Sanchoniathon-is KMTic and acknowledges that writing was invented in African Kmt
• Phoenician alphabet was the source of the greek alphabet
• Greek alphabet engendered writing systems used by several non-Hellenistic languages
• writing gives permanent form to speech; it opens the way to the universe of ideas across time and space
• it is the basic social and intellectual process subtending our entire modern civilization
• the history of writing is identified with the narrative of human intellectual progress
• Simplicity is the essence of African Kmt art
• During the new kingdom, Ancient Kmtian boundaries were expanded, grand constructions sprung up, including civil and religious edifices, palaces, temples, military depots and fortresses
• SBA means-to teach, learner, pupil, student
• The aim of learning was the acquisition of wisdom; it was based on courses of moral instruction, spelled out in maxims or instructions
• The basic transcendent moral law was MAAT, the concept of Justice-Truth
• In art the canon was tied to a well-organized legislative code whose aim, in the education of the young, was the achievement of virtue and perfection
• Pyramids are considered among the wonders of ancient architecture; Texts inscribed are incontrovertibly philosophical, discussing the genesis of the world, the origin of the universe and the radical issue of death
• Their construction consummate mathematical knowledge; understanding of cotangent was necessary
• Many traveled to African Kmt to study

Mapmaking-Navigation-Textile Chemistry

• The document in question is a map, popularly called the "Gold Mines Papyrus"-it is the oldest topographical, geological and geographical map in the world
• Shows a an actual map of gold mines and quarries
• The copper mines were worked early
• Ore-bearing strata as far as southern Darfur; Gold-bearing lodes poke through the crystalline bedrock
• Hard or semi-precious stones-e.g., granite, carnelian, crystal, quartz, and agate-litter the old beds of the Nile
• Amethyst, jasper and obsidian came from Sudan and lapis lazuli came from (modern) Afghanistan; From the far east came turquoise, malachite and emerald
• Stones needed for particular projects, such as yellow slate, white limestone, grey and pink limestone, red quartzite and calcite (alabaster), came from various parts of the region
• Additional stones quarried locally included diorite, marble, basalt, serpentine, dioritic