I know this is labeled as a "Story of the World" post, but we actually didn't use the text for this lesson. However, all the activities work perfectly with Chapter 4 - Making Mummies. If you aren't using Story of the World, these activities would make a great little unit study on Egyptian Mummies!
We had already read about the mummification process in several different library books on Egypt, so I wanted to take a different tack and look at the science behind how mummification works.
Nit-Picky Fact Check: Technically,the mummification process described in Chapter 4 of Story of the World was really not fully developed until the New Kingdom (though I don't know if I would have cared enough to tweak this if there hadn't been other reasons to).
For our alternative text we used a page from "Science of Ancient Egypt: Mummification" (part of a larger bundle on Ancient Egypt by Dr. Dave's science which I bought after falling in love with his free sample unit on The Nile). It covered some things that the other books we read didn't about the science behind making mummies (like how microorganisms are involved in breaking down bodies, and how Natron, the salt mixture the Egyptians used in mummification, prevented these from growing by removing moisture).
While the Unit Study was for 4th - 7th graders, we did this when my son was a 1st grader with a Kindergarten sized attention span. I felt like the material was engaging and kid friendly enough for him to handle...especially since he loves science. (And I was right)
I didn't try to cover the whole unit though, since I knew that would be an attention span stretch. In stead I used a couple of pages from it for this lesson, and I did what I always do...added some tactiles and visuals, and of course, lots of questions.
First, we reviewed Egyptian mummification with this video...
Then, before we dug into the text, I took my son outside to see something I knew had been sitting out by the fence in our yard...the remains of a dead bird. I knew it would be a great example of what happens to an animal after it dies...and how microorganisms take part in that process (though I'm sure ants took a part too).
Feel free to save and print this picture as an alternative to
viewing a real decomposing animal.
I pointed out the bones and the beak and the feather, and asked my son "What do you think happened to the rest of it, all the bird's muscles and stuff?"
He gave a guess about the bird going to heaven (theology lessons pop up when least expected, don't they?).
"Well, the Bible doesn't say whether birds go to Heaven. Some people think they do, and some people don't, but we don't know. But when people go to Heaven it says God gives us new bodies...so our old bodies stay here when we die. So even if animals go to Heaven it doesn't mean their bodies do too. So what do you think happened to the bird's body?"
I let him give a couple more guesses and then said, "Lets go inside and find out!" That got him interested and he listened intently as I read the whole page on "Preserving the Body" which talked about how microorganisms break up and consume dead things and how the mummification process prevents that.
At that my son expressed some fears about microorganisms eating him...so I told him about how when we're living that our cells have ways of fighting bad bacteria and germs, and that other bacteria lives in our body and doesn't hurt us, but when someone or something dies than its cells die too, and so the microorganisms then start to eat the dead cells.
(Yeah, all that...it was all off the cuff and I wasn't sure if that was completely correct, though it did assuage his fears. Later I checked up on it and got this great answer from someone on Answers.com. I was pretty on target...but he gave some extra details that were really great. That answer isn't around anymore...but there's a similar one on Quora)
While the video below doesn't directly answer that question, it does describe the process of decomposition and would be a good resource to share with older kids for this study. I don't suggest this for younger kids because some of the illustrations could be scary for them (though every kid is different...you could preview it and see if you thought it would work for your child). After minute 2:27 it talks about the problem of burial space/cost and some solutions, which is not as related to this lesson, so you may want to stop there (though it is interesting).
If your kids are interested in learning more about what we do with bodies to prepare them for burial today, this page also has good information.
We skipped the next page of the mummification unit study ("Salt) to come back to after we had done our egg experiment (as it gives away the end), and read the first paragraph of "The Chemistry of Salt." This paragraph talks about how salt is a mixture and how there are different kinds of salt (even baking soda is, chemically, a salt). So, I showed him some....
Aw, the salt looks like a funny monster face.
Click on it to see the different salts enlarged.
We looked at regular salt, coarse ground sea salt, Himalayan sea salt, Epson salts, and baking soda. I left these out on a dish for him touch and play with while I read the next paragraph about natron. When we got to the last paragraph about where the Egyptians got natron (in the Natron Valley, in the Nile Delta), we looked it up on our map.
MAP TIPS: Most ancient Egyptian maps
won't have the Natron Valley labeled. It's located on the west side
of the Nile Delta (the river area shaped like a V where the Nile meets
the Mediterranean. "Wadi El Natrun"
is it's current name, which is actually Arabic (so, a later name). In
Coptic (the language descended from the ancient Egyptian language), it
is called Šihēt, meaning "Measure of the Hearts." (This may still be
tied to it being a source of the natron used in mummification, since in
ancient Egyptian religion, the heart was weighed before a person could
enter the afterlife).
Egg Mummy Experiment
We followed up our study with an experiment where we mummified a hard boiled egg. I've seen this done with apples too, or a whole chicken (as suggested in the SOTW Activity book). Several day into our experiment, we read the page on "Salt" that we had
earlier skipped, after making guesses as to why our egg had shrunk and
hardened.
Hard boil an egg (or two if you want to have a "control" egg...see section below). Peel off the shell.
Measure the egg with flexible tape ruler and write down results.
Weigh egg and write down results.
Mix an equal amount of salt and baking soda to make an approximation of natron (you can just use salt in stead)...enough to cover an egg.
Put the egg in a cup or open container and cover completely with natron mixture.
Uncover egg and repeat steps 1 - 3 every day for several weeks until the weight and size remains constant.
CONTROL EGG
We also put another egg outside in an open
container to see what happened to it (but did not measure it, because I
knew after a while we wouldn't want to touch that one). In stead we
took pictures.
Below are our pictures of our egg mummy (left) and control egg (right). OK, yes, that first picture is the same egg reversed...cause I didn't take a picture of the mummified one before we put it in the salt. It's not consecutive days because we didn't take a picture every day (the days shown are as follows: Day 1, Day 2, Day 5, Day 9, Day 12), and the sizes are not completely to scale, though I did try to show how they shrunk (it was a little more dramatic than the pictures here show, actually). But you can still get the general idea.
Click to see larger pictures.
(We missed taking a picture of the mummified egg that last day shown, but I thought the changes in the other egg were interesting). The control egg eventually withered away to nearly nothing and we tossed it. The mummified egg eventually turned rock hard and gray, but alas I
didn't take a final pic. I left it outside and then forgot about it a long time and it was gone (guess it didn't stay forever, but we live in a humid area, not the dry Egyptian desert). Plus, some animal may have eaten it.
This was a fun lesson and my son really enjoyed it. I would recommend this experiment for any kids interested in mummies.
Chapter 1 - Section 2: The First Nomads Become Farmers
There were a few semi-substantive changes/additions, in addition to a few minor wording changes (not mentioned here).
CHANGE 1:
Original - Paragraph 1 (last sentence)
And it was called "fertile" because plenty of rich grass, wild barley, and wild wheat grew there.
Revised - Paragraph 2
And it was called fertile
because two rivers, called the Tigris and Euphrates, ran through it.
Rich grass, wild barley, and wild wheat grew in the damp soil of the
river banks.
CHANGE 2:
Original - Paragraph 3
Nomads
who settled in the Fertile Crescent had to feed themselves without
wandering around to find wild leaves, nuts and berries. Soon the people
who lived in the Fertile Crescent discovered that wheat or barley seeds,
dropped onto the ground, grew into new plants. They found out that
these plants needed extra water to flourish. The land near the rivers
was damp enough to make growing easy, but further away, the land was dry
for much of the year. So the new farmers learned to dig canals from
the river out into their fields. That way, even if it did not rain,
they could bring water to their crops.
Revised - Paragraph 4-5
Nomads
who settled in the Fertile Crescent couldn't just pick leaves, nuts,
and berries to eat. Soon they would run out of wild plants to harvest.
Instead, they had to begin to plant grain for themselves. The nomads
of the Fertile Crescent were turning into farmers.
These
new fields of grain needed extra water to flourish. The land near the
rivers was damp enough to make growing easy. But it didn't rain very
much in the Fertile Crescent, and father away from the shores, the land
was dry for much of the year. So the farmers learned to dig canals from
the rivers out into their fields. That way, even if it did not rain,
they could bring water to their crops.
CHANGE 3:
The following sentence was added to the end of paragraph 10 of the Revised Verion (paragraph 7 of the original).
The tower was 35 feet high--taller than a two story house!
CHANGE 4 (Endnotes)
Original
Note to Parent: Nomads roamed through the Fertile Crescent c. 6000 BC/BCE.
Revised
Note to Parent: Nomads roamed through the Fertile Crescent c. 7000 BC/BCE. The stone wall at Jericho dates to around 6800 BC/BCE.
Chapter 2 - Section 1: Two Kingdoms Become One
Original - In Paragraph 5
...The
Egyptians who lived in the Nile delta were called the "Lower
Egyptians," and they were ruled by a king who wore a red crown. The
Egyptians who lived along the straight part of the river were called the
"Upper Egyptians." They were ruled by a king who wore a white crown.
The White Crown King and the Red Crown King fought with each other, and
the Upper Egyptians and the Lower Egyptians sailed up and down the Nile
and fought with each other too.
Revised - In Paragrph 5 -8
...The
Egyptians who lived in the North, in the Nile Delta, were called the
"Lower Egyptians." The Egyptians who lived along the straight part of
the river, further south, were called the "Upper Egyptians."
When
you look at a map, "north" is usually at the top and "south" is usually
at the bottom. So it might seem to you that the Nile Delta should be
"Upper Egypt." After all, it's on the upper part of your map.
But
the ancient Egyptians didn't think about the world in that way. The
Nile River flowed from the mountains in the south, down to the delta in
the north. So the ancient Egyptians thought about the southern part of
their country, Upper Egypt, as "up the river," and the northern part,
Lower Egypt, as "down the river." If you turn the map at the top of
this page upside down, you'll see the world as the Egyptians did.
The
Lower Egyptians were ruled by a king who wore a red crown, and the
Upper Egyptians were ruled by a king who wore a white crown. Both kings
wanted to rule over all of Egypt. So for years, the White Crown King
and the Red Crown King fought with each other, and the
Upper Egyptians and the Lower Egyptians sailed up and down the Nile and
fought with each other too.
Chapter 3: The First Writing
CHANGE 1:
Original - Paragraph 5
Because
the Sumerians lived between two rivers, they had plenty of damp clay.
And instead of carving their pictures onto stone, they would mold this
clay into a square tablet. Then, while the clay was still wet, they
would use a sharp knife or stick to carve their own picture-writing into
the tablet. After the message was carved into the clay, the Sumerians
would bake the clay until it was hard. The Sumerian picture-writing was
called cuneiform.
Revised - Paragraph 8
The
Sumerian picture-writing was called cuneiform. Because the Sumerians
lived between two rivers, they had plenty of damp clay. Instead of
carving their pictures onto stone, they would mold this clay into a
square tablet. Then, while the clay was still wet, they would use a
sharp knife or stick to make the cuneiform marks. After the message was
carved into the clay, the Sumerians could either wipe it out and write
another message (if the message were something unimportant, like a
grocery list), or else bake the clay until it was hard. Then the
message would last for a very long time.
CHANGE 2:
The
following section, which I've bolded, was added to the end of the last
sentence of paragraph 9 of the Revised Version (paragraph 6 of the
original).
...you need a whole lot of space--whole buildings full of rooms for even a small library.
Chapter 4 - Part 1: Making Mummies
Between Paragraphs 1 - 2 some dates were added as well as a long explanation of BC/BCE AD/CE dating structures.
Changes in typesetting and font to make the book more attractive and easier to read
Some longer paragraphs split into shorter paragraphs
Some other non-substantive changes in wording
Some dates were added to the text that were previously only in footnotes
A few substantive changes and additions (changes which affect the content)
Several added appendixes: A Chronology, a Name Pronunciation Guide, and a Note to Parents regarding the Abraham Story.
I've added a list below some more specific changes in a few of some chapters, especially ones where I noticed more important changes. Minor
changes such as splitting up paragraphs
are not something I usually note in these guides, nor do I typically note picture changes. I haven't yet done this for every chapter, and even in the chapters I covered I may have missed changes.
Click the links below to see the revisions for those chapters.
Click on the picture below for the printer size version.
(Non commercial or classroom use only)
If you or your little one color one of my coloring pages and would like to share what you made, please e-mail me at ecarian at yahoo dot com and show me it! Let me know if I can use it as an example on my site, and if you post it up on your blog send me the link so I can link to it. :-)
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