Lesson video

Hello everyone and welcome to your seventh lesson on Ancient Egypt.

My name is Mrs Tipping and in this lesson we're going to tackle the question, what did the Ancient Egyptians believe in.

In this lesson, we will learn about the gods and goddesses that the Ancient Egyptians worshipped and how they were important to the Ancient Egyptians.

So let's get started.

Okay, so for this lesson make sure you are sat somewhere nice and comfortable so you can capture all of the knowledge from this lesson and you're going to need a couple of things.

You're going to need an exercise book or some paper, a pencil or a pen and your fantastic brains working hard today.

So if you haven't got any of those things, quickly go and grab them and we'll begin.

All right, that was quick, good job.

So let's take a look at the lesson structure.

I'm going to start by sharing some key words and then what I'd like us to discuss is how many gods and goddesses the Ancient Egyptians worshipped.

Then we're going to explore the roles of those different gods and goddesses.

And finally, we'll look at how the Ancient Egyptians worshipped those gods and goddesses.

And we'll finish with our end of lesson quiz.

So let's take a look at the key words for today.

The first word is relief.

My turn, your turn relief.

A relief is a type of carving or painting that could be found inside tombs or temples.

The next word is preserved.

My turn, your turn preserved.

If something is preserved it means to keep it in its original form.

So look after it and protect it.

Keep it in its original form.

The third word is representation.

My turn, your turn representation.

A representation is a description of someone or something in a particular way.

So these words are going to be important during our lesson today.

So let's start with how many gods and goddesses the Ancient Egyptians worshipped ? There were over 2000 Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses and each god and goddess was responsible for maintaining, for keeping peace in Egypt.

And they also had different areas of expertise.

Some of the roles they had were bringing the flood every year, offering protection or even taking care of those who had died.

So around how many Ancient Egyptians gods and goddesses were there? Was it A 1000, B 2000, C 100 or D 200? How many were there? Write your answer down, say it out loud or point to the screen, which was it, A, B, C or D? It was, B.

There were around 2000 ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses.

Now, no god or goddess was worshipped more than any other.

Although some gods became more famous.

There around 10 famous gods and some of them include Seth, Isis, Anubis, Horus, Ra and Osiris.

The whole of Egypt worshipped these famous gods and local villages often chose to be represented by one God.

Some people supported gods to follow their profession, their job like Thoth, the God of scribes.

So there were around 10 famous gods that were worshipped by the whole of Egypt.

Is this true or false? Have a think, point to your screen, shout it out or write it down.

Is this true or false? It is indeed, true.

There were around 10 famous gods that the whole of Egypt worship.

However, the smaller villages did choose which god they want to be represented by.

And some people decided which god to worship by the profession, the job they had.

Now, the gods and goddesses were represented really differently.

So they wore different clothes and they held different objects from the images that we've seen in the tombs and on the temple walls.

Many gods had the head of an animal.

Bastet was the goddess of home and she was represented with the head of a cat or a lioness.

So I'd like you to complete this passage now, pause the video and have a go filling in the gaps.

So write the passage out and fill in the gaps with the words below and when you're finished, restart your video.

Okay, let's take a look at the answers.

So there were many Egyptian gods and goddesses.

There were around 10 famous ones that all of Egypt worship all the gods wore different clothes and held different objects.

The gods were often represented with the head of an animal.

Now, let's take a look at what the roles of each of the gods were.

So let's take a look at just a couple of the gods.

The first one is Anubis.

Now Anubis is the Ancient Egyptian god of the dead.

He is represented as a man, with the head of a dog or a jackal.

So jackal is a type of dog.

His role was to guide the souls of the dead to the whole of truth.

So I'd like you to pause the video now to create a fact file for the god, Anubis.

So write down the name, what he was god of, what he was represented, so what did he look like and what his role was? What did he do? And if you want, you could draw a picture as well and restart the video when you're done.

Okay, so hopefully your fact file looks a bit like this.

Anubis is the god of the dead.

And he's a man with the head of a dog or a jackal.

And his role was to guide souls of the dead to the whole of truth.

Let's take a look now at the god Ra.

Ra, is the Ancient Egyptian sun god.

He is represented as a man with the head of an eagle or a falcon, which are types of birds.

He also carries a staff in his hand.

Ra was a very popular and very important God.

His role was to rule over the land of the living and of the dead.

He would sail a barge.

Remember barge is a long boat.

Across the heavens during the day and he would sail the underworld during the evening.

If you think about the sun coming up and going down, that's why Ra is the sun god.

So again, please pause your video to complete this task.

Create a fact file for the god Ra, what is his name? What is he god of? What, how was he represented? What does he look like? And what was his role? And then restart your video when you're done.

Okay, hopefully your fact file looks a bit like this.

His name is Ra.

He is the god of the sun.

He is a man with a head of an eagle or a falcon.

And you may have put that he has a staff in his hand as well.

And he rules over the land of the living and the dead, that's his role.

So hopefully you've got those filled in and you may have even drawn a picture to go with it.

Finally, let's take a look at how the Ancient Egyptians worshipped the gods and goddesses.

The temple of Horus was named after the god Horus.

Horus is usually shown as a falcon or as a man with a falcon or a hawk's head.

So here you can see a statue of what a falcon or a hawk could look like.

He was described as the god of the sky and the protector of Egypt.

He became one of the most important gods of Egypt.

It is said he battled his uncle for the kingdom and won.

He restored peace and order to Egypt.

So, here's a quick statement.

Is it true or false? Horus is usually represented with the head of a dog.

Is this true? Or is this false? Shout out your answer, point to the screen or write it down if you wish.

The answer is, false.

Horus is usually represented with the head of a falcon because he was the god of the sky.

So a falcon is a type of bird.

Now the Egyptians built large temples and statues in order to honour the gods.

This was where the official gods and goddesses were worshipped.

Others were worshipped at shrines that were maybe made in villages or in homes.

The temple of Horus is in a town called Edfu.

It is one of the best preserved monuments in Egypt.

It was preserved by the desert sand.

So the desert sands covered the whole of the monument and kept it protected from all of the other weather.

Now it is around 2000 years old and the temple had many rooms, including an entrance and a chapel and the court.

Inside the temple where numerous statues, huge tall columns and reliefs carved into the walls.

Now remember, reliefs are the types of pictures, so you can see on the front of this image here the people that have been carved into the rock.

So your final task of today is to create your own Ancient Egyptian god.

So what I'd like you to do is, write the name of your god, what is your god's going to be god of? It could be god of crops or god of the river Nile or god of music or anything else you can think of.

And then what was their role? What would they have done? And you can also draw a picture of your god to show how it was represented.

And remember many Ancient Egyptian gods had the head of an animal.

So what would your god have the head of? And when you're finished, restart the video.

Okay, I'm sure you have designed a really interesting Ancient Egyptian god.

Now that is the end of our lesson today and we've covered a lot.

So well-done for working so hard.

Thank you for joining me.

And I hope that you joined me for the next lesson on Ancient Egypt soon.

Goodbye.