As the culminating activity for our Ancient Egypt Unit Study, we had an Egyptian feast. We dressed up in our Egyptian tunics and ate foods from Egypt. (We bought all of these foods from a regular grocery store.) Here is a video describing what we ate:
Take a look at how we prepared these foods for our Egyptian feast:
This post may contain affiliate links.
We’ve watched several programs and videos about Egypt during the last month. By far, our favorite was “The Ten Commandments”, with Charleton Heston in it. It is 3 and a half hours long, so we watched it half an hour a day, until one of my sons begged to finish it one Sunday afternoon (because he said he loved it). Even though the set of two videos isn’t perfectly Scriptural, it does help you to picture and to feel what it was like for the Israelites to leave Egypt. The movie was filmed in Egypt.
Our second-to-favorite video was “The Exodus Revealed.” It’s a Christian video that showed evidence of Egyptian chariot wheels in the middle of the Red Sea (which was super cool!), but at a different place than what is commonly believed. There was other evidence of the Exodus story, too, like a rock that was split, with evidence of water there, even though it is physically impossible.
The National Geographic video “Egypt Eternal: The Quest for the Lost Tombs” was boring. It contained a lot of good information, but they need to hire a better writer to make it more exciting. There was female nudity on one sarcophagus, and a sacred cow made the archaeologists excited. My oldest son said, “Why are they excited to find an idol? God isn’t pleased by that. Besides, isn’t that the same image that the Israelites made at the bottom of Mt. Sinai?” Yes, it was the one that infuriated Moses so much that he broke the Ten Commandments, and God nearly destroyed the whole nation. I told my son that the reason the archaeologists were excited about the golden idol was because it was a historic piece of antiquity that is worth a lot of money and has historic significance that can help us understand history. “Is that the way God feels about it?” my son said. “Probably not,” was my answer.
“The Lost Mummy of Imhotep” was not very good. It vilified Christians by saying that they destroyed a lot of ancient Egyptian artifacts and killed priests. Of course, this was back during the time when entire nations were “converted” to Christianity in name only. Regardless, there was nudity on the tomb walls, and people removed organs from the body (in a re-enactment) for the preparation for making a mummy. The blood and guts was behind the person lying down, so an adult can see that nothing is happening. This one isn’t worth watching, in my opinion, because they never even found the mummy. They were just looking. Ho-hum.
“King Tut’s Mystery Tomb Opened” was outstanding. Archaeologists found a new tomb from the time of King Tut. They had only a short amount of time to open the sarcophagus, because the mummy could disintegrate to dust within minutes. A hole in the coffin was already there, so they needed to open it, because it had already been exposed to air. Once a tomb is opened, there are changes in humidity, temperature, insects and other factors to deal with. Eventually they opened the sarcophagus (recorded live!) to find not a mummy, but lots of treasure! We were all on the edge of our seats the entire time. It was fun.
“Secrets of Egypt’s Lost Queen” was my personal favorite of all the Discovery Channel programs. This was a two-hour show, and it was an absolutely riveting, edge-of-your-seat mystery investigation. We were trying to figure out which of four mummies was Queen Hatchepsut. We knew that royalty was buried in high-quality linen, and that one arm was bent to signify royalty. Based on other ancestors and statues, we know that her eyes were far apart, and she had a wide nose and small mouth. A CAT scan of the mummies, followed by DNA evidence, was presented. Several mummies were ruled out. Finally, in a box labeled with Queen Hatchepsut’s name, a CAT scan revealed a tooth as well as organs of her body. The tooth had one root missing. One mummy had a tooth missing, with one root still in her head. The puzzle matched exactly for size, and the mystery was solved. My older two boys (ages ten and eight) were on the edge of their seats with excitement and often jumped up and down as we watched. I absolutely loved it. My seven-year-old son was scared of the mummies, especially the one called “The Screaming Mummy.” My five-year-old girl was fine with it. Because it was so long, we watched half an hour a day. So when my scared son saw “The Screaming Mummy” again, I sang, “La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la…” (as if the mummy was singing instead of screaming) so that he would laugh. He did laugh, and he’s fine now. This show is fun to watch, especially if your kids are older.
I bought some papyrus paper at a teacher supply store. I looked on the back, and the papyrus was actually made in Egypt. I gave one sheet to each child, along with a pencil. My 10-year-old son grabbed one of our Egypt books, opened it up for ideas, and drew a scribe along with some hieroglyphs. The children colored their drawings with colored pencils. (I use Prismacolor colored pencils because they glide on more smoothly, and there are some metallic colors.)
My 8-year-old son wanted something easy, so I showed him a coloring book of Ancient Egypt. Children find black and white sketches easier to draw than finished illustrations from books.
My 7-year-old designed his own picture based on a page from another book. He wrote a story in hieroglyphs. His picture is absolutely precious. It looks similar in style to all the other drawings he makes. He loves drawing, almost as much as my oldest son, Bryan.
My 5-year-old girl took one look at the coloring book page that she had chosen, and she decided to trace it. Too bad that papyrus is so thick. We did this project after dinner one night, and my husband heard her scream and cry when she found out she couldn’t trace it. My husband took the coloring book, photocopied the one page she chose, taped it to the window, then taped the papyrus to the window. Luckily there was still enough light outside to trace the drawing. (The lights were off in the room where she was drawing, so that she could see through the papyrus.)
When she finished tracing it, she was so proud of her work. She colored it and added a few random hieroglyphs. (She didn’t realize that her brothers were writing real stories with their hieroglyphs, and she wanted to do what they were doing.)
We put their finished papyrus papers into their Egypt notebooks, sliding them into the sheet protector.
When we studied the story of Moses being pulled out of the Nile River by the Egyptian princess, my daughter wanted to be the Egyptian princess. Since I traveled to Egypt before I had kids, I had a real Egyptian costume. I used some face paint my husband had bought for $2 the day after Halloween several years ago when we had a circus birthday party. I wasn’t sure if the face paint was going to be old or hard as a rock, but it wasn’t. It worked perfectly.
I asked my son Bryan to design the Nile River, so he grabbed all the blue blankets in the house. He started by making a waterfall off the couch, then had the river meander through the living room.
We wrapped Rachel’s doll in a blanket and placed it in a basket in the river. We pretended to seal it with pitch before the baby went in, or pretend water would have leaked into the basket, and fake baby Moses would have been drowned. The princess heard the crying and walked over to retrieve the baby out of the river. For some reason she looked like she was dumping the baby into the river. “No, you’re taking the baby out, not putting the baby in! You feel sorry for the baby and want to raise the baby as your own son.”
Here are the pictures of the retrieval of Moses out of the Nile River by the beautiful Egyptian princess. If I had more daughters, I would have put a girl behind the potted plant in the corner, since the sister of Moses came out and offered to get a wet nurse for the baby. Instead, we just talked about it, since I didn’t want my boys playing a girl part.
