Upper Egypt
Upper Egypt is a narrow strip of land on both sides of the Nile that extends from modern-day Aswan to the area south of modern-day Cairo. The northern part of Upper Egypt, between El-Aiyat and Asyut is sometimes called Middle Egypt.
Upper Egypt was known as Ta Shemau [1] which means "the land of reeds."[2] It was divided into twenty-two districts called nomes.[3] The first nome was roughly where modern Aswan is and the twenty-second was at modern Atfih (Aphroditopolis), just to the south of Cairo.
For most of pharaonic Egypt's history Thebes was the administrative centre of Upper Egypt. [4]
Upper Egypt was represented by the tall White Crown Hedjet, and its symbol was the flowering lotus.
It is in this region that the Arab Bedouin were installed before settling between Tunisia and eastern Algeria (Constantinois)
Upper Egypt Media
Map of Ancient Egypt with its historical nomes. "Upper Egypt" is in the lower portion of the map.
Hedjet, the White Crown of Upper Egypt
Large vessel inscribed with the name of king Iry-Hor, from his tomb at Abydos, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Vessel found at Tarkhan (tomb 261) with the name of the Egyptian king Ka; Petrie Museum, London (UC 16072
King Scorpion, detail from his mace head, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Close-up of the pharaoh Narmer, from a full-sized facsimile of the original Narmer Palette in Cairo, this version residing in the Ancient Egyptian wing of the Royal Ontario Museum.
Related pages
References
- Ermann, Johann Peter Adolf; Hermann Grapow, eds., Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache
- The Encyclopedia Americana Grolier Incorporated, 1988
- Katheryn A. Bard, Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, Routledge 1999
- Michel Chauveau, Egypt in the Age of Cleopatra: History and Society Under the Ptolemies, Cornell University Press 2000
- Ann Rosalie David, The Egyptian Kingdoms, Elsevier Phaidon 1975