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13 Now-You-Know Facts About Ancient Egypt (They Didn’t Teach At School)

We can thank Ancient Egypt for the practice of cat naming, the D20, and so much more.

13 Now-You-Know Facts About Ancient Egypt (They Didn’t Teach At School)

November 19, 2021

Ancient Egypt isn’t just mummies and pyramids. There’s also cats (so many cats), geeky stuff like the D20, and political fragmentation. In a way, it was the internet of the Ancient World. Here’s more:

13

Facial hair was surprisingly strictly regulated back in ancient Egypt. Men had to keep their beards, and couldn't even shave them - unless they happened to be in mourning. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

12

For a while, in ancient Egypt, iron was more valuable than gold itself. For centuries, Egyptians had no technology for smelting iron, so they got iron from meteorites - and it was very, very rare. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

11

In Ancient Egypt, teachers would correct students with red ink, just like today. At least one writing board, that's almost 4,000 years old, has a teacher's corrections in red ink. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

10

Ancient Egyptians had pregnancy tests of a sort as far back as 3,500 years ago. A woman would pee over a bag of barley and a bag of wheat, and if either one sprouted, the woman was pregnant. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

9

Only high-ranking Egyptians actually kept their hearts after their death. Hearts were removed from many mummies, and the heart was seen as the seat of consciousness - presumably, this kept commoners out of the afterlife. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

8

Ancient Egypt (Sorry, a Fourth Time)

Egyptian medicine was surprisingly specialized, and they even had proctologists. The Egyptian term for those literally translates to shepherd of the anus. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

7

We can thank Ancient Egypt for the existence of the humble, beloved D20 die. 7 12 2 8 8 OI S 14 2 20 4 6. ey OI 8 L S PMC Well, in a sense - what's probably the world's oldest D20 die, over 2,000 years old, was found in Egypt. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

6

Apparently, noble women in Ancient Egypt weren't given to embalmers right away. Their families waited a few days, so that embalmers wouldn't get horny and try anything - all according to the ancient historian Herodotus. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source, Source

5

The first named cat- that we know of, anyway - comes from Ancient Egypt. The cat was named Nedjem (sweet, or pleasant), and lived at some point between 1479 and 1425 ВСЕ. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

4

Egyptians liked to mummify animals so much, they almost made some extinct. And if anyone objected, they probably wouldn't have got it - to them, mummification was a great honor. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

3

Ancient Egypt, Part II

There were a bunch of minor, petty kingdoms throughout Ancient Egypt. They all had varying degress of independence, and some of them later provided rulers that ruled over all of Egypt. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

2

In a way, the Egyptian pyramids were built by something very ordinary: beer. Laborers who built them got one and one-third gallon of beer a day, and apparently beer was considered essential for laborers. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

1

Ancient Egyptians mummified cats so they could follow people in death. Plus, cats represented gods, and gods were happy to get, uh, offerings of cats. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

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