Ken Jennings - Ancient Egypt

KEN JENNINGS grew up in Seoul, South Korea, where he became a daily devotee of the quiz show Jeopardy! In 2004, he successfully auditioned for a spot on the show, and went on an unprecedented seventy-four-game victory streak worth $2.52 million. Jennings book Brainiac, about his Jeopardy! adventures, was a critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller, as were his follow-up books, Maphead and Because I Said So! Jennings lives outside Seattle with his wife, Mindy; his son, Dylan; his daughter, Caitlin; and an excitable little dog named Chance. Visit Ken on the Web at ken-jennings.com.

MIKE LOWERY is an illustrator and fine artist whose work has been seen in galleries and publications internationally. Mike is the illustrator of Moo Hoo and Ribbit Rabbit by Candace Ryan; The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray; and the Doctor Proctors Fart Powder novels by Jo Nesbo. Currently he is a professor of illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives with a lovely German frau, Katrin, and his supergenius daughter, Allister. You can visit him on the Web at MikeLowery.com.

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First Little Simon edition August 2015

Text copyright 2015 by Ken Jennings

Illustrations copyright 2015 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jennings, Ken, 1974- Ancient Egypt / by Ken Jennings ; illustrated by Mike Lowery. First edition. pages cm. (Ken Jennings junior genius guides) Audience: Grade 4 to 6. 1. EgyptCivilization To 332 B.C.Juvenile literature. 2. EgyptHistoryTo 332 B.C.Juvenile literature. I. Lowery, Mike, 1980- illustrator. II. Title. DT61.J48 2015 932dc23 2015010225

ISBN 978-1-4814-2953-5 (hc) ISBN 978-1-4814-2952-8 (pbk) ISBN 978-1-4814-2954-2 (eBook)

Em hotep nefer! That, my friends, is a greeting that means In beautiful peace. But you probably didnt understand me, because I was using a language that hasnt been heard on earth for centuries!

Im Professor Jennings, and today were going to travel back in time to the Nile River Valley five thousand years ago and learn about life in one of historys greatest civilizations: ancient Egypt! While most of the world was still living in caves and huts, the Egyptians were inventing geometry, writing, and toothpaste, not to mention building stone monuments fifty stories high.

How did they do it? What were their lives like? Where did they go?

Im glad you are asking questions like this, because the official Junior Genius motto is Semper quaerens Always curious. Lets begin by saying the Junior Genius Pledge! Place your right finger to your temple, face this drawing of Albert Einstein, and repeat after me!

With all my fellow Junior Geniuses, I solemnly pledge to quest after questions, to angle for answers, to seek out, and to soak up. I will hunger and thirst for knowledge my whole life through, and I dedicate my discoveries to all humankind, with trivia not for just us but for all.

... And now were in the year 3500 BC, the very end of the Stone Age. Here are some things that havent been invented yet:

Bronze

Written language

The wheel

The world population is less than fifteen million. In our time thats about the population of the Los Angeles area. But here in 3500 BC, thats every single human being on earth.

The fall of Troy is more than two thousand years in the future. The Vikings are more than four thousand years away. It goes without saying that your parents and teachers havent been born yet, so dont bother doing your homework tonight.

Lets say that weve traveled in space as well as time. Were now in Africa, in the hottest desert on earththe Sahara.

But the Sahara wasnt always a desert. If we traveled back in time five thousand more years, wed find a very different Sahara.

Back then the Sahara was a grassy savannah. There was plenty of rain, thanks to monsoon winds from the Mediterranean and melting glaciers from the previous ice age.

But around 4000 BC, that all changed. The rains stopped, the grass died, lakes and rivers dried up. Once the grasses were gone, the soil blew away, leaving only baked sand underneath.

Pretty much everyone left or died.

But our story doesnt end there, or this would be the worst time-travel trip ever !

Its time to meet the main character in our story, the one who made Egyptian civilization happen. This character isnt a priest or a pharaoh or one of those gods with the weird animal heads. Its a river.

The Nile River is one of the longest rivers in the world. It runs more than half the length of Africa, from high in the mountains of Rwanda down to the Mediterranean Sea. Thats more than 4,000 miles, longer than the border between the contiguous United States and Canada.