Cuneiform is an ancient writing system that was first used in around 3400 BC. Distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, cuneiform script is the oldest form of writing in the world, first appearing even earlier than Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Both Hieroglyphs and Cuneiform are use clay to write on. They both are used for record keeping and religious related purposes. Hieroglyphs and Cuneiform both lasted for awhile in history, through CE.

Egyptian hieroglyphs and cuneiform are both logographic scripts. Hieroglyphs are written as an abjad. Cuneiform is written as a syllabary. Hieroglyphs were restricted to one sociolinguistic context — as an element of ceremonial discourse in a conservative form of Ancient Egyptian.

It continued to be used throughout the Middle East, including by the Babylonians and Assyrians, for a couple of thousand years, until being replaced by the Aramaic alphabet during the time of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

The ancient Egyptians believed that writing was invented by the god Thoth and called their hieroglyphic script “mdju netjer” (“words of the gods”). The word hieroglyph comes from the Greek hieros (sacred) plus glypho (inscriptions) and was first used by Clement of Alexandria.

Menes

Ramesses II

To the north was Lower Egypt, where the Nile stretched out with its several branches to form the Nile Delta. To the south was Upper Egypt, stretching to Aswan. The terminology “Upper” and “Lower” derives from the flow of the Nile from the highlands of East Africa northwards to the Mediterranean Sea.

Upper Egypt, Arabic Qiblī Miṣr, also called Al-Ṣaʿīd (“The Upland”), geographic and cultural division of Egypt, generally consisting of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel N. It thus consists of the entire Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake Nasser (formed by the Aswan High Dam).

Much of the history of Egypt is divided into three “kingdom” periods—Old, Middle, and New—with shorter intermediate periods separating the kingdoms.

Historians call this the Archaic period of Egyptian history. Sometime around 2686 BCE, Upper Egypt came north and invaded Lower Egypt, unifying the two kingdoms under a single ruler who took the title of pharaoh and wore a double crown. Most accounts attribute this moment to King Menes or King Narmer.

Menes’s reign of Egypt from 3407 to 3346 B.C. was treated as the dawn of Egyptian civilization in many classical histories.

The Egyptian word Tawy, means “Two Lands” – this refers to the two main regions of ancient Egypt, Upper and Lower Egypt. Lower Egypt is in the north and contains the Nile Delta, while Upper Egypt contains areas to the South.

Lower Egypt is to the north and is that part where the Nile Delta drains into the Mediterranean Sea. Upper Egypt is to the south from the Libyan desert down to just past Abu Simbel (Nubia). The Nile controlled everything for the Egyptians, so this effected it.

The ancient Egyptians believed that a soul (kꜣ/bꜣ; Egypt. pron. ka/ba) was made up of many parts. In addition to these components of the soul, there was the human body (called the ḥꜥ, occasionally a plural ḥꜥw, meaning approximately “sum of bodily parts”).

King Darius I. Darius

In the early period of Egypt, during the Old Kingdom, Egypt was referred to as Kemet (Kermit), or simply Kmt , which means the Black land. They called themselves “remetch en Kermet”, which means the “People of the Black Land”. The term refers to the rich soil found in the Nile Valley and Delta.

Narmer was the 32nd-century B.C. founder of Pharaonic Egypt and celebrated throughout the region’s ancient period for uniting Upper and Lower Egypt. As the king of Upper Egypt, Narmer led a campaign sometime around 3200 B.C. to conquer the northern kingdom of Lower Egypt, though this date is uncertain.

Sumerian civilization

If you look back at the time when humans first decided to give up their nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle in favor of settling down at one place, six distinct cradles of civilization can be clearly identified: Egypt, Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and Iran), the Indus Valley (present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan).