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There are many similarities between Ancient Greece and ancient Egypt. This mostly has to do with the positioning of both countries, they were quite close and so trading was easy between them.

Both ancient civilizations are well known for their numerous gods. The number and spread of these gods relate to the harsh conditions of both countries. The land in Egypt is only livable through the Nile which burst its banks each year and deposited silt in which the ancient Egyptians grew their crops. In Greece the land is mountainous and rocky, thus being hard to cultivate.

The isolation of the towns or city states from one another creates the numerous amounts of gods. Many of the gods across Greece and Egypt will have different names but similar characteristics. Each town also had its own deity (Egypt) or patron god (Greece).

Another similarity between the two cultures is their religious architecture. Both cultures obviously took great care and pride in providing their land and gods with beautiful temples (The Parthenon or temple at Karnak) made from expensive resources and refurbished for the glory of the gods by new rulers.

Though ancient Greeks show no difference between state and secular (government) the ancient Egyptians were more spiritual. In ancient Greek culture there were exceptional philosophers which thought that the gods did not exist and it was common place to believe the gods evil and spiteful.

However, in ancient Egypt the gods were all powerful and for the most part, helpful to man kind. Even their views on the afterlife, a continuation of the happy times you spent on Earth lived through your ka (soul) in the underworld is more optimistic then the Greeks view of torture and nothingness in Hades (the underworld).

Both societies had strong social structures, though the ancient Egyptians weren't as misogynous (hater of women) as the ancient Greeks who thought that women were a punishment sent from Zeus (Pandora).

The two cultures also have similar versions or stories of the creation of the world. In ancient Egypt the world began with Nun, the primal ocean of chaos that contained the beginnings of everything to come. From these waters came Ra who, by himself, gave birth to Shu and Tefnut. Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture gave birth to Geb and Nut, the earth god and the sky goddess. And so the physical universe was created. Men were created from Ra's tears. They proved to be ungrateful so Ra, and a council of gods, decided they should be destroyed. Re created Sekhmet to do the job. She was very efficient and slaughtered all but a few humans, when Ra relented and tricked her into stopping. Thus was the present world created.

Against Ra's orders, Geb and Nut married. Ra was incensed and ordered Shu to separate them, which he did. But Nut was already pregnant, although unable to give birth as Ra had decreed she could not give birth in any month of any year. Thoth, the god of learning, decided to help her and gambling with the moon for extra light, was able to add five extra days to the 360-day calendar. On those five days Nut gave birth to Osiris, Horus the Elder, Set, Isis, and Nephthys successively. Osiris became the symbol of good, while Set became the symbol of evil. And thus the two poles of morality were fixed once and for all.

In ancient Greek religion there was also Kaos, this time, an amorphous, gaping void encompassing the entire universe, and surrounded by an unending stream of water ruled by the god Oceanus, was the domain of a goddess named Eurynome, which means "far-ruling" or "wide-wandering."

She was the Goddess of All Things, and desired to make order out of the Chaos. By coupling with a huge and powerful snake, Ophion, or as some legends say, coupling with the North Wind, she gave birth to Eros, god of Love, also known as Protagonus, the "firstborn."

Eurynome separated the sky from the sea by dancing on the waves of Oceanus. In this manner, she created great lands upon which she might wander, a veritable universe, populating it with exotic creatures such as nymphs, Furies, and Charities, as well as with countless beasts and monsters.

Also born out of Chaos were Gaia, called Earth, or Mother Earth, and Uranus, the embodiment of the Sky and the Heavens, as well as Tartarus, god of the sunless and terrible region beneath Gaia, the Earth.

Gaia and Uranus married and gave birth to the Titans, a race of formidable giants, which included a particularly wily giant named Cronus.

In what has become one of the recurrent themes of Greek Mythology, Gaia and Uranus warned Cronus that a son of his would one day overpower him. Cronus therefore swallowed his numerous children by his wife Rhea, to keep that forecast from taking place.

This angered Gaia greatly, so when the youngest son, Zeus, was born, Gaia took a stone, wrapped it in swaddling clothes and offered it to Cronus to swallow. This satisfied Cronus, and Gaia was able to spirit the baby Zeus away to be raised in Crete, far from his grasping father.

In due course, Zeus grew up, came homeward, and into immediate conflict with the tyrant Cronus, who did not know that this newcomer was his own son. Zeus needed his brothers and sisters help in slaying the tyrant, and Metis, Zeus's first wife, found a way of administering an emetic to Cronus, who then threw up his five previous children, who were Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon. Together they went to battle against their father. The results were that all of his children, led by Zeus, vanquished Cronus forever into Tartarus' domain, the Dark World under the Earth.

Thus, Zeus triumphed over not only his father, and his father's family of Giants, he triumphed over his brothers and sisters as well, dividing up the universe as he fancied, in short, bringing order out of Chaos.

Some obvious differences between the two cultures deprives from positioning. While Egypt is along the River Nile (the Egyptian god being Hapi / Hapy) and therefor where not prone to attack and had more time to grow culturally whereas Greece, being situated in the Mediterranean, was constantly in warfare. Either with other countries or within the city states (Athenians vs. Spartans). This constant warfare created a culture that was centrally war focused.

Despite this ancient Greek cultures were also masterful at art (especially Athens) and the ancient Egyptians were skillful warriors.

Another huge difference is the pyramids in Egypt, the most famous of these being in Giza. 'The Great Pyramid' was made be Cheops (Khufu), the middle or slightly smaller was made by Khafre and the smallest and last built in Giza for Menakaure. Whist both cultures built awe inspiring temples only the ancient Egyptians built pyramids, ancient tombs for the pharaoh and his (favorite) queen.

While both cultures lived perilous lives and dealt with the problems that (the gods) presented them, they each had a unique way of living. The ancient Greeks choose to blame everything on the gods (three fates: Clotho, Lachises and Atropos) while the Egyptians lived with free will but could not get into the afterlife if they were unmoral. Both societies had strong moral beliefs including: no stealing, adultery, murder etc. These morals are still seen used today in modern (used) religion. Both cultures were skilled warriors and artisans, their work still displayed today.

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9y ago
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14y ago

That depends on what you mean by Ancient. Egypt was old long before Greece became significant. After Alexander the great, Egypt was ruled by the Ptolomaic Dynasty- which was Greek, and Egypt, thereafter became a lot more like the Greeks. However, there is a fundamental difference between Greece and Egypt. Egypt was a water monopoly state... with a strong central government that persisted over centuries. Egypt was both protected, and its people isolated by the surrounding desert in such a way that it facilitated the power of strong central rule. Greece, on the other hand was a collection of various Greco tribal clans, each with its own region, and its own identity. These evolved into the classical City/States of Greece. Rather than centralized power, the Greeks had a long fascination with democracy, but not the central authoritarian structure to enable a stable Empirical rule. When every man gets a vote, govenrment can not operate on scales larger than the City. Thus the greek City States had numerous upheavals in rule, occilating between various levels of independence, and being conquered or ruled by various Kings. But Greece did not have the severely limited geography of the nile valley... this made the maintenance of any kind of Greek Empirical rule far more complicated than that faced by the rulers of Egypt, who essentially had every city in their empire linked by the single road of the Nile.

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