Egypt Vs. China - Compare and Contrast

Egypt vs. China Compare and Contrast

While both China and Egypt came up with similar ways of running their territories, they had contrasting ways of Leadership such as having social classes to divide each other into groups, Worshiping different gods but in similar ways and how they both grew into large civilized empires by living off the surrounding rivers and land.

Almost every civilization has a social order. Weather it be based on wealth or skills, most civilizations separated its citizens. In ancient Egypt, It was based upon religion. The pyramid was structured as follows: Pharaoh, who ruled over the land as a “Chosen king of the gods”; Government officials, who carried out the Pharaohs’ will; Priests, who (As you know) taught about their many different gods; Scribes, who recorded the kingdom’s history by writing it on several different materials; Artisans, who were basically the working class of the kingdom; and Slaves, who serve all of the above. Chinese social status did not, however, focus upon religion. The better educated (Who were basically the rulers at the time) were placed upon the top and the less educated and enslaved were put upon the bottom. The emperor and his attendants were at the top of the social order. Below him was the imperial bureaucracy, staffed at all levels—court, province, prefecture, and county—with elite scholar officials. Through these officials, backed by the army and other imperial policing authorities, the imperial government administered the state and imposed its authority and control when challenged. Farmers, soldiers, merchants, and artisans were below the bureaucrats. While Egypt had one centralized ruler, China had a decentralized government (However this was at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty). They both were a patriarchal society, however, China focused on honoring women more than Egypt.

Most civilizations were built alongside a river as we have brought up in class many times. Both the Egyptian and Chinese civilizations started on rivers, but the Chinese used two instead of one. Unfortunately for the groups, their rivers were unstable. They both flooded spontaneously, albeit the Huang He a lot more than the Nile, but they both brought extremely fertile soil. In Egypt, this was simply black silt, and in China the Huang He deposited Loess soil, which had a yellowish color to it entitling it to the nickname “The yellow