Lives After Death: The Pyramids of Giza

Following are links to the downloadable PDFs included with this lesson plan.

Between c. 2,600 BCE and c. 2,500 BCE, the Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu built one of the wonders of the ancient world. The Great Pyramids of Giza are surrounded by a complex of temples, tombs and statues, like the Great Sphinx, as well as a pyramid built later by his son, Khafre.

Building the pyramids was a multigenerational project on a titanic scale. The complex was designed to ensure the immortality of the pharaoh's soul and to bring another sort of eternal life by imortalizing the legacies of godlike, powerful human figures of the pharaos that has survived through the millennia to present day. Of course, the Giza complex involved the work of many architects, priests, laborers and artisans who are barely remembered or not recorded at all. The pyramids not only help us to understand the history of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, but to appreciate how much is left out of that history.

Lesson Plan and Teacher Guide

Activity Time: 40–50 minutes total, with additional flexible time for completion of the assessment activity.

Class Size: This lesson is theoretically flexible enough to accommodate classes of any size, remotely or in person.

Learning Environment: All of the activities described in this lesson can be completed in a classroom setting, with students having either individual or small-group access to computers with Fortnite installed (to access the Wonders: Pyramids of Giza island); or remotely, with students using Fortnite on their own computers and connecting to a shared voice/text/video channel for group work and teacher-guided learning.

Age Range: 14–16

Subjects: History, Sociology, Heritage Studies, Archaeology

Languages: English

Author(s): Dr. Robert Sherman and Preloaded

Overview

This lesson plan is for a series of activities and an assessment exercise for history students, designed to be used in conjunction with the Wonders: Pyramids of Giza developed by Preloaded.

These activities combine group discussion, critical activities taking place in Fortnite itself, and a creative exercise that explores broader social questions about how human beings from all time periods seek to influence how they are remembered after they die, and how those legacies are uncovered and interpreted in subsequent generations.

In the course of these activities, students will consider the partiality of their knowledge of ancient Egypt, and explore this partiality through a "virtual field trip" in a re-creation of the Giza complex on the Fortnite island. Finally, an assessed activity will ask them to reflect on how their own lives and times might be (mis)remembered in the far future, and how modern technologies could affect the historical process.

Students will also consider more broadly how society’s understanding of itself, past and the present, is a constant work in progress, constructed from imperfect, incomplete interpretations of the available evidence — evidence whose continued existence is influenced by many political, social and cultural factors.

This lesson plan gives teachers all of the guidance and materials necessary to run this lesson taking place across the Fortnite gameworld, classroom environments, and remote, self-led learning.

Essential Questions and Big Ideas

• Who do we remember from the ancient world?

• Why did they want to be remembered?

• What methods did they use to ensure that they would be remembered?

• How did their beliefs, desires and ideas differ from ours? Are there also similarities and continuities?

• Who is missing from the historical record? Why?

• How do we interpret the gaps left by people from the past, and how do we know those interpretations are correct?

Desired Learning Outcomes and Objectives

This lesson has been designed for universal use by classrooms of 14–16 year olds, and its learning outcomes and objectives have been designed to generally conform to national standards at this level:

• The lesson fosters interdisciplinary skills among students, asking them to use historical evidence to make creative, reasoned conjectures about social and cultural issues both in the ancient and contemporary worlds, and to consider broader philosophical questions about the nature of historical memory and human relations.

• The lesson provides experience for students in the following 21st Century Skills, as defined by AES Education: critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, information literacy, media literacy, technological literacy, and personal initiative.

• The lesson teaches students about historical contexts beyond the Western hemisphere, and deepens their understanding of the people and cultures of a frequently sensationalized and misunderstood time period (ancient Egypt).

• Importantly, students will "... recognize that the discipline of history… helps them to understand their own identity and significant aspects of the world in which they live". This also aligns with the UCLA History, Public History Initiative.

During the session, students will learn to:

• Analyze a virtual historical site — including its architecture, layout and artifacts — to support a hypothesis about its construction, use and significance.

• Critically engage with evidence (primary and secondary) to form and communicate complex and coherent conclusions about the beliefs and practices of past peoples and cultures.

• Understand how power, authority and hierarchy have influenced the lives of past peoples, and how we understand those lives today.

• Use and curate a diverse range of media to analyze how historical interpretations are made, supported and change over time — especially when they prove to be mistaken or missing important information.

• Apply these conclusions to their own lives, their socio-cultural context and the technologies they use, demonstrating similarities and differences, and continuity and change in the human experience between ancient and modern worlds.

1. Warm-Up Activity

What do we know, or think we know, about the past?

Objectives

Students will:

• Reconsider received wisdom and popular myths about ancient Egypt.

• Understand the difference between primary and secondary sources of information.

• Begin to identify important gaps in the historical record of this period and consider the reasons for those gaps.

Activity Time: 10 minutes

Materials

• Letter or legal-sized paper and pens for each student group or pair to use. If studying remotely, students can create a shared document or diagram in Google Docs, Miro, or similar software.

• The curriculum materials (as downloadable PDFs) listed at the top of this page.

Activity Sequence

Before the lesson, the teacher should ask each student to submit a piece of media — a film clip, photograph, painting or digital image, physical object, audio clip, podcast, scene from a video game or something similar — that they feel embodies how we think about ancient Egypt today.

The lesson can begin with the display of all student submissions — either physically on a table or using a digital curation service like Wakelet or Pinterest.

The teacher can then lead a short, informal discussion about some of the common themes arising from the submitted media in terms of what contemporary culture understands about the ancient Egyptian period.

This could include:

• The pyramids themselves

• The pyramids being built by slaves

• Almost-divine rulers called pharaohs

• Worship of the sun

• "Exotic" animal-headed gods

• Curses and traps (particularly for hapless archaeologists!)

• A hard life in the arid desert

• Mummies as "undead" monsters

The teacher should then ask the class to participate in another short discussion, categorizing whether they think each of these impressions and understandings are true or false, and how they know this to be the case. This can be done as a class or in pairs.

The teacher will encourage students to question this received wisdom, and identify some common myths or misconceptions, such as:

• There’s no evidence that the pyramids were built by slaves. In fact, they were most likely skilled paid laborers.

• The desert was actually a complex, multi-faceted environment, and the area around the Nile was extremely lush and fertile.

• There were no traps inside the pyramids.

• Not only pharaohs were mummified.

• Most tombs were robbed during the ancient Egyptian period itself.

• Mummies are not zombies; they were not thought to rise from the dead. Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife were more subtle than this.

More examples of such myths can easily be found using an Internet search.

The teacher will want to guide the discussion to the following takeaway:

“Many of the things we think we know about ancient Egypt might be wrong or confused. Sometimes we deliberately create false narratives about the time period for entertainment or for some other reason; sometimes we make mistakes and misinterpret things; other times we simply don’t know the truth.”

Finally, the teacher will bring the students to the following conclusion or understanding:

We understand the past based on two types of evidence: primary and secondary. Secondary evidence, like the media you brought today, is reports about past times by people (such as historians or writers) who weren’t actually there. Primary evidence is objects and stories that have survived directly from the time period, and is much more useful for understanding how things actually were.

After this, the teacher will divide the class into pairs or small groups, and ask them to think of some examples of primary evidence from ancient Egypt. These might include:

• Statues

• Mummies

• Hieroglyphic inscriptions

• Murals, paintings and carvings

• Myths and legends passed down from authentic sources

• Ruined palaces, temples and tombs (including the pyramids themselves)

Students can share their responses with the class, and the teacher can lead a short discussion, using these responses, on the following questions:

• Who, in ancient Egyptian society, do these pieces of evidence tell us the most about?

• Who is missing from these stories, and why?

This discussion should lead students to the following takeaway:

“Most of the primary evidence we have of ancient Egypt only tells us about one small segment of Egyptian society: the powerful rulers and their families. Like any society, ancient Egypt included many other types of people, who often are missing or obscured from the evidence we have of the time period. This makes our understanding of ancient Egypt incomplete, or even incorrect at times!”

2 - Main Activity

How do people want to be remembered? Is remembrance a form of immortality? What are the different forms of remembrance?

Objectives

Students will:

• Discuss memorialization and the practice of building monuments in relation to both ancient Egyptian beliefs and general human desires for remembrance.

• Collect evidence to support or refute a hypothesis by conducting virtual fieldwork in a re-creation of the Giza complex in Fortnite.

• Communicate and defend this hypothesis, with reference to the collected evidence, to their peers.

Activity Time: 30 minutes

Materials

• Students should have access to an internet-connected computer that has Fortnite installed, and a connection to the Internet in order to access the Wonders: Pyramids of Giza island.

• Copies (digital or print) of the virtual archaeology task sheets listed at the top of this lesson and again at the end. These can be downloaded as PDFs.

• A teacher’s copy of the island layout and its points of interest. This is included with this lesson plan and can be downloaded as a PDF. The map is also repeated at the end of this page, with the key for the points of interest.

Activity Sequence

The teacher begins the activity by telling the class that they will be exploring the questions raised in the previous activity by investigating the most important archaeological evidence of the time period — the Great Pyramids of Giza and the surrounding complex of temples and statues.

The teacher should introduce the Wonders: Pyramids of Giza Fortnite island (ISLAND CODE: 0458-0828-0073) by explaining:

• It is a re-creation of the Pyramids of Giza and the surrounding landscape from around 2,500 BCE.

• At that time, the Great Pyramid of Khufu and its connected temples had been completed, while the pyramid of Khufu’s son, Khafre, the Great Sphinx, and Khafre’s temples were still under construction.

• The island tries to re-create the complex as accurately as possible, based on the latest historical research into the ruins and in collaboration with leading Egyptologists.

This map, along with a key for the locations, is available as a downloadable PDF.

The teacher might like to ask the students the following slightly knotty question: is this primary or secondary evidence?

Of course, the pyramids and the Sphinx themselves are primary sources — direct connections to ancient Egypt. However, this re-creation — however accurate it might be — is secondary, as it involves modern people interpreting the modern ruins to imagine how the pyramids may have looked millennia ago. This shows the difficulties involved in working out what is true about our understanding of the past!

The teacher will then display the following, provocative quote:

Next, the teacher will ask the students to say (or write) quick responses to the following three questions before hearing some of them aloud:

• Why do you think the pharaohs built the pyramids?

• Can "eternal life" mean more than one thing here?

• What advantages do you think the pyramids gave the pharaohs after death?

The teacher can conclude this initial discussion by highlighting the following two points:

• The pyramid tombs not only enabled the pharaohs to preserve their souls for the afterlife they believed in, but also (through their size and durable construction) to serve as long-lived memorials to their greatness among the living.

• They were able to gain "eternal life" in these ways because of their power and wealth in Egyptian society. There were many other people, from the wealthy to the poor, who did not have these resources, and who are often forgotten or misremembered.

Following this discussion, the teacher will divide the class into small groups, and hand out one of the virtual archaeology task sheets (downloadable as PDFs, listed at the top of this page) to each group.

These sheets will give each group a statement, hypothesis or question related to the themes already discussed in class, and ask them to gather evidence to support this statement from around the Wonders: Pyramids of Giza Fortnite island in much the same way archaeologists do from real historical sites. This evidence could take the form of:

• Screenshots

• Recorded video clips

• A tour of the map with their fellow students

They are also tasked with creating a short presentation of their response to the statement for their classmates, using the evidence gathered.

This task should take a minimum of 20 minutes, but can be longer, depending on the duration of the class.

• There are four different task sheets reflecting different aspects of the themes of this lesson, and different points of interest in the Wonders: Pyramids of Giza Fortnite island. Teachers can split these different task sheets equally between the groups, or focus on one task in particular to compare responses across groups. They may also develop their own task sheets on other themes present on the island, using the Task Sheet template provided.

• Group sizes can be increased or decreased to accommodate different class sizes, though small groups of two or three usually work best.

• The teacher may need to instruct students how to capture screenshots or a video of their playthrough. There are many ways to do this, but here are instructions for PC and for Mac.

• This task works well for remote learning as long as students can access and play Fortnite on their own machines. If in groups with other remote learners, some additional administration is required to set up a group instance of the island that they can all share.

• The Wonders: Pyramids of Giza Fortnite island can hold up to 16 players simultaneously. For smaller classes, students could all participate in the same instance of the island, while for larger classes, each group could play their own instance before reconvening. Teachers should be aware, however, that many of the interactions on the island can only be completed once per session, so some student groups may miss elements of the experience if other groups get to these interactions first.

3 - Assessment Activity

What are the differences and similarities between the time of the pharaohs and the modern day? Has the urge to live forever disappeared?

Objectives

Students will compare and contrast their learning about ancient Egypt and the Great Pyramids of Giza with modern-day cultures and practices, particularly in the context of how people commemorate their lives and leave records of themselves using modern technology.

They will identify similarities and differences between practices in the ancient world and the modern day, drawing on their own experiences to communicate their conclusions in an assessment-friendly format.

Activity Time: 5 minutes (plus homework and assessment time)

Materials

The downloadable assessment worksheet and rubric.

Activity Sequence

The teacher will explain to the students that despite the passage of 5,000 years, we haven’t changed very much since the time of the ancient Egyptians. People still want to commemorate their lives and leave traces of themselves for the future, using every medium available. Despite living in a very different type of society and having access to much-advanced technology, many of the issues explored in this lesson are still relevant to students’ lives today!

The teacher will then give students their assessment activity, handing out the assessment worksheets (available for download as PDFs). This assessment task is designed to solidify their learning, draw on the evidencing materials created during the playthrough of the Wonders: Pyramids of Giza island, and provoke an original creative and critical response to a question that compares and contrasts their own lives with the lives and historical records of people in the past.

The teacher can set an appropriate time frame for completing the assessment, and a list of suitable forms that the assessment might take (including those suggested on the task sheets).

4 - Suggested Further Activities

If teachers want to explore the ideas introduced in this lesson further, or work with Fortnite and the Wonders: Pyramids of Giza island more extensively, some ideas for further lesson development are included below:

• Students could create and describe (or even perform) modern "rituals"’ that reflect a contemporary take on some of the concerns driving the monumental practices of the ancient Egyptians, such as a need for certainty about what happens when we die or the wish to be remembered fondly. As an additional challenge, they could be asked to reflect on how these rituals could be made more equitable, and available to a more diverse range of people than just the rich and powerful.

• Students could research and prepare a case study of modern efforts to preserve contemporary culture for the near or distant future, and compare and contrast these practices to those of the ancient world. For example, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the practice of nuclear semiotics, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine or The Long Now Foundation.

• Students and teachers could design and play a simple game, in which one player chooses a number of items to represent them, their life, and their values after they die. Other players would then play the role of archaeologists discovering these items, trying to guess why each object was chosen, or is significant to that person. The guesses and real reasons for the choices can then be compared and discussed, with particular attention paid to the differences in interpretation.

• A variant of the above game could involve students submitting their own belongings to form a “museum of the present.” This would be a collection of items presented as though they were included in a museum to illustrate life in the early 21st century. Students could then write labels for the objects that demonstrate how interpretations can be misguided, uncertain or mistaken because of gaps in the historical record.

• Students could be set a creative and reflective writing exercise that asks them to imagine a day in the life of an ordinary person in ancient Egypt, highlighting those parts of their thoughts, actions and emotions that are both familiar, and strange to modern-day audiences.

• Students could use Fortnite to construct their own memorial megastructures, either to commemorate themselves or another contemporary person, organisation, or set of beliefs that interests them, relying on architectural symbolism and environmental storytelling to demonstrate their choice values and beliefs.

• Alternatively, students could use Fortnite to reimagine the city created beyond the Wall of the Crow, where the pyramid builders lived. They could base it on publicly-available information about the archaeology of the site in combination with their own imaginations. What would this city have been like?

• Students could prepare a written report on evidence of past societies and peoples in their own local area, using a variety of media to explore what has survived of these societies, their theories as to what is missing and why, and how this colors their interpretation of their local area.

Island Map with Key

Island map for Wonders: Pyramids Of Giza (ISLAND CODE: 0458-0828-0073). Note that this info is also in a downloadable PDF.

KEY: (1) The point where the player spawns into the experience. (2) The Nile River. (3) The Great Sphinx, still under construction at this time. Players can finish carving out the Great Sphinx from a single, colossal piece of bedrock. (4) Locally-quarried blocks of white limestone used to encase the pyramids. In modern times, this smooth finish is mostly missing. (5) Red granite used to construct the pyramids and the surrounding temples. It was floated down the Nile from quarries in Aswan, 800 kilometers away. (6) Khafre's Valley Temple, where the pharaoh's body would be prepared for mummification and burial. (7) Two statues of temple deities guard the entrance to Khafre's Temple to keep out evil and to protect the soul of the pharaoh. (8) Players can perform the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony, a rite performed on a statue of Khafre to ensure that he could speak as he navigated the afterlife. (9) Find evidence of the Sphinx being aligned with Khufu's pyramid, as though guarding it. It was built by Khafre, Khufu's son, perhaps to honor his late father. (10) Use of the Temple of The Great Sphinx isn't known, but it probably had something to do with the solar cycles that were central to ancient Egyptian beliefs. At this stage it was still under construction. (11) A causeway runs nearly 500 meters from the temple by the river up to Khafre's pyramid. (12) The Wall of the Crow separated the sacred Giza complex from the city inhabited by the pyramid builders and their families. Players can find an example of preserved graffiti by one of the work gangs. (13) One of the quarries for the stone used to construct the statues and temples surrounding Khafre's pyramid. Players can carve statues of some of Khafre's royal viziers (advisors) from the rock. (14) An example of the meals that pyramid workers may have eaten — beer in sealed earthenware vessels and round loaves of bread. (15) Khafre's Pyramid (unfinished) stands next to the pyramid of his father, Khufu. (16) The pyramidion, or capstone for the pyramid, bears Khafre's name in hieroglyphics. It was believed to be the conduit by which the dead pharaoh's soul could ascend to the sun. (17) Across the top of the unfinished pyramid are some examples of the tools used by the pyramid builders: chisel, wedge, saw, and flint scraper. (18) Various mastabas, or rectangular tombs with an underground chamber, typically built for notable aristocrats, artisans and other important non-royals. (19) Khafre's Pyramid Temple is another temple for the preparation of the pharaoh's body and soul after death. (20) Petiti's Tomb, one of the mastabas that housed the remains of one of the pyramids' architects, has an imaginative curse over its door, designed to deter grave robbers. (21) Hemiunu's Tomb is another mastaba that housed the remains of the pyramid's architect. Note that it is aligned with the top of Khufu's pyramid behind it. (22) Khufu's Solar Barque is a complete buried ship, designed to be used by the Pharaoh Khufu for travel in the afterlife alongside the sun god Ra. It may also have carried his body to Giza on the Nile. (23) The Queen's Pyramids — before the Great Pyramid was built, Khufu's mother, Hetepheres I, was buried in a simpler tomb within a smaller pyramid. Khufu chose this site so he could be close to his mother in the afterlife. (24) Khufu's Valley Temple was where the pharaoh's body was prepared for mummification and burial. (25) A causeway connects the two temples of Khufu, symbolizing the passage between the lands of the living and the dead. The causeway is covered but with a narrow opening to allow rays of sunlight to illuminate the walls. (26) Khufu's Funerary Temple was built on one side of the Great Pyramid to house the complex funerary rituals for the pharaoh. (27) Players can make an offering to the statue of Khufu in this temple. The veneration of the pharaoh continued even after his death. (28) When all of the island objectives have been completed, a secret door will open here. It has been theorized that this room is where the pharaoh himself would have worshiped the gods. (29) Khufu's Pyramid: this is the Great Pyramid, and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. (30) The pyramidion, or capstone for the pyramid, bears Khufu's name in hieroglyphics. It was believed to be the conduit by which the dead pharaoh's soul could ascend to the sun. (31) Menkaure's Pyramid is a smaller pyramid, built after Khafre's death, built to honor his son Menkaure.