This fully-resourced unit from Musical Contexts, presented in a newly revised 'easier to navigate' format, draws upon the Ancient Civilization of The Egyptians using places, signs and symbols, wall paintings, pictures, reconstructions, stories, and legends to open up opportunities for the creating, composing, improvising, and performing of pupil’s own music as a response to some of the issues raised and sources examined.  The unit explores two key musical concepts: Dynamics and Texture.  
 
The unit begins with pupil’s responding to an Egyptian Pyramid Building Scene creating movement and then sound pictures to describe different groups of characters and workers, which is then sequenced into a class Egyptian Sound Pyramid using changing dynamics and textures.  
 
Pupils sing two Egyptian-themed songs: The Song of Tutankhamun and Camel Driver, both of which use the E Harmonic Minor Scale, giving a traditional ‘Egyptian/Middle-Eastern’ mood/feel which is extended into a class performance.
 
Pupils examine traditional ancient Egyptian musical instruments, based upon wall paintings and reconstruction images, and compare these with modern-day and classroom instruments, using similar timbres and sonorities within their own work to create an intended mood or effect.  
 
The unit ends with an investigation into how dance and hand clapping was used as a response to music and an integral part of Egyptian music-making through a fun and enjoyable hand clapping dance to an Egyptian-inspired popular song.  
 
Like other Musical Contexts units within the Ancient Civilizations group, it is difficult to explore music ‘of the time’, although there are examples of ‘reconstructed Egyptian music’ and Egyptian-inspired music.
 
Ancient Civilizations - Ancient Egypt comes as a fully-resourced 6-lesson package ideal for specialist and non-specialist music teachers.  Detailed Lesson Plans feature the Lesson Question and Core Content structured into Intro Quiz/DOITNOW, Lesson Content Activities: Skills, Knowledge and Understanding (with Resources referenced for each task, discussion notes and answers to all activities) and Exit Quizzes, each supported by a Lesson Presentation containing slide notes and embedded media files (also available separately as MP3 and WAV formats).
 
Each lesson is accompanied by a Worksheet and a unit Knowledge Organiser consolidates key musical knowledge, theory and concepts.  A selection of Cover and Homework Activities provides unit-themed work for planned or emergency music cover.
 
Ancient Civilizations - Ancient Egypt is available to download upon purchase as a ZIP file where all printables are available as both customisable and editable Word files (.docx) and PDFs (.pdf).