Comparing and Contrasting Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome

According to history, there are great ancient civilizations that have left important signs in the
history of human development. Indeed, ancient Egypt, ancient Greece and ancient Rome presented
different characteristics that deserve being compared and contrasted between them taking into account
some crucial factors such as politic, economic, social and cultural.

In the first place, relate to the political factor, in the ancient Egypt the pharaohs had
absolute power because of the theocracy, so that they were responsible for dispensing justice and for
making all the important decision regarding government affairs. On the other hand, Ancient Greece was
made up of city-states in their political aspect, where each city-state had its own rule and government
following one of the three main types of it: democracy, monarchy and Oligarchy. But, the Roman
established as a form of government a republic, which had a number of leaders, called magistrates, and
groups of consuls, senators, plebeian council, tribunes, governors, aediles, and censor that helped to
govern.

In the second place, dealing with the economic factor, Egyptian were wonderful traders who
commerce gold, papyrus, ebony, copper, iron, ivory and lapis lazuli by the Nile River where ships sailed up
and down bringing goods to various ports. In contrast, the ancient Greek economy had a lot of diverse
factors: taxation (a tax on the wealth of the rich), shopping and trading (exporting wine, olives, metalwork
and pottery) and agriculture (olive trees, grape vines and other oil-producing plants were able to be
grown). Meanwhile, the roman economy was based on agriculture (where there were wealthy landowners
that employed many peasants and slaves to work), the mining of gold, silver, iron, copper, tin and
mercury, and the trade that developed a vast network of roads and ports, becoming the Roman Trajan
Market a place where one could easily find garum form Hispania; spices, silk and cotton from India or
slaves from Africa.

Subsequently, regarding to the social condition, the class structure in Egypt was extremely rigid
and everyone knew where they stood in society and most accepted their position: at the top was the
pharaoh, underneath him were Egypt’s social elite, lower down were the educated professional classes
such as scribes, accountants and doctors, beneath them were the workers and craftsmen and at the very
bottom were the slaves and servants. The Greek society was mainly broken up between free people
(divided into Citizens, people who was born with Athenians parents and could take part in the government
of the Polis and Metics, who were foreign birth that had migrate to Athens and pay taxes) and slaves who
were owned by the free people. Otherwise, the social structure of ancient Rome was based on heredity,
property, wealth, citizenship and freedom and the boundaries between the different classes were strict and
legally enforced and followed a system of patronage where members of the upper classes, the patroni,
offered protection to freedmen or plebeians, who became their clients that might consist of money, food
or legal help.

Finally, according to the cultural component, Egypt was rich in culture including government and
religion that tied together and as the leader of the government, the pharaoh was also the leader of the
religion; writing, which was also important in keeping the government running because of only scribes
could read, and write and they were considered powerful people; and art, they painted everyday life, along
with important events and war, in fact, they were known for making 2-dimensional painting in which the
eyes of the human were on the side of the head. In their way, the Greek people believed in many gods,
but the principal were the twelve Olympians thought to live on Mount Olympus, led by Zeus ruler of the
heavens, and temples were built to provide earthly homes for individual gods. Also, festivals were held to
pleas individual gods and persuade them to be munificent. However, the roman was a cosmopolitan
society that absorbed some of the traits of the people it conquered-particularly the Etruscans, Greek and
Egyptians. They maintained culture and education and Greek scholars. Also, they were fascinated with wild
beasts, temples and mystical religious cults form Egypt.

To sum up, the ancient Egypt, ancient Greece and ancient Rome civilization presented many
similarities as well as differences in their political, economic, social and cultural aspect. It is evident that the
three cultures were rich in intelligence and they had deep respect in religion and rituals, even though, they
exhibited problems in social class hierarchy since only males who were citizens by birth were allowed to
vote and women are not mentioned in any political decisions. As a personal opinion, the ancient Egypt
civilization provided the building blocks for Greek and Roman culture, and, through them, influenced all of
the modern society.