Compare and Contrast Ap Essay Egypt and Indus Valley

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The settlements of Egypt and the Indus Valley both grew into primary urban civilizations. There are seven characteristics shared in innovative primary urbanization and elements of these characteristics can vary in different civilizations. The most prominent comparisons between Egypt and the Indus Valley lie in the characteristics of government, writing, and technology. Government plays a large role in any urban civilization, which it did for Egypt and the Indus Valley. Both these civilizations used a bureaucracy as their form of government. Though they both had the same kind of government, it was organized differently. Egypt had one large government throughout the region, and in the Indus Valley, each city-state had a different group of government workers. Minimal evidence has been found indication social hierarchy in the Indus Valley, however it is certain that Egypt had a social structure with pharaohs on top and peasants on the bottom. The Indus Valley and Egypt both had their own writing systems. The Egyptian script is called hieroglyphs and with the aid of the Rosetta Stone, have come to be deciphered, while the scripts of the Indus Valley has not yet been translated. Since hieroglyphs can be read, and the physical remains have been destroyed by the Nile, most interpretable remains that tell us about Egypt are written. On the other hand, most informative remains from the Indus Valley are physical. To further differentiate the two scripts, there is controversy over whether the script of the Indus Valley is a complete language or not, but it is known that hieroglyphs form a complete language. Along with comparisons between the two scripts themselves, the materials used to write on were both different. The people of the Indus Valley wrote on stone seals and the Egyptians wrote on paper created from the papyrus plant. Advancing technology is a crucial part of

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