JEFF GRANIT staff Upper Freehold Regional Elementary/Middle School sixth-graders created their version of ancient Egypt with mummies, pyramids and hieroglyphics in the annex Nov. 20. ALLENTOWN - Complete with pyramids, the Nile River, and some reincarnated gods and goddesses, ancient Egypt arose in the annex of the Upper Freehold Regional Elementary/Middle School last week.

Under the direction of teachers Liz Richards, Judi Hoffman and Tammie Pintimalli, the 162 students that comprise the school's sixth-grade social studies classes converted the building into the ancient civilization Nov. 20.

As part of their lesson unit studying ancient Egypt, students went on a trip Sept. 18 to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, where they learned about Egypt's history and visited the exhibit of the tomb of King Tutankhamen. Afterward, they were asked to create a visual project with an oral presentation based on one of three things - the geography, the architecture or people's daily lives in ancient Egypt.

The students invited family, friends, community members and students in kindergarten through fifth grade to see their presentations last Tuesday.

While some visitors learned how the Nile River kept the ancient civilization alive and others tried their hand at Egyptian games, such as tossing gold rings around silver goblets, others still put their souls to the test in the "Weighing of the Heart Ceremony."

Natasha Bacera, Ashley Kunnath, Katie Howell, Erica Gale and Brianna O'Boyle took visitors through the ancient ceremony, which determined whether or not a person was suitable for the afterlife. Dressed as gods and goddesses such as Thoth, the god of the scribes, and Anubis, the god of embalming and friend of the dead, the students asked visitors a variety of questions regarding their morals and then weighed a replica of a human heart against a feather on a golden scale. If the heart outweighed the feather, one of the girls would pretend to be the Ammit beast and devour the heart, denying them passage into the afterlife.

O'Boyle, who had the job of escorting visitors out of the ceremony tent, said, "It can get pretty boring waiting for people to come out, but it's fun to see the kids watching the ceremony in amazement and horror."

Other presentations were more sedate, including those of Alexa Tallarido, Lele Depompo, Kristy Rosenberger and Quinn Cytryn, who all dressed in the fashions of the time and under a sheet presented the differences between the wealthy and the poor in ancient Egypt.

They explained that the wealthy ate figs, drank wine, wore jewelry and went to balls, while the workers ate aged bread and lentils and wore tattered and itchy clothes as they toiled to build pyramids for the wealthy.

As students Jay Kloskowski and Jimmy Roselli explained, the pyramids were built out of millions of blocks weighing 50 tons each. A pyramid, which could measure up to 408 feet tall, took more than 20 years and 100,000 people to construct, they said.

When given the choice, most students said they would have preferred to be a wealthy Egyptian rather than a worker. They also said they would prefer to be a wealthy person today rather than a prominent ancient Egyptian.

Rosenberger said, "I would prefer to be wealthy in this time because there's more of a variety of food and we have all this electronic stuff."

Cytryn said, "If I was wealthy, I think being wealthy in this time would be a bit more fun because I would have the chance to build really big buildings and to help others."

Student Taylor Eisenberg said the ancient Egypt lesson was important in that it helped students "learn about a part of the world that they didn't know about."

"It was cool because we learned about a lot of stuff that gave us a better idea what Egypt and the tombs there are really like," she said.