- This article is about the contemporary North African ethnic
group. See Egyptians for other
uses.
Egyptians (Standard Arabic: ; Egyptian Arabic: ; Coptic: ) is the name of the nationality and Mediterranean
North African ethnic group native to Egypt
.
Egyptian
identity is closely tied to the Geography of Egypt
, dominated by the lower Nile
Valley, the small strip of cultivable land stretching from the
First Cataract to the Mediterranean
Sea
and enclosed by desert both to the east and to the west. This unique
geography has been the basis of the development of Egyptian society
since
antiquity.
The daily language of the Egyptians is the local
variety of Arabic, known as
Egyptian Arabic or
Masri. Egyptians
are predominantly adherents of
Sunni
Islam with a
Shia minority and a
significant proportion who follow native
Sufi
orders. A sizable minority of Egyptians
belong to the
Coptic Orthodox
Church, whose
liturgical
language,
Coptic, is the last
stage of the indigenous
Egyptian
language.The
national identity
of Egyptians as it developed in the 19th to 20th centuries consists
of overlapping or conflicting ideologies, secular Egyptian
nationalism (also known as "Pharaonism"), secular
Arab nationalism (including
pan-Arabism), and
Islamism.
Names
- Egyptians, from Greek , , from , "Egypt".
The Greek
name is derived from Late Egyptian
Hikuptah "Memphis
", a
corruption of the earlier Egyptian
name Hat-ka-Ptah ( ), meaning "home of the ka (soul) of Ptah", the name of a temple to
the god Ptah at Memphis. Strabo provided a folk
etymology according to which had evolved as a compound from ,
meaning "below the Aegean". In English, the noun "Egyptians"
appears in the 14th century, in Wycliff's Bible, as Egipcions.
- Copts ( قبط) – Under Muslim rule, the
Egyptians came to be known as Copts, a
derivative of the Greek word , Aiguptios (Egyptian), from
, Aiguptos (Egypt). The Greek name in turn may be derived from
the Egyptian , literally "Estate
(or 'House') of Ptah", the name of the temple
complex of the god Ptah at Memphis
. After the majority of Egyptians converted
from Christianity to Islam due to the Islamic takeover, the term became
exclusively associated with Egyptian Christianity
and Egyptians who remained Christian, though references to native
Muslims as Copts are attested until the Mamluk period.
- – The modern Egyptian name comes from the ancient Semitic name for Egypt and originally
connoted "civilization" or "metropolis". Classical Arabic (Egyptian Arabic ) is directly cognate with
the Biblical Hebrew
Mitzráyīm, meaning "the two straits", a reference to the
predynastic separation of Upper
and Lower Egypt. Edward William
Lane writing in the 1820s, said that Egyptians commonly called
themselves 'the Egyptians', 'the Children of Egypt' and 'the People
of Egypt'. He added that the Turks
"stigmatized" the Egyptians with the name or the 'People of the
Pharaoh'.
- – This was the native Egyptian
name of the people of the Nile Valley, literally 'People of Kemet'
(i.e., Egypt). In antiquity, it was
often shortened to simply or "the people". The name is vocalized as
in the Coptic stage of the language,
meaning "Egyptian" ( , with the plural indefinite article,
"Egyptians"; , with the plural definite article, "the
Egyptians").
Demographics
An
estimated 76.4 million Egyptians live around the world, but the
vast majority are in Egypt
where ethnic
Egyptians constitute about 94% (74 million) of the total
population. Ethnic minorities in Egypt are formed by
Nubians,
Berber,
Bedouins,
Arabs,
Beja and
Dom.
Approximately 90% of the population of Egypt are
Muslim and 10% are
Christian
(9%
Coptic, 1% other Christian),
though estimates vary. The majority live near the banks of the
Nile River where the only
arable land is found. Close to half of the
Egyptian people today are urban; most of the rest are
fellahin living in rural towns and villages. A
large influx of fellahin into urban cities, and rapid urbanization
of many rural areas since the turn of the last century, have
shifted the balance between the number of urban and rural citizens.
Egyptians also form smaller minorities in neighboring countries,
North America,
Europe and
Australia.
Historically, it was rare for Egyptians to leave their country
permanently or for an extended period of time—it was not until the
1970s that Egyptians began to emigrate in large numbers. Until
recently, a study on the pattern of Egyptian emigration was quoted
as saying "Egyptians have a reputation of preferring their own
soil. Few leave except to study or travel; and they always
return... Egyptians do not emigrate." Egyptians also tend to be
provincial, meaning their attachment extends not only to Egypt but
to the specific
provinces,
towns and villages from which they hail. Therefore, return
migrants, such as temporary workers abroad, come back to their
region of origin in Egypt.

Sixty percent of Egyptians are rural
fellahin or farmers.
The percentage was much higher at the turn of the last
century, before rapid urbanization and large-scale in-migration
shifted Egypt's demographics.
A sizable
Egyptian diaspora did
not begin to form until well into the 1980s, when political and
economic conditions began driving Egyptians out of the country in
significant numbers. Today, the diaspora numbers nearly 4 million
(2006 est). Generally, those who emigrate to the United States and
western European countries tend to do so permanently, with 93% and
55.5% of Egyptians (respectively) settling in the new country. On
the other hand, Egyptians migrating to Arab countries almost always
only go there with the intention of returning to Egypt; virtually
none settle in the new country on a permanent basis. Prior to 1974,
only few Egyptian professionals had left the country in search for
employment. Political, demographic and economic pressures led to
the first wave of emigration after 1952. Later more Egyptians left
their homeland first after the 1973 boom in oil prices and again in
1979, but it was only in the second half of the 1980s that Egyptian
migration became prominent.
Egyptian emigration today is motivated by even higher rates of
unemployment, population growth and increasing prices. Political
repression and human rights violations by Egypt's ruling régime are
other contributing factors (see
Egypt
- Human rights).
Egyptians have also been impacted by the wars
between Egypt and Israel
,
particularly after the Six-Day War in
1967, when migration rates began to rise. In August 2006,
Egyptians made headlines when 11 students from Mansoura University failed to show up at
their American
host
institutions for a cultural exchange program in the hope of finding
employment. Many
Coptic Christians also
leave the country due to discrimination and harassment by the
Egyptian government and Islamist groups.
Egyptians in neighboring countries face additional challenges.
Over the
years, abuse, exploitation and/or ill-treatment of Egyptian workers
and professionals in the Arab states of the Persian
Gulf, Iraq
and Libya
have been
reported by the Egyptian Human Rights Organization and different
media outlets. Arab nationals have in the past expressed
fear over an "'Egyptianization' of the local dialects and culture
that were believed to have resulted from the predominance of
Egyptians in the field of education" (see also
Egyptian Arabic -
Geographics). The Egyptians for their part object to what they
call the "Saudization" of their culture due to Saudi Arabian
petrodollar-flush investment in the Egyptian
entertainment industry. Twice Libya
was on the brink of war with Egypt due to mistreatment of Egyptian
workers and after the signing of the
peace treaty with Israel. When the
Gulf War ended, Egyptian workers in Iraq
were subjected to harsh measures and expulsion by the Iraqi
government and to violent attacks by Iraqis returning from the war
to fill the workforce.
Identity

Egyptian students at a youth
workshop.
Egyptian
identity since the Iron Age Empire
evolved under the influence of a succession of foreign rulers,
Nubian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Turkish, French
and British, accommodating two new
religions, Christianity and
Islam, and a new language, Egyptian Arabic.
The degree to which Egyptians identify with each layer of Egypt's
history in articulating a sense of collective identity can vary.
Questions of identity came to fore in the 20th century as Egyptians
sought to free themselves from British occupation, leading to the
rise of ethno-territorial, secular Egyptian nationalism (also known
as "Pharaonism"), secular
Arab
nationalism (including
pan-Arabism),
and
Islamism.
"Pharaonism" has its roots in the 19th century and rose to
prominence in the 1920s and 1930s.
It looked to Egypt's pre-Islamic past and argued that Egypt was part
of a larger Mediterranean
civilization. This ideology
stressed the role of the Nile River and
the Mediterranean
Sea
. Pharaonism's most notable advocate was
Taha Hussein.It became the dominant
mode of expression of Egyptian anti-colonial activists of the pre-
and inter-war periods:
In 1931, following a visit to Egypt, Syrian Arab nationalist
Sati' al-Husri remarked that
"[Egyptians] did not possess an Arab nationalist sentiment; did not
accept that Egypt was a part of the Arab lands, and would not
acknowledge that the Egyptian people were part of the Arab nation."
The later 1930s would become a formative period for Arab
nationalism in Egypt, in large part due to efforts by
Syrian/Palestinian/Lebanese intellectuals.
Nevertheless, a year
after the establishment of the League of
Arab States in 1945, to be headquartered in Cairo, Oxford
University
historian H. S. Deighton was still
writing:
It was not until the
Nasser era
more than a decade later that Arab nationalism, and by extension
Arab socialism, became a state policy
and a means with which to define Egypt's position in the Middle
East and the world, usually articulated vis-à-vis
Zionism in the neighboring Jewish state.
For a
while Egypt and Syria
formed the
United Arab Republic.
When the union was dissolved, Egypt continued to be known as the
UAR until 1971, when Egypt adopted the current official name, the
Arab Republic of Egypt. The Egyptians' attachment to Arabism,
however, was particularly questioned after the 1967
Six-Day War. Thousands of Egyptians had lost
their lives and the country became disillusioned with Arab
politics.
Nasser's successor Sadat, both through public policy and his
peace initiative with Israel
, revived an
uncontested Egyptian orientation, unequivocally asserting that only
Egypt and Egyptians were his responsibility. The terms
"Arab", "Arabism" and "Arab unity", save for the new official name,
became conspicuously absent. (See also
Liberal age and
Republic sections.)
Many Egyptians today feel that Egyptian and Arab identities are
inextricably linked, and emphasize the central role that Egypt
plays in the Arab world. Others continue to believe that Egypt and
Egyptians are simply not Arab, emphasizing indigenous Egyptian
heritage, culture and independent polity; pointing to the failures
of Arab and pan-Arab nationalist policies; and publicly voicing
objection to the present official name of the country.
In late
2007, el-Masri el-Yom daily newspaper conducted an
interview at a bus stop in the working-class district of Imbaba
to ask
citizens what Arab nationalism (el-qawmeyya el-'arabeyya)
represented for them. One Egyptian Muslim youth responded,
"Arab nationalism means that the Egyptian Foreign Minister in
Jerusalem gets humiliated by the Palestinians, that Arab leaders
dance upon hearing of Sadat's death, that Egyptians get humiliated
in the
Arab states of
the Persian Gulf, and of course that Arab countries get to
fight Israel until the last Egyptian soldier." Another felt
that,"Arab countries hate Egyptians," and that unity with Israel
may even be more of a possibility than Arab nationalism, because he
believes that Israelis would at least respect Egyptians.
Some contemporary prominent Egyptians who oppose Arab nationalism
or the idea that Egyptians are Arabs include Secretary General of
the
Supreme Council of
Antiquities Zahi Hawass, popular
writer
Osama Anwar Okasha,
Egyptian-born Harvard University Professor
Leila Ahmed, Member of Parliament Suzie Greiss,
in addition to different local groups and intellectuals. This
understanding is also expressed in other contexts, such as Neil
DeRosa's novel
Joseph's Seed in his depiction of an
Egyptian character "who declares that Egyptians are not Arabs and
never will be."
Egyptian critics of Arab nationalism contend that it has worked to
erode and/or relegate native Egyptian identity by superimposing
only one aspect of Egypt's culture. These views and sources for
collective identification in the Egyptian state are captured in the
words of a linguistic anthropologist who conducted fieldwork in
Cairo:
Languages

a 3rd century Coptic inscription
The
official language of Egypt
today is
Arabic. The spoken
vernacular is known as
Egyptian
Arabic, while
Modern Standard
Arabic is reserved for more formal contexts.
The recorded history of Egyptian Arabic as a separate dialect
begins in
Ottoman Egypt with a
document by a 17th century author writing about the peculiarities
of the speech of the Egyptian people. This suggests that the
language by then was spoken by the majority of Egyptians. It is
represented in a body of
vernacular literature comprising
novels, plays and poetry published over the course of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Classical Arabic is also a significant
cultural element in Egyptian culture, as Egyptian novelists and
poets were among the first to experiment with modern styles of
Arabic literature, and the forms they developed have been widely
imitated.
In
Byzantine Egypt, both the native
Coptic language (the direct
descendant of the ancient
Egyptian
language) and
Koine Greek were in
use for administrative purposes.Following the
Muslim conquest of Egypt in the 7th
century, Egypt came under
Arab
rule.
Use of both Greek and Coptic as administrative languages was
discontinued in favour of the
Arabic
language in
705, and Coptic suffered a
continuous decline over the following centuries. Especially under
Mamluk rule, speakers of Coptic were actively
persecuted.The Coptic language was virtually extinct by the 18th
century, although it remained in continuous use as the
liturgical language of
Coptic Christianity. Since the 19th
century, there have been attempts at
revival (see
Liberal Egyptian Party), and it is
now reported as the native language of a few hundred members of the
Egyptian diaspora..
Origins
Over the years, the findings of
archaeology,
biological anthropology and
population genetics have shed light on
the origins of the Egyptians. The
indigenous Nile Valley population became
firmly established during the
Pleistocene epoch when
nomadic hunter-gatherers began living along the
Nile River. Traces of these proto-Egyptians
appear in the form of
artifacts and rock carvings in the
terraces of the Nile and the desert oases. Beginning in the
predynastic period, some
differences between the populations of Upper and Lower Egypt were
ascertained through their skeletal remains, suggesting a gradual
clinal pattern north to
south.
When Lower and Upper Egypt were unified
c. 3150 BC, the
distinction began to blur, resulting in a more "
homogeneous" population in Egypt, though the
distinction remains true to some degree to this day. Some
biological anthropologists such as
Shomarka Keita believe the range of
variability to be primarily indigenous and not necessarily the
result of significant intermingling of widely
divergent peoples. Keita describes the
northern and southern patterns of the early
predynastic period as
"northern-Egyptian-Maghreb" and "tropical African variant"
(overlapping with
Nubia/
Kush) respectively. He shows that a
progressive change in Upper Egypt toward the northern Egyptian
pattern takes place through the predynastic period.
The southern pattern
continues to predominate in Abydos
, Upper Egypt
by the First Dynasty, but
"lower Egyptian, Maghrebian, and European patterns are observed
also, thus making for great diversity."
A 2006
bioarchaeological study on the
dental
morphology of
ancient Egyptians by Prof. Joel Irish
shows dental traits characteristic of indigenous
North Africans and to a lesser extent
Southwest Asian and southern
European populations.
Among the samples included in the study
is skeletal material from the Hawara tombs of Fayum, which
clustered very closely with the Badarian
series of the predynastic period. All the
samples, particularly those of the Dynastic period, were
significantly divergent from a neolithic West Saharan sample from
Lower Nubia. Biological continuity was also found intact from the
dynastic to the post-pharaonic periods. According to Irish:
[The Egyptian] samples [996 mummies] exhibit
morphologically simple, mass-reduced dentitions that are similar to those in
populations from greater North Africa (Irish, 1993, 1998a–c, 2000)
and, to a lesser extent, western Asia and Europe (Turner, 1985a;
Turner and Markowitz, 1990; Roler, 1992; Lipschultz, 1996; Irish,
1998a).
Similar craniofacial measurements among samples from
these regions were reported as well (Brace et al., 1993)... an
inspection of MMD values reveals no evidence of increasing phenetic distance between samples from the first
and second halves of this almost 3,000-year-long
period.
For example, phenetic distances between First-Second
Dynasty Abydos and samples from Fourth Dynasty Saqqara (MMD ¼
0.050), 11-12th Dynasty Thebes (0.000), 12th Dynasty Lisht (0.072),
19th Dynasty Qurneh (0.053), and 26th–30th Dynasty Giza (0.027) do
not exhibit a directional increase through time...
Thus, despite increasing foreign influence after the
Second Intermediate Period, not only did Egyptian culture remain
intact (Lloyd, 2000a), but the people themselves, as represented by
the dental samples, appear biologically constant as
well...
Gebel Ramlah [Neolithic Nubian/Western
Desert sample] is, in fact, significantly different from Badari
based on the
22-trait MMD (Table 4).
For that matter, the Neolithic Western Desert sample is
significantly different from all others [but] is closest to
predynastic and early dynastic samples.
A group of noted physical anthropologists conducted
craniofacial studies of Egyptian skeletal
remains and concluded similarly that "the Egyptians have been in
place since back in the Pleistocene and have been largely
unaffected by either invasions or migrations. As others have noted,
Egyptians are Egyptians, and they were so in the past as
well."
Genetic analysis of modern
Egyptians reveals that they have
paternal lineages common to indigenous North
Africans/
Berber populations primarily,
and to
Near Eastern peoples to a lesser
extent—these lineages would have spread during the
Neolithic and maintained by the
predynastic period.
Studies based on
maternal
lineages also link Egyptians with people from modern Eritrea
/Ethiopia
such as the Tigre, who
are characterized by haplogroup M1 believed to
have originated in West Asia.
University
of Chicago
Egyptologist Frank Yurco confirmed this finding of
historical and regional continuity, saying:
Certainly there was some foreign admixture [in Egypt],
but basically a homogeneous African population had lived in the
Nile Valley from ancient to modern times...
[the] Badarian people, who developed the earliest
Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North
African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified
Egyptians ever since (Hassan 1985; Yurco 1989; Trigger 1978; Keita
1990; Brace et al., this volume)...
The peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of East
Africa, Ethiopia and Somalia are now generally regarded as a
Nilotic (i.e.
Nile River) continuity, with widely ranging physical
features (complexions light to dark, various hair and craniofacial
types) but with powerful common cultural traits, including cattle
pastoralist traditions (Trigger 1978; Bard, Snowden, this
volume).
Language research suggests that this Saharan-Nilotic
population became speakers of the Afro-Asiatic
languages...
Semitic was evidently spoken by Saharans who crossed
the Red Sea into Arabia and became ancestors of the Semitic
speakers there, possibly around 7000 BC...
In summary we may say that Egypt was distinct North
African culture rooted in the Nile Valley and on the
Sahara.
History
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt sees a succession of
thirty dynasties spanning three millennia, during which Egyptian
culture underwent significant development in terms of
religion,
arts,
language and
customs.Egypt fell under "foreign rulers", the
Hyksos, in the
Middle Bronze Age, which the native
nobility managed to expulse by the
Late
Bronze Age, initiating the
New
Kingdom of Egypt rising to the status of an "Empire" under
Thutmose III, and it remained a
super-regional power throughout the successful
19th and
20th dynasties (the
Amarna Period and the
Ramesside Period, lasting into the
Early Iron Age. The
Bronze Age collapse that had afflicted
the Mesopotamian empires reaches Egypt with some delay, and it is
only in the 11th century BC that the Empire declines, falling into
the comparative obscurity of the
Third Intermediate Period of
Egypt. The
25th
dynasty of
Nubian rulers was again
briefly replaced by native nobility in the 7th century BC, but in
525 BC, Egypt fell under
Persian rule.
Alexander the Great was greeted as a
liberator as he conquered Egypt in 332 BC. The
Late Period of ancient Egypt is
taken to end with his death in 323 BC. The
Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt from 305 BC to
30 BC and introduced
Hellenic culture to
Egyptians.
Throughout the Pharaonic epoch (viz., from 2920 BC to 525 BC in
conventional Egyptian
chronology),
divine kingship was
the glue which held Egyptian society together. It was especially
pronounced in the Old and Middle Kingdoms and continued until the
Roman conquest. The societal structure created by this system of
government remained virtually unchanged up to modern times. The
role of the king, however, was considerably weakened after the
20th dynasty. The king in
his role as Son of Ra was entrusted to maintain
Ma'at, the principle of truth,
justice and order, and to enhance the country's agricultural
economy by ensuring regular
Nile
floods. Ascendancy to the Egyptian throne reflected the myth of
Horus who assumed kingship after he buried his murdered father
Osiris. The king of Egypt, as a living
personification of Horus, could claim the throne after burying his
predecessor, who was typically his father. When the role of the
king waned, the country became more susceptible to foreign
influence and invasion.
The attention paid to the dead, and the veneration with which they
were held, were one of the hallmarks of ancient Egyptian society.
Egyptians built tombs for their dead that were meant to last for
eternity. This was most prominently expressed by the Great
Pyramids. The ancient
Egyptian
word for tomb means 'House of Eternity.' The Egyptians also
celebrated life and this is attested by tomb reliefs and
inscriptions, papyri and other sources depicting Egyptians farming,
conducting trade expeditions, hunting, holding festivals, attending
parties and receptions with their pet dogs, cats and monkeys,
dancing and singing, enjoying food and drink, and playing games.
The ancient Egyptians were also known for their engaging sense of
humor, much like their modern descendants.
Another
important continuity during this period is the Egyptian attitude
toward foreigners—those they considered not fortunate enough to be
part of the community of rmṯ or "the people" (i.e.,
Egyptians.) This attitude was facilitated by the Egyptians' more
frequent contact with other peoples during the New Kingdom, when
Egypt expanded to an empire that also encompassed Nubia through Jebel Barkal
and parts of the Levant. The Egyptian sense of superiority was
given religious validation, as foreigners in the land of
Ta-Meri (Egypt) were anathema to the maintenance of Maat—a
view most clearly expressed by the
admonitions of Ipuwer in reaction to the
chaotic events of the
Second Intermediate
Period. Foreigners in Egyptian texts were described in
derogatory terms; e.g., 'wretched Asiatics' (Semites), 'vile
Kushites' (Nubians), and 'Ionian dogs' (Greeks). Egyptian beliefs
remained unchallenged when Egypt fell to the Hyksos,
Assyrians,
Libyans,
Persians and Greeks—their rulers assumed the role of the Egyptian
Pharaoh and were often depicted praying to Egyptian gods.
The ancient Egyptians used a solar calendar that divided the year
into 12 months of 30 days each, with five extra days added. The
calendar revolved around the annual
Nile
Inundation (
akh.t), the first of three seasons into which
the year was divided. The other two were Winter and Summer, each
lasting for four months. The modern Egyptian
fellahin calculate the agricultrual seasons,
with the months still bearing their ancient names, in much the same
manner. The importance of the Nile in Egyptian life, ancient and
modern, cannot be overemphasized. The rich alluvium carried by the
Nile inundation were the basis of Egypt's formation as a society
and a state. Regular inundations were a cause for celebration; low
waters often meant famine and starvation. The ancient Egyptians
personified the river flood as the god
Hapy and
dedicated a
Hymn to the Nile to celebrate it.
km.t, the Black Land, was as
Herodotus observed, "the gift of the river."
Graeco-Roman period
When Alexander died, a story began to circulate that
Nectanebo II was Alexander's father. This made
Alexander in the eyes of the Egyptians a legitimate heir to the
native pharaohs. The new Ptolemaic rulers, however, exploited Egypt
for their own benefit and a great social divide was created between
Egyptians and Greeks. The local priesthood, however, continued to
wield power as they had during the Dynastic age. Egyptians
continued to practice their religion undisturbed and largely
maintained their own separate communities from their foreign
conquerors. The language of administration became
Greek, but the mass of the Egyptian
population was
Egyptian-speaking
and concentrated in the countryside, while most Greeks lived in
Alexandria and only few had any knowledge of Egyptian.
The Ptolemaic rulers all retained their Greek names and titles, but
projected a public image of being Egyptian pharaohs. Much of this
period's vernacular literature was composed in the
demotic phase and script of the Egyptian
language. It was focused on earlier stages of Egyptian history when
Egyptians were independent and ruled by great native pharaohs such
as
Ramesses II. Prophetic writings
circulated among Egyptians promising expulsion of the Greeks, and
frequent revolting by the Egyptians took place throughout the
Ptolemaic period. A revival in animal cults, the hallmark of the
Predyanstic and Early Dyanstic periods, is said to have come about
to fill a spiritual void as Egyptians became increasingly
disillusioned and weary due to successive waves of foreign
invasions.
When the
Romans annexed Egypt in 30 BC,
the social structure created by the Greeks was largely retained,
though the power of the Egyptian priesthood diminished. The Roman
emperors lived abroad and did not perform the ceremonial functions
of Egyptian kingship as the Ptolemies had. The art of
mummy portraiture flourished, but
Egypt became further stratified with Romans at the apex of the
social pyramid, Greeks and
Jews occupied the
middle stratum, while Egyptians, who constituted the vast majority,
were at the bottom. Egyptians paid a poll tax at full rate, Greeks
paid at half-rate and Roman citizens were exempt. The Roman emperor
Caracalla advocated the expulsion of all
ethnic Egyptians from the city of Alexandria, saying "genuine
Egyptians can easily be recognized among the linen-weavers by their
speech." This attitude lasted until AD 212 when Roman citizenship
was finally granted to all the inhabitants of Egypt, though ethnic
divisions remained largely entrenched. The Romans, like the
Ptolemies, treated Egypt like their own private property, a land
exploited for the benefit of a small foreign elite. The Egyptian
peasants, pressed for maximum production to meet Roman quotas,
suffered and fled to the desert.
The cult of
Isis, like those of
Osiris and
Serapis, had been
popular in Egypt and throughout the
Roman
Empire at the coming of Christianity, and continued to be the
main competitor with Christianity in its early years. The main
temple of Isis remained a major center of worship in Egypt until
the reign of the
Byzantine emperor
Justinian I in the 6th century, when it
was finally closed down. Egyptians, disaffected and weary after a
series of foreign occupations, identified the story of the
mother-goddess Isis protecting her child
Horus
with that of the
Virgin Mary
and her son
Jesus escaping the emperor
Herod. Consequently, many sites
believed to have been the resting places of the holy family during
their sojourn in Egypt became sacred to the Egyptians. The visit of
the holy family later circulated among Egyptian Christians as
fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy "When Israel was a child, then
I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt" (Hosea 11:1). The
feast of the coming of the Lord of Egypt on June 1 became an
important part of Christian Egyptian tradition. According to
tradition, Christianity was brought to Egypt by
Saint Mark the Evangelist in the
early 40s of the 1st century, under the reign of the Roman emperor
Nero.
The earliest converts were Jews residing in
Alexandria
, a city which had by then become a center of
culture and learning in the entire Mediterranean oikoumene.
St. Mark is said to have founded the Holy Apostolic See of
Alexandria and to have become its first
Patriarch.
Within 50 years of
St. Mark's arrival in Alexandria, a fragment of New Testament writings appeared in Oxyrhynchus
(Bahnasa), which suggests that Christianity already
began to spread south of Alexandria at an early date. By the
mid-third century, a sizable number of Egyptians were persecuted by
the Romans on account of having adopted the new Christian faith,
beginning with the Edict of
Decius.
Christianity was tolerated in the Roman Empire until AD 284, when
the Emperor
Diocletian persecuted and put
to death a great number of Christian Egyptians. This event became a
watershed in the history of Egyptian Christianity, marking the
beginning of a distinct Egyptian or
Coptic Church. It became known as the
'Era of the Martyrs' and is commemorated in the
Coptic calendar in which dating of the years
began with the start of Diocletian's reign. When Egyptians were
persecuted by Diocletian, many retreated to the desert to seek
relief. The practice precipitated the rise of
monasticism, for which the Egyptians, namely
St. Antony,
St. Bakhum,
St. Shenouda and
St. Amun, are credited as pioneers. By the end of
the 4th century, it is estimated that the mass of the Egyptians had
either embraced Christianity or were nominally Christian.
The Catachetical School of Alexandria was founded in the 3rd
century by
Pantaenus, becoming a major
school of Christian learning as well as science, mathematics and
the humanities. The
Psalms and part of the
New Testament were translated at the school from Greek to Egyptian,
which had already begun to be written in Greek letters with the
addition of a number of demotic characters. This stage of the
Egyptian language would later come to be known as
Coptic along with its
alphabet. The third theologian to head the
Catachetical School was a native Egyptian by the name of
Origen. Origen was an outstanding theologian and one
of the most influential
Church
Fathers. He traveled extensively to lecture in various churches
around the world and has many important texts to his credit
including the
Hexapla, an
exegesis of various translations of the
Hebrew Bible.
the threshold of the
Byzantine
period, the New Testament had been entirely translated into Coptic.
But while Christianity continued to thrive in Egypt, the old pagan
beliefs which had survived the test of time were facing mounting
pressure. The Byzantine period was particularly brutal in its zeal
to erase any traces of ancient Egyptian religion. Under emperor
Theodosius I, Christianity had already
been proclaimed the religion of the Empire and all pagan cults were
forbidden.
When Egypt fell under the jurisdiction of
Constantinople
after the split of the Roman Empire, many ancient
Egyptians temples were either destroyed or converted into
monasteries.
One of the defining moments in the history of the Church in Egypt
is a controversy that ensued over the nature of Jesus Christ which
culminated in the final split of the Coptic Church from both the
Byzantine and Roman Catholic Churches. The
Council of Chalcedon convened in AD
451, signaling the Byzantine Empire's determination to assert its
hegemony over Egypt. When it declared that Jesus Christ was of two
natures embodied in Christ's person, the Egyptian reaction was
swift, rejecting the decrees of the Council as incompatible with
the
Miaphysite doctrine of Coptic
Orthodoxy. The Copts' upholding of the Miaphysite doctrine against
the pro-Chalcedonian Greek
Melkites had both
theological and national implications. As
Coptologist Jill Kamil notes, the position taken
by the Egyptians "paved [the way] for the Coptic church to
establish itself as a separate entity...No longer even spiritually
linked with Constantinople, theologians began to write more in
Coptic and less in Greek.
Coptic art
developed its own national character, and the Copts stood united
against the imperial power."
Arab Egypt
Before the
Muslim conquest of
Egypt, the Byzantine Emperor
Heraclius
was able to reclaim the country after a brief
Persian invasion in AD 616, and
subsequently appointed
Cyrus of
Alexandria, a
Chalcedonian, as Patriarch. Cyrus
was determined to convert the Egyptian Miaphysites by any means. He
expelled Coptic monks and bishops from their monasteries and sees.
Many died in the chaos, and the resentment of the Egyptians against
their Byzantine conquerors reached a peak. Meanwhile, the new
religion of
Islam was making headway in
Arabia, culminating in the
Muslim conquests that took place under the
Caliphate following
Muhammad's death. In AD 639, the Arab general
'Amr ibn al-'As marched into Egypt
with his small
Rashidun army, facing
off with the Byzantines in the
Battle of Heliopolis that ended with
the Byzantines' defeat. The relationship between the Greek Melkites
and the Egyptian Copts had grown so bitter that most Egyptians did
not put up heavy resistance against the Arabs.
The new
Muslim rulers moved the capital
to Fustat
and, through
the 7th century, retained the existing Byzantine administrative
structure with Greek as its
language. Native Egyptians filled administrative ranks and
continued to worship freely so long as they paid the
jizya poll tax, in addition to a
land tax that all Egyptians irrespective of religion
also had to pay. The authority of the Miaphysite doctrine of the
Coptic Church was for the first time nationally recognized. Soon
increased taxation by the Arabs became heavier, leading many
Christians to adopt Islam in order to escape the jizya. According
to
al-Ya'qubi, repeated revolts by Egyptian
Christians against the Arabs took place in the 8th and 9th
centuries under the reign of the
Umayyads
and
Abbasids. The greatest was one in which
disaffected Muslim Egyptians joined their Christian compatriots
around AD 830 in an unsuccessful attempt to repel the Arabs. The
Egyptian Muslim historian Ibn Abd al-Hakam spoke harshly of the
Abbasids—a reaction that according to
Egyptologist Okasha El-Daly can be seen "within
the context of the struggle between proud native Egyptians and the
central Abbasid caliphate in Iraq."
The form of Islam that eventually took hold in Egypt was
Sunni, though very early in this period Egyptians
began to blend their new faith with indigenous beliefs and
practices that had survived through Coptic Christianity. Just as
Egyptians had been pioneers in early
monasticism so they were in the development of
the mystical form of Islam,
Sufism. Various
Sufi
orders were founded in the 8th century
and flourished until the present day. One of the earliest Egyptian
Sufis was
Dhul-Nun al-Misri (i.e.,
Dhul-Nun the Egyptian).
He was born in Akhmim
in AD 796
and achieved political and social leadership over the Egyptian
people. Dhul-Nun was regarded as the Patron Saint of the
Physicians and is credited with having introduced the concept of
Gnosis into Islam, as well as of being able
to decipher a number of hieroglyphic characters due to his
knowledge of
Coptic. He was keenly
interested in ancient Egyptian sciences, and claimed to have
received his knowledge of alchemy from Egyptian sources. By the end
of the 9th century, Islam appears to have become predominant among
Egyptians.
In the years to follow the Arab occupation of Egypt, a social
hierarchy was created whereby Egyptians who converted to Islam
acquired the status of
mawali or "clients" to
the ruling Arab elite, while those who remained Christian, the
Copts, became
dhimmis. In time, however, the
power of the Arabs waned throughout the
Islamic Empire so that in the 10th
century, the Turkish
Ikhshids were
able to take control of Egypt and made it an independent political
unit from the rest of the empire. Egyptians continued to live
socially and politically separate from their foreign conquerors,
but their rulers like the Ptolemies before them were able to
stabilize the country and bring renewed economic prosperity. It was
under the
Shiite Fatimids from the 10th to the 12th centuries that
Muslim Egyptian institutions began to take form along with the
Egyptian dialect of Arabic, which
was to eventually supplant native Egyptian or Coptic as the spoken
language.
Al-Azhar
was founded in AD 970 in the new capital Cairo
, not very
far from its ancient predecessor in Memphis. It became the
preeminent Muslim center of learning in Egypt and by the
Ayyubid period it had acquired a Sunni
orientation. The Fatimids with some exceptions were known for their
religious tolerance and their observance of local Muslim, Coptic
and indigenous Egyptian festivals and customs. Under the Ayyubids,
the country for the most part continued to prosper until it fell to
the
Mamluks.
The Mamluk period (AD 1258-1517) is generally regarded as one under
which Egyptians, Muslims and Copts, greatly suffered. Copts were
forcibly converted to Islam in greater numbers following the
Crusader assaults on Egypt. By the 15th
century most Egyptians had already been converted to Islam, while
Coptic Christians were reduced to a minority. The Mamluks were
mainly ethnic
Circassians and
Turks who had been captured as slaves then
recruited into the army fighting on behalf of the Islamic empire.
Native Egyptians were not allowed to serve in the army until the
reign of
Mohamed Ali.
Historian James Jankwoski writes:
Ottoman Egypt
Egyptians under the
Ottoman Turks from
the 16th to the 18th centuries lived within a social hierarchy
similar to that of the Mamluks, Arabs, Romans, Greeks and Persians
before them. Native Egyptians applied the term
atrak
(Turks) indiscriminately to the Ottomans and Mamluks, who were at
the top of the social pyramid, while Egyptians, most of whom were
farmers, were at the bottom. Frequent revolts by the Egyptian
peasantry against the Ottoman-Mamluk
Beys took
place throughout the 18th century, particularly in Upper Egypt
where the peasants at one point wrested control of the region and
declared a separatist government. The only segment of Egyptian
society which appears to have retained a degree of power during
this period were the Muslim
ulama or religious
scholars, who directed the religious and social affairs of the
native Egyptian population and interceded on their behalf when
dealing with the Turko-Circassian elite.
Egyptians, as Muslims, were part of a wider Islamic
community, yet they also held on to their separate national
identity:
Modern history
Modern Egyptian history is generally believed to begin with the
French expedition in Egypt led by
Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. The
French defeated a Mamluk-Ottoman army
at the
Battle of the
Pyramids, and soon they were able to seize control of the
country. The French occupation was short-lived, ending when
British troops drove out the French
in 1801. Its impact on the social and cultural fabric of Egyptian
society, however, was tremendous. To be sure, the Egyptians were
deeply hostile to the French, whom they viewed as yet another
foreign occupation to be resisted. At the same time, the French
expedition introduced Egyptians to the ideals of the
French Revolution which were to have a
significant influence on their own self-perception and realization
of modern independence. When Napoleon invited the Egyptian
ulama to head a French-supervised government in Egypt, for
some, it awakened a sense of nationalism and a patriotic desire for
national independence from the
Turks.
In addition, the French introduced the printing press in Egypt and
published its first newspaper. The monumental catalogue of Egypt's
ecology, society and economy,
Description de l'Égypte,
was written by scholars and scientists who accompanied the French
army on their expedition.
The withdrawal of French forces from Egypt left a power vacuum that
was filled after a period of political turmoil by
Mohammed Ali, an Ottoman officer of
Albanian descent. He rallied support among
the Egyptians until he was elected by the native Muslim
ulama as governor of Egypt. Mohammed Ali is credited for
having undertaken a massive campaign of public works, including
irrigation projects, agricultural reforms and the cultivation of
cash crops (notably
cotton,
rice and
sugar-cane),
increased industrialization, and a new educational system—the
results of which are felt to this day. In order to consolidate his
power in Egypt, Mohammed Ali worked to eliminate the
Turko-Circassian domination of administrative and army posts. For
perhaps the first time since the Roman period, native Egyptians
filled the junior ranks of the country's army.
The army would later
conduct military expeditions in the Levant,
Sudan
and against the Wahabis in
Arabia. Many Egyptians student
missions were sent to
Europe in the early
19th century to study at European universities and acquire
technical skills such as printing, shipbuilding and modern military
techniques. One of these students, whose name was Rifa'a
et-Tahtawy, was the first in a long line of intellectuals that
started the modern Egyptian Renaissance.
Nationalism
The period between 1860 − 1940 was characterized by an Egyptian
nahda, renaissance or rebirth. It is best known for the
renewed interest in
Egyptian antiquity
and the cultural achievements that were inspired by it. Along with
this interest came an indigenous, Egypt-centered orientation,
particularly among the Egyptian intelligentsia that would affect
Egypt's autonomous development as a sovereign and independent
nation-state. The first Egyptian renaissance intellectual was
Rifa'a el-Tahtawi. In 1831,
Tahtawi undertook a career in journalism, education and
translation. Three of his published volumes were works of political
and moral
philosophy. In them he
introduces his students to
Enlightenment ideas such as
secular authority and political rights and
liberty; his ideas regarding how a modern civilized society ought
to be and what constituted by extension a civilized or "good
Egyptian"; and his ideas on public interest and public good.
Tahtawi was instrumental in sparking indigenous interest in Egypt's
ancient heritage. He composed a number of poems in praise of Egypt
and wrote two other general histories of the country. He also
co-founded with his contemporary
Ali
Mubarak, the architect of the modern Egyptian school system, a
native
Egyptology school that looked for
inspiration to medieval Egyptian scholars like
Suyuti and
Maqrizi, who
studied ancient Egyptian history, language and antiquities. Tahtawi
encouraged his compatriots to invite Europeans to come and teach
the modern sciences in Egypt, drawing on the example of Pharaoh
Psamtek I who had enlisted the
Greeks' help in organizing the Egyptian
army.
Mohammed Ali's successors, the most influential was
Isma'il Pasha who became
khedive in 1863.
Ismail's reign witnessed the growth of the
army, major education reforms, the founding of the Egyptian
Museum
and the Royal
Opera House, the rise of an independent political press, a
flourishing of the arts, and the inauguration of the Suez Canal
. In 1866, the Assembly of Delegates was
founded to serve as an advisory body for the government. Its
members were elected from across Egypt, including villages, which
meant that native Egyptians came to exert increasing political and
economic influence over their country. Several generations of
Egyptians exposed to the ideas of
constitutionalism made up the emerging
intellectual and political milieu that slowly filled the ranks of
the government, the army and institutions which had long been
dominated by an aristocracy of Turks, Greeks,
Circassians and
Armenians.
Ismail's massive modernization campaign, however, left Egypt
indebted to European powers, leading to increased European meddling
in local affairs. This led to the formation of secret groups made
up of Egyptian notables, ministers, journalists and army officers
organized across the country to oppose the increasing European
influence. When the British deposed of Ismail and installed his son
Tawfik, the now Egyptian-dominated army
reacted violently, staging a
revolt led
by Minister of War
Ahmed Urabi,
self-styled el-Masri ('the Egyptian'), against the Khedive, the
Turko-Circassian elite, and the European stronghold. The revolt was
a
military failure and
British forces occupied Egypt in
1882. Technically, Egypt was still part of the
Ottoman Empire with the
Mohammed Ali family ruling the country,
though now with British supervision and according to British
directives. The Egyptian army was disbanded and a smaller army
commanded by British officers was installed in its place.
Liberal age
Egyptian self-government, education, and the continued plight of
Egypt's peasant majority deteriorated most significantly under
British occupation. Slowly, an organized national movement for
independence began to form. In its beginnings, it took the form of
an Azhar-led religious reform movement that was more concerned with
the social conditions of Egyptian society. It gathered momentum
between 1882 and 1906, ultimately leading to a resentment against
European occupation. Sheikh
Muhammad
Abduh, the son of a Delta farmer who was briefly exiled for his
participation in the Urabi revolt and a future Azhar
Mufti, was its most notable advocate. Abduh called for
a reform of Egyptian Muslim society and formulated the
modernist interpretations of
Islam that took hold among younger generations of
Egyptians. Among these were
Mustafa
Kamil and
Ahmed Lutfi
el-Sayed, the architects of modern Egyptian nationalism.
Mustafa Kamil had been a student activist in the 1890s involved in
the creation of a secret nationalist society that called for
British evacuation from Egypt. He was famous for coining the
popular expression, "If I had not been an Egyptian, I would have
wished to become one."
Egyptian nationalist sentiment reached a high point after the 1906
Dinshaway Incident, when
following an altercation between a group of British soldiers and
Egyptian farmers, four of the farmers were hanged while others were
condemned to public flogging. Dinshaway, a watershed in the history
of Egyptian anti-
colonial resistance,
galvanized Egyptian opposition against the British, culminating in
the founding of the first two political parties in Egypt: the
secular, liberal
Umma (the Nation, 1907) headed by
Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, and the
more radical, pro-Islamic
Watani Party (National Party,
1908) headed by Mustafa Kamil.
Lutfi was born to a family of farmers in the
Delta province of Daqahliya
in 1872. He was educated at al-Azhar where
he attended lectures by Mohammed Abduh. Abduh came to have a
profound influence on Lutfi's reformist thinking in later years. In
1907, he founded the Umma Party newspaper, el-Garida, whose
statement of purpose read: "El-Garida is a purely Egyptian party
which aims to defend Egyptian interests of all kinds."
Both the
People and National parties came to dominate Egyptian politics
until World War I, but the new leaders
of the national movement for independence following four arduous
years of war (in which Great Britain
declared Egypt a British protectorate) were closer to the secular,
liberal principles of Ahmed Lutfi
el-Sayed and the People's Party. Prominent among these
was
Saad Zaghlul who led the new
movement through the
Wafd Party. Saad
Zaghlul held several ministerial positions before he was elected to
the Legislative Assembly and organized a mass movement demanding an
end to the British Protectorate. He garnered such massive
popularity among the Egyptian people that he came to be known as
'Father of the Egyptians'.
When on March 8, 1919 the British arrested
Zaghlul and his associates and exiled them to Malta
, the
Egyptian people staged their first modern revolution.
Demonstrations and strikes across Egypt became such a daily
occurrence that normal life was brought to a halt.
The Wafd Party drafted a
new
Constitution in 1923 based on a
parliamentary representative system.
Saad Zaghlul became the first popularly-elected Prime Minister of
Egypt in 1924. Egyptian independence at this stage was provisional,
as British forces continued to be physically present on Egyptian
soil. In 1936, the
Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was
concluded. New forces that came to prominence were the
Muslim Brotherhood and the radical
Young Egypt Party.
In 1920,
Banque Misr (Bank of Egypt) was
founded by
Talaat Pasha Harb as
"an Egyptian bank for Egyptians only", which restricted
shareholding to native Egyptians and helped finance various new
Egyptian-owned businesses.
Under the parliamentary monarchy, Egypt reached the peak of its
modern intellectual Renaissance that was started by Rifa'a
el-Tahtawy nearly a century earlier. Among those who set the
intellectual tone of a newly independent Egypt, in addition to
Muhammad Abduh and
Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, were
Qasim Amin,
Muhammad Husayn Haykal,
Taha Hussein,
Abbas
el-'Akkad,
Tawfiq el-Hakeem,
and
Salama Moussa. They delineated a
liberal outlook for their country expressed as a commitment to
individual freedom,
secularism, an
evolutionary view of the world and faith
in science to bring progress to human society. This period was
looked upon with fondness by future generations of Egyptians as a
Golden Age of Egyptian liberalism,
openness, and an Egypt-centered attitude that put the country's
interests center stage.
When Egyptian novelist and
Noble Prize
laureate
Naguib Mahfouz died in 2006,
many Egyptians felt that perhaps the last of the Greats of Egypt's
golden age had passed away. In his dialogues with close associate
and journalist Mohamed Salmawy, published as
Mon Égypte,
Mahfouz had this to say:
Republic
Increased involvement by
King Farouk
in parliamentary affairs, government corruption, and the widening
gap between the country's rich and poor led to the eventual
toppling of the monarchy and the dissolution of the parliament
through a
coup d'état by a
group of
army officers in
1952. The Egyptian Republic was declared on June 18, 1953 with
General
Muhammad Naguib as the first
President of the Republic. After Naguib was forced to resign in
1954 and later put under house arrest by
Gamal Abdel Nasser, the real architect of
the 1952 movement, mass protests by Egyptians erupted against the
forced resignation of what became a popular symbol of the new
régime. Nasser assumed
power as
President and began a
nationalization process that initially had
profound effects on the socioeconomic strata of Egyptian society.
According to one historian, "Egypt had, for the first time since
343 BC, been ruled not by a Macedonian Greek, nor a Roman, nor an
Arab, nor a Turk, but by an Egyptian."
Nasser
nationalized the Suez
Canal
leading to the 1956 Suez
Crisis. Egypt became increasingly involved in
regional affairs until three years after the 1967 Six Day War, in which Egypt lost the Sinai
to Israel
, Nasser died
and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat.
Sadat
revived an Egypt Above All orientation, switched Egypt's
Cold War allegiance from the Soviet Union
to the United States
, expelling Soviet advisors in 1972, and launched
the Infitah economic reform policy.
Like his predecessor, he also clamped down on religious and leftist
opposition alike. Egyptians fought one last time in the 1973
October War in an attempt to liberate Egyptian territories captured
by Israel six years earlier. The October War presented Sadat with a
political victory that later allowed him to regain the Sinai. In
1977, Sadat made a historic visit to Israel leading to the signing
of the 1978
peace treaty, which
was supported by the vast majority of Egyptians, in exchange for
the complete Israeli withdrawal from Sinai.
Sadat was finally
assassinated in Cairo
by a
fundamentalist soldier in 1981, and was succeeded by Hosni Mubarak.
President
Mohamed Hosni Mubarak has
been the
President of the
Republic since
October 14 1981, currently serving his fifth term in office.
Although power is ostensibly organized under a
multi-party semi-presidential system, in
practice it rests almost solely with the President. In late
February 2005, for the first time since the 1952 coup d'état, the
Egyptian people had an apparent chance to elect a leader from a
list of various candidates, most prominently
Ayman Nour. Most Egyptians today are skeptical
about the process of
democratization
and fear that power may ultimately be transferred to the
President's first son,
Gamal Mubarak.
In 2003, the
Egyptian Movement for Change or
simply
Kefaya (Egyptian Arabic for "Enough!") was founded
as a grassroots mobilization of Egyptians seeking a return to
democracy, a transparent government and greater equality and
freedom; however, it has thus far met with very limited success in
reform of the Egyptian government.
The long road to Egyptian independence took more than 20 centuries
to achieve, and for many Egyptians it is still a work in progress.
Egyptians have endured as a people for more than 5,000 years thanks
in large part to Egypt's unique geography. They take pride in their
pharaonic heritage and in their descent from one of mankind's
earliest civilizations.
Culture
- For ancient Egypt, see Ancient Egyptian technology,
Egyptian mathematics.
Egyptian culture boasts five millennia of recorded history.
Ancient Egypt was among the earliest
and greatest civilizations during which the Egyptians maintained a
strikingly complex and stable culture that influenced later
cultures of
Europe, the
Near East and
Africa. After
the Pharaonic era, the Egyptians themselves came under the
influence of
Hellenism,
Christianity and
Islamic culture. Today, many aspects of
ancient Egyptian culture exist in interaction with newer elements,
including the influence of modern
Western culture, itself influenced by
Ancient Egypt.
Egypt has the highest number of
Nobel
Prize Laureates in Africa and of any country in the Muslim
world.
Surnames
Today, Egyptians carry names that have Egyptian, Greek, Arabic,
Turkish, English and French origins, among others. The concept of a
surname is lacking in Egypt. Rather,
Egyptians tend to carry their father's name as their first middle
name, and stop at the 2nd or 3rd first name, which thus becomes
one's surname. In this manner, surnames continuously change with
generations, as first names of 4th or 5th generations get
dropped.
It is not entirely unusual for families of Egyptian origin
(especially Coptic ones) to have names or family names beginning
with the
Egyptian masculine
possessive pronoun
pa (generally
ba in Arabic,
which lost the phoneme in the course of developing from
Proto-Semitic). For example, Bayoumi
(variations: Baioumi, Bayoumi, Baioumy) - meaning "of the sea",
i.e. Lower Egyptian - Bashandi, Bakhoum ("the eagle"), Bekhit,
Bahur ("of
Horus") and Banoub ("of
Anubis"). The name Shenouda, which is very common
among
Copts, means "slave of God". Hence, names
and many
toponyms may end with
-nouda or
-nuti, which means
Of God in
Egyptian and
Coptic.
In addition, Egyptian families often derive
their name from places in Egypt
, such as
Minyawi from Minya
and
Suyuti from Asyut
; or from
one of the local Sufi orders such as el-Shazli
and el-Sawy.
With the adoption of Christianity and eventually Islam, Egyptians
began to take on names associated with these religions. Many
Egyptian surnames also became
Hellenized and
Arabized, meaning they were altered to sound
Greek or
Arabic. This was done by the addition of the
Greek suffix
-ios to Egyptian names; for example, Pakhom
to Pakhomios; or by adding the Arabic definite article
el
to names such as Baymoui to el-Bayoumi.
Names starting with
the Egyptian affix pu ("of the place of") were sometimes
Arabized to abu ("father of"); for example, Busiri ("of the place of Osiris") occasionally became Abusir
and
al-Busiri. Some people might also have surnames like
el-Shamy ("the Levantine") indicating a possible Levantine origin,
or Dewidar indicating an Ottoman-Mamluk remnant. Conversely, some
Levantines might carry the surname el-Masri ("the Egyptian")
suggesting a possible Egyptian extraction. The Egyptian peasantry,
the fellahin, are more likely to retain indigenous names given
their relative isolation throughout the Egyptian people's
history.
References
- Hoffman, Valerie J. Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern
Egypt. University of South Carolina Press, 1995. [1]
- C. Petry. "Copts in Late Medieval Egypt." Coptic
Encylcopaedia. 2:618 (1991).
- Lane, Edward William. An Account of the Manners and Customs
of the Modern Egyptians. Cairo: American University in Cairo,
2003. Rep. of 5th ed, 1860. pp. 26-27.
- Egypt. The CIA World Factbook. 2006.
- qtd. in Talani, p. 20
- Mitchell, Josh. Egyptians came for jobs, then built lives.
Baltimore Sun. August
13, 2006.
- EHRO. Migrant workers in SAUDI ARABIA. March
2003.
- IRIN. EGYPT: Migrant workers face abuse.
March 7, 2006.
- Evans, Brian. Plight of Foreign Workers in Saudi Arabia.
- AfricaNet. Libya.
- Vatikiotis, P.J. The History of Modern Egypt. 4th
edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1992, p. 432
- qtd in Dawisha, Adeed. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth
Century. Princeton University Press. 2003, p. 99
- Jankowski, "Egypt and Early Arab Nationalism," p. 246
- "Before Nasser, Egypt, which had been ruled by Britain since
1882, was more in favor of territorial, Egyptian nationalism and
distant from the pan-Arab ideology. Egyptians generally did not
identify themselves as Arabs, and it is revealing that when the
Egyptian nationalist leader [Saad Zaghlul] met the Arab delegates
at Versailles in 1918, he insisted that their struggles for
statehood were not connected, claiming that the problem of Egypt
was an Egyptian problem and not an Arab one." Makropoulou,
Ifigenia. Pan - Arabism: What Destroyed the Ideology of Arab
Nationalism?. Hellenic Center for European Studies. January 15,
2007.
- "1971 - Egypt's new constitution is introduced and the country
is renamed the Arab Republic of Egypt." Timeline Egypt. BBC News, Timeline: Egypt
- Dawisha, p. 237
- Dawisha, pp. 264-65, 267
- Ragab, Ahmed. El-Masry el-Yom Newspaper. "What is the definition of 'Arab Nationalism':
Question at a bus stop in Imbaba". May 21, 2007.
- In response to queries about Tutankhamun in a recent lecture,
Hawass declared "Egyptians are not Arabs..."
- An Interculturalist in Cairo. InterCultures
Magazine. January 2007.
- We are Egyptians, not Arabs. ArabicNews.com.
11/06.2003.
- Egyptian people section from Arab.Net
- Princeton Alumni Weekly
- Review by Michelle Fram Cohen. The Atlasphere.
Jan. 17, 2005.
- ('The Removal of the Burden from the Language of the People of
Egypt') by
- [2]| "Here is only one example of how Abd al
Malik enforced his command in Egypt. He ordered punishment for any
Coptic Christian Egyptian who spoke his or her language. This
language was Coptic, which was derived from ancient Hieroglyphic
Egyptian language. The punishment was to cut out their tongues.
This is how the Egyptians lost their own language. The Coptic
language is only used now in church liturgy."
- http://www.copts.net/history_book.htm "A severe blow to the
Coptic language followed when El-Hakim Bi-Amr-Illah ordered all
Egyptians to stop using the Coptic language in the homes and
streets. He also ordered the punishment of those who spoke Coptic
by cutting their tongues, especially the mothers who taught their
children the Coptic language in their homes."
- [3] "The number of people who speak Coptic
reaches around 300, an no one is still in Egypt except the family
of Titti Mouris." (copticassembly.com)
- Batrawi A (1945). The racial history of Egypt and
Nubia, Part I. J Roy Anthropol Inst 75:81-102.
- Batrawi A. 1946. The racial history of Egypt and Nubia,
Part II. J Roy Anthropol Inst 76:131-156.
- Keita SOY (1990). Studies of ancient crania from northern
Africa. Am J Phys Anthropol 83:35–48.
- Keita SOY (1992). Further studies of crania from ancient
northern Africa: an analysis of crania from First Dynasty Egyptian
tombs. Am J Phys Anthropol 87:245–254.
- Berry AC, Berry RJ, Ucko PJ (1967). Genetical change in
ancient Egypt. Man 2:551–568.
- Brace CL, Tracer DP, Yaroch LA, Robb J, Brandt K, Nelson AR
(1993). Clines and clusters versus "race:" a test in ancient
Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile. Yrbk Phys Anthropol 36:1–31.
- Keita SOY and Rick A. Kittles. The Persistence of Racial
Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence. American
Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp.
534-544
- Keita 1992, p. 251
- Irish pp. 10-11
- Brace et al. 1993 Abstract
- Frank Yurco, "An Egyptological Review" in Mary R. Lefkowitz and
Guy MacLean Rogers, eds. Black Athena Revisited. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. p. 62-100
- Grimal, p. 93
- Watterson, p. 15
- Watterson, p. 192
- Kamil, Jill. Coptic Egypt: History and Guide. Cairo:
American University in Cairo, 1997. p. 11
- Watterson, p. 215
- Jankowski, p. 28
- Kamil, p. 12
- Watterson, p. 214
- Watterson, p. 237
- qtd. in Alan K. Bowman Egypt after the Pharaohs, 332 BC −
AD 642. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. p.
126.
- Jankowski, p. 29
- Kamil, p. 16
- Kamil, p. 21
- Jankowski, p. 32
- Kamil, p. 35
- Ibid, p. 39
- Watterson, p. 232
- Kamil, p. 40
- Watterson, p. 268
- El-Daly, Okasha. Egyptology: The Missing Millennium.
London: UCL Press, 2005. p. 165
- El-Daly, p. 140
- Vatikiotis, P.J. The History of Modern Egypt. 4th ed.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. p. 26
- El-Daly, p. 164
- El-Daly, p. 112
- Kamil, p. 41
- Opet Festival
- Jankowski, p. 35
- Vatikiotis, p. 31
- Jankowskil, p. 74
- Vatikiotis, p. 115-16
- El-Daly, p. 29
- Jankowski, p. 83
- Vatikiotis, p. 135
- Vatikiotis, p. 189
- qtd. in Vatikiotis, p. 227
- Jankowski, p. 112
- qtd. in Jankowski p. 123
- Jankowski, p. 130
- Jankowski, p. 137
- Watterson, p. 294
- Vatikiotis, p. 443
See also