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| Names | |
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The English name Egypt was borrowed from Middle French Egypte, from Latin Aegyptus, from ancient Greek Aígyptos (Αἴγυπτος), from earlier Linear B 𐁁𐀓𐀠𐀴𐀍 a-ku-pi-ti-yo. The adjective aigýpti-, aigýptios was borrowed into Coptic as ⲅⲩⲡϯⲓⲟⲥ/ⲕⲩⲡϯⲓⲟⲥ gyptios, kyptios, and from there into Arabic as قبطي qubṭī, back formed into قبة qubṭ, whence English Copt. The Greek forms were borrowed from Late Egyptian (Amarna) Hikuptah "Memphis", a corruption of the earlier Egyptian name Hwt-ka-Ptah (ḥwt-kꜣ-ptḥ), meaning "home of the ka (soul) of Ptah", the name of a temple to the god Ptah at Memphis.[10] Strabo attributed the word to a folk etymology in which Aígyptos (Αἴγυπτος) evolved as a compound from Aigaiou huptiōs (Aἰγαίου ὑπτίως), meaning "below the Aegean".
Miṣr, the Arabic and modern official name of Egypt (Egyptian Arabic: Maṣr), is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם (Mitzráyim), literally meaning "the two straits" (a reference to the dynastic separation of upper and lower Egypt).[unreliable source?][11] The word originally connoted "metropolis" or "civilization" and means "country", or "frontier-land".
The ancient Egyptian name of the country is Kemet (km.t) [𓆎𓅓𓏏𓊖], which means "black land", referring to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains, distinct from the deshret (dšṛt), or "red land" of the desert.[12] The name is realized as kēme and kēmə in the Coptic stage of the Egyptian language, and appeared in early Greek as Χημία (Khēmía).[13] Another name was tꜣ-mry "land of the riverbank".[14] The names of Upper and Lower Egypt were Ta-Sheme'aw (tꜣ-šmꜥw) "sedgeland" and Ta-Mehew (tꜣ mḥw) "northland", respectively.
Tags:Arabic,Eg,/,Ancient Greek,Linear B,Copt,Ptah,Strabo,Folk Etymology,Aegean,Semitic,Km,Desert,Coptic,Nile, | |
| Pre-historic Egypt | |
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Main article: Prehistoric Egypt
There is evidence of rock carvings along the Nile terraces and in desert oases. In the 10th millennium BC, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishers replaced a grain-grinding culture.[citation needed] Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 8000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society.[15]
By about 6000 BC a Neolithic culture rooted in the Nile Valley.[16] During the Neolithic era, several predynastic cultures developed independently in Upper and Lower Egypt. The Badarian culture and the successor Naqada series are generally regarded as precursors to dynastic Egypt. The earliest known Lower Egyptian site, Merimda, predates the Badarian by about seven hundred years. Contemporaneous Lower Egyptian communities coexisted with their southern counterparts for more than two thousand years, remaining culturally distinct, but maintaining frequent contact through trade. The earliest known evidence of Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions appeared during the predynastic period on Naqada III pottery vessels, dated to about 3200 BC.[17]
Tags:Rock Carvings,10th Millennium Bc,Hunter-gatherers,Fishers,Grain,Culture,Sahara,Economy,Society,Neolithic,Badarian,Naqada, | |
| Ancient Egypt | |
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Main article: Ancient Egypt
Giza Pyramids
A unified kingdom was founded c. 3150 BC by King Menes, leading to a series of dynasties that ruled Egypt for the next three millennia. Egyptian culture flourished during this long period and remained distinctively Egyptian in its religion, arts, language and customs. The first two ruling dynasties of a unified Egypt set the stage for the Old Kingdom period, c. 2700–2200 BC., which constructed many pyramids, most notably the Third Dynasty pyramid of Djoser and the Fourth Dynasty Giza Pyramids.
The Great Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza, built during the Old Kingdom, are modern national icons that are at the heart of Egypt's thriving tourism industry.
The First Intermediate Period ushered in a time of political upheaval for about 150 years.[18] Stronger Nile floods and stabilization of government, however, brought back renewed prosperity for the country in the Middle Kingdom c. 2040 BC, reaching a peak during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III. A second period of disunity heralded the arrival of the first foreign ruling dynasty in Egypt, that of the Semitic Hyksos. The Hyksos invaders took over much of Lower Egypt around 1650 BC and founded a new capital at Avaris. They were driven out by an Upper Egyptian force led by Ahmose I, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty and relocated the capital from Memphis to Thebes.
The New Kingdom c. 1550–1070 BC began with the Eighteenth Dynasty, marking the rise of Egypt as an international power that expanded during its greatest extension to an empire as far south as Tombos in Nubia, and included parts of the Levant in the east. This period is noted for some of the most well known Pharaohs, including Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. The first historically attested expression of monotheism came during this period as Atenism. Frequent contacts with other nations brought new ideas to the New Kingdom. The country was later invaded and conquered by Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians, but native Egyptians eventually drove them out and regained control of their country.[19]
The Thirtieth Dynasty was the last native ruling dynasty during the Pharaonic epoch. It fell to the Persians in 343 BC after the last native Pharaoh, King Nectanebo II, was defeated in battle.
Tags:Great Sphinx,Giza Pyramids,Menes,Old Kingdom,Pyramid Of Djoser,Pyramids Of Giza,Amenemhat Iii,Ahmose I,International Power,Tombos,Nubia,Levant,Pharaohs,Hatshepsut,Thutmose Iii,Akhenaten,Nefertiti,Tutankhamun,Ramesses Ii, | |
| Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt | |
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The Greek Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra VII and her son by Julius Caesar, Caesarion at the Temple of Dendera.
Main articles: History of Ptolemaic Egypt and Egypt (Roman province)
The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to Cyrene to the west, and south to the frontier with Nubia. Alexandria became the capital city and a center of Greek culture and trade. To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, they named themselves as the successors to the Pharaohs. The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life.[20][21]
The last ruler from the Ptolemaic line was Cleopatra VII, who committed suicide with her lover Mark Antony, after Caesar Augustus had captured them. The Ptolemies faced rebellions of native Egyptians often caused by an unwanted regime and were involved in foreign and civil wars that led to the decline of the kingdom and its annexation by Rome. Nevertheless Hellenistic culture continued to thrive in Egypt well after the Muslim conquest.
Christianity was brought to Egypt by Saint Mark the Evangelist in the 1st century.[22] Diocletian's reign marked the transition from the Roman to the Byzantine era in Egypt, when a great number of Egyptian Christians were persecuted. The New Testament had by then been translated into Egyptian. After the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, a distinct Egyptian Coptic Church was firmly established.[23]
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| Arab and Ottoman Egypt | |
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Main articles: History of Muslim Egypt and History of Ottoman Egypt
Selim I (1470–1520), conquered Egypt
The Hanging Church of Cairo, first built in the 3rd or 4th century, is one of the most famous Coptic Churches in Egypt.
The Byzantines were able to regain control of the country after a brief Persian invasion early in the 7th century, until in 639, Egypt was absorbed into the Islamic Empire by the Muslim Arabs. When they defeated the Byzantine Armies in Egypt, the Arabs brought Sunni Islam to the country. Early in this period, Egyptians began to blend their new faith with indigenous beliefs and practices, leading to various Sufi orders that have flourished to this day.[22] These earlier rites had survived the period of Coptic Christianity.[24]
Muslim rulers nominated by the Islamic Caliphate remained in control of Egypt for the next six centuries, with Cairo as the seat of the Caliphate under the Fatimids. With the end of the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, a Turco-Circassian military caste, took control about AD 1250. By the late 13th century, Egypt linked the Red Sea, India, Malaya, and East Indies.[25] They continued to govern the country until the conquest of Egypt by the Ottoman Turks in 1517, after which it became a province of the Ottoman Empire. The mid-14th-century Black Death killed about 40% of the country's population.[26]
After the 15th century, the Ottoman invasion pushed the Egyptian system into decline. The defensive militarization damaged its civil society and economic institutions.[25] The weakening of the economic system combined with the effects of plague left Egypt vulnerable to foreign invasion. Portuguese traders took over their trade.[25] Egypt suffered six famines between 1687 and 1731.[27] The 1784 famine cost it roughly one-sixth of its population.[28]
Battle of the Pyramids, 21 July 1798, by François-Louis-Joseph Watteau.
Further information: French Campaign in Egypt and Syria, Ottoman–Saudi War, Muhammad Ali's seizure of power, First Turko-Egyptian War, Second Turko-Egyptian War, and Khedivate of Egypt
British admiral Codrington negotiating with Muhammad Ali Pasha in the latter's palace in Alexandria.
Mosque of Muhammad Ali
The brief French invasion of Egypt led by Napoleon Bonaparte began in 1798. The expulsion of the French in 1801 by Ottoman, Mamluk, and British forces was followed by four years of anarchy in which Ottomans, Mamluks, and Albanians -- who were nominally in the service of the Ottomans—wrestled for power. Out of this chaos, the commander of the Albanian regiment, Muhammad Ali (Kavalali Mehmed Ali Pasha) emerged as a dominant figure and in 1805 was acknowledged by the Sultan in Istanbul as his viceroy in Egypt; the title implied subordination to the Sultan but this was in fact a polite fiction: Ottoman power in Egypt was finished and Muhammad Ali, an ambitious and able leader, established a dynasty that was to rule Egypt until the revolution of 1952. In later years, the dynasty became a British puppet.[29]
His primary focus was military: he annexed Northern Sudan (1820–1824), Syria (1833), and parts of Arabia and Anatolia; but in 1841 the European powers, fearful lest he topple the Ottoman Empire itself, forced him to return most of his conquests to the Ottomans, but he kept the Sudan and his title to Egypt was made hereditary. A more lasting result of his military ambition is that it required him to modernize the country. Ea Tags:Red Sea,Sudan,Cairo, | |
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