Egypt

"As a boy, like other schoolchildren all over the world, I studied the civilization of Egypt. In the last few days, I have at last seen the legacy of that great civilization with my own eyes. As a citizen of a very young country, I can only marvel at the 7,000-year heritage of the Egyptian people, whom you represent. For most of the last 500 years, Egypt suffered under foreign domination. But Egypt has again taken her place among the world's independent countries and has led the resurgence among the Arab people to a prominent place among the nations of the world. I'm very proud of that great achievement on your part. Tragically, this generation of progress has also been a generation of suffering. Again and again, the energies of the peoples of the Middle East have been drained by the conflicts among you—and especially by the violent confrontations between Arabs and Israelis. Four wars have treasure, in uprooted families, and young lives cut short by death. Then, 16 months ago, one man, Anwar al-Sadat, rose up and said, "Enough of war." He rose up and said, "Enough of war. It is time for peace.""

"And they spoiled the Egyptians."

"‘I will make the land of Egypt a ruin and a desolate waste among devastated lands.’"

"Present-day Egyptians speak Arabic, think of themselves as Arabs, and identify wholeheartedly with the Arab Empire that conquered Egypt in the seventh century and crushed with an iron fist the repeated revolts that broke out against its rule."

"When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he took 165 scholars with him. Among other things, they founded an entirely new discipline, Egyptology, and made important contributions to the study of religion, linguistics and botany."

"…let me tell you about the atmosphere in Egypt in May '82. That was a real honeymoon. Everything was open, even euphoric. We had already given back Sinai, and every Egyptian in the street would stop to tell us that Israel was an honorable nation, one that kept its word. Practically all of our friends were making definite plans to visit Israel for congresses, lectures, or simply for private purposes. There was a joint exhibition of women painters-Egyptian and Israeli-at the biggest hotel in Cairo. Once they knew we were Israelis, waiters and shopkeepers refused to accept our tips. "You are family now," they would say. And you know the level of poverty in Egypt where a teacher earns $40 a month. In May of '82, Egypt was a ball! (HC: And then?) SH: And then Israel invaded Lebanon, and everything, everyone stopped-horrified."

"The Egyptian scales of justice are not reversible. There is no justice in Egypt. No reason. Logic committed suicide a while ago. Egypt went crazy. Egypt is ruled by a bunch of lunatics."

"Egypt plays an important role in [the ] as a land mentioned in prophecies dating back to Prophet Muhammad and that once had an advanced monotheistic religion, although it later became corrupted. In 2012, even before Abdullah Hashem revealed himself as the second Mahdi in 2015, he and his followers had gathered in Egypt and had established there the first Shia-inspired school in the country."

"We are good fighters but lousy builders. Our last piece of original architecture was during ancient Egypt. What are we known for now?"

"The world of the was a wonderfully diverse and pluralistic world, and nowhere is that diversity and pluralism seen more clearly than in the text of ritual power that were produced and used by the people who inhabited that world."

"The Egyptians were the best philosophers in the world"

"It follows that Egypt is not a "Muslim Country" but a republic, a country for all Egyptians."

"Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula."

"It is particularly instructive to turn to the example of Egypt under Mohammed Ali, who ruled from 1805 to 1849. [...] The ideals of Mohammed Ali could be related in the idiom of modern social science as being the creation of a viable, self-propelling economy to provide the basis for national independence. Such ideals were diametrically opposed to the needs of European capitalism. British and French industrialists wanted to see Egypt not as a textile manufacturer but as a producer of raw cotton for export, and an importer of European manufactures. European financiers wanted Egypt to be a source of investment, and in the second half of the eighteenth century they turned the sultan of Egypt into an international beggar, who mortgaged the whole of Egypt to international monopoly financiers. Finally, European statesmen wanted Egyptian soil to serve as a base for exploiting India and Arabia. Therefore, the was dug out of Egyptian soil by Egyptians, but it was owned by Britain and France, who then extended political domination over Egypt and Sudan."

"I am dying, Egypt, dying."

"The better sort of Women here, and all the Kingdom over, weare Rings of gold or silver, through the hollow of their noses, both endes of their mouthes, and in their under lips; hanging rich pearles, and precious stones to them; wearing also about their armes faire Bracelets, and about their ancles below, broad bonds of gold or silver. To which if the baser sort can not attayne unto, then they counterfeit their Betters, with Rings, Bracelets, and bonds of Brasse, Copper, Lead, and white Iron, and thinke themselves not worthy to live, unlesse they weare these badges."

"The situation with Egypt is different. Some of the parallels are remarkable and unique, like ‘the lotus-born one’, ‘the eye that runs off’, ‘the Cosmic Egg’ or the Yama-Osiris correspondences. ... Thus, since the Vedic people had knowledge of mathematics and astronomy which found expression in the material culture of the ISC, one is tempted to suggest that the influence for the sudden outburst of the Egyptian civilization came from Saptasindhu, especially since no other comparable culture is in evidence in the late fourth millennium. But precisely here both archaeological and textual evidence fail us in not indicating any direct contacts. We are left only with speculation that, perhaps, some Indoaryans, in obedience to the dictum in RV X, 65, 11 that they should spread the Aryan laws/usages all over the earth, went to Egypt for this purpose. However, future archaeological work may present a new picture in Egypt."

"The Encyclopaedia of Diderot likewise suggested, in the article on India, that the"sciences may be more ancient in India than in Egypt"."

"The Madras Presidency is the habitat of that Tamil race whose civilisation was the most ancient, and a branch of whom, called the Sumerians, spread a vast civilisation on the banks of the Euphrates in very ancient times; whose astrology, religious lore, morals, rites, etc., furnished the foundation for the Assyrian and Babylonian civilisations; and whose mythology was the source of the Christian Bible. Another branch of these Tamils spread from the Malabar coast and gave rise to the wonderful Egyptian civilisation, and the Aryans also are indebted to this race in many respects. ... Thousands of years ago, these Egyptians starting from Punt (probably Malabar) crossed the Red Sea, and steadily extended their kingdom till they reached Egypt... The Egyptians entered into Egypt from a southern country called Punt, across the seas. Some say that that Punt is the modern Malabar, and that the Egyptians and Dravidians belong to the same race. Their first king was named Menes, and their ancient religion too resembles in some parts our mythological tales. The god Shibu was enveloped by the goddess Nui; later on another god Shu came and forcibly removed Nui. Nui's body became the sky, and her two hands and two legs became the four pillars of that sky. And Shibu became the earth. Osiris and Isis, the son and daughter of Nui, are the chief god and goddess in Egypt, and their son Horus is the object of universal worship. These three used to be worshipped in a group. Isis, again, is worshipped in the form of the cow."

"Yet in Egyptian literature, there are certain things to be accounted for - the introduction of the Indian lotus on old temples, the lotus Gangetic. It is well known that this only grows in India. Then there are the references to the land of Punt. Although very great attempts have been made to fix that land of Punt on the Arabs, it is very uncertain. And then there are the references to the monkeys and sandalwood of southern India - only to be found there."

"Thus, against the origin of the Egyptians being attributed to an ancient Indian colony, there is no graver impediment than Noah's disrespectful son -- Ham -- himself a myth. But the earliest form of Egyptian religious worship and government, theocratic and sacerdotal, and her habits and customs all bespeak an Indian origin... Let us examine who were the Egyptians. In our opinion -- which is but a poor authority, of course -- they were the ancient Indians, and in our first volume we have quoted passages from the historian Collouca-Batta that support such a theory."

"It is on the strength of such circumstantial evidence -- that of reason and logic -- that we affirm that, if Egypt furnished Greece with her civilization, and the latter bequeathed hers to Rome, Egypt herself had, in those unknown ages when Menes reigned,** received her laws, her social institutions, her arts and her sciences, from pre-Vedic India; and that therefore, it is in that old initiation of the priests -- adepts of all the other countries -- we must seek for the key to the great mysteries of humanity."

"For reasons that we will now adduce, we are prepared to maintain that Egypt owes her civilization, commonwealth and arts -- especially the art of building, to pre-Vedic India, and that it was a colony of the dark-skinned Aryans, or those whom Homer and Herodotus term the eastern AEthiopians, i.e., the inhabitants of Southern India, who brought to it their ready-made civilization in the ante-chronological ages, of what Bunsen calls the pre-Menite, but nevertheless epochal history."

"Thus, according to every probability, Egypt owes her civilization, her civil institutions, and her arts, to India. But against the latter assumption we have a whole army of "authorities" arrayed, and what matters if the latter do deny the fact at present?"

"Naguib Sawiris Good times are not the happiness of money, but rather the happiness of the heart with certainty."

"Sawiris and the October 6 War, which represents a memory that Egyptians celebrate and is not a victory without God."

"On the following morning, the 22nd, I climbed to the top of the lighthouse of Port Said. It is one of the highest in the world—160 feet high—and its electric light is visible at a distance of twenty-one s. Its strong walls are built of blocks of the same concrete as the mole of the harbour—immense cubes of artificial stone, composed of seven parts of desert sand and one part of French hydraulic lime. The view from the top did not in any respect answer my expectations, for, beyond Port Said itself and its immediate neighbourhood of flat sand, nothing is to be seen but water on every side."

"There is a small light exhibited on each of the pier ends: Port Said Lighthouse itself stands at the inner entrance of the western . It is a grey-colored octagonal-shaped tower, constructed of concrete, 180 feet high, exhibiting an electric light visible at a distance of 25 miles, and it forms a noble beacon by day or night."

"Centuries of Darkness was particularly critical of modern Egyptologists. ‘Early Egyptologists were usually more tentative about their chronology, continually revising their opinions in the light of fresh evidence. Sadly the study of Egyptian chronology seems to have become so ossified that it cannot question its fundamental assumptions, accepted more for familiarity than for any basis in fact.’"

"Sir Alan Gardiner’s 1961 Egypt of the Pharaohs devoted a whole chapter to the dating problem. ‘In spite of all defects,’ he wrote, ‘this division into dynasties has taken so firm a root in the literature of Egyptology that there is little chance of its ever being abandoned. In the forms in which the book has reached us, there are inaccuracies of the most glaring kind…Africanus and Eusabius often do not agree; for example Africanus assigns nine kings to Dyn. XXII, while Eusabius only has three. Sometimes all that is vouchsafed to us is the number of kings in a dynasty and their city of origin…the lengths of reigns frequently differ in the two versions…the reconstructed Manetho remains full of imperfections…. Nonetheless, [it]still dominates our studies.’ Despite decades of archaeological discoveries and scholarly research since then, his conclusion is still relevant. ‘We are dealing with a civilisation thousands of years old and of which only tiny fragments have survived.’"

"Robert G. Morkot has come to the alarming conclusion that because Egyptologists regard Egypt in isolation, ‘the minutiae of chronology does not matter because at least for the New Kingdom, the relative sequence of kings is certain so the absolute dates are less important.’"

"The book encapsulating it was Centuries of Darkness in 1991. The authors were not fringe mavericks. Colin Renfrew, Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge University wrote in the book’s Forword, ‘They [the authors]indicate that the chronology for the time period in question, the so called “Third Intermediate Period”, is altogether shaky. They show that there are problems with the historical chronology of the Near East. And the sad fact is that the historical chronology for the rest of the Mediterranean until well after 700 BC rests on these. It is already widely known that the chronology for early Italy, during the Iron Age period, down to and including the foundation of Rome, is a complete shambles.’ He concluded, ‘I feel their critical analysis is right and that a chronological revolution is on the way.’"

"[In the case of the Egyptian war chariot,] the timbers in question were not of Egyptian origin but ‗came from the north‘. […] The timbers used were holm-oak for the axle and the spokes, elm for the pole, ash for the felloes, the chassis and the dashboard, hornbeam for the yoke and birch bark for wrapping and for joining the spokes with the felloes and the hub […] The wooden material of the Egyptian chariots came from the Caucasus."

"Lo, while his majesty sat talking with the princes, the vanquished chief of Kheta came and the numerous countries, which were with him. They crossed over the channel on the south of Kadesh, and charged into the army of his majesty while they were marching, and not expecting it. Then the infantry and chariotry of his majesty retreated before them, northward to the place where his majesty was. Lo, the foes of the vanquished chief of Kheta surrounded the bodyguard of his majesty, who were by his side."

"I charged all countries, while I was alone, my infantry and my chariotry having forsaken me. Not one among them stood to turn about. I swear, as Re loves me, as my father, Atum, favors me, that, as for every matter which his majesty has stated, I did it in truth, in the presence of my infantry and my chariotry."

"Thus the Phrygians, earliest of all races, call me Pessinuntia, mother of all gods. Thus the Athenians, sprung from their own soil, call me Cecropeian Minerva and the sea-tossed Cyprians call me Paphian Venus, the archer Cretans Diana, Dictynna, and the trilingual Sicilians Proserpine; to the Eleusinians I am Ceres, the ancient godess, to others Juno, to others Bellona and Hecate and Rhamnusia. But the Ethiopians, who are illumined by the first rays of the sun-god as he is born every day, together with the Africans and Egyptians, who excel through having the original doctrine, honour me with my distinctive rites and give me my true name of Queen Isis."

"We Greeks own Egypt, the grand monarchy of letters and nobility, to be the parent of our fables, metaphors and doctrines."

"And since Egypt is the country where mythology places the origin of the gods, where the earliest observations of the stars are said to have been made, and where, furthermore, many noteworthy deeds of great men are recorded, we shall begin our history with the events connected with Egypt."

"It was the belief of the Greeks that many elements of their civilization had come to them from Egypt… [I]n Egypt the Greeks acquired many new skills in pottery, textiles, metalworking, and ivory; there, as well as from the Assyrians. Phoenicians, and Hittites, Greek sculptors took the style of their early statues…Second to Egypt’s was the influence of Phoenicia…"

"Egypt can be regarded as the mother of all theogonies and the source of all the fictions which the Greeks received and embellished, for it does not appear that they invented much."

"at a riper age I no longer presume to connect the Greek, the Jewish and the Egyptian antiquities, which are lost in a distant cloud."

"Almost all the names of the gods came into Greece from Egypt. .. Besides these which have been here mentioned, there are many other practices. . . which the Greeks have borrowed from Egypt....it seems to me a sufficient proof of this that in Egypt these practices have been established from remote antiquity, while in Greece they are only recently known."

"How it happened that Egyptians came to the Peloponnese, and what they did to make themselves kings in that part of Greece, has been chronicled by other writers; I will add nothing therefore, but proceed to mention some points which no one else has yet touched upon."

"The temple of Athena there [Lindos in Rhodes] was founded by the daughters of Danaos, who touched at the island during their flight from the sons of Aigyptos."

"Kadmos, the son of Agenor, touched at it [Thera] during his search for Europa and … left there a number of Phoenicians."

"I propose to hold my tongue about the mysterious rites of Demeter, which the Greeks call Thesmophoria, though … I may say, for instance, that it was the daughters of Danaos who brought this ceremony from Egypt and instructed the Pelasgian women in it …"

"The Phoenicians who came with Kadmos … introduced into Greece, after their settlement in the country, a number of accomplishments, of which the most important was writing, an art till then, I think, unknown to the Greeks."

"Now I have an idea that Melampous … introduced the name of Dionysos into Greece, together with the sacrifice in his honour and the phallic procession. He did not, however, fully comprehend the doctrine, or communicate it in its entirety; its more perfect development was the work of later teachers. Nevertheless it was Melampous who introduced the phallic procession, and from Melampous that the Greeks learnt the rites that they now perform. Melampous, in my view, was an able man who acquired the art of divination and brought into Greece, with little change, a number of things which he had learned in Egypt, and amongst them the worship of Dionysos … Probably Melampous got his knowledge about Dionysos through Kadmos of Tyre and the people who came with him from Phoenicia to the country now called Boiotia. The names of nearly all the gods came to Greece from Egypt. [my emphasis] I know from the enquiries I have made that they came from abroad, and it seems most likely that it was from Egypt, for the names of all the gods have been known in Egypt from the beginning of time … These practices, then, and others which I shall speak of later, were borrowed by the Greeks from Egypt … In ancient times, as I know from what I was told at Dodona, the Pelasgians offered sacrifices of all kinds, and prayed to the gods, but without any distinction of name or title – for they had not yet heard of any such thing. They called the gods by the Greek word theoi – ‘disposers’… Long afterwards the names of the gods were brought into Greece from Egypt and the Pelasgians learnt them … then as time went on, they sent to the oracle at Dodona (the most ancient, and at that period, the only oracle in Greece) to ask advice about the propriety of adopting names that had come into the country from abroad. The oracle replied that they would be right to use them. From that time onward, therefore, the Pelasgians used the names of the gods in their sacrifices, and from the Pelasgians the names passed to Greece."

"I will never admit that the similar ceremonies performed in Greece and Egypt are the result of mere coincidence – had that been so, our rites would have been more Greek in character and less recent in origin. Nor will I allow that the Egyptians ever took over from Greece either this custom or any other."

"The people of Troizen [in the Argolid] ... say the first human being to exist in their country was Oros, which looks to me like an Egyptian name, certainly not a Greek one."

"He says that the Greeks learnt about processions and national festivals from the Egyptians as well as the worship of the twelve gods; the very name of Dionysos, he says, was learnt from the Egyptians by Melampous, and he taught the rest of the Greeks; and the mysteries and secret rituals connected with Demeter were brought from Egypt by the daughters of Danaos … Nor is this the worst. He traces the ancestry of Herakles to Perseus and says Perseus, according to the Persian account, was an Assyrian; ‘and the chiefs of the Dorians’ he says, ‘would be established as pure-blooded Egyptians …’; not only is he anxious to establish an Egyptian and a Phoenician Herakles; he says that our own Herakles was born after the other two, and he wants to remove him from Greece and make a foreigner out of him. Yet of the learned men of old neither Homer nor Hesiod … ever mentioned an Egyptian or a Phoenician Herakles, but all of them knew only one, our own Herakles who is both Boiotian and Argive"

"In short, they forgot none of the interesting features of Egypt, for there is no country in the world which Greeks prefer to hear about."

"That Osiris is identical with Dionysos who could more fittingly know than yourself, Klea? For you are the head of the inspired maidens [devotees of Dionysos] of Delphi, and have been consecrated by your father and mother in the holy rites of Osiris."

"Rather think that as the Egyptians were the first of men to be allotted the participation of the gods, the gods when invoked rejoice in Egyptian rites."

"We do not know how many works Psellos composed on Hermetic literature. The only one that remains is a gloss on the ‘Poimandres’ … After maintaining the influence of ‘Genesis’ on the formation of the cosmogonic doctrines of the ‘Poimandres’, Psellos affirms that all Hellenic conceptions of God are influenced by Eastern models. He justifies this superiority of the East over Greek philosophy by pointing out that Porphery [the Neo-Platonist of the 3rd century AD] had gone to an Egyptian priest, Anebon, in order to receive instruction on the first cause."

"It is impossible that in this exchange of ideas and goods, the Egyptian language did not participate in the formation of Greek."

"Thus the Greeks, emerging from their forests, no longer saw objects under a frightening and sombre veil. Thus the Egyptians in Greece softened bit by bit the severe and proud expressions in their paintings. The two groups, now making a single people, created a language that sparkled with vivid expressions."

"For the whole length of the 3,000 years of her history, Egypt thus, little by little, prepared the way for the Greek scholars who - like Thales, Pythagoras and Plato - came to study then even to teach, like Euclid, at the school in Alexandria."

"From Egypt Pythagoras thus without doubt brought the idea of his Order, which was a regular community brought together for purposes of scientific and moral culture … Egypt at that time was regarded as a highly cultured country, and it was so when compared with Greece; this is shown even in the differences of caste which assume a division amongst the great branches of life and work, such as the industrial, scientific and religious. But beyond this we need not seek great scientific knowledge amongst the Egyptians, nor think that Pythagoras got his science there. Aristotle (Metaph.I) only says that ‘in Egypt mathematical sciences first commenced, for there the nation of priests had leisure.’53"

"The name of Greece strikes home to the hearts of men of education in Europe, and more particularly is this so with us Germans … They [the Greeks] certainly received the substantial beginnings of their religion, culture … from Asia, Syria and Egypt; but they have so greatly obliterated the foreign nature of this origin, and it is so much changed, worked on, turned round and altogether made so different, that what they – as we – prize, know and love in it is essentially their own."