EGYPT
Plate VI.EGYPT is a country at the north-eastern extremity of Africa, bounded on the N. by the Mediterranean Sea, on the S. by Nubia, on the E. by Palestine, Arabia, and the Red Sea, and on the W. by the Great Desert.
The name of Egypt in hieroglyphics is Kem, which becomes Kemi in demotic, a form preserved in the Coptic ⲔⲎⲘⲈ (Sahidic), ⲔⲎⲘⲒ (Bashmuric), and ⲬⲎⲘⲒ (Memphitic), with unimportant variants. The sense is “the black (land),” Egypt being so called from the blackness of its cultivable soil.[1]
In Hebrew Egypt is called Mizraim, מִצְרַיִם, a dual, sometimes used as a singular.[2] It describes the country with reference to its two great natural divisions, Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, or the Delta. In the prophets Mazor, מָצור, occurs as the singular form, and means Lower Egypt, Pathros being used for Upper Egypt.[3] Thus Mizraim may be compared to the two Sicilies, though sometimes we find Mizraim for the lower country where we should expect Mazor. (Gesen. Thes. s. v. Mizraim.) The meaning of Mazor is probably the “fortified,” rather than the “border,” referring to the natural strength of the country.
The Greek Αἴγυπτος first occurs in the Homeric writings. In the Odyssey it is the name of the Nile (masculine) as well as of the country (feminine). Afterwards it is not used for the river. No satisfactory Egyptian[4] or Semitic origin has been proposed for it. The probable origin is the Sanskrit root gup, “to guard,” whence may have been formed agupta, “guarded about,” a similar sense to Mazor.[5]
The Hebrew Mazor is preserved in the Arabic Misr, مِصْر, pronounced Masr in the vulgar dialect of Egypt. It occurs in the Korán as the name of Egypt (xliii. 50), but has been applied to the country and to its chief capitals since the Arab conquest, El-Fustát, now called Masr-el-’Ateekah, or Old Masr, and El-Káhireh, the Cairo of the Europeans.[6]
By the Greeks and Romans Egypt was usually assigned to Asia, though some gave it to Libya, or Africa. This difference was owing to the adoption of the Nile as the division of the two continents, which would naturally have given half of the country to each continent.
In ancient times Egypt was the country watered by the Nile north of the First Cataract, the deserts on either side being assigned to Arabia and Libya.[7] The Egyptian name, “the black land,” is only applicable to the cultivable land. The Misr of the Arabs is distinctly restricted to the same territory, the adjoining deserts being called the deserts of Egypt. Physically, ethnographically, and politically, the two tracts are markedly different, but it is now usual to treat them as a single country.
Physical Geography, Productions, and Inhabitants.
The political advantages of Egypt, in situation, natural strength, and resources, can hardly be overrated. It lies in the very route of the trade between Europe and Asia, and that between Africa and the other two continents. It is the gate of Africa, and the fort which commands the way from Europe to the East Indies. The natural ports on the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, selected and improved by the wisdom of Alexander and the Ptolemies, whose enterprises have been eclipsed by those of M. de Lesseps in our own days, have always been enough for its commerce, which the great inland water-way of the Nile has greatly aided. The inhabited country, guarded by deserts and intersected in Lower Egypt by branches of the Nile and canals, in Upper Egypt closely hemmed in by the mountains on either side, is difficult to reach and to traverse; at the same time its extreme fertility makes it independent of supplies from other lands, and thus easier to defend. The ancient wealth and power of Egypt should occasion us no wonder, nor even that the country still prospers in spite of centuries of Turkish misrule.
“The extent of the cultivated land in Egypt [Mr. Lane calculates] to be equal to rather more than one square degree and a half; in other words, 5500 square geographical miles. This is less than half the extent of the land which is comprised within the confines of the desert; for many parts within the limits of the cultivable land are too high to be inundated, and consequently are not cultivated; and other parts, particularly in Lower Egypt, are occupied by lakes, or marshes, or drifted sand. Allowance also must be made for the space which is occupied by towns and villages, the river, canals, &c. Lower Egypt comprises about the same extent of cultivated land as the whole of Upper Egypt.”[8] Since the date when this was written,
- ↑ Cf. Plut. De Iside et Osiride, cap. 33. Dr Brugsch objects to the idea that Kem may be connected with the biblical patriarchal name Ham חֵם (forming part of poetic names of Egypt in the Psalms:—“the land of Ham,” cv. 23, 27, cvi. 22; “the tents of Ham,” lxxviii. 51), on the ground that it is philologically difficult to connect the Egyptian K with ח (Geogr. Inschr., i. p. 74, note*). This objection would be valid were the case one of a Semitic word transcribed in ancient Egyptian; it is not so where we have a root which is common, as this may be, to both (cf. Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place, v. 757, 758). The meaning of the Hebrew root חָם is “hot, warm.” The Arabic root حَمَّ signifies “it became hot,” and describes blackness as a result of heat; and the word حَمْأَةً “black mud” also occurs.
- ↑ The use of Mizraim as the proper name of an individual appears to be as early as the time of Ramses II. Ma͗zrima occurs as the name of a Hittite, the brother of the king (Brugsch, Geogr. Inschr., ii. 25, pl. xviii. 77). The Hebrew dual form is similarly transcribed in Mâhanemâ, Mahanaim (ii. 61, pl. xxiv. 22), a word not actually dual, and the Aramaic dual also in Neharina, the Hebrew Naharaim (i. pi. ix. 333).
- ↑ Pathros may take its name from the Pathyrite Nome, so called from its metropolis, P-hat-har (Brugsch, Geogr. Inschr., i. 188, 189, pl. xxvii. 839). As this nome contained Thebes, it might have a signification like Thebaïs. De Rougé prefers p-to-res, “the country of the south,” or Upper Egypt. (Six Premières Dynasties, Mém. de l'Inst., xxv. ii. 231).
- ↑ Dr Brugsch has conjecturally identified Αἴγυπτος with Ha-ke-ptah, the sacred name of Memphis, from which the westernmost branch of the Nile, the Canobic, with its two mouths, the Canobic and the Bolbitine, those best known to the early Greeks, seem to have been called (Geogr. Inschr., i. 83).
- ↑ The apparent relation of Αἴγυπτος to αἰγυπιός, a vulture, might seem to suggest a mythological origin for the proper name. M. Pictet has, however, most ingeniously traced both to gup, to guard, though his supposition that the name originally was connected with the Shepherd rule in Egypt must be regarded as hazardous (Origines Indo-Européennes, i. 459, seqq.). It is better to consider it a translation of Mazor, as Νεῖλος of Shihor.
- ↑ In the Arabic lexicons مِصْر is placed under the root مَصَرَ which in the second conjugation has the sense “he built cities,” “he commanded a city should be a capital;” but we also find مصْر “red mud,” the term used meaning both red and reddish brown.
- ↑ Probably the oldest southern boundary was at Silsilis, near Gebel-es-Silsileh.
- ↑ Mrs Poole, Englishwoman in Egypt, i. 85, 86. Mr Lane “made his calculation from a list of all the towns and villages in Egypt, and the extent of cultivated land belonging to each. This list is appended to De Sacy’s Abd-Allatif. It was made in the year of the Flight 777 (A.D. 1375–6), [recording the census of 715, A.D. 1315–6], and may be rather underrated than the reverse. The estimate of M. Mengin (Histoire de l'Égypte, ii. 342–344) shows that in 1821 the extent of the cultivated land was much less; but since that period considerable tracts of waste land had been rendered fertile” (Englishwoman in Egypt, i. 85, note). In the Description de l'Égypte there is an excellent memoir on the superficies of that country by Col. Jacotin, who computes the space which the Nile does or can water or fertilize, including its bed, north of the first cataract, at 9582·39 square geographical miles, of which but 5626·59 were in a state of cultivation or fit for cultivation. The space actually under cultivation was found by M. Estève to be 5469·86 square miles, but it is stated that 2735·07 more may have been anciently cultivable, of which much might be reclaimed. Description de l'Égypte, xviii. ii. 101, seqq. The close agreement of Mr Lane’s estimate with Col. Jacotin’s shows that the bases of both were accurate, and the difference from M. Mengin’s may be explained by the disasters which preceded the establishment of Mehemet Ali as pasha.
