subject: Egyptians or Arabs [print this page] Egyptians or Arabs Egyptians or Arabs
With Egypt in the headlines, I am reminded of a debate I used to have with a fellow graduate student at Durham University, many years ago.
He was an Egyptian, studying Ancient Egyptian history. I would ask him, are you an Egyptian or an Arab? And he would say, both!
Why do the Egyptians think of themselves as Arabs - indeed, as the foremost of all the Arab countries? Is it because they are Muslims? Iran is Muslim, and Iranians definitely do not think of themselves as Arabs. Neither do Pakistanis or Indonesians.
And the Egyptians, of all people, surely have a reason to think of themselves primarily in national terms. Their ancestors established one of the earliest and greatest civilizations on the planet - and modern Egyptians really are the descendants of the Ancient Egyptians. This is more than can be said for, say, Iraqis, who are mostly of Arab origin.
Of course, this prompts another question - what actually happened to Ancient Egypt? Or rather, what happened to the Ancient Egyptians after they were famous?
The answer to this, superficially at least, is thatthey got conquered by a succession of empires - Persian, Greek,Roman,Arab - and little by little theEgyptians'language, religion,art and architecture changed.
But the real answer to the questionis a little more complicated, because, of course, the Ancient Egyptians stayed put. They didn't go anywhere. They just, very gradually,changed their civilization.
This whole question of how peoples change civilizations is, for me, a fascinating one. It happened in Ancient Mesopotamia - more than once. It happened on a smaller scale in numerous other places - even the French-speaking Norman conquerors of England eventually turned into Englishmen (having previously turned themselves into Frenchmen).
I think I'm going to write a series on such folk. What happened to the Ancient Egyptians after they were famous?...and the Ancient Greeks? ...and the Ancient Romans?...and the Vikings?..the Normans?
However, none of this really explains why the Egyptians consider themselves to be Arabs as well as Egyptians. A history of Egypt won't help, and nor did my friend.
