Coptic Egypt - The First Church of Alexandria P1

Coptic Egypt - The Christians of the Nile
The First Church of Alexandria
by Christan Cannuyer
Paragraph 1

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, characterized the Egyptians of his time as "excessively religious, more so than any other people in the world." Indeed over three millennia the civilization of pharaonic Egypt centered on the cultural concept we call religion, even though the ancient Egyptian language has no such word. While all the civilizations of the Middle East were fundamentally religious, in Egypt religion was omnipresent in all human activity. Its optimistic vision of the world distinguished it from other ancient Near and Middle Eastern religious practices, as did the view, which dates to the era of the pyramids (c. 2600 BC) that death is not an end, but a new beginning, a passage to the next life.

Coptic Egypt - The Christians of the Nile

Coptic Egypt - The Christians of the Nile
by Christan Cannuyer

The Copts are the Christians of Egypt. Theirs is among the most ancient forms of Christianity, born in the time of Jesus. The name derives from the Arabic Qibt, an abbreviation of the Greek name Aigyptios (Egyptian); this in turn is a derivation of Hikuptah, House of the Energy of Ptah, the religious name for Memphis, the capital city of ancient Egypt. Coptic Christianity mingles remnants of pharaonic practices, elements of Hellenistic and Byzantine Egyptian culture, and the dynamism of Arab civilization.