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Origin and history of Egypt

Egypt

Old English Egipte "the Egyptians," from French Egypte, from Greek Aigyptos "the river Nile, Egypt," from Amarna Hikuptah, corresponding to Egyptian Ha(t)-ka-ptah "temple of the soul of Ptah," the creative god associated with Memphis, the ancient city of Egypt.

Strictly one of the names of Memphis, it was taken by the Greeks as the name of the whole country. The Egyptian name, Kemet, means "black country," possibly in reference to the rich delta soil. The Arabic is Misr, which is derived from Mizraim, the name of a son of Biblical Ham.

Entries linking to Egypt

Egyptian

late 14c., Egypcyan, adjective and noun; see Egypt + -ian. Old English had Egiptisc. Meaning "the language of Egypt" is from 1550s.

Egyptology(n.)

1841, from Egypt + -ology. Related: Egyptologist.

æ(1)

digraph in certain Greek or Latin words; it developed in later Latin where classical Latin used separate letters. The Latin digraph also was used to transliterate Greek -ai- (as in aegis). When Latinate words flooded English in the 16c. it came with them, but as an etymological device only, and it was pronounced simply "e" and eventually reduced to that letter in writing (as in eon, Egypt) in most cases, excepting (until recently) proper names (Cæsar, Æneas, Æsculapius, Æsop). When divided and representing two syllables (aerate, aerial) it sometimes is written aë.

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    annual Jewish feast instituted to commemorate the escape from Egypt, 1530, coined by Tyndale from verbal phrase pass over...ha-pesah "Passover," from pesah (see paschal), in reference to the Lord "passing over" the houses of the Israelites in Egypt...
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    beverage was introduced in Venice by 1615 and in France by 1650s by merchants and travelers who had been to Turkey and Egypt...
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    Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, traveling in Egypt circa A.D. 1300, reported buying three mummified heads filled with asphalt for...Mummy wheat (1842), grown in Egypt and Ethiopia and once thought to be a distinct species, was said to have been cultivated...
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    A type of rush or reed formerly abundant on marshy river banks in Egypt, Palestine, etc., it afforded the ancient Egyptians...
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    The heliacal year (used in ancient Egypt) is reckoned from the heliacal rising of Sirius; thus it also is known as the canicular...
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    common name of sister-queens in Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty....
    Memphis
    ancient city of Egypt, from Memphis, the Greek form of Egyptian Mennefer, literally "his beauty," from men "his" + nefer "beauty" (as in Queen Nefertiti, literally "Beauty has Come"). A reference to pharaoh Pepi I (24c. B.C.E.). The city in Tennessee, U.S., was so named 1826 for
    Zeus
    supreme god of the ancient Greeks and master of the others, 1706, from Greek, from PIE *dewos- "god" (source also of Latin deus "god," Old Persian daiva- "demon, evil god," Old Church Slavonic deivai, Sanskrit deva-), from root *dyeu- "to shine," in derivatives "sky, heaven, god.
    line
    a Middle English merger of Old English line "cable, rope; series, row, row of letters; rule, direction," and Old French ligne "guideline, cord, string; lineage, descent" (12c.), both from Latin linea "linen thread, string, plumb-line," also "a mark, bound, limit, goal; line of de

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