Egypt

We are good fighters but lousy builders. Our last piece of original architecture was during ancient Egypt. What are we known for now? A continent plagued with inadequate health facilities but rich Ministers of Health. ~ Michael Matogo

Egypt (Arabic: مِصر‎), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa and the Middle East. The great majority of its estimated 80 million people live near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found. Its head of state is President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and its head of government is Mostafa Madbouly.

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Quotes

C

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."
- Jimmy Carter; Cairo, Egypt Address Before the People's Assembly Online, The American Presidency Project; 26 August 1978

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E

And they spoiled the Egyptians.
- Exodus, XII. 36; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 218

‘I will make the land of Egypt a ruin and a desolate waste among devastated lands.’
- Ezekiel, 29: 10, 12.

H

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.
- Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), Chapter 11: "Imperial Visions"
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.
- Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), Chapter 15: "The Marriage of Science and Empire"
…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.
- Shulamith Hareven 1985 interview in We Are All Close: Conversations with Israeli Writers by Haim Chertok (1989)

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.
- Mohammed Abu Hurira, as quoted in "Four-year-old sentenced to life in prison for murder in Egypt" (19 February 2016), by Caroline Mortimer, The Independent

I

Egypt plays an important role in [the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light] 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.
- Massimo Introvigne and Rosita Šorytė, "Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light Members Persecuted in Egypt", Bitter Winter (July 12, 2024)
- Compiler's Note: The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL), a Shia-derivative new religious movement, is not to be confused with the Sunni-derivative Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at (AMJ).

M

We are good fighters but lousy builders. Our last piece of original architecture was during ancient Egypt. What are we known for now?
- Michael Matogo, The Burden of a Great Legacy (4 October 2001)

The world of the Greco-Roman Egypt 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.
- Marvin Meyer, Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power. Princeton University Press. 1999. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-691-00458-7.

The Egyptians were the best philosophers in the world
- Montesquieu , in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization Vol. I, published in 1987, by Martin Bernal

N

It follows that Egypt is not a "Muslim Country" but a republic, a country for all Egyptians.
- Maajid Nawaz and Tom Bromley, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism (2016), Connecticut: Rowman & Littlefield, p. xxiii

O

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.
- Osama bin Laden, English translation of a statement in al-Quds al-Arabi (23 February 1998) "Summary/Review of Reports Concerning Threats by Osama Bin Laden to Conduct Terrorist Operations Against the United States and/or her Allies - 23 February 1998 to 16 June 1998"

R

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 Suez Canal 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.
- Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Howard University Press. 1972. p. 153. ISBN 978-0-9501546-4-0.

S

I am dying, Egypt, dying.
- William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1600s), Act IV, scene 15, line 18; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 218.