Egypt : handbook for travellers / edited by K. Baedeker.

Date:
1885-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egypt : handbook for travellers / edited by K. Baedeker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of wisdom; and, as their ideas of a scholar and a physician are identical, they place implicit reliance on onr ability to heal the sick and to save the dying. The traveller who comes in contact with the fellahin will often he applied to for medicine, and will often find drugs more effective than money in securing their good will. ( 2). Copts (kiibt, ubt). While we have regarded the fellahin as genuine Egyptians in consequence of their uninterrupted occupation of the soil, the religion of the Copts affords us an additional guarantee for the purity of their descent. The Copts are undoubtedly the most direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians, there being no ground for the assumption that their ancestors were foreign immigrants who embraced Christianity after the conquest of the country by the Mohammedans, while on the other hand the obstinacy with which they defended their monophysite Christianity for several centuries against the inroads of the creed of Byzantium affords another indication of their Egyptian character. The Coptic population is officially stated as 250,000, but these figures are obviously too low, and the number is more probably about 400,000, i.e. about a fifth of the purely indigenous population of the valley of the Nile.f They are most numerous in the towns of Northern Egypt, around the ancient Coptos, at Negada, Luksor, Esneh, Dendera, Girgeh, Tahta, and particularly at Siut and Akhmim. A large proportion of the population of all these places is Coptic. The Coptic Patriarch is elected from their own number by the monks of the live chief monasteries of Egypt. These are the monasteries of St. Anthony and St. Paul in the western desert, the two in the valley of the Natron Lakes, and the large convent of Marrag, near Monfalut. Most of the Copts are dwellers in towns, and are chiefly engaged in the more refined handicrafts (as watchmakers, goldsmiths, jewellers, embroiderers, tailors, weavers, manufacturers of spurious antiquities, etc.), or in trade, or as clerks, accountants, and notaries. Their physique is accordingly materially different from that of the fella- hin. They are generally somewhat below the middle height, and of delicate frame, with small hands and feet; their skulls are higher and narrower than those of the peasantry, and with less protruding cheek-bones; and, lastly, their complexion is fairer. These dif- ferences are sufficiently accounted for by their mode of life; for, when we compare those Copts who are engaged in rustic pursuits, or the Coptic camel drivers of Upper Egypt, with the fellahin, we find that the two races are not distinguishable from each other. The two distinct types have also been recognized in the skeletons of the ancient mummies. Few nations in the East embraced the Gospel more zealously than the dwellers on the Nile. Accustomed as they had long been to regard life as a pilgrimage to death, as a school of preparation for t Tlie total number of Christians in Egypt, including Europeans, Ar- menians, and Syrians, is about 600,000, or one tenth of the entire popu- lation.