X-Nico

20 unusual facts about Egypt


2008 Egyptian bus accident

The 14 December 2008 Egyptian bus accident happened when a bus plunged into an irrigation ditch while traveling from Cairo to Minya killing at least fifty-five and injuring ten.

Aguz

Qasr el-'Aguz is the modern name of the ancient Egyptian site, not far from Thebes, of a temple of the Pharaonic god Thoth

Akoris

Akoris, Egypt, an ancient Egyptian site 40km north of Hermopolis Magna

Amun-her-khepeshef

Statues and depictions of Amun-her-khepeshef appear in his father's famous temples in Abu Simbel, Luxor, in the Ramesseum, and in Seti's Abydos temple.

Ausar

Osiris, an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead.

Carl Benjamin Klunzinger

Beginning in February 1864 he worked as a physician at Kosseir, a seaport on the Red Sea.

Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations, American University in Cairo

The Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations (ARIC), at the American University in Cairo (AUC) located in Cairo, Egypt, specializes in the study of the rich tradition of Arabo-Islamic culture, thought, language, and history.

Eagle Point, Pennsylvania

It is located directly between the communities of Egypt and Cementon.

Faggala

It is also an important religious center for the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt.

Hatib bin Abi Balta'ah

Hatib bin Abi Balta'ah delivered the prophet Muhammad's letter to the Ruler of Egypt, Maqauqos the Copt.

Henry Danby Seymour

In 1856 Henry donated fragments of the Tomb of Sobekhotep, Thebes, to the British Museum, and was co-author of A History of Egypt Under the Pharaohs.

Henry William Beechey

Some time before 1816 he had become secretary to Henry Salt, the British consul-general in Egypt, and at the latter's request accompanied Belzoni in that and the following year beyond the second cataract, for the purpose of studying and making designs of the fine monuments existing at Thebes.

J. W. Marcel Gilbert

At the time, the German forces were at the gate of Alexandria, Egypt and as a pilot for 239 Wing, which had a base near Cairo, Egypt, he ferried war planes to Alexandria’s airport close to the front.

Kiln God

Kiln gods (or goddesses) originated in ancient times when pottery first came about in places like China and Egypt its not exactly clear.

Mohamed El-Asabgi

Mohamed Ali Ebrahim El Asabgi or Mohamed El-Asabgi (15 April 1892 - 1966) was an Egyptian composer that was known for his renewal of Arabic music and being inspired by the European Classic music in his works.

Moses Israel

The authority of the Chief Rabbinate of Cairo extended to the Jewish communities of Port Said, Mansoura, Banha and Mit Ghamr, whereas Tanta, Damanhur and Kafr El-Zayat were under the jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbinate of Alexandria.

Prince Ismail Imaduddeen

He got married to Princess Sameera Ali Abu El'la from Egypt in 1944 and had a boy (Al Nabeel Ahmed Ismail Imaduddeen) and a girl (Al Nabeelah Azeeza Ismail Imaduddeen) with her.

The Festival

The story is set at Christmas time: "It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind."

Tombs of the Kings

The Valley of the Kings in Egypt was sometimes known as the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings (see, for example, H. Carter, "Report on tomb-pit opened on the 26th January 1901 in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings", Les annales du service des antiquités de l’égypte 2 (1901).

William Kelly Simpson

He is one of several co-directors of the University of Pennsylvania Museum Yale University Expedition to Abydos, Egypt, which conducts archaeological excavations of ancient sites.


11th Indian Infantry Brigade

It was relocated from India to Egypt in the middle of August 1939 and trained at Fayed in Ismailia Governorate on the Great Bitter Lake.

Adel Abdel Bari

He was sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt in 1995 for his part in the 1995 plot to blow up the Khan el-Khalili market, along with Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar and Ahmad Salama Mabruk.

Amarna Period

This queen wrote to Suppiluliuma I, king of the Hittites, asking him to send one of his sons to become her husband and king of Egypt.

Aulus Gabinius

During Gabinius' absence in Egypt, Syria had been devastated by robbers, and Alexander, son of Aristobulus, had again taken up arms with the object of depriving Hyrcanus II of the high-priesthood.

Battle of Pelusium

Battle of Pelusium (343 BC), second battle fought between Achaemenid forces under Artaxerxes III (the Ochus) of Persia and pharaoh Nectanebo II, leading to defeat of Egyptian forces and the start of second Persian period in Egypt

Clive King

Set in the eastern Mediterranean world of the 15th century BC, the story follows the adventures of the three sons of a Phoenician master builder through three loosely linked stories in which they travel to Egypt (Sinai), to the court of King Minos (Crete) and north to Ugarit.

Dakhamunzu

The episode in The Deeds of Suppiluliuma that features Dakhamunzu is often referred to as the Zannanza affair, after the name of a Hittite prince who was sent to Egypt to marry her.

Dark retreat

All spiritual traditions have used Darkness Techniques in the pursuit of enlightenment: in Europe, the dark room appeared as a network of tunnels, in Egypt as the Pyramides, in Rome as the catacombs, by the Essenes in Israel and Taoists in China as caves.

David Conforte

The original manuscript was brought from Egypt by R. David Ashkenazi of Jerusalem, who, to judge from a note in his preface, gave it the title Ḳore ha-Dorot, and had it printed in Venice in 1746, without mentioning the name of the author.

Deir el-Muharraq

The Deir el-Muharraq (Arabic: الدير المحرق, ad-Deir al-Muḥarraq, "the burnt monastery") or Monastery of the Virgin Mary in Asyut, Egypt, is a Coptic monastery near El-Qusiya.

Delga

Dalga a town of about 120,000 people in Minya Governorate in Egypt

Denys Johnson-Davies

Denys Johnson-Davies (Arabic: دنيس جونسون ديڤيز) is an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who has translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer.

Egyptian cigarette industry

The founder of the industry was Nestor Gianaclis, a Greek who arrived in Egypt in 1864 and in 1871 established a factory in the Khairy Pasha palace in Cairo.

El Matareya

The city played a heroic role during the French campaign on Egypt, where the fishermen joined the resistance forces led by the Egyptian leader of the struggle against colonialism in this region, Sheikh Hassan Tobar.

El Naddaha

It is quite popular in the Nile Delta, the northern agricultural-based area of Egypt, typically north to Cairo, where the Nile constitutes a main part of the environment.

Elbistan

The region was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire shortly before the campaign against the Mameluks of Egypt in 1512, although some local chiefdoms were given varying degrees of autonomy, notably around the localities of Haticepınar and Kasanlı.

Fortunino Matania

Matania was also recommented to Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille and produced a number of paintings of Rome and Egypt from which authentic designs could be made for the movie The Ten Commandments.

Goebel Brewing Company

In the John Bellairs book The Trolley to Yesterday and its eventual sequel The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost, the character of Brewster (really Horus, a god of Upper and Lower Egypt) is given his name because he bears a resemblance to Brewster Rooster.

Guillemette Andreu

After studying history, Andreu specialized in Egyptology (hieroglyphs, hieratic, Coptic) and produced a thesis on the law and order in Ancient Egypt at Sorbonne in 1978 under the direction of Professor Jean Leclant.

Henry Liddon

In 1882 he resigned his professorship and travelled in Palestine and Egypt; and showed his interest in the Old Catholic movement by visiting Döllinger at Munich.

Hermann Eilts

He served as an American ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, assisted Henry Kissinger's Mideast shuttle diplomacy effort, worked with Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat throughout the Camp David Accords, and dodged a Libyan hit team.

History of Greek

As Greek culture under Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) and his successors spread from Asia Minor to Egypt and the border regions of India the Attic dialect became the basis of the Koiné (Κοινή; "common").

Kamilia Shehata

Kamilia Shehata Zakher (born 1985) is a schoolteacher in Deir Mawas, Egypt, and the wife of Tadros Samaan, the Coptic Priest of Saint Mark's Church in Mowas Cathedral in Minya.

Karim Adel Abdel Fatah

Since the transfer window closes on 31 January in Egypt, some Egyptian league's clubs, such as Olympic Alexandria, showed their dissatisfaction towards that transfer and considered it illegitimate.

Legoland Billund

In addition there are famous landmarks from Sweden, Bergen in Norway, Scotland, Germany, the Netherlands, Kennedy Space Center, Mount Rushmore, Abu Simbel in Egypt, Statue of Liberty, Acropolis of Athens, and Star Wars.

Lord Gascoyne-Cecil

Lord Edward Gascoyne-Cecil (1867–1918), British soldier and colonial administrator in Egypt

Love letter

Examples from Ancient Egypt range from the most formal - 'the royal widow...Ankhesenamun wrote a letter to the king of the Hittites, Egypt's old enemy, begging him to send one of his sons to Egypt to marry her' - to the down-to-earth: let me 'bathe in thy presence, that I may let thee see my beauty in my tunic of finest linen, when it is wet'.

Ludwig Hans Fischer

A pupil, at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, of Eduard von Lichtenfels in painting, of Louis Jacoby in engraving, and of William Unger in etching, he completed his studies traveling in Italy, Spain, North Africa, Egypt, and India, and afterwards settled in Vienna.

Mike Oddy

He played in an era where the sport was dominated by great players from Pakistan (such as Azam Khan, Roshan Khan, Mo Khan and Aftab Jawaid) and Egypt (such as A.A. AbouTaleb and Ibrahim Amin).

Mohammed Tayea

Mohammed Ali Tayea (1945-2000) was one of the political leaders in Egypt during the Sadat and Mubarak era.

Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy

In October 2009, Tantawy launched a campaign against the niqab (the full-face veil which covers the entire body except for the eyes, increasingly worn by women in Egypt) by personally removing the niqab of a teenage girl (after she failed to remove it) at a secondary school affiliated to Al-Azhar University, which he was touring in Cairo's Madinet Nasr suburb, much to the shock of all concerned.

Nakhla

Nakhla meteorite, a Mars meteorite that landed in the Nakhla region of Abu Hommos, Alexandria, Egypt

No. 214 Squadron RAF

Post war the squadron was moved to Egypt but it was disbanded on 1 February 1920 with its crew and aircraft merged into No. 216 Squadron RAF.

Osman Pasha

Bosniak Osman Pasha (died 1685), Ottoman governor of Egypt, Damascus, and Bosnia

Paederus

An article in The Lancet suggests that events like those described as the first two of the ten plagues of Egypt (anoxic die-off in the Nile, followed by many dead frogs) would have created ideal breeding conditions for P. alfierii.

Parabalani

Though they were chosen by the bishop and always remained under his control, the Codex Theodosianus placed them under the supervision of the governor of Egypt (the praefectus augustalis).

Peter of Courtenay, Lord of Conches

On 25 August 1248, he sailed with his cousin, King Louis IX of France, from Aigues-Mortes to Egypt to fight the Seventh Crusade, during which he died.

Port Said International School

It is the first International School in Port Said and the first international school to be accredited by the Commission on International and Trans-Regional Accreditation and fully licensed by the Egyptian Ministry of Education in the region.

Portals in fiction

Authors Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince also write of The Stargate Conspiracy: The Truth About Extraterrestrial Life and the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt.

Qualifying Industrial Zone

USTR has designated three QIZs in Egypt – the Greater Cairo Zone, the Alexandria Zone, and the Suez Canal Zone (69 CFR 78094).

Roxana Kafati

She is the partner of Honduran football player Esdras Padilla, who currently plays for Motagua and was part of the U-20 national team in the world cup in Egypt.

Shahira Amin

Amin became the subject of criticism after she interviewed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on October 18, 2011 in Egypt, following Shalit's release from more than five years of captivity in Gaza but preceding his return to Israel and reunification with his family.

Taghribat Bani Hilal

The Egyptian poet and writer Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi has made an exhaustive collection of the Sira, travelling from Egypt to Libya to Tunisia to document the variants of the epic.

Three-state solution

Daniel Pipes describes the “Jordan-Egypt option” as “a uniquely sober way” to bring peace.

Trabluslu Ali Pasha

After hearing about the overthrow of the governor Koca Hüsrev Mehmed Pasha in 1803, Ali Pasha asked to be made the governor of Egypt, even though it appeared as though the Albanian troops had taken control of the province from the Ottomans.

Ultras

In 2013, the Associated Press stated that the Egyptian Ultras network was one of the most organized movements in Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood.

Uthman bin Ali Zayla'i

He eventually settled in Cairo, Egypt, where he joined other Somali students at the Riwaq al Zayla'i of the Al Azhar University.

Welad El Am

Welad El-Am (ولاد العم, The Cousins) (also called Escaping Tel Aviv) is a 2009 Egyptian film directed by Sherif Arafa and starring Karim Abdel Aziz, Sherif Mounir and Mona Zaki.

Wilhelmenia Fernandez

Since then she has sung in operas and recitals in cities all over the world, her most notable roles being Carmen, Carmen Jones (for which she received the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1992 as Best Actress in a Musical), and Aïda, a role she has performed in Luxor and at the Pyramids in Egypt.

William Willcocks

He was serving as director general of reservoirs for Egypt when he completed his studies and plans in 1896 to construct the Aswan Low Dam, the first true storage reservoir on the river.