In this publication, distinguished Egyptologist Fayza Haikal examines the transmission of ancient Egyptian culture into contemporary Egyptian society. Focusing on Egypt’s intangible rather than monumental heritage, she is taking exciting pathway toward a compelling portrait of a culture in unbroken dialogue with its ancient past.
Drawing on philological analysis of hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic, and Coptic sources alongside close attention to present-day language, ritual, and social practice, the author traces continuities in vocabulary, religious concepts, kinship terminology, and everyday custom across nearly six millennia. With the precision of a skilled philologist and the warmth of someone writing about her own home, she finds convincing fragments of pharaonic Egypt in proverbs of modern taxi drivers, lullabies of Egyptian mothers, or the smell of bread rising from a village oven.
The volume is organized thematically, addressing in turn the environmental foundations of ancient Egyptian culture, the development of its scripts and language, conceptions of the self and society, kinship and gender roles, and religious belief and practice, including the transmission of key motifs into Coptic and Islamic devotional traditions. Methodologically, the work situates itself within the framework of cultural memory studies, and ethno-Egyptology.
Building on a series of the author’s previously published studies, substantially revised and unified for this edition, the book contributes to ongoing debates concerning cultural heritage, identity, continuity, and the re-appropriation of Egyptology by Egyptian scholars. The book is richly illustrated with photographs from the archives of the Czech Institute of Egyptology and other authors. It will be of interest to Egyptologists, historians of religion, linguists, and anthropologists concerned with long-term cultural transmission in the Nile Valley, and anyone drawn to how people carry their past into the present.