Saturday, July 30, 2011

Name Of EGYPT

Name Of EGYPT

The English name Egypt was borrowed from Middle French Egypte, from Latin Aegyptus, from ancient Greek Aígyptos (Αἴγυπτος), from earlier Linear B ���������� a-ku-pi-ti-yo. The adjective aigýpti-, aigýptios was borrowed into Coptic as ⲅⲩⲡϯⲓⲟⲥ/ⲕⲩⲡϯⲓⲟⲥ gyptios, kyptios, and from there into Arabic as قبطي qubṭī, back formed into قبة qubṭ, whence English Copt. The Greek forms were borrowed from Late Egyptian (Amarna) Hikuptah "Memphis", a corruption of the earlier Egyptian name Hwt-ka-Ptah (ḥwt-kꜣ-ptḥ), meaning "home of the ka (soul) of Ptah", the name of a temple to the god Ptah at Memphis. Strabo attributed the word to a folk etymology in which Aígyptos (Αἴγυπτος) evolved as a compound from Aigaiou huptiōs (Aἰγαίου ὑπτίως), meaning "below the Aegean". Miṣr, the Arabic and modern official name of Egypt (Egyptian Arabic: Maṣr), is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם‎ (Mitzráyim), literally meaning "the two straits" (a reference to the dynastic separation of upper and lower Egypt). The word originally connoted "metropolis" or "civilization" and means "country", or "frontier-land".
The ancient Egyptian name of the country is Kemet (km.t) [��������], which means "black land", referring to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains, distinct from the deshret (dšṛt), or "red land" of the desert. The name is realized as kēme and kēmə in the Coptic stage of the Egyptian language, and appeared in early Greek as Χημία (Khēmía). Another name was tꜣ-mry "land of the riverbank". The names of Upper and Lower Egypt were Ta-Sheme'aw (tꜣ-šmꜥw) "sedgeland" and Ta-Mehew (tꜣ mḥw) "northland", respectively.

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