EGYPT 



1966 



EGYPT 



and even the little children work from day- 

 light till dark. A typical village, unless quite 

 modern, has walls about it of sundried mud, 

 broken only by the heavy wooden doors in 

 which each street ends and which are closed 

 at night. The one-story huts are also of mud 

 and are built close together, with their flat 

 roofs continuous, so that the goats, sheep and 

 half-wild dogs may roam about over them at 

 will. 



Few of the huts have windows, the little 

 door serving for ventilation, and since the 

 streets are very narrow and the fires very 

 smoky, the Egyptian peasants have little pure 

 air to breathe in their homes. Since they are 

 out in the fields most of the day, however, 

 and make use of their homes only at eating 

 or sleeping time, they seem fairly healthy. 

 Rice is the chief food, and coffee, which the 

 poorest family knows how to make excellently, 

 is the well-nigh universal drink. Each village 

 has its guest-chamber in which the chance 

 traveler ?s fed and lodged, but this is often 

 so dirty that the traveler prefers to do with- 

 out food and rest rather than to endure it. 



Religion. The Copts still hold to their an- 

 cient Christianity, and a few people in the 

 towns have embraced that religion, but the 

 great mass of the people is Mohammedan. 

 Their religion is not a surface affair merely, 

 but forms and regulates their lives. God, or 

 Allah, is their personal deity, to whom they 

 can appeal as a father, and the fatalistic doc- 

 trine which is so large a part of Mohamme- 

 danism prevents them from grumbling at any 

 misfortunes which may befall them. A very 

 strong influence is exerted by religion upon 

 hygiene, for since a Mohammedan may not 

 pray unwashed, ablutions are much more com- 

 mon than they would otherwise be. To men, 

 the religious duties and observances are all- 

 important, but not so to the women. The 

 latter are not allowed to enter the mosques 

 during prayer, and though they are permitted 

 to pray in their homes it is not required of 

 them. Polygamy is legal, but most Egyptians 

 content themselves with one wife. If, how- 

 ever, a wife angers her husband or bears him 

 no children, he may take a second wife or 

 may divorce her by merely saying, "Thou art 

 divorced." 



Education. As their religion seems to take 

 it for granted that a woman has no soul, so 

 the educational scheme assumes that she has 

 no mind. Naturally such an attitude works 

 untold injury to the country. A woman is not 



even taught how to care for her children. If 

 a baby be born to her while she is working 

 in the fields she wraps it in a handkerchief 

 and lays it under a bush in the shade. Later, 

 perhaps, she returns to find that the shadows 

 have shifted, and that the hot sun has killed 

 her baby, but she only says, "It is Allah's 

 will," and returns to her work. As a result of 

 such gross ignorance, it is estimated that about 

 ninety per cent of the babies born to the 

 purely-native population die in infancy. 



The men among the peasants are but little 

 better educated than the women, few of them 

 knowing how to read and write. So general 

 is illiteracy that a written signature to a doc- 

 ument is exceedingly rare. Where there are 

 native schools they merely teach by rote por- 

 tions of the Koran. In the towns, however, 

 education is farther advanced, and the old 

 conservative method of teaching from the 

 Koran is gradually giving place to something 

 like a liberal system. 



The Geography of Egypt. Geographically 

 Egypt has two regions Lower Egypt, which 

 stretches from the Mediterranean to Cairo and 

 consists largely of the Nile delta; and Upper 

 Egypt, from Cairo to the southern boundary, 

 a fertile valley nowhere more than fifteen 

 miles broad. These two divisions constitute 

 the part of Egypt which is known as "the gift 

 of the Nile," for only as that river furnishes 

 its waters and the fine silt which remains 

 after its annual overflows has any agricultural 

 development been possible. It is in these two 

 regions that the greater part of the population 

 lives, for only a very precarious living is to 

 be obtained elsewhere. See NILE. 



West of the Nile are the barren, rainless 

 stretches of the Libyan Desert. This, in the 

 main, is a region of wind-blown rock waste, 

 but here and there are areas which are watered 

 from subterranean sources or by canals lead- 

 ing to them from the Nile. These are the 

 famous oases, the rich, fertile spots which 

 have an added interest because of their situation 

 as verdant islands in a vast sea of rock waste. 

 East of the Nile is another desert region, but 

 it is mountainous, rising gradually until near 

 the borders of the Red Sea it attains a height 

 of several thousand feet. In the high places 

 there is a little vegetation, and there the 

 Bedouins pasture their wandering flocks. 



A discussion of the waters of Egypt can 

 deal with but one topic the Nile. Since that, 

 with its influence on the country, is given full 

 treatment in the article under its own name, 



