Copts
In light of the recent events in Egypt, I wanted to talk about the ethnoreligious group in Egypt known as the Copts. "If you come to a Coptic person and tell him that he’s an Arab, that’s offensive. We are not Arabs, we are Egyptians... When we hear the word "Copt", that doesn’t only mean "Christian", it means "Egyptian"." –Bishop Thomas of Cusae and Meir, a Copt. HISTORY You may or may not know much about Egyptian history after the pharaohs. I will bring us up to speed. For most of their ancient history, the people in Egypt were ethnic Egyptians and they did the Egyptian thing–pyramids, embalming, and senet . In 434 B.C., the Persians took it over for a wee-bit. A hundred years later along came Alexander, who the Egyptians viewed as a liberator, and following his early death, the Hellenistic (Greek civilization outside of Greece) Ptolemaic Kingdom reigned along the Nile. The capital moved from Memphis to newly established Alexandria. Hellenizati...