SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

2:00-2:45 p.m. Deacon Severus (Maged) S. A. Mikhail, Islamization of Egypt from 7 th -9 th Centuries 2:45 - 3:40 p.m. Informal discussions. Presentations: There were four presentations delivered during the day, a brief description of each is as follows: a. The Research into the Kalenjian Culture in Kenya by Rev. Gerald Fish: This unique paper introduced the audience to the culture of a group of African tribes. Members of these tribes have recounted through their oral tradition, that they were originally from Egypt. In particular, the Kipsigis tribe living primarily around Lake Victoria in Kenya was the pocus of the presentation. Rev. Fish discussed the background of his and his wife's research into this culture over several decades. A work that was part of his church missionary work in the region. He also shared his observations of the religious customs of these tribes as they pertain to possible links to other cultures. The fascinating thing about this is the close affinity of the religious practices of these communities to the Biblical Book of Leviticus. However there are no knowledge that they have about the origin of these practices except that they represent the traditions handed down from their forefathers. These communities are also acquainted personalities in the Old Testament up to and including Moses. Rev. Fish also introduced the evolution of their research into the origin of these communities. A process that began with the possible Jewish roots and later on turned to possible Egyptian roots, as their tradition claimed. This change was in part made as a result of one of their colleagues, Mr. Kipkoech arap Sambu accidental contact with Bishop Antonious Marcos, in Egypt. This change was rather based on the common linguistic features with Egyptian or Coptic. Discussion ranged from clarifications of points presented to pros and cons of the different original root theories. But, in the opinion of this

writer, the customs reveal a community that had connections to the Ancient Hebrews as would be found in a Samaritan community with strong linguistic affinity to Ancient Egyptian. This would point to possibly a group that associated closely with a Samaritan type community in Upper Egypt, probably several centuries before the birth of Christ. b. The Language of the Kalenjian and its affinity to the Ancient Egyptian by Rev. Gerald Fish. In this segment Rev. Fish briefly went over examples found by Mr. Sambu of words common between Egyptian and Kalenjian. This forms part of Mr. Sambu's Doctoral dissertation on the subject, being prepared in Kenya. c. Relationship between Egyptian Arabic and Ancient Egypt by Mrs. Lilian Nawar. In this presentation, Mrs. Nawar shared with the audience her work on uncovering the origin of many of the colloquial words found in Egyptian Arabic. Her initial premise was that many of these words are not originally Arabic but rather an arabized form of ancient Egyptian original. Her work also supported the affinity of such words to Amharic as well as Somali languages. The bases for the etymologies given were patterns of identical consonants and/or vowels, uniform character substitutions, and character transposition. The discussions during that paper was lively! d. Islamization of Egypt from 7 th -9 th Centuries In this paper, Deacon Severus (Maged) shared with the audience his research about the intriguing period of Coptic history that spans from shortly before the Arab Conquest of Egypt until the end of the first few centuries of Arab rule. Specifically he dealt with the Islamization of some of the economic issues in Egypt during the period. In particular, he addressed the issues of the change in the taxation system and currency reform. On the issue of taxation, he explored the bases for determining the amount of taxation used by the Arabs. It depended on whether the country

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

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