Affiliation:
Dr. Okasha el Daly is an Egyptian historian/Egyptologist, specializing in ancient Egypt’s history, art, religion, and languages. His research interests cover Egypt’s history and cultural heritage from the birth of its civilization to contemporary history and current affairs. Dr. El Daly’s main interest is exploring links and relationships between cultures, past and present. He studied Egyptology at Cairo University and gained his PhD from the Institute of Archeology at the University College London. He taught in Egypt, and the UK, such subjects as the History of Egyptian Art, the History of Egyptian Archaeology, Egyptian Religion, the Historical Geography of the Nile Valley, and the History of Science in the Islamic World. He has directed several international projects in the UK, Qatar and Sudan. As a guest lecturer, he leads tours to Egypt and the Mediterranean for the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA).
Contrary to the prevailing view that the conversion of Egyptians first to Christianity and then Islam, put an end to any interest in their heritage, there is ample evidence that they continued to study their past with great pride. Many medieval Arab scholars visited Egypt to study its heritage and ancient scripts. This interest in ancient Egyptian scripts led to many scholarly attempts to decipher them. Here is a brief study of the probable motivations behind their interest and the degrees of their success in the decipherment and understanding of ancient Egypt. They saw the pyramids, temples, and lighthouses as material evidence for the glory that was Egypt. This medieval Muslim reception is widely ignored in our current academia but very worthy of our interest because it fills a huge gap of about a thousand years in the history of Egyptology.
