The Egyptian Greeks, also known as Egyptiots () or simply Greeks of Egypt (), are the ethnic Greek community in Egypt with a history dating back to the Hellenistic period. Historically concentrated in Alexandria, the community was one of the largest and most influential foreign populations in the country. Following the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and subsequent nationalization policies, the population declined significantly; however, a small community remains in Cairo and Alexandria today.
Antiquity Greeks have been present in Egypt since at least the 7th century BC. Herodotus visited ancient Egypt in the 5th century BC and claimed that the Greeks were one of the first groups of foreigners that ever lived there.Α΄ Η διαχρονική πορεία του ελληνισμού στην Αφρική Diodorus Siculus claimed that Rhodian Actis, one of the Heliadae, built the city of Heliopolis before the cataclysm; likewise the Athenians built Sais. Siculus reports that all the Greek cities were destroyed during the cataclysm, but the Egyptian cities including Heliopolis and Sais survived.The Historical Library of Diodorus Siculus, Book V,57.
First historical colonies According to Herodotus (ii. 154), King Psammetichus I (664–610 BC) established a garrison of foreign mercenaries at Daphnae, mostly Carians and Ionian Greeks.
In the 7th century BC, after the Greek Dark Ages from 1100 to 750, the city of Naucratis was founded in Ancient Egypt. It was located on the Canopic branch of the Nile river, 45 mi (72 km) from the open sea. It was the first and, for much of its early history, the only permanent Greek colony in Egypt; acting as a symbiotic nexus for the interchange of Greek and Egyptian art and culture.
At about the same time, the city of Heracleion, the closest to the sea, became an important port for Greek trade. It had a famous temple of Heracles. The city later sank into the sea, only to be rediscovered recently.
From the time of Psammetichus I onwards, Greek mercenary armies played an important role in some of the Egyptian wars. One such army was led by Mentor of Rhodes. Another such personage was Phanes of Halicarnassus.
Hellenistic times
Rule of Alexander the Great (332–323 BC) Alexander the Great conquered Egypt at an early stage of his conquests. He respected the pharaonic religions and customs and he was proclaimed Pharaoh of Egypt. He established the city of Alexandria. After his death, in 323 BC, his empire was divided among his generals. Egypt was given to Ptolemy I Soter, whose descendants would establish Egypt's last royal dynasty. This dynasty was composed solely of ethnic Greeks and produced dynasts such as Cleopatra. Its capital was Alexandria. Ptolemy added legitimacy to his rule in Egypt by acquiring Alexander's body. He intercepted the embalmed corpse on its way to burial, brought it to Egypt, and placed it in a golden coffin in Alexandria. It would remain one of the famous sights of the town for many years, until probably destroyed in riots in the 3rd century AD.
The Ptolemaic Empire (323–30 BC)
The initial objective of Ptolemy's reign was to establish firm and broad boundaries to his newly acquired kingdom. That led to almost continuous warfare against other leading members of Alexander's circle. When these conflicts were over, he was firmly in control of Egypt and had strong claims (disputed by the Seleucid dynasty) to Palestine. He called himself king of Egypt from 306 BC. By the time he abdicated in 285 BC, in favour of one of his sons, the Ptolemaic dynasty was secure. Ptolemy and his descendants showed respect to Egypt's most cherished traditions – those of religion – and turned them to their own advantage. At times Ptolemies held Cyprus, Cyrenaica and parts of Greece and Anatolia.
Alexandria became the centre of the Greek and Hellenistic world and the centre of international commerce, art and science. The Lighthouse of Alexandria was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World while during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Library of Alexandria was the biggest library in the world until it was destroyed. The last Pharaoh was a Greek princess, Cleopatra VII, who took her own life in 30 BC, a year after the battle of Actium.
Roman and Byzantine Egypt
Under Greco-Roman rule, Egypt hosted several Greek settlements, mostly concentrated in Alexandria, but also in a few other cities, where Greek settlers lived alongside some seven to ten million native Egyptians.Adams, Winthrope L in Bugh, Glenn Richard. ed. "The Hellenistic Kingdoms". The Cambridge Companion to the Hellenistic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006, p. 39 Faiyum's earliest Greek inhabitants were soldier-veterans and cleruchs (elite military officials) who were settled by the Ptolemaic kings on reclaimed lands.Stanwick, Paul Edmund. Portraits of the Ptolemies: Greek Kings as Egyptian Pharaohs. Austin: University of Texas Press. 2003, p. 23Adams, op cit. Native Egyptians also came to settle in Faiyum from all over the country, notably the Nile Delta, Upper Egypt, Oxyrhynchus and Memphis, to undertake the labor involved in the land reclamation process, as attested by personal names, local cults and recovered papyri.Bagnall, R.S. in Susan Walker, ed. Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits in Roman Egypt (Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications). New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 27
Coptic Greeks
It is estimated that as much as 30 percent of the population of Faiyum was Greek during the Ptolemaic period, with the rest being native Egyptians;Bagnall, op cit. the Faiyum mummy portraits reflect the complex synthesis of the predominant Egyptian culture and that of the elite Egyptian Greek minority in Faiyum.
By the Roman period, much of the "Greek" population of Faiyum was made up of either Hellenized Egyptians or people of mixed Egyptian-Greek origins,Bagnall, pp. 28–29 and by the time of Roman emperor Caracalla in the 2nd century AD, ethnic Egyptians could be distinguished from Egyptian Greeks only by their speech.qtd. in Alan K. Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs, 332 BC – AD 642, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, p. 126: "genuine Egyptians can easily be recognized among the linen-weavers by their speech."
Egyptian Greek is the variety of Greek spoken in Egypt from antiquity until the Islamic conquest of Egypt in the 7th century. Egyptian Greek adopted many loanwords from Egyptian language; there was a great deal of intracommunity bilingualism in Egypt.
The following is an example of Egyptian Greek language, used in the Coptic Church:
The dental morphology of the Roman-period Faiyum mummies was also compared with that of earlier Egyptian populations, and was found to be "much more closely akin" to that of ancient Egyptians than to Greeks or other European populations.Dentition helps archaeologists to assess biological and ethnic population traits and relationshipsIrish JD (2006). "Who were the ancient Egyptians? Dental affinities among Neolithic through postdynastic peoples.". Am J Phys Anthropol 129 (4): 529-43 Victor J. Katz notes that "research in papyri dating from the early centuries of the common era demonstrates that a significant amount of intermarriage took place between the Greek and Egyptian communities".Victor J. Katz (1998). A History of Mathematics: An Introduction, p. 184. Addison Wesley, : "But what we really want to know is to what extent the Alexandrian mathematicians of the period from the first to the fifth centuries C.E. were Greek. Certainly, all of them wrote in Greek and were part of the Greek intellectual community of Alexandria. And most modern studies conclude that the Greek community coexisted [...] So should we assume that Ptolemy and Diophantus, Pappus and Hypatia were ethnically Greek, that their ancestors had come from Greece at some point in the past but had remained effectively isolated from the Egyptians? It is, of course, impossible to answer this question definitively. But research in papyri dating from the early centuries of the common era demonstrates that a significant amount of intermarriage took place between the Greek and Egyptian communities [...] And it is known that Greek marriage contracts increasingly came to resemble Egyptian ones. In addition, even from the founding of Alexandria, small numbers of Egyptians were admitted to the privileged classes in the city to fulfill numerous civic roles. Of course, it was essential in such cases for the Egyptians to become "Hellenized," to adopt Greek habits and the Greek language. Given that the Alexandrian mathematicians mentioned here were active several hundred years after the founding of the city, it would seem at least equally possible that they were ethnically Egyptian as that they remained ethnically Greek. In any case, it is unreasonable to portray them with purely European features when no physical descriptions exist."
Medieval Islamic and Ottoman era Greek culture and political influence continued and perhaps reached some of its most influential times during the Ottoman Caliphate, which witnessed many Ottoman sultans and pashas of Greek ancestry rule over the Ottoman Empire in general, and Egypt in particular. Other notable Greeks in Egypt during the Ottoman period included Damat Hasan Pasha from the Morea, a governor of Egypt. Raghib Pasha, born in Greece to Greek parents, served as prime minister of Egypt. During the Ottoman Caliphate, Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha, grand vizier to Suleiman the Magnificent from 1520 to 1566, is perhaps the best known.
At the end of the 18th century, Ottoman Egypt was home to a small community of Egyptian Greeks who numbered from under a thousand to 5000 people. At the time Egyptian Greeks were split into two distinct communities that rarely intermingled. The first was composed of Arabic speaking descendants of early Greek settlers and Greeks who immigrated to Egypt after 1517, most of whom were merchants. During the course of the War of the Second Coalition France occupied Egypt. The new French authorities established cordial relations with the Greek community. This resulted in the recruitment of Greek mercenaries who once served the Mamluks. On 27 June 1800, a regular army unit composed of ethnic Greeks was established under the name Légion Grecque (Greek Legion). Commanded by Nikolaos Papazoglou it numbered 577 officers and soldiers. After the end of the French occupation of Egypt a part of the Greek Legion continued their service in the French military as part of the Bataillon Chasseurs d'Orient and other small units.
Many Greek Muslims from Crete (often confusingly called Cretan Turks) were resettled in Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, and Syria by Sultan Abdul Hamid II after the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 that resulted in the autonomy of Crete (see the example of al-Hamidiyah, a largely Cretan Greek Muslim village in Syria).
Modern times Greek community In 1920, approximately 200,000 Greeks lived in Egypt. By , the Greeks numbered about 300,000. The Greek community in Alexandria lived around the church and convent of Sabbas the Sanctified. In the same area there was a guest house for Greek travelers, a Greek hospital and later a Greek school. The Greek Orthodox bishop was based in Damietta in the church of Nikolaos of Myrna.
In Cairo, the first organised Greek community was founded in 1856, with the community based in three main neighbourhoods: Tzouonia, Haret el Roum (Street of the Greeks), and in Hamzaoui. The patriarchate was based in Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral, Hamzaoui. The monastery of Saint George, in Old Cairo still survives. The monastery is surrounded by a huge wall and topped by a stone tower. Within its walls there was a Greek hospital, a school and housing for the elderly and poor.