What so you think is the differnce between an Egyptian and an Arab?

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msafwat

I Just answered a similar question here: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AhG2tufWvXMhBNOyQv8aA.P97BR.;_ylv=3?qid=20080518093415AAa4AX5
I think it will be useful having a look at all the answers there too. But any way, here is my answer:

We have to distiguish between three definitions for Arab:

1- Arab as an ethnicity is widely perceived as being that group of people who are direct decendants of Ishmael (Ismaeel) son of Abraham (Ibrahim). Those are mainly tribes located in the Arab peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Yemen and stretching north to include parts of Jordan Syria and Iraq.

2- Arab as a cultural influence, including the spoken Arabic language and other cultural aspects.

3- Pan Arabism as a political/ nationalistic movement dating back to the early 20th century and which can be loosely defined today as the countries member of the Arab League.

Now applying those definitions to the case of Egypt we can say that Egypt politically and culturally speaking is definitely an Arab country since Egypt is a founding member of the Arab League, is greatly influenced by the Arab culture since the Arab Conquest in 640 AD, and the Arabic language is the official language of the state and is the language used by the overwhelming majority of Egyptians.

But when it comes to the Arab ethnicity, although some Egyptians can trace their ethnic origins back to the Arab peninsula but still most of the Egyptians have mixed origins. Egypt since ancient times was a melting pot of many cultures, civilizations and ethnicities and we can not accurately say that modern Egyptians belong to this or that ethnic group. Egyptians are loosely categorized as middle eastern or caucasian. And I believe Zoser is right when he said we are an ethnicity by ourselves, since our history overdates the presence of most other major ethnic categorizations.

Having said that, and further emphasizing on the first definition above (i.e. Arab as an ethnicity) its worth mentioning that the mother of Ishmael, Hagar, was Egyptian. So while not all Egyptians are ethnically Arabs, all Ethnic Arabs should be considered half Egyptian since Ishmael himself was half Egyptian.

I Am Jack's Wasted Life

Egypt is the country, Arab is the culture!

johnnyreb67

Arab is currently used as a catchall. It actually refers to those born on the Arabian peninsula. Egyptians speak Arabic, but they are not arabs, since Egypt is on the African mainland.

Judy

The Egyptian accent...very unique

Catcy

egyptian say ma'alesh for sorry and aywa and aaa for yes and they are the nicest arabs in the world

SchÃ¶rdinger

Well From A Historical And Cultural View Arabs Were Nothing More Than Nomadic Desert Dwellers They Barely Lived A Stable Life Until The Arrival Of Islam That Is Then The Conquests Began And A Stable Government Was Formed Then Came Arabic Calligraphy , Islamic Architecture , Advancements In Science And Medicine And Literature Including Poetry And Folklore And Mythology. There Were Also Advancements In Geometry , Algebra , Modern Medicine And Geography It Was Islam's Golden Age

On Other Hand Egypt Started A Civilization A Few Millenniums Earlier Advancements In Geometry, Architecture, Mathematics, Language, Writing Food, Growing Livestock, Farming < The Invention Of The Wheel All Laid Foundation For Modern Science

From A Geographical Point Of View Egyptians Originate From North Africa While Arabs Are Mostly From The Arabian Peninsula And The Middle East

Hope I Helped

somebody

Here are some scientific evidences that proves that Egyptians are not arabs:

Work has been going on at Cairo University Medical School to compare the DNA taken from the 4,500-year-old bones of workers found at pyramid sites to DNA taken from modern Egyptians. Preliminary results, says Dr. Tyldesley, said that the pyramid builders were the ancestors of modern Egyptians.
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Royal Ontario Museum
The ancient population of Egypt has never been extinguished nor replaced, but is in fact ancestral to most of the modern population of Egypt. Ancient Egyptians looked very much like modern Egyptians; the faces on the walls of tombs and temples can be matched by the faces to be seen on the streets of modern Cairo.
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Interestingly DNA studies at the University of Cairo report that there are little differences between modern and ancient Egyptians.
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University College London
Together, the pictorial and written sources indicate most often four broad divisions of human beings, as in the Underworld Books (in tombs of kings in the New Kingdom):
1.Egyptians.
2.Those living to the south (Nubians and others).
3.Those living to the west (western nomads, Libyans in the sense of anyone living west of the Nile and south of the Mediterranean).
4.Those living to the east (Asiatics).
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NARRATOR: But would the bones support Zahy's contention that the workforce was Egyptian? Before the discoveries at Giza, scientists in Cairo had been analyzing the DNA of modern Egyptians. Now, they had managed to successfully extract DNA from the ancient bones. A genetic comparison would be able to establish whether a relationship existed. The results were definitive. DR. MOAMENA KAMEL (IMMUNOLOGIST, CAIRO UNIVERSITY): People who are living here, they are the same as the people who had been living 6000 years ago. OK? And now the moderns are the descendants of these ancient Egyptians. NARRATOR: The DNA confirmed a close relationship between the modern Egyptians living in the Nile Valley and the ancient workers who had been buried there. For Zahy, this was an extremely significant find.
Hammer et al. (1997) used seven different methods to compute population trees of world populations, using Y-chromosome data. All seven methods grouped the Egyptians with the non-African populations rather than with the sub-Saharan Africans. Egyptians' genetic profile resembles that of South Europeans more than the other regional groups in the study.
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Poloni et al. (1997). Egyptians and a few other African populations (Tunisians, Algerians, and even Ethiopians) showed a stronger Y-chromosome similarity to non-African Mediterraneans than to the remainder of Africans mostly from south of the Sahara.
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Borgognini-Tarli and G. Paoli, 1982. The *** blood type frequencies of ancient Egyptians showed no signs of differing significantly from that of present-day Egyptians.
Di Rienzo et al. (1994) studied the relationship of three samples (taken from Egyptians, Sardinians, and sub-Saharan Africans), using mitochondrial DNA and simple sequence repeats. In terms of genetic distance, the Egyptian sample was closer to the Sardinian sample than to the sub-Saharan African sample.
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. Loring Brace 1, David P. Tracer 2, Lucia Allen Yaroch 1, John Robb 1, Kari Brandt 1, A. Russell Nelson 1
1Museum of Anthropology, University Museums Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
2Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
A group of noted physical anthropologists conducted craniofacial studies of Egyptian skeletal remains and concluded similarly that "the Egyptians have been in place since back in the Pleistocene and have been largely unaffected by either invasions or migrations. As others have noted, Egyptians are Egyptians, and they were so in the past as well."[

CAIRO (AFP) â€” Egyptian antiquities supreme Zahi Hawass insisted Tuesday that Tutankhamen was not black despite calls by US black activists to recognize the boy king's dark skin colour.
"Tutankhamen was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilization as black has no element of truth to it," Hawass told reporters.
"Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa," he said, quoted by the official MENA news agency.
Dr. Zahi Hawass Says: "We are more pharaohs than connected to Africans, or Arabs or anything like that," ... This is the last line in the article Egyptian
Reuters May 26, 2006

Also you could read the Encyclopedia "Egypt's Character 13 part" of Dr. Gamal Hemdan, one of the greatest Egyptian Anthropologists, Geologists...he proves that nothing called copts are the true Egyptians beacuse 91% of Egyptians are copts (Egyptians). and also proves that Egyptians are not arabs.

Zoser II

There was a joke -long time ago- In Egypt:
What is the difference between the Egyptians and albahaÃ¡m (the cattle) ,,the answer was the Red sea,,

green sky means run

Egyptians are north african.

Nisha T

Egyptians are from Egypt, and Arabs are from Arabia

Moonrise

an Arab comes from the Gulf .
an Egyptian comes from North Africa .
the culture and the language is Arabic .
it is different from Arab bec it is a mixture of many influences , Ancient Egyptian, African, and Mediterranean.

mandy

Priviet, Egyptians are Arabs.Egypt is part of the Arab world even if it is in Africa .the same goes to Libya,Tunisia,Morocco,Algeria,Sudan........
when you list the Arab countries ,all of the above are included

áƒ¦â™¥THE.WAY.IT.ISâ™¥áƒ¦

EGYTIANS ARE FROM EGYPT OR AROUND IT AND ARABS ARE FROM SAUDI ARABI OR SOME OTHER COUNTRY LIKE THAT

arch0049

Egyptians are Africans. Arabs are Arabs.

MaskedMusketeer

An Arab is someone with ancestry from the nations of the Middle East or North Africa where Arabic is the primary language.

An Egyptian is...well, a native or inhabitant of Egypt. They speak in arabic dialects that are a variant of the ones spoken by those in ME.

Although they have the same physical traits (bronze /tan skin) it is due to the fact that Egypt and Middle East have similar climates. They are not related at all.

lisa2006

They live in different places?

What do the think the difference is between someone from Palestine and someone from Israel (I'm talking genetically, not faith)?

dinodino

The majority of the population is Arab/Muslim. The true Egyptians are the Copts who are descended from earlier inhabitants of Egypt.

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