Why is Egypt called 'Egypt' ?
The first to use the name Aigyptos was the Greek poet Homer. This word was the Greek version of "Hikuptah", a Babylonian term for the temple of Ptah at Memphis, known as the "Castle of the Ka of Ptah".
The ancient Egyptians, on the other hand, called their country Kenet (or Kemi) that means "black earth", referring to the fertile land covered by the black silt left by the floods of the Nile. The desert area was instead called Dashret, the "red earth".
The country was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt, the first represented with the symbol of the rush and the second with that of the bee (or respectively, with the lotus and with the papyrus). The Upper Egypt included the Nile Valley from Aswan to Heliopolis (near present-day Cairo), while Lower Egypt occupied the whole area of the Nile Delta.
