Early Life and Education
Labib was born in 1905 in Cairo. His father was Cladius Labib, also an Egyptologist and Coptologist who was one of the first Egyptians to learn Hieroglyphics from the French Egyptologists in Egypt and who compiled a Coptic-Arabic dictionary. He grew up in Ain Shams, a suburb of Cairo, where his father had a house with a few acres of land (13 "feddans") that were used to cultivate fruits and vegetables.
For preparatory school Labib went to the "Great Coptic School" and then to Khedivieh Secondary School, both in Cairo. After Labib received his "Bachaloria", he entered the Faculty of Law. However, the Faculty of Archeology had recently opened and he joined this as well. At the final year, exams for both studies clashed, so he choose to sit the Archeology final which he passed with distinction.
Labib was sent for higher studies to Berlin, Germany in 1930. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Frederick William University in 1934. The subject of his doctoral degree was King Ahmose I, founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who expelled the Hyksos from Egypt. Labib showed that the Hyksos stayed in Egypt for 150 years (previously suggested periods were much longer) and that they came from Canaan. He was the first Egyptian to obtain a doctorate in Egyptology. His teachers in Germany included Herman Grapow (with whom he stayed in touch till the latter's death in 1967) and Kurt Heinrich Sethe.
Read more about this topic: Pahor Labib
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line.... Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)