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:
“We have been told over and over about the importance of bonding to our children. Rarely do we hear about the skill of letting go, or, as one parent said, “that we raise our children to leave us.” Early childhood, as our kids gain skills and eagerly want some distance from us, is a time to build a kind of adult-child balance which permits both of us room.”
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion (20th century)
“Who shall describe the inexpressable tenderness and immortal life of the grim forest, where Nature, though it be midwinter, is ever in her spring, where the moss-grown and decaying trees are not old, but seem to enjoy a perpetual youth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“‘Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.”
—William Congreve (1670–1729)