Geography
Upper Egypt is between the Cataracts of the Nile above modern-day Aswan, downriver (northwards) to the area between Zawyet Dahshur and El-Ayait, which is south of modern-day Cairo. The northern (downriver) part of Upper Egypt, between Sohag and El-Ayait, is also known as Middle Egypt. In Arabic, inhabitants of Upper Egypt are known as Sa'idis; they generally speak Sa'idi Arabic.
In Pharaonic times Upper Egypt was known as Ta Shemau which means "the land of reeds." It was divided into twenty-two districts called nomes. The first nome was roughly where modern Aswan is and the twenty-second was at modern Atfih (Aphroditopolis), just to the south of Cairo.
Read more about this topic: Upper Egypt
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)