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The first one who used the name Aigyptos was the Greek poet Omero.
This
word was the Greek version of “Hikuptah”, a word that in Babylon
indicated Ptah temple in Memphis, known as “Castle of Ptah’s Ka”.
The ancient Egyptians, instead, called their country Kenet or Kemi which
meant “black land”, referring to the fertile land covered by the black
mud left from the floods of the Nile.
The desert area was instead called
Dashret, “the red land”.
The country was divided in upper and lower
Egypt, the former represented by the symbol of the cane reed and the
latter with the symbol of the bee ° (or respectively, with the lotus and
with the papyrus).
Upper Egypt included the Valley of the Nile from
Assuan to Heliopolis (in
Cairo of today).
Lower Egypt instead occupied
the whole area of the Delta of the Nile.
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