Upper Egypt (Arabic:صعيد مصرṢaʿīd Miṣr, shortened toالصعيد,Egyptian Arabic pronunciation:[es.sˤe.ˈʕiːd],locally:[es.sˤɑ.ˈʕiːd]) is the southern portion ofEgypt and is composed of theNile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel North. It thus starts atBeni Suef and stretches down toLake Nasser (formed by the Aswan High Dam).[1]
In ancient Egypt, Upper Egypt was known astꜣ šmꜣw,[2] literally "the Land of Reeds" or "the Sedgeland", named for thesedges that grow there.[3]
InArabic, the region is called Sa'id or Sahid, fromصعيد meaning "uplands", from the rootصعد meaning to go up, ascend, or rise. Inhabitants of Upper Egypt are known asSa'idis and they generally speakSa'idi Egyptian Arabic.
InBiblical Hebrew it was known asפַּתְרוֹסPaṯrôs and inAkkadian it was known asPatúrisi.[4] Both names originate from the Egyptianpꜣ-tꜣ-rsj, meaning "the southern land".[5]
Upper Egypt is between theCataracts of the Nile beyond modern-dayAswan, downriver (northward) to the area of El-Ayait,[6] which places modern-dayCairo inLower Egypt. The northern (downriver) part of Upper Egypt, betweenSohag and El-Ayait, is also known asMiddle Egypt.
It is believed to have been united by the rulers of the supposedThinite Confederacy who absorbed their rival city states during theNaqada III period (c. 3200–3000 BC), and its subsequent unification withLower Egypt ushered in theEarly Dynastic period.[7] Upper and Lower Egypt became intertwined in the symbolism ofpharaonic sovereignty such as thePschent double crown.[8] Upper Egypt remained as a historical region even after the classical period.
By approximately 3600 BC, Neolithic Egyptian societies along theNile based their culture on the raising of crops and the domestication of animals.[20] Shortly thereafter, Egypt began to grow and increase in complexity.[21] A new and distinctive pottery appeared, related to theLevantine ceramics, and copper implements and ornaments became common.[21]Mesopotamian building techniques became popular, using sun-driedadobe bricks in arches and decorative recessed walls.[21]
According tobioarchaeologist Nancy Lovell, the morphology of ancient Egyptian skeletons gives strong evidence that: "In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt andNubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of theSahara and more southerly areas", but exhibited local variation in an African context.[32] S. O. Y. Keita, abiological anthropologist also reviewed studies on the biological affinities of the Ancient Egyptian population and characterised the skeletal morphologies of predynastic southern Egyptians as a "Saharo-tropical African variant". Keita also added that it is important to emphasize that whilst Egyptian society became more socially complex and biologically varied, the "ethnicity of the Niloto-Saharo-Sudanese origins did not change. The cultural morays, ritual formulae, and symbols used in writing, as far as can be ascertained, remained true to their southern origins."[33]
The proto-dynastic kings emerged from the Naqada region.[34] Excavations at Hierakonpolis (Upper Egypt) found archaeological evidence of ritual masks similar to those used further south of Egypt, and obsidian linked to Ethiopian quarry sites.[35]Frank Yurco stated that depictions of pharonic iconography such as theroyal crowns,Horus falcons and victory scenes were concentrated in the Upper Egyptian Naqada culture andA-Group Lower Nubia. He further elaborated that "Egyptian writing arose in Naqadan Upper Egypt and A-Group Lower Nubia, and not in the Delta cultures, where the directWestern Asian contact was made, further vitiates the Mesopotamian-influence argument".[36]
An anthropological study by Eric Crubézy (2010) on a Adaïma predynastic cemetery from 3700 CE, contained 6,000 skeletons, found affinities with a southerly African population.[37] According to the study, 25% of the sampled children's teeth had "Bushmen" upper canines typical of people fromKhoi-San which "confirmed the African origin of the Adamia population."[37]
Similarly,Christopher Ehret, historian and linguist, stated that the cultural practice of sacral chiefship and kingship which emerged in Upper Egypt in the fourth millennium had originated centuries earlier in Nubia and the Middle Nile south of Egypt. He based this judgement on supporting,archaeological and comparativeethnographic evidence.[38]
Qustul Incense Burner, excavated from a royal Nubian tomb inLake Nasser, considered among the earliest representations of the White Crown Hedjet in Upper Egypt.[39]
Stan Hendrick,John Coleman Darnell and Maria Gatto in 2012 excavatedpetroglyphic engravings from Nag el-Hamdulab to the north ofAswan, in southern Egypt, which featured representations of a boat procession,solar symbolism and the earliest known depiction of theWhite Crown with an estimated dating range between 3200 BCE and 3100 BCE.[40]
In 2025, the UNESCO International Scientific Committee members for drafting theGeneral History of Africa Volumes IX-XI reached the view that Egypt had African and Eurasian populations, with Upper Egypt now repositioned as the origin of pharaonic unification, with closegenetic,linguistic,archaeological andanthropological affinities identified between the Upper Egyptian populations and Sub-Saharan groups.[41]
These cultural advances paralleled the political unification of towns of the upper Nile River, or Upper Egypt, while the same occurred in the societies of theNile Delta, orLower Egypt.[21] This led to warfare between the two new kingdoms.[21] During his reign in Upper Egypt, KingNarmer defeated his enemies on the delta and became sole ruler of the two lands of Upper and Lower Egypt,[42] a sovereignty which endured throughout Dynastic Egypt.
A couple of statuettes which represent a Middle Kingdom pharaoh as King of Upper Egypt (left, with the white crown) and King of Lower Egypt (right, with the red crown); wood, from el-Lisht, 12th dynasty, Middle Kingdom (Egyptian Museum, main floor, room 22, JE44951)
In royal symbolism, Upper Egypt was represented by the tall White CrownHedjet, the flowering lotus, and the sedge. Its patron deity, Nekhbet, was depicted by the vulture. After unification, the patron deities of Upper and Lower Egypt were represented together as theTwo Ladies, to protect all of the ancient Egyptians, just as the two crowns were combined into a single pharaonic diadem.
Several dynasties of southern or Upper Egyptian origin, which included the11th,12th,17th,18th and25th dynasties, reunified and reinvigorated pharaonic Egypt after periods of fragmentation.[43]
For most of Egypt's ancient history,Thebes was the administrative center of Upper Egypt. After its devastation by the Assyrians, the importance of Egypt declined. Under the dynasty of the Ptolemies,Ptolemais Hermiou took over the role of the capital city of Upper Egypt.[44]
Shomarka Keita reported that a 2005 study on mummified remains found that "some Theban nobles had ahistology which indicated notablydark skin".[45]
In the eleventh century, large numbers ofpastoralists, known as Hilalians, fled Upper Egypt and moved westward intoLibya and as far asTunis.[46] It is believed that degraded grazing conditions in Upper Egypt, associated with the beginning of theMedieval Warm Period, were the root cause of the migration.[47]
Genetic analysis of a modern Upper Egyptian population in Adaima by Eric Crubézy had identified genetic markers common across Africa, with 71% of the cases carrying E1b1 haplogroup and 3% carrying the L0f mitochondrial haplogroup.[49] A secondary review published in 2025 noted the results were preliminary and need to be confirmed by other laboratories with new sequencing methods.[49]
^The title was first used byPrince Farouk, the son and heir ofKing Fouad I. Prince Farouk was officially named Prince of the Sa'id on 12 December 1933.[48]
^See list of nomes. Maten (Knife land) is the northernmost nome in Upper Egypt on the right bank, while Atef-Pehu (Northern Sycamore land) is the northernmost on the left bank.Brugsch, Heinrich Karl (2015).A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs. Vol. 1. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 487., originally published in 1876 in German.
^Brink, Edwin C. M. van den (1992). "The Nile Delta in Transition: 4th.-3rd. Millennium B.C."Proceedings of the Seminar Held in Cairo, 21.-24. October 1990, at the Netherlands Institute of Archaeology and Arabic Studies. E.C.M. van den Brink.ISBN978-965-221-015-9.
^Griffith, Francis Llewellyn, A Collection of Hieroglyphs: A Contribution to the History of Egyptian Writing, the Egypt Exploration Fund 1898, p. 56
^Zakrzewski, Sonia R. (April 2007)."Population continuity or population change: Formation of the ancient Egyptian state".American Journal of Physical Anthropology.132 (4):501–509.Bibcode:2007AJPA..132..501Z.doi:10.1002/ajpa.20569.PMID17295300.When Mahalanobis D2 was used, the Naqadan and Badarian Predynastic samples exhibited more similarity to Nubian, Tigrean, and some more southern series than to some mid- to late Dynasticseries from northern Egypt (Mukherjee et al., 1955). The Badarian have been found to be very similar to a Kerma sample (Kushite Sudanese), using both the Penrose statistic (Nutter, 1958) and DFA of males alone (Keita,1990). Furthermore, Keita considered that Badarian males had a southern modal phenotype, and that together with a Naqada sample, they formed a southern Egyptian cluster as tropical variants together with a sample from Kerma
^Mokhtar, Gamal, ed. (1981).Ancient Civilizations of Africa. UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa; Heinemann Educational Books; University of California Press. pp. 20–21, 148.ISBN978-0-520-03913-1.The difference in behaviour between two populations of similar ethnic composition throws significant light on an apparently abnormal fact: one of them adopted and perhaps even invented, a system of writing, while the other, which was aware of that writing, disdained it
^Lovell, Nancy C. (1999). "Egyptians, physical anthropology of". In Bard, Kathryn A.; Shubert, Steven Blake (eds.).Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge. pp. 328–331.ISBN0415185890.There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa. The distribution of population characteristics seems to follow a clinal pattern from south to north, which may be explained by natural selection as well as gene flow between neighboring populations. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas
^The Cambridge history of Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1975–1986. pp. 500–509.ISBN9780521222150.
^Davies, W. V. (1998).Egypt uncovered. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang. pp. 5–87.ISBN1556708181.
^Yurco, Frank J. (1996). "The Origin and Development of Ancient Nile Valley Writing". In Theodore Celenko (ed.).Egypt in Africa. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art. pp. 34–35.ISBN0-936260-64-5.
Ballais, Jean-Louis (2000). "Conquests and land degradation in the eastern Maghreb". In Graeme Barker; David Gilbertson (eds.).Sahara and Sahel. The Archaeology of Drylands: Living at the Margin. Vol. 1, Part III. London: Routledge. pp. 125–136.ISBN978-0-415-23001-8.
Bard, Kathryn A.; Shubert, Steven Blake, eds. (1999).Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge.ISBN0-415-18589-0.
David, Ann Rosalie (1975).The Egyptian Kingdoms. London: Elsevier Phaidon.OCLC2122106.
Ermann, Johann Peter Adolf; Grapow, Hermann (1982).Wörterbuch der Ägyptischen Sprache [Dictionary of the Egyptian Language] (in German). Berlin: Akademie.ISBN3-05-002263-9.
Edel, Elmar (1961)Zu den Inschriften auf den Jahreszeitenreliefs der "Weltkammer" aus dem Sonnenheiligtum des Niuserre Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen,OCLC309958651, in German.
