Upper Egypt
Upper Egypt is the southern part of the country: the valley of the Nile south of the Delta, from Beni Suef to the First Cataract at Aswan. In Arabic it is al-Sa'id, "the uplands", and its people are Sa'idis. The governorates it is conventionally taken to comprise are seven: Beni Suef, Minya, Asyut, Sohag, Qena, Luxor and Aswan.
Key facts
- al-Sa'id, "the uplands"
- The Nile valley from Beni Suef to Aswan
- Seven
- 23.9 million in the seven governorates at the census of 2017
- Highest in the Minya–Asyut and Asyut–Sohag clusters, by a 2013 study
The Greek geographers and their Arabic successors divided the valley between Cairo and Aswan into three. The Coptic Encyclopedia keeps that division: a lower Sa'id, a middle Sa'id that begins south of al-Bahnasa (Oxyrhynchus) and ends at Akhmim, and an upper Sa'id, the southern third, that runs to Aswan. Minya lies in the middle section.
Governorates and population
Egypt's census of 2017 counted 94,798,827 people. The seven governorates of Upper Egypt held 23,890,358 of them, about a quarter.
| Governorate | Census 2017 | Estimate 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Beni Suef | 3,154,100 | 3,592,039 |
| Minya | 5,497,095 | 6,337,595 |
| Asyut | 4,383,289 | 5,061,934 |
| Sohag | 4,967,409 | 5,727,271 |
| Qena | 3,164,281 | 3,640,916 |
| Luxor | 1,250,209 | 1,400,640 |
| Aswan | 1,473,975 | 1,656,218 |
Christians in Upper Egypt
The national figures are estimates. The United States Department of State's report for 2023 records that most experts and media sources put Christians at about 10 per cent of the population, that about 90 per cent of them belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church according to Christian leaders, and that Pope Tawadros II told journalists in April 2023 that 15 million Copts live in the country.
A published estimate by area comes from a 2013 study of the 2008 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey. Among people aged 15 to 59 it found Copts to be 5.1 per cent nationally, and identified three clusters where the share was highest: a Minya–Asyut cluster, 17.6 per cent; an Asyut–Sohag cluster, 15.1 per cent; and metropolitan Cairo, 9.4 per cent. The figure is for people aged 15 to 59, not the whole population; the authors give it with a confidence interval of 4.6 to 5.5 per cent.
Coptic history
Monasticism in its communal form began here. Saint Pachomius, born in Upper Egypt in 292, was baptised at Sheneset (Chenoboskion) after his release from the Roman army, became a disciple of the ascetic Palamon, and settled at the abandoned village of Tabennese, where the first community under a common rule took shape. He died in 346. The Coptic Encyclopedia places his first foundations between the modern Qasr al-Sayyad and Qena, with Faw al-Qibli preserving the memory of the second, Pbow. Of the upper Sa'id, the southern third, the encyclopedia records that the west bank held far more monasteries than the east, perhaps because it was the side of the dead and hermits settled in the ancient tombs, and that "to pass to the west" was once another way of saying "become a monk".
Near Sohag stand the two monasteries most often named with the region. The White Monastery, Dayr Anba Shinudah, keeps the church of the community that Saint Shenute led: he attended the Council of Ephesus with Patriarch Cyril I in 431 and died in 466, and papyri of the sixth to eighth centuries name the monastery and, in 567, its archimandrite Peter. About 3 km to its north the Red Monastery, Dayr Anba Bishoi, takes its popular name from the red brick of its church, which is all that remains of it.
Asyut, the ancient Lycopolis, had a Christian community by the persecution of Diocletian at the start of the fourth century and became one of the most important Christian centres of Roman and Byzantine Egypt; its bishop Plusanius attended the Council of Nicaea in 325. Dayr al-Muharraq, about 7 km from the town of al-Qusiyyah, is held by tradition to stand where the Holy Family stayed on the Flight into Egypt, a tradition Abu Salih already knew at the start of the thirteenth century; four of its monks became patriarchs between 1370 and 1484.
Church jurisdictions
The Patriarchate's list of dioceses in Egypt names 31 whose seats lie in the seven governorates, counting the Diocese of Muharraq Monastery: from Beni Suef in the north to Luxor, Esna and Aswan in the south. Nine of them are seated in Minya alone; its hub lists them.