England and Egypt 303
tection either on racial or religious grounds. The Copts,
as a race, have a better claim than any other to be
considered autochthonous Egyptians. Since the mass
moslemisation of Copts in the thirteenth century they are
not racially distinct from the Egyptian Moslem originally
of Arabic and Nubian stock. It is, however, among the
Copts that is still to be found most clearly the old
Pharaonic type, thin waisted, broad shouldered, straight
limbed, thick lipped, and almond eyed. As a Christian
community, the Copts are a minority of perhaps one-
twelfth of the population, and they have a life apart
in so far as there is no intermarriage and not much social
intercourse with the Moslems. But there are no dis-
criminations against them such as disable minorities in
Europe. For example, the Kuttabs, or Government
schools, are open to Copts who can arrange for their own
religious instruction there. In provinces where Copts are
numerous a proper proportion of Coptic schools are State
supported. Where the Coptic minority fails to get repre-
sentatives in local government, Copts are generally co-
opted. Nor has there been any persecution of them for
centuries, and the history of the community shows that
they have suffered on the whole less from their
Moslem fellow-citizens than from their Orthodox and
Catholic fellow-Christians. Curiously enough it has been
mainly in religious ceremonial that the closest relations
have been maintained between this primitive Christian
Church and its Moslem conquerors. Copts have built
mosques and Moslems have restored Coptic churches.
Priests and Mullahs still hold joint religious ceremonies,
which are survivals of the original ritual of Nile worship.
In this, the real religion of the fellaheen, it is the
Coptic calendar that is followed, in which the New Year
is in September, the season of the Nile flood, Both