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[German Version] I. General – II. History and Society – III. Religion and Culture I. General 1. Name/Designations In Egyptian-Coptic, Egypt is “the black (i.e. land)” (Egyptian *Kū́mut, Coptic Kēme, etc.) after the dark soil, in Semitic languages, generally, Miṣr-, etc., in Hebrew also מָצוֹר / Māṣôr (“border,” i.e. “borderland”?), in Greek after a sanctuary of the god Ptah as a designation for the old capital city Memphis, Aígyptos, i.e. Aígupto-s (in contemporary Egyptian perhaps *Hekoptáḥ). 2. Geography The central area of the country is the river oasis of the lower Nile between the first cataract near Aswan and the Mediterranean, divided into Upper Egypt, the narrow, at most approx. 20 km-broad Nile valley between Aswan and Cairo, and Lower Egypt, the Nile delta which widens to about 220 km. In addition, there are the oases in the western (Libyan) desert, the quarry and mining regions between the Nile and the Red Sea, as well as the Nile valley above the first cataract, reclaimed at various times as Egyptian territory. The climate is arid (in the south) to semi-arid (in the north). Its economic basis was always agriculture that depended almost completely on the waters of the Nile. While irrigation was originally based on the natural inundation by the annual flood of the Nile, since Pharaonic times the …

[German Version] In religious studies androgyny (bisexuality: Gk ἀνήρ, ἀνδρός/ anḗr, andrós, “male,” and γυνή/ gynḗ, “female”) is a frequent phenomenon in religious studies. In the case of deities, it can highlight an ontological status; but it can also manifest itself in various gradations in a dynamic process. In this case, we find cultic transsexualism and transvest…