Similarities And Differences In Ancient Egyptian Culture

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Becoming aware of other cultures has always been interesting to me. The Egyptian culture is one that I had never been exposed to until my senior year of high school when a foreign exchange student come to our school. This experience exposed me to an abundance of understanding for another culture and religion, as well as changed my mind in thinking that I was significantly different from those cultures that I am not familiar with.
Preconceptions or Biases I come from a very small school in rural Kansas and majority of people are predominantly White and of Christian faith. When our Egyptian foreign exchange student, Donia, came to our high school; nobody knew what to expect. Donia is from Mansoura Egypt and is of Muslim faith. I am slightly
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I associated the hijab she wore and the place in which she was from with terrorism and fear. I did not know what to expect when I spoke with her and I absolutely did not foresee myself becoming extremely great friends with her one day. In my mind, Egypt was a far-away place that I had only seen on the news. When I thought about Egypt, things like pharos, pyramids, open desert, camels, etc. In the simplest form, Ancient Egyptian history came to mind. Occasionally, I would see a few people in the mall wearing hijabs; but the most I ever acknowledged their culture was by staring and seeing the physical …show more content…
Public displays of affection are not accepted and women are expected to keep their distance from men, while dressing in a modest way (Favors, n.d.). Men are expected to cover the area between the navel to the knee and women should cover everything except the hands, face, and feet (“Culture and Religion”, 2015). Despite the popular belief that Muslim women are submissive beings, the Western Journal of Medicine indicates that there is a lot being done to work towards equality of sexes. When those in the Muslim faith decide to marry, men are the head of household and are responsible for finances (Dhami and Sheikh, 2000). In turn, Egyptians are working toward equality, but there are still gender roles socialized in their culture.
Class Differences There is a distinct difference in classes in Egypt, where influential and wealthy citizens do not typically associate with the rest of society (Favors, n.d.) USA Today notes that the remainder of society values collectivism, where decisions are made to better society rather than an individual. Thus, Egypt also values following the rules and conforming to norms (Favors, n.d.).
Interview
Family and