Egypt’s name and ancient history were officially erased during the Nasserist Arabist period

Evidence

At other times they identified themselves as Arabs rather than Egyptians, and found their past heroes in the Arab caliphs rather than in the Egyptian Pharaohs. During the last fifteen years or more, the Arab rather than the Egyptian line has been dominant. It found its highest expression in the creation (in 1958) of the United Arab Republic after the union with Syria, and in the retention of that title by Egypt alone even after the Syrian secession. During this period even the very name of “Egypt” was wiped off the map. I was told that in elementary schools the history primers dealing with the ancient period spoke not of ancient Egypt but of “the ancient history of the southern region of the United Arab Republic”. I do not know whether this is literally true, but it is not untypical of the attitudes that were current at that time. “Egyptianism” as distinct from “Arabism” was regarded as sectional and sectarian or, even worse, as an expression of Coptic influence. This was a damaging accusation. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1254

Categorization

• XREF: State-driven rewriting of historical identity to serve a political project parallels Said’s mechanisms of identity construction — usable for the representation cluster.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1254