About the project
The comprehensive digital encyclopedia of Egypt: discovery, learning, history, culture and games — in one place, under a stated editorial standard.
Every historical claim carries a recorded source and a stated level of confidence.
Sawah (سواح) is Arabic for travellers — from sāḥa fī al-arḍ, to roam the land. The name is a promise about what the site does: to take you through Egypt — its history, its script, its places — rather than show it to you from a distance.
The project is a digital encyclopedia of Egypt: its history from the Predynastic era to today, its hieroglyphic script, its culture, and games that teach while you play. The aim is not to have you read about Egypt. It is to help you experience it.
Arabic material about ancient Egypt online is largely carelessly translated, copied without a source, or myth repeated until it passes for fact.
Egypt — whose people built this civilisation — has the first claim on a serious encyclopedia about it, in its own language.
Every historical claim on this site must have a recorded source attached to it.
Every claim is classified by confidence: scholarly consensus, disputed, or popular myth. Where something is disputed we report who argues what; we do not adjudicate between them.
Ancient Egyptian dates are estimates by nature and differ between reference works, so we always show them with the chronology used and the work it comes from.
Academic research and publications first, then museum catalogues and official institutions, then reviewed specialist books, and last reputable general websites.
Wikipedia is a starting point for research — not a source.