This year 2025 marks 120 years on the birth of Pahor Labib (1905 – 1994), a pivotal figure in Egyptology and Coptology. Watani invited his son, Ahmes Pahor Labib, to write about his father who had been decorated with the High Cross from West Germany in 1976, and the World Decoration of Denmark in 1963.
Ahmes Pahor Labib FRCS, DHMSA(UK), FICS(USA), Dip.ICS (Egypt), PhD.Hist.Med. (Netherlands), has many publications in History of Medicine especially Pharaonic Medicine, also in Coptic History and Language of which he is a diligent researcher.
Pahor Labib (1905 – 1994) was a world renowned Egyptologist and Coptologist, before the word Coptology even existed. In fact it was he who coined the word to denote Coptic studies. His father Cladius Bey Labib (1868 – 1918) — Bey was an official title denoting high rank — was also a world renowned Coptologist.
On Tuesday 19 September 1905 in the Cairo eastern district of Ain Shams, Cladius Labib had his firstborn placed in his arms: a baby boy whom he named Pahor.
Cladius was then teaching Coptic Language in the Coptic Theological School, which he had helped bring into existence. He came from a family that originated in Meir, Assiut, some 350km south of Cairo, and whose members were well versed in Coptic. His own father would regularly visit the 4th-century al-Muharraq Monastery on the outskirts of Meir to teach the monks Coptic.
Cladius was schooled in Cairo at the Great Coptic School. Coptic schools were established in Egypt by Pope Kyrillos IV who was patriarch in 1845 – 1861 and was given the name “Father of Reform”. His schools were among the earliest non-State schools in Egypt, and among the finest; Muslims as well as Copts enrolled there and rose to become some of Egypt’s most prominent politicians, professionals, and enlightenment figures.
Cladius became interested in Egyptology and was the second Egyptian to learn hieroglyphs mainly from French Egyptologists. The first was Ahmad Kamal Pasha; both men became friends. Cladius was so engrossed in his love of the Coptic language that he travelled to Germany and bought a printing press specifically including Coptic letters. He started printing Church service books which had previously been only hand-copied. In fact, the Labib family was famous for copying Church books in Meir. He also published a monthly magazine produced in a multi-lingual form. It contained Coptic, Hieroglyphs, Arabic, English, and other languages, a unique feature at the time. Cladius also produced an extensive Coptic Arabic dictionary in successive volumes.
Cladius departed this world in May 1918 when his son Pahor was not even 14. Yet he rose in his father’s funeral to give a word of thanks to the attendants in Coptic.
Obviously, Pahor’s family background had an indelible mark on his affinity to Coptic. Another matter that strongly influenced his choice was his father’s friendship with Pope Kyrillos V who was among the Coptic Church’s most impactful popes. He was patriarch from 1874 until he passed in 1927, living well into his 90s. During his last years, Pope Kyrillos V was confined to his room, and rarely met visitors. Yet he would meet the young Pahor when he came to see him. On one visit, the Pope told him, “If you follow your father in his chosen line of science, you will be king in your science”.
While in secondary school in 1919, Pahor and his colleagues took part in the massive 1919 national revolution. Despite warnings from the headmaster of potential trouble on the street, they joined the demonstrations demanding freedom from British control over Egypt.
At home in Ain Shams, Pahor’s mother feared for her son. She asked her son-in-law, Dr Ahmese to go fetch Pahor and bring him home. But Dr Ahmese ended up joining Pahor in the protest. The British soldiers opened fire on the demonstrators; a bullet flew between the heads of Pahor and Ahmese who were marching side by side. The bullet passed between their ears. It was a miracle that saved them.
Pahor graduated from secondary school and enrolled in the Faculty of Law at King Fouad University, today Cairo University. At that time the Egyptology department opened at the Faculty of Arts. Pahor’s heart was in Egyptology. He met the University President, Ahmad Lotfy al-Sayid and explained his predicament. The President agreed that Pahor would, besides being a law student, join the Egyptology Department, paying no fees. Pahor regularly attended classes in Egyptology and law, and would sit for their examinations and pass each year. In the final year, however, the timing of exams conflicted. Pahor chose to sit for the Egyptology final exam and miss that of law. He passed with distinction.
At the time, the Egyptian government was keen to build a group of intellectuals and educators that could teach and lead future generations of Egyptians. Scholarships were offered to continue studies abroad. Pahor was sent to Berlin in 1930. Professor Percy Newburry, his mentor from university had told him, “We gave you all what we know, we will send you to learn from those who know more”. Pahor went to Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, today Humboldt University of Berlin. He learned at the hands of Professor Herman Grapow, the world leader in Hieroglyphs, and Kurt Sethe head of the Egyptology section in Berlin Museum. In 1934, he earned a PhD in Egyptology; his doctoral thesis focused on King Ahmes I, founder of the 18th Dynasty, (1550 – 1292BC) who expelled the Hyksos from Egypt. Labib showed that the Hyksos stayed in Egypt for 150 years (previously suggested periods were much longer) and that they came from Canaan. He was the first Egyptian to obtain a doctorate in Egyptology.
In Germany, Pahor resided with German families, which helped him acquire fluent German. He read Goethe who left a profound impression on him; in conversations with me he would often cite Goethe, he had also read Shakespeare to me as a schoolboy.
During the early 1930s in Germany, he witnessed the transfer from Hindenburg to Hitler. He noticed that his German friends would disappear at weekends, later to discover they would be attending camps. He had a wide circle of friends.
Pahor was studying for another PhD in Munich. He travelled to Germany every summer till WWII erupted. During one of his trips back from Germany he had an audience with the Catholic Pope in the Vatican, who gave him a message to the Coptic Patriarch in Cairo. I never got to know what that message was.
After returning to Egypt, Pahor faced unemployment for a full year on account of spurious reasons. He joined the political party Misr al-Fatah (Young Egypt) through which he and like-minded educators endeavoured to instil in university students the love for their country and aspirations for full independence from British control. He was dismissed as a faculty member, again for spurious reasons.
During a visit by King Farouk to the Egyptian Museum, friends of Pahor put his unfair predicament before the King. The King gave directions that Pahor be appointed in the Museum. Later, Pahor rose to be Head of Provincial Museums. He promoted existing ones and established one in Aswan. He managed to transfer a museum in Ismailiya run by the Suez Canal Company to the Egyptian government. In a way, he had managed to nationalise the company’s museum before President Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal itself in 1956.
During the 1940s, The Ministry of Education was the overseer of the museums. At a time when Taha Hussein (1889 – 1973), the enlightenment and literary giant, was minister, Dr Togo Mina who headed the Coptic Museum, suddenly died at a rather young age. Dr Hussein asked Pahor to fill the vacancy. Pahor Labib was director of the Coptic Museum from 1951 till his retirement in 1965.
During his time at the Coptic Museum, Pahor turned the museum into a world-famous research centre for Coptic Studies; he was the first to term them “Coptology”.
Pahor got known for the study and publishing of the Nag Hammadi Scrolls, a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered in 1945 and later handed to the Coptic Museum. Translating these texts was a mammoth task as the Coptic language involved dealt with challenging philosophical rhetoric. Pahor believed that the philosophy was Egyptian in origin rather than Greek. He presented a paper on the subject to the First International Congress of Coptology in Cairo in 1976.
Pope Kyrillos VI
Pahor had a strong friendship with St Pope Kyrillos VI who was patriarch in 1959 – 1971, whom he had known ever since he was the solitary monk Fr Mina.
Upon directions from Pope Kyrillos VI, Pahor carried out archaeological works at the site of Abu-Mina, in Baheeg, Maryut, southwest Alexandria, where a 4th/5th century magnificent Mar-Mina (St Mina) pilgrim city once stood, including a resplendent cathedral and churches. Mar-Mina was the patron saint of Pope Kyrillos who keenly followed up on these excavations.
Pope Kyrillos used to visit the site and held liturgical services among the ruins of the old cathedral. My father took me with him at times when he travelled to Maryut. Then, the locality was an arid desert, and the dust path to the ancient ruins was merely marked by small stones.
Pope Kyrillos VI was keen on building a modern monastery consecrated to Mar-Mina close to the site of the ruins of his old cathedral and city. Yet bureaucratic glitches initiated by fanatic government officials would frequently come up to delay or stop the work. My father was a first-hand witness to the power of the Pope’s intercessory prayer in resolving such glitches.
Another incident regarding excavation relates to the Pope’s keenness on excavating Tel Atrib, northeast Cairo, where a large cathedral for Our Lady once stood but was destroyed by the Arabs who conquered Egypt in 640. The Pope formed a special group with Pahor as its leader, and gave him a bottle of holy water to sprinkle at the site. Excavations proved that the site was indeed where the Cathedral had once stood. An expedition from Warsaw University, Poland proceeded with the excavations, unearthing significant findings.
In the book I wrote about my father, I did a chapter on the relationship between Pope Shenouda III, patriarch in 1971 – 2012, and Pahor.
Pope Shenouda visited Birmingham a number of times, during one of them he met Greek Bishop Irenius of the Midlands. I was there, and it surprised me to see Pope Shenouda point at me and tell the Bishop, “I know his father, he taught me for a year when I was studying Archaeology”. My father had never mentioned that to me.
Pahor also knew well St Habib Girgis (1876 – 1951), the archdeacon and blessed educator who, among so many other works, founded the Clerical College and Sunday Schools in the Coptic Church. The Archdeacon had been a student of Cladius Labib. He presented Pahor with a copy of the four Gospels printed in Coptic.
Since Pahor Labib passed to the higher abode, a number of matters he was keen on or predicted, materialised.
It was thought that the pedestal in the centre of Tahrir Square had remained for decades bare because previous rulers presumably planned for the installation of a statue of one of them. In an interview with Watani in 1959, Pahor Labib proposed that the pedestal in that central site in the capital was best suited for an obelisk rising to meet the sun, an authentic symbol of Egyptianness. This materialised in 2020 when a 90 ton, 19m tall obelisk from the era of Ramses II (1303 – 1213BC) was raised on the pedestal.
Pahor Labib was very keen that the Egyptian Museum should remain in its central place in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. At the time there were proposals to build a new, larger one to house the [overcrowded] Tahrir museum’s vast collection. Today, the venerable old museum remains, while a new resplendent one, the Grand Egyptian Museum GEM is being opened on the Pyramids Plateau in Giza; each museum boasting amazing collections.
However, one matter that really irked Pahor was the theft of Egypt’s ancient artefacts. Deplorably, things have not improved much today as our beloved country continues to lose some of its treasured ancient articles.
Pahor Labib was a man who loved his country his Church, his work and family. He used to say, “In research you might find a positive result, or a negative. Sometimes the negative is as important as the positive…What matters is the truth”. He had foresight, and time proved him right.
