Celebration of the International Greek Language Day in Cairo, Egypt, with keynote speaker Professor at NKUA Amphilochios Papathomas

On Sunday evening, February 9^th, 2025, at the Greek Residence in Cairo, a splendid event took place to mark the International Greek Language Day. It was organized by the Embassy of Greece in Egypt and attended by ambassadors and diplomats from a variety of nations as well as prominent members of the academic community and society of Cairo and Alexandria.

At the invitation of Mr Nikolaos Papageorgiou, Greece’s Ambassador to Egypt, it was the Director of the Division of Classics at the NKUA’s Department of Philology, Professor Amphilochios Papathomas, who gave the keynote speech. His presentation, entitled ‘The Greek Language: A History of Four Thousand Years and Counting’, covered four millennia of Greek language history. Professor Papathomas placed special emphasis on the approximately 1,150 years when Greek was Egypt’s official or most spoken language (332 BCE to around 825 CE).

The event also featured poems by C. P. Cavafy recited by Greek Language and Literature students at Universities and Cultural Centres in Egypt, along with songs representative of the Greek language’s historical diachrony and dialectal diversity.