Inb4 someone says something silly: by "surviving religion" I mean religion of appreciable size. There may very well be an old Ra worshipper or two somewhere there.
That's not how religions work though. It's not like species or alleles - you don't pass your religion to your children, and pagan religions aren't recessive alleles.
Religions are practiced by groups of people. There's often a continuity of practices and beliefs in a given places, but the influence of the Alexandrian scholars (jewish, pagan and christian) was mainstream anyway.
What happened is that some places with water sources or old sacred places maintained their sacred nature, and probably some associated beliefs through christianism and islam (just like everywhere else ; which is why churches in France are often built on places where there was a roman and even a celtic temple before that, and why so many saints are derived from older myths, often involving sacred springs or talking to animals). But unless immortals are a real thing, it's impossible for an old Ra worshipper or two to survive through the middle ages. And as far as we know ther wasn't any lost community is total isolation either.
Those aren’t the same at all, The Empire of Francia is just an Empire creatable by anyone, Theirs Zero possibility of a Copt buliding a Pyramid.
You're all focusing on the culture, when the key thing here is the lunatic trait.
We're talking about crazy folks here. They don't build pyramids because it's part of their cultural heritage. They build pyramids because they see pyramids in the landscape and thing they deserve one.
African Pagan (Closest religion to Kemetic)
whaaaaaat? How is the blob called "African Paganism" closer to the overgeneralization / revivalist religion some call "kemetism"?
For the fellas who disagreed with my post, I just stumbled upon this interesting comparison of DNA results between a Christian and a Muslim (from Egypt) on Reddit.
Muslim:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Egypt/comments/b87jm0/for_the_sake_of_comparison_here_is_my_sons/
Christian:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Egypt/comments/b7oqa3/my_23andme_dna_results_coptic/
Obviously two people aren't representative but it's interesting nevertheless. The slightly higher percentage of Western Asian heritage in the Muslim could be a reflection of Muslim openness towards cross-cultural marriages with other Muslim ethnicities in the region that have had a historical presence in Egypt (Turks, Circassians, Georgian Mamluks etc.).
Are we really going to confuse ethnicity with cultural heritage and genetic heritage now? We're not in the USA, folks. Those genetic profiles are only interesting if you want to know about (undocumented) population movements. They do NOT tell us ANYTHING about who's right to claim the cultural heritage of ancient egyptians and pyramid builders. Because that past belongs to everyone, and that cultural heritage is the responsability of every living Egyptian.
Btw, your hypothesis to explain the differences between those two people could be interesting, but is likely wrong. Modern Coptic Egyptians are often descended from populations that lived in the south of what is now modern Egypt, and in more rural and isolated communities. It's not about being more open to cross-cultural marriages, it's just an example of what happens to marginal communities (like jewish communities in medieval Europe). It doesn't mean that Coptic people are "purer" descendants of ancient egyptians either, because these communities formed during the islamization of Egypt, that is after many centuries of ancient Egyptians mixing with all kind of people from south, west and north. When it comes to the cultural heritage, yes today the Copts sometimes use a ritual language that is close to the ancient egyptian language (they still mostly speak arab). But if you think that's the only dimension of cultural heritage, maybe you shouldn't participate in this debate.
