There are three types of superstitions in Egypt. The first are the superstitions we have inherited from our ancestors, the ancient Egyptians. The second are the ones that have come from foreign conquests, even as far back as the Roman conquest in the first century BCE, and the third are modern superstitions that are the synthesis of ancient and more modern stories.
Among ancient Egyptian superstitions there are many that deal with children. For example, one says that a baby should not be bathed for the first two weeks after birth to protect him from the evil eye. Some people still hold this belief and dress their babies in worn-out clothes. Others go to extremes by putting earth on the cheeks of a newborn child to protect him from the evil eye or by drawing a small blue human hand on its head to prevent it from having cross eyes. This is still practised in some rural areas.
If a child is a girl, some superstitions hold that this means the parents will come into money. During the seboa, the celebration that takes place seven days after a child's birth as seven was a lucky number for the ancient Egyptians, a baby is shaken in a sieve to cleanse it from evil spirits. This is an originally ancient Egyptian tradition that has been practised by many Egyptians no matter what their religious background.
