El Sebou': the Egyptian birth ritual

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Title:	El Sebou': the Egyptian birth ritual
Editor:	Guindi, Fadwa El
Year:	1986
Language:	English
Publisher:	El Nil Research Production
Geographic term:	Egypt
Subjects:	birth rites videos (form) anthropological films (form) documentary films (form)
Abstract:	This film is an ethnographic record of the birth ritual in Egypt call 'el Sebou' (meaning the seventh), which is celebrated on the seventh day following the birth of a child of either sex by Coptic and Muslim families from all status-groups, rural and urban. Traditionally, this was the occasion for naming newborn children, circumcising boys and pearcing the ears of girls. Today these pratices are deritualized in the urban centres and in most cases take place separately from the Sebou' ceremony on the seventh day, the latter continuining to function as a key ritual for initiating newborn children into the Egyptian social and cultural world. Interestingly, the seventh day after birth is celebrated throughout the Arab world with variation in ritual objects and events, and in acculturated form among Arab immigrants in the USA. The particular Sebou ceremony depicted in this film is that of a pair of twins, a boy and a girl, celebrated by an upwardly mobile lower middle class Muslim family. [Abstract reproduced from dvd-video]