A new book purports to prove that those people we call "Scottish" are in truth Egyptian. Ralph Ellis—author of Cleopatra to Christ: Jesus Was the Great Grandson of Cleopatra—claims to present in Scota, Egyptian Queen of the Scots new proof for the old theory that a pharaoh's daughter and her husband, a Greek king, emigrated to Scotland circa way back when.
According to tradition, this royal family was expelled from Egypt during a time of great uprising. They sailed west, settling initially in Spain before travelling to Ireland and then on to the west coast of Scotland. This same race of people eventually battled and triumphed over the Picts to become the Scots – the people who united this country.
Few historians have taken the story to be anything more than a verbose bit of Middle Ages origin story-spinning, created by a nation who needed to prove that they were of ancient stock.
"Most political entities [in medieval times] try and trace the origin of their race back into biblical times," says Steve Boardman, lecturer in Scottish history at Edinburgh University. "It was a way of asserting the natural existence of the kingdom of the Scots." [Link]