The Use of the Pharaonic Past in Modern Egyptian NationalismAuthor(s): Michael WoodReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 35 (1998), pp. 179-196Published by: American Research Center in EgyptStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40000469 .Accessed: 07/06/2012 07:51

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The Use of the Pharaonic Past in Modern Egyptian Nationalism*

All Things Dread Time, but Time Dreads the Pyramids Arab Proverb1

Michael Wood

Introduction

Ancient history is often used by modern na- tions to inspire the processes of nation building. Events, monuments and artifacts of centuries past are often reflected in how a modern nation perceives itself and its future. It may be possi- ble to see the present nation and its citizens as the current descendants, whether physically or merely in spirit, of a once great civilization of the past. Such an identification can take the form of an official ideology propagated to a nation's citizens in the school curriculum and the pro- nouncements of the government and political parties. In Turkey, for example, children are taught that modern Turks are the descendants of the ancient Hittites; the modern Greek nation, from the War of Independence on, has con- sciously identified itself with the Greece of Peri- cles and the Parthenon.2 Mongolian politicians, campaigning in recent elections, invoked the

memory of Genghis Khan. Flags may contain an- cient symbols and resources may be spent on the preservation, promotion and display of the mate- rial remains of the past. Thus, the Mexican flag portrays a scene from an Aztec legend; the Mex- ican dictator Diaz, in an attempt to solidify feel- ings of Mexican nationhood, sponsored extensive excavations at the site of Teotihuacan.3 Israeli ar- chaeologists have used the results of excavations at such sites as Masada to reconstruct a vision of an ancient Biblical past with which the citizens of the modern state of Israel could identify.4

It would be natural to suppose that ancient Pharaonic Egypt, with its impressive monuments and artifacts, its pyramids, its temples, its tombs, its hieroglyphs and its gold, might similarly serve to inspire modern Egyptians in the process of na- tion building. But this may not necessarily have been the case. It is perhaps possible that other ideas inspired Egyptian nationalists of the nine- teenth and twentieth centuries. Islam and pan- Arabism may have been more powerful forces in shaping modern Egyptian identity. This paper will, in its first section, examine how the Phara- onic past manifested itself in the building of the

* This paper owes a great deal to discussions with Elin Weinstein, who introduced me to the relevance of archaeo- logical theory and to the advice of Bruce Trigger, Depart- ment of Anthropology, McGill University and that of Uner Turgay, McGill Institute of Islamic Studies.

1 Tom Melham, "Egypt's pyramids: Monuments of the Pharaohs," in Mysteries of the Ancient World (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1979), 56.

1 For more information on Turkish use of the past see Tekin Alp, "The Restoration of Turkish History," in National- ism in Asia and Africa, edited by Elie Kedourie (New York; The World Publishing Company, 1970), 207-24. For Greek use of the past see Kedourie 's discussion, in the introduction to the same volume, of the Greek historian Paparrhegopulos and his five volume The History of the Greek Nation published between 1860 and 1877, 47-48.

3 For Mexican use of the past see Donald Fowler, "Uses of the Past: Archaeology in the Service of the State," in Ameri- can Antiquity 52/2 (1987), 230-34 and B. Keen, The Aztec Image in Western Thought (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971).

The most complete discussion of the political dimen- sions of Israeli archaeology can be found in Neil Silberman's biography of the Israeli archaeologist, general and politician Yigal Yadin, A Prophet from Amongst You: The Life of Yigael Yadin: Soldier, Scholar and Mythmaker of Modern Israel (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1993).

179

180 JARCE XXXV (1998)

modern Egyptian nation through literature, art, the educational system and political activities. This paper will argue that Pharaonic images were of only marginal importance to the nationalist project. The second section of this paper will try to ascertain why Pharaonic history and images failed to become a central part of modern Egyp- tian nationalist ideology.

Egypt of the Pharaohs in Art and Literature

There has always been a tendency in Egyp- tian literature to deal exclusively with Egyptian matters. Jack A. Crabbs attributes this tendency to Egypt's position in the ancient and medieval Islamic worlds. For Syria and Iraq, the age of the Umayyad and cAbbasId Caliphs was the most spectacular period these regions had known. For Egypt, on the other hand, the medieval period, during which it was more often than not a mere province, paled in comparison to the glories of the Hellenistic and Pharaonic past.5 An entire class of medieval writings, the faddDil Misr, extol the greatness of Egypt. Its land, its people and its past, including its Pharaonic past, were glori- fied.6 However, modern historical writing only really began in the early nineteenth century. During this time period the Viceroy Muhammad cAli, through his modernizing efforts and his defiance of the Ottoman authorities, fostered a sense of distinctive Egyptian identity, even if it was not yet possible to speak of Egyptian nation- alism. It was in such an atmosphere that the Egyptian historian, government official and edu- cational reformer Rifaca al-Tahtawi produced, in 1868, a notable work on ancient Egyptian his- tory, which utilized a variety of European, Arabic and even archaeological sources.7 Jamal al-Din

al-Shayyal describes this book as marking a turn- ing point not only in the writing of Egyptian his- tory but also in the development of Egyptian national awareness.8 Besides writing his history of ancient Egypt, Tahtawi also protested Mu- hammad cAli's plans to export an obelisk to Europe. Instead he urged conservation on the Viceroy who eventually in 1836 agreed to forbid the exportation of antiquities, appoint antiquity inspectors and open a museum in Cairo; these plans, as will be noted below, took much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to become a reality.9

Historical works on the Pharaonic past contin- ued to be written by native Egyptians throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu- ries. A variety of Arabic works were produced, including books on hieroglyphics, histories, and guidebooks on ancient monuments. The guide- books aimed to convince Egyptians to familiarize themselves with their nation's heritage through visiting museums and archaeological sites rather than leaving such activities to European tour- ists.10 Scholarly articles from the pens of native Egyptians became particularly common in the wake of the 1922 discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun; Ahmad Kamal, one of the first native Egyptologists, described the history of the 18th dynasty, while his son Hasan wrote a series of articles on the tomb's discovery.11

Such an interest in the history of ancient Egypt was reflected in a trend of Egyptian na- tionalist thought known as "Pharaonism," which

5 Jack A. Crabbs, The Writing of History in Nineteenth- Century Egypt: A Study in National Transformation (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), 36. The Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations of Mesopotamia, while frequently men- tioned in the Hebrew Bible and Classical sources, were largely forgotten in both Europe and the Middle East until the emer- gence of modern archaeology in the nineteenth century.

6 Ulrich Haarmann, "Regional Sentiment in Medieval Islamic Egypt," in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43, 1 (1980), 57-59.

7 Crabbs, The Writing of History, 79; also Donald Reid, "In- digenous Egyptology: The Decolonization of a Profession?," in Journal of the American Oriental Society 105, (1985), 236.

8 Jamal al-Din al-Shayyal, A History of Egyptian Historiog- raphy in the Nineteenth Century (Alexandria: Alexandria Uni- versity Press, 1962), 23; cf. Bernard Lewis, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 34.

9 Crabbs, The Writing of History, 70; Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 235.

10 Ibid., 236-37. 11 Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 239. The tomb of the

Eighteenth Dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun (reigned 1352- 1344 B.C.) was discovered by the Englishman Howard Carter in November of 1922 after many years of search. As it later turned out, and as will be explained in more detail below, the tomb's discovery was to have major political significance, John Wilson, Signs and Wonders upon Pharaoh: A History of American Egyptology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964) , 159-66; The Eighteenth Dynasty is generally identified as the time 1570 to 1303 B.C., John Wilson, The Culture of An- cient Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 321.

THE PHARAONIC PAST IN MODERN EGYPTIAN NATIONALISM 181

emerged in the early twentieth century and was particularly popular in the 1920's. In brief, Phar- aonism identified Egypt as a distinctive territorial entity with its own history and character separate from that of the rest of the Arab and Islamic world. This separate identity drew on Egyptian symbols derived from the Pharaonic and Helle- nistic pre-Islamic past; an Islamic and Arab iden- tity was in contrast downplayed or even rejected. Pharaonism tended to blend into the identifica- tion of Egypt as a Mediterranean nation with historic links with Europe. Ultimately Egypt could be identified as a part of Europe, a western na- tion rather than an eastern Islamic nation.12 Be- fore World War I the Egyptian political thinkers Mustafa Kamal and Ahmad Lufti al-Sayyid both introduced pharaonic elements into their politi- cal thought. Kamil spoke of Egypt as the world's first great civilized state, while Lufti expressed an interest in a "Pharaonic core" of Egyptian society which had survived into modern times. Pharaonic themes appeared in many Egyptian novels, such as Tawfiq al-Hakim's novel The Re- turn of the Spirit. The Pharaohs were also evoked in the visual arts. The statues of the sculptor Mahmud Mukhtar combined modern and phar- aonic motifs. Sacad Zaghlul, the great Egyptian nationalist leader, was entombed in a neo- pharaonic mausoleum of Aswan granite.13

The Pharaonic past as part of the Egyptian education system and the rise of

indigenous Egyptology

As the nineteenth century progressed, efforts were made to instill in Egyptian youth a knowl- edge and appreciation of their Pharaonic heri- tage. cAli Mubarak, who was Egyptian Minister of Education after 1868, sponsored talks on Egyp- tology; and from at least 1874 Pharaonic Egypt was part of the secondary school curriculum.14 But such efforts may not have made a discern-

ible impact. Salama Musa, a Copt who went on to have a notable career as a socialist writer, was em- barrassed to show his ignorance of the Pharaonic past while he was visiting Europe at the turn of the century. He had graduated from secondary school and felt that the Egyptian school system, now thoroughly under British control, avoided the teaching of ancient Egyptian history for fear that such information would stimulate local na- tional pride and a desire for independence.15

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries native Egyptians began to take an inter- est in ancient Egypt as Egyptologists. The Egyp- tian antiquities service was under French control for almost one hundred years, from Sacid Pasha's appointment of Auguste Mariette as Conserva- tor of Egyptian Monuments in 1858 to the over- throw of King Faruq in 1952. British, American, German, Austrian, and Italian Egyptologists also played a prominent role in the uncovering of Egypt's past; indigenous participation in this enterprise was slow to manifest itself, although this was not for lack of interest. Egyptians were systematically prevented, by Europeans, from studying their own ancient history. Local study, on European lines, of the Egyptian past can prob- ably be held to have begun with the opening of a "School of the Ancient Egyptian Language" in 1869. This school was run by the German orien- talist Karl Heinrich Brugsh. Students, selected for their abilities in French, and including Ah- mad Kamal, studied hieroglyphics. The progress of these students pleased both Brugsh and the Viceroy, but Mariette felt that Egyptians who knew hieroglyphics were a threat to French con- trol of the antiquities service and the school was consequently closed. Kamal, however, strived to continue to study Egyptology; his persistence seems to demonstrate that it was European inter- ference more than Egyptian indifference which slowed the development of an indigenous branch of Egyptology. After Mariette 's death in 1881 Kamal was appointed to the museum in Cairo; he later became assistant curator and taught ar- chaeology and hieroglyphics. Kamal's difficulties continued after Mariette 's successor Gaston Mas- pero returned to France in 1886. The archaeol- ogy and hieroglyphics class was disbanded and

12 Yaacov Shimoni, Political Dictionary of the Arab World (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987), 406; Israel Gershoni, "The Emergence of Pan-Nationalism in Egypt," in Asian and African Studies 16, 1 (1982), 89; L. B. Namier, "Nationality and Liberty," in Vanished Supremacies (London: H. Hamilton, 1985), 47.

13 Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 239. 14 Crabbs, The Writing of History, 94, 112. 15 Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 237, 239.

182 JARCE XXXV (1998)

most Egyptians were dismissed from museum service. Kamal was able to regain his position after Maspero's 1899 return to Egypt. He is listed as one of three museum conservators in 1908, the other two being Europeans.16

Ahmad Kamal remained very much alone throughout his career; few Egyptians were al- lowed and encouraged to study Pharaonic Egypt. To try to promote more local interest and par- ticipation in Egyptology Kamal organized popu- lar lectures. In 1908 he began to teach the history of ancient Egypt at the recently founded Egyptian University (later King Faud University and finally Cairo University). In 1910 Kamal was able to get an Egyptology program set up at the Higher Teacher's College, which he himself taught. The graduating class of 1912 had diffi- culty in finding jobs and the class was discon- tinued in 1913. Kamal retired in 1914; realizing that there were virtually no local Egyptologists to succeed him, he tried to persuade the Antiq- uities Service, and its French director Pierre Lacau, to begin training more Egyptian stu- dents.17 Lacau replied that few Egyptians, be- sides Kamal himself, took much interest in the Pharaonic past. Kamal replied: "Ah M. Lacau, in the sixty-five years you French have directed the service, what opportunities have you given us?"18 Kamal died soon after, in August 1923, on the very day on which the Egyptian government de- creed the creation of an Egyptological school at the Higher Teacher's College with Kamal as its director. This event, which occurred in the wake of formal Egyptian independence and a vari- ety of controversies associated with the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, marked the turn- ing point in the long struggle to create an in- digenous group of Egyptologists. The teaching of subjects related to ancient Egypt increased dramatically at the Egyptian University; the first class of Egyptologists graduating in 1928. 19

The staff at the University was almost exclu- sively European; the most promising students were usually sent to Europe for advanced study. These students were soon directing their own

excavations and occupying important positions in the University, the Cairo Museum, and the Antiquities Service. The process of the "Egyp- tianization" of the study of Pharaonic history was well under way by 1939. In that year Sami Gabra, who had studied in Europe in the twenties, be- came the first Egyptian director of the Egyptian University's Institute of Archaeology. FuDad Uni- versity began to award its own doctorates in 1942. Additional Egyptian universities later provided training in Egyptology.20

The Politics of Pharaonism

Pharaonism, as a trend in Egyptian national- ism, was not only reflected in art, literature and education, but was also, albeit on a modest scale, translated into political action. Pride in the Phar- aonic past was notably evident in the wake of the February 1922 declaration by Great Britain of Egypt's independence and the November 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun; to some the Egypt of the Pharaohs seemed the real ante- cedent of the new Egypt. The spirit of the newly independent state was to be pre-Islamic and pre-Christian; a fusion of both Islamic and Chris- tian traditions but also independent of both.21 What was to become of the tomb and its contents soon became a flashpoint of political conflict. Up to this time the convention of the Egyptian Antiquities Service was that artifacts discovered in intact tombs had to remain in Egypt, while those found in plundered tombs would be di- vided between the Egyptian government and for- eign archaeologists. The Tutankhamun tomb had apparently been broken into soon after the king's death and had been resealed by the mortuary priests; it had remained intact ever since. As its "plundering" had taken place in antiquity and was rather small scale (a few unguent bottles were smashed for their aromatic contents), it could be argued that the tomb was in fact intact. This was in fact the argument put forward by the Egyptian authorities. The issue was complicated by the strained relationship between the govern-

16 Ibid., 236-37. 17 Ibid., 237. 18 Wilson, Signs and Wonders, 192.

Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 241.

20 Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 241. 1 P. J. Vatikiotis, The History of Modern Egypt from Muham-

mad Ali to Mubarak, 4th Edition (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991), 312.

THE PHARAONIC PAST IN MODERN EGYPTIAN NATIONALISM 183

merit and the tomb's excavator, Howard Carter. Carter felt that the right to control access to the tomb properly belonged to him and that the government was interfering with his work. Fur- ther, he felt that some of the tomb's treasures should go to the estate of the late Lord Carnar- von, who had invested a fortune and years of effort in the effort to find the tomb's location. Events came to a head in February of 1924 when Carter and his European associates in effect "went on strike," sealing the tomb and stop- ping work to protest government interference. In retaliation the French director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service had the tomb seized and de- clared that contrary to past practice all the con- tents of the tomb must remain in Egypt.22

Prime Minister Zaghlul justified the action on the grounds that: "it is the duty of the govern- ment to defend the rights and dignity of the nation. I do not consider that a constitutional government can disregard the opinion of the country." To celebrate the tomb's reopening a gala reception was planned for March 6. This turned into a massive rally in support of the Wafd Party and its leader, although Zaghlul him- self was absent. A special train carrying ministers and members of parliament left the Cairo sta- tion amid the cheers of a large crowd of Wafd supporters; hundreds of thousands of others thronged the entire route to Luxor. In Luxor it- self the train was greeted by the largest crowd the city had seen in modern times. The High Commissioner Lord Allenby, who had arrived separately with his wife, was met with cries for an immediate and total British withdrawal from Egypt. The opening itself was a dramatic event in which Tutankhamun's gold coffin was illumi- nated with a specially rigged lighting system. The celebrations lasted well into the night and in the opinion of the Egyptian press demonstrated the government's awareness of the people's at- tachment to their Pharaonic heritage.23

Carter felt that he had been wronged and the issue of who controlled the tomb eventually landed in court; an attempt at a compromise mediated by the American Egyptologist James

Henry Breasted came to nothing when Carter's lawyer compared the government to "bandits."24 The Egyptian press backed the government in opposing Howard Carter.25 However, the assas- sination of Sir Lee Stack and the subsequent change of government allowed Carter to quietly resume working in the tomb in the fall of 1924. The new prime minister, Ahmad Ziwar, had little interest in the nationalistic implications of the Pharaonic past, although he was apparently aware of them. He supposedly remarked to Breasted: "Egypt has no civilization except what comes to us from Europe and America. We must rely on foreign scientists - but I cannot say that in pub- lic! Therein lies our chief difficulty in carrying out your project."26

Ziwar's comments were made in response to Breasted's request for permission to build a new museum in Cairo. This project, to be funded by John D. Rockefeller Jr., aroused nationalist passions similar to the controversies involving the Tutankhamun discovery. The old museum, built by Mariette in the last century, and still in use today, was clearly in need of repair, but the proposal contained several controversial ele- ments. It threatened French control of the Egyp- tian Antiquities Service and the British were not particularly interested in the proposal. The big- gest objection to the museum, from an Egyp- tian nationalist point of view, was that it was to be controlled for thirty years by an interna- tional commission. Egyptians would eventually be trained to take over the museum themselves. Nationalists felt that the project was an infringe- ment on the sovereignty of Egypt. Some foreign scholars sympathetic to Egyptian political aspi- rations, such as the American George Reisner, agreed with them and the offer was eventually withdrawn.27

Pharaonism was also particularly evident in the ideology of the Misr al-Fatah (Young Egypt)

22 Wilson, Signs and Wonders, 165-66. 23 Thomas Hoving, Tutankhamun: The Untold Story (New

York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 298-99.

24 Ibid., 301-6. 25 With the sole exception of the Liberal Constitutionalist

Party's al-Siyasa (which was always hostile to Zaghlul). Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 239.

Zb Ibid., 238. 27 Wilson, Signs and Wonders, 183. Also, Jeffrey Abt,

"Toward a Historian's Laboratory: The Breasted-Rockefeller Museum Projects in Egypt, Palestine, and America," JARCE 33 (1996), 173-94.

184 JARCE XXXV (1998)

movement. This movement, founded by Ahmad Hussain and other law students in 1933, stressed a revival of Egypt's glory through militant action on the part of the nation's youth. The move- ment had become a political party by 1938 with a platform combining extreme Egyptian nation- alism with religious fanaticism and general xeno- phobia; the movement possessed an impressive paramilitary youth wing. The party advocated the radical syndicalization and militarization of Egyptian politics and society.28 Young Egypt's supporters consisted mainly of urban secondary school students. The party published its own newspaper, Misr al-Fatat, which in January 1939 carried the party's programme and fundamen- tal principles. This program was intended to ap- peal to the masses; youth were to be the military vanguard of Egypt's renewal. An Egyptian em- pire consisting of Egypt and the Sudan, allied to the Arab states, was to lead the Islamic world. The will of the people was equated with the will of God. The party called for an increase in agricultural production; in industry it aimed to emulate the achievements of Muhammad Ali and the Pharaohs. Egypt was to lead the world in educational achievements; Egyptian scholars would spread an "Egyptian mentality" through- out the Arab world. Young Egypt placed great importance on religious belief and morality -

attacking alcohol consumption, prostitution, and public corruption. The party felt that the creed of the new generation should involve faith, ac- tion, material sacrifice and possibly even death for the sake of a new Egyptian empire. The party clearly admired the methods, achievements and even the symbols of the German Nazis; they had connections with the Italian Fascists and even attended the mammoth Nuremburg rally of 1936.29

The movement's founder, Ahmad Hussain, had long been interested in Egypt's Pharaonic past and he touted it as an inspiration for the re- newal of the country's greatness. In his teens, in the early 1920's, he had been heavily involved in theater and had been influenced by Mahmud Murad who had composed plays, musicals and operettas on Pharaonic themes. These works in- cluded The Glory of Ramses. Hussain noted the

effect this play had upon him and his contem- poraries, it "resurrected the spirit and filled us with enthusiasm and power." Murad, who later joined Young Egypt, also wrote a play about Tut- ankhamun, in which Hussain played the part of Ramses.30 But Hussain's real recognition of the importance of the Pharaonic past to Egypt's present came in a dramatic conversion while on a scouting trip to Upper Egypt in 1928. After seeing the monuments of the Valley of the Kings, Karnak and Aswan, he argued that if Egypt had once been great it could be so again. He felt reborn and fell in love with Egypt calling for a life of dignity, patriotism, and self respect. Filled with such visions of power and greatness he went on to organize mass rallies involving flags, an- thems glorifying the Pharaonic past and green- shirted paramilitary followers. He stressed the need for a "leader of action, who is not of Turk- ish or Circassian, but of Pharaonic blood."31

The Pharaonic past was most evident in the ideology of Young Egypt in the 1930s; appeals to Egypt's Arab and Islamic character later gained in importance. Hussain had begun his movement by emphasizing Egypt's distinctiveness from other Arab and Islamic nations, a pattern which he felt had a long history. Thus, Ahmad Hussain repeats the arguments of Taha Hussain, who asserts that even under Islam Egypt had long dis- played a particularist streak, leading a revolt against the third Caliph and soon becoming in- dependent under Ibn Tulun in the ninth cen- tury.32 Party ideologue, Dr. Muhammad Ghallab, in a 1938 article in the party journal, while gen- erally dismissing the importance of ancient Egyp- tian religion, notes two important connections between Pharaonic Egypt and the present day. The ancient Egyptians had shown great respect towards their religion and their Pharaoh; present day Egyptians could ensure that their nation re- mained a viable concern through a similar re-

28 Vatikiotis, The History of Egypt, 320. 29 Ibid., 330-31.

30 P. J. Vatikiotis, Nasser and his generation (London: Croon Helm, 1978), 70; Vatikiotis draws his information on Hus- sain's life from the latter's autobiography Imani (My Faith) (Cairo, n.p., 1936).

61 Vatikiotis, Nasser, 68, 72. 32 Dennis Walker, "The Contribution of Rising Pan-

Arabism to the Break-up of a Multi-Sectarian Egyptian Polit- ical Community in the 1930's: The Case of Misr al-Fatat," in Al-Mushir22 (1980), 144.

THE PHARAONIC PAST IN MODERN EGYPTIAN NATIONALISM 185

spect for religion (Islam) and the king (in this case Faruq).33

By 1939, however, Hussain was calling for Egyptian society to be purified on the basis of Islam. In 1940 the Young Egypt Party changed its name to the National Islamic Party. New empha- sis was placed on renewing Islamic law, re-estab- lishment of zakat and abolition of the charging of interest on loans. The movement claimed that it was moving "beyond the narrow limits of Egyp- tian nationalism" and was now also an Islamic movement battling imperialism in all Islamic countries. The party later took on a more social- ist air after the war, calling for a struggle against "feudalists and capitalists"; Hussain called for the overthrow of the monarchy and the estab- lishment of a pan-Arabic "United Arab State." Little was left of the movement's old Pharaonic ideology.34

The Failure of Pharaonism

Young Egypt was not alone in abandoning Pharaonism in the face of rising interest in pan- Islamic and pan-Arabist forces. In August 1930, the Egyptian Muslim activist Muhammad cAli cAlluba called for the abandonment of "unhealthy provincialism" within the "narrow boundaries" of the Nile Valley and for Egypt to fulfill its des- tiny of promoting Arab unity through creating an all-encompassing economic, cultural, social and political framework for the Arab world. He felt that "he who wishes to deflect Egypt from ac- complishing this greater (Arab) mission in order to persist in that (Pharaonic) heresy is dealing Egypt a heavy blow."35 cAlluba was virtually alone, among the literary elite of the late 1920s and early 1930s, in questioning Egyptian Pharaonic- based territorial nationalism. An attitude which saw the Pharaonic past as a unique inspiration to the inhabitants of the Nile Valley was beginning to crystallize. But such attitudes clearly began to change; cAlluba's strident call for Egypt to see

itself as an Arab, rather than a Pharaonic, nation was echoed throughout the 1930s and 1940s.36

Similar attacks on Pharaonism emerged from a pan-Islamic perspective. Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, attacked the concept that Egypt was a distinctive territo- rial nation, with a proud pre-Islamic history. He saw such notions as being in "abysmally deep contradiction" with the concept of a uni- versal Islamic umma. Pharaonism, noted al- Banna, seemed to consider the pre-Islamic past to be the exclusive model for modern Egypt's revival; the unity of Arab-Islamic history is de- nied and the mistaken claim is made that the people of Egypt had a history separate from other Arabs and Muslims.37

In 1937, al-Banna describes Pharaonism as "the revival of pagan jahili customs which have been swept away, and the resurrection of ex- tinct manners"; the aim of this "resurrection of the dead" was "to annihilate the characteristic traits of Islam and Arabism." Pharaonism arbi- trarily placed the beginnings of the Egyptian nation, and its golden age, in the distant Phara- onic past; the "pagan reactionary" Pharaohs, Tut- ankhamun, Ramses and Akhenaton, are exalted in place of Muhammad and his companions.38 Al-Banna probably goes too far in his assaults; most Egyptian admirers of the Pharaonic past, such as Ahmad Hussain, were also devoted to the country's Islamic heritage. But what clearly emerged in the 1930s and 1940s was a feeling that whatever the pedigree of its past Egypt could not exist in isolation; it had to take part in, and possibly even lead, a wider world, whether that world be pan-Arab or pan-Islamic.

Since the 1940s then, artists and politicians, with a few exceptions, have shown little interest in the Pharaonic past as a possible basis for build- ing the modern Egyptian nation. Before Nasser moved on to Arab nationalism in the 1950s he began to utilize Pharaonic symbols; Faruq's portrait on the piaster coin was replaced by the Sphinx and the huge statue of Ramses II from Memphis was raised in front of the Cairo railroad station.39 In the wake of the Egyptian 33 Muhammad Ghallab, "Al-Din wal-WalaD lil-cArsh daru-

riyyani lil-Hayat al-Salihah fi Misr," (Religion and Loyalty to the Throne: Two Necessities for a Viable Life in Egypt), in Misr al-Fatat, 24th February (1938) quoted in Walker, "The Contribution," 146.

34 Ibid., 144. 35 Gershoni, "The Emergence of Pan-Nationalism," 59-60.

36 Ibid., 61. 37 Ibid., 72, 74. 38 Ibid., 74. 39 Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 240.

186 TARCE XXXV (1998)

defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, an Egyp- tian writer, using the pen-name Bint al-ShatP (daughter of the Nile river bank), described the Qur3an as being in error; the Pharaoh was a hero, while his Israelite opponents were vil- lains.40 Sadat, at least on an international scale, tried to promote the glories of the Pharaonic past; he insisted that the mummy of Ramses II, being flown to Paris for restoration work, be greeted at Charles de Gaulle Airport with a twenty-one-gun salute as befitted a visiting head of state.41 To facilitate improved relations with the United States, he allowed selected items from the king Tutankhamun tomb to be sent to America in a traveling exhibit.42 Sadat also emu- lated Nasser in giving gifts of artifacts to for- eign dignitaries. Nasser, according to Egyptian archaeologist Ibrahim al-Nawawi, sent impor- tant works of art to the Soviet Union, Japan and the Vatican, while Sadat sent jewelry, statues and other artifacts to the heads of state of France, the United States, the Philippines and Iran.43

Domestically, however, Sadat toned down ap- peals to the Pharaonic past and had the mummy room of the Cairo Museum closed so as to avoid offending religious sensibilities.44 It is possible, however, that such an action was in fact an act of reverence towards Egypt's past (and pagan) rulers; Sadat supposedly remarked at the time that, "Egyptian kings are not to be made a spec- tacle of" (the mummy room was eventually re- opened in 1994) .45 Despite such attempts by Sadat to distance himself from the Pharaonic past, his assassins were still able to identify him as a non-Islamic tyrant, crying out at their trial: "We have killed Pharaoh!". Since Sadat's death the political discourse has remained largely hos- tile to a glorification of the Pharaonic past.46 In many ways the Pharaonic past has been re- duced to an economic entity, a source of tourist

revenue to be deliberately targeted by Islamist militants, a group of Egyptians who apparently have no interest in the country's pre-Islamic past. Militants, for example, in 1993 planted a series of bombs in the vicinity of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.47 Other identifications, whether they be with other Arabs or with other Muslims, seem to have a greater hold over Egyptians today than does a feeling of kinship with the Egypt of the Pharaohs. The various attempts, whether in art, literature or politics, discussed above, to foster such a bond between ancient past and present can be seen as largely a failure.

Reasons behind the failure of Pharaonism

A reverence for Egypt's Pharaonic past thus failed to become a major component in the art, literature or politics of Egyptian nationalism; pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism, proved more powerful forces in mobilizing Egyptians for the purposes of nation building. This paper identi- fies three reasons for Pharaonism's failure to make more of a lasting impact. First of all, Islam had a long history of hostility towards the Phar- aonic past. Second, the West in general, and Western Egyptologists in particular, have system- atically expropriated Egypt's past and thwarted efforts by native Egyptians to study and interpret their own history. Last of all, certain marked features of Egypt of the Pharaohs, made it prob- lematic; the Pharaonic past, for the Egyptian nationalist, was simply the "wrong past". This section of the paper will explore these three themes starting with Islam's alleged hostility towards the Pharaohs.

Islam and the Pharaohs

The QurDan refers to the Pharaoh in almost entirely negative terms. He is noted as an unbe- liever and the oppressor of Moses, Aaron and the Israelites. Pharaoh forced his people to wor- ship him as god and to build a tower which would enable him to reach heaven.48 Pharaoh

40 Lewis, History Remembered, 35. 41 Neil Asher Silberman, Between Past and Present: Archaeol-

ogy, Ideology and Nationalism in the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1987), 160.

42 Hoving, Tutankhamun, 12. 43 Dina Ezzat, "Egypt's Stolen Past," in The Middle East, 240

(1995), 37. 44 Silberman, Between Past and Present, 160. 45 Helen Miles, "Mummies at Rest," in The Middle East, 235

(1994), 40. 46 Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 246.

47 Scott Mattoon, "Egypt: Terror makes its mark," in The MiddleEast, 224 (June 1993), 9-10.

48 A. J. Wensinck and G. Vadja, "FirDawn," in Encyclopedia of Islam: Second Edition, Volume II (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965), 917.

THE PHARAONIC PAST IN MODERN EGYPTIAN NATIONALISM 187

eventually accepted God at the moment of his drowning in the Red Sea, but God decreed that Pharaoh's body be left in Egypt as a warning to future sinners. Later traditions amplified the details of Pharaoh's sinfulness. Egypt's kings, before and after Moses, were archetypal ty- rants, who ruled with an iron fist during the pre-Islamic age of ignorance. A verb eventually emerged in Arabic, derived from Fircawn (Pha- raoh), tafarcana, meaning "to act arrogantly or tyranically".49

Hostility towards the Pharaonic past some- times took the form of attacks on ancient monu- ments during the medieval period. Such attacks did not always meet with widespread approval, and it seems clear that many Egyptians took a more ambivalent attitude towards their distant past. The Umayyad Caliph Yazid II gave orders for the destruction of the remnants of pagan- ism in Egypt, both al-Macmun and Saladin tried to break into the great pyramid of Giza; such attacks seemed to have been less evident dur- ing the reigns of the Tulunids and the Fatimids, both more locally based dynasties. The thir- teenth and fourteenth centuries were peak peri- ods for the defacement and destruction of Pharaonic artifacts; this wave of iconoclasm may have been connected to a feeling of unease caused by famines, floods, plagues and foreign invasion. In 1260 a local Sufi struck the sphinx with his shoes expressing his contempt for pop- ular veneration of the statue. In 1311 the statue of Isis in Fustat was destroyed and a temple was destroyed in Memphis in 1350, its stones were then used to build a Sufi convent in Cairo, an indication both of the triumph of Islam over paganism and of the continued power, in some minds, of the remains of the Pharaohs. The de- stroyers of the Memphis temple expressed relief that they were not punished by the building's "evil eye," which had obviously lost its power. The sphinx was damaged in 1378 by a Sufi. His ac- tions supposedly caused sands to blanket the lands around Giza. Later traditions clearly con- demned the act of vandalism; a report from the seventeenth century claimed that the Sufi was killed by a mob and buried near the sphinx.50

The actual deliberate, religiously motivated destruction of the physical legacy of the Pha- raohs remained relatively rare (the disman- tling of temples for building supplies was a more common phenomenon). Throughout the medi- eval and modern periods there was always at least some degree of popular veneration for the country's ancient monuments; there was even an attempt to "Islamicize" both these monuments and ancient history in general. The foremen- tioned thirteenth century Sufi, who attacked the sphinx with his shoes, did so in response to certain rites which were performed at the monu- ment in the spring; incense was burned and cer- tain formulae were repeated sixty-three times, in response the sphinx was supposed to answer hu- man requests.51 Near the pyramids of Egypt is an important Fourth Dynasty tomb of the noble Debehni (the Fourth Dynasty is usually dated between ca. 2650 and 2500 B.C.); this tomb was later identified with the local Muslim saint Sidi Hamad Samcan, and up to recent times pious women and children have come to the site for its religious benefits.52 At the turn of the cen- tury many Egyptian women apparently visited the Cairo Museum for the same reason, although many middle class Egyptian families were be- ginning to see an excursion to the museum as merely a pleasant diversion.53

During the medieval period, Egypt's monu- ments were celebrated as wonders worthy of re- spect. The cajdDib of the country, such as the pyramids, were seen as symbols of Egypt en- dowed with magical and even religious power; Jamal al-Din al-Idrisi, writing in the thirteenth century, states that it is a sign of humility and intelligence to be impressed by such wonders. He admonishes a Maghrabi pilgrim for failing to visit the pyramids while en route to Mecca; a talab al-cajaDib (a seeker or student of wonders)

49 Silberman, Between Past and Present, 159. Haarmann, "Regional Sentiment," 63-64.

51 Ibid., 62. 52 Wilson, Signs and Wonders, 8. 53 Annie A. Quibell, A Wayfarer in Egypt (London: n.p.,

1925), 45-46, cited by Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 240; Reid notes, however, that such superstitions are hardly re- stricted to Egyptians, it was the Western press, after all, who invented "King Tut's Curse". Neither Reid nor Quibell seem to consider the possibility that such acts of veneration might involve genuine religious sentiment rather than mere superstition.

188 TARCE XXXV (1998)

is equated with a talab al-cilm (a seeker of reli- gious knowledge). Idrisi attempts to "Islamize" the country's Pharaonic ruins, particularly the pyramids. He feels that they were not mentioned in the QurDan only because they were of no direct relevance to the Arabs, to whom Mu- hammad's message was initially addressed. These monuments later acquired holiness through the Companions of the Prophet who did not object to living and even being buried near pagan mon- uments; one of them even left a Kufic inscription on one of the pyramids. The presence of these blessed individuals bestowed baraka on the land of Egypt; sinners were driven mad when they visited Giza. Idrisi argued that if the Compan- ions of the Prophet had allowed the relics of paganism to remain unmolested then so should his contemporaries; the pyramids had been left standing as a warning for future generations.54

Idrisi also assigns magical powers to the mon- uments, stating, on the basis of a book on charms and magic, Kitab Masisun al-Rahib, that dust from Giza, from Ansina (the legendary Egyptian city of sorcerers) and any third Egyptian locale can produce a talisman of wisdom. Tracing the in- telligence of the people of Egypt to the pyra- mids seemed a fairly common belief in medieval Egypt; Hermes, the Idris of the Arabs, was often associated with the ancient Egyptian god of sages, Thoth, who had supposedly built the pyramids, and with Mercury the planet of wisdom.55 The pyramids were also often mentioned in an escha- tological context. Idrisi felt that the destruction of the pyramids and temples of Egypt would result in carnage of such a scale that horses would be submerged to their knees in blood.56

This effort at integrating the temples, pyra- mids and tombs of ancient Egypt into an Islamic framework extended to Pharaonic history as a whole. "Righteous" ancient Egyptians were found, who had not spitefully rejected the message of God and his Prophets. The QurDanic story of Pharaoh's magicians; who convert to Moses' mes- sage and are severely punished by their master is extended, in various traditions, to include other Egyptians who have shown exemplary be-

havior; these include Pharaoh's son. Indications that even a nation of tyrants was not wholly irredeemable were important to medieval Egyp- tians, it prefigured a hoped for conversion of the persistently stubborn Coptic minority. The Pharaoh who ruled while Joseph was sojourn- ing in Egypt and the first few rulers after Noah were all supposedly monotheists. It was even alleged, in an attempt to salvage Egypt's pre- Islamic reputation, that the first Pharaoh was not a real Egyptian and was in fact an unemployed druggist from the bazaar of Isfahan.57

If Islam was not always hostile to the ancient Egyptian past it always posed problems for those who saw a Pharaonic identity as a model for Egypt's present and future development. Islam and the Egypt of the Pharaohs could be recon- ciled only with great difficulty; in the end they could not but compete with each other. Islam, to this day, cannot be excluded from any state- building ideology, its hold over most Egyptians is too great. In this sense a rediscovery of the ancient past was much more problematic to Egyptians than it was to other peoples emerg- ing from colonialism. A Mexican could freely use pre-Colombian icons as part of the national- ist enterprise, as the period of Spanish colonial rule could be safely dismissed as a foreign in- trusion on an indigenous pattern of develop- ment.58 In contrast, an Egyptian could not use Pharaonic symbols without being left open to the charge that such symbols were un-Islamic or even anti-Islamic. Islam had planted deep roots in the Egyptian population over the course of the last fourteen hundred years.

Popular belief in certain remnants of the pre- Islamic past could be attacked and discredited as part of the legitimate nation building pro- cess on several levels. First, any form of popular belief, even popular forms of Islam, including some forms of Sufism and the local veneration of saints, could be attacked as an un-Islamic innova- tion. Second, the roots of such Pharaonic obser- vances were often to be found among the peasant classes and were thus far removed from the edu- cated elites who developed and promoted a modern Egyptian identity. Attempts to "Islamize"

54 Haarmann, "Regional Sentiment," 59-61. 55 Ibid., 61. 56 Ibid., 60.

57 Ibid., 56-57. 58 Lewis, History Remembered, 58.

THE PHARAONIC PAST IN MODERN EGYPTIAN NATIONALISM 189

Pharaonic monuments by such learned authori- ties as Idrisi were usually negative in approach; the monuments, which represented the pre- Islamic past, were acceptable only because of their associations with revered and pious Mus- lims who had tolerated their continued existence. The monuments should remain standing, to warn future generations and because they may possess a degree of magical power, but they were not in- spiring in themselves. The Pharaonic past did not offer a positive model for medieval (and later modern) Egyptian Muslims. Last of all, popular utilization of the Pharaonic past, by Muslims, was suspect because of its inaccurate nature. The Pharaonic past which some Egyptians tried to combine with their Islamic world view, was very distorted in nature, drawn as it was mostly from hostile sources such as the QurDan and folk traditions which had undergone major modifi- cations over the centuries. Neil Asher Silberman, who has written extensively on the nationalist use of archaeology, notes that traditional folk descriptions of a nation's history are currently considered suspect. Archaeologists all over the world, whether they be Israeli, Syrian, Greek or Turkish, are trained in broadly similar methods (or at least similar in comparison to non-archae- ological methods of observing the past). A new nation, if its claims are to be taken seriously by the world community, must construct a "modern history" using the common methods of modern scientific archaeology.59

Egyptian nationalists who wished to look to their ancient history for inspiration would have to start from scratch and would have to distance themselves from an Islamic identity with which the Pharaonic past could not really coexist. In doing so, however, they could cut themselves off from one of the strongest and most important elements of the Egyptian national psyche. They would also have to deal with foreign competi- tion, for as will be explained below, Europeans were already busy monopolizing the reconstruc- tion of the Egypt of the Pharaohs.

European Expropriation of the Egyptian Past

In 1798 Napoleon invaded Egypt accompanied by a large number of scientific experts. Some of these experts included students of ancient his- tory and of eastern languages and cultures. An attempt was made to examine and record Phara- onic monuments; this process culminated in the publication of the twenty-four volume Description de I'Egypte between 1809 and 1824. This work in- spired a European revival of Pharaonic art and architecture. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone, in 1799, led to the eventual decipherment of the ancient Egyptian language. Napoleon's expedi- tion and its scholarly component marked the beginning of a new epoch in how Europeans viewed Egypt and its past. Edward Said de- scribes the invasion as "the very model of a truly scientific appropriation of one culture by an- other, apparently stronger one."60 Since Napo- leon's time Europeans (and Americans) have systematically expropriated the Egyptian past, not only on a concrete level but on an ideologi- cal level.

On a concrete level, as noted above, Europe- ans made it difficult for Egyptians to study and recover their own country's past. Also, the French controlled the Egyptian Antiquities Service; other Europeans, including Howard Carter, held lesser positions in the service. Vast amounts of antiq- uities were exported to Europe and America. Mohammad Ali, who apparently only saw Egypt's antiquities as gifts with which to manipulate po- tentially powerful foreign visitors, allowed mer- chants, diplomats and even casual tourists to enter tombs and temples and to take souvenirs home with them.61 Early nineteenth century ad- venturers, like the Italian ex-circus performer Giovanni Battista Belzoni, armed with explosives, sledgehammers and muscle, looted tombs for various clients in the European diplomatic com- munity. A diplomatic post in Cairo, at the time, was widely seen as an opportunity for increas- ing one's wealth through the theft and export

59 Neil Asher Silberman, "Promised lands and chosen peoples: the politics and poetics of archaeological narrative," in Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology, edited by Philip L. Kohl and Clare Fawcett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 257.

60 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 42.

61 Brian Fagan, The Rape of the Nile: Tomb Robbers, Tourists and Archaeologists in Egypt (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975), 85.

190 JARCE XXXV (1998)

of antiquities.62 Later European visitors to the Nile were not as brazen as Belzoni and later Egyptian officials were not as accommodating as Muhammad Ali, but the plundering of Egypt's heritage has continued to the present day. A con- cern for science, for the archaeologically proper study of Egypt's material culture has modified the way in which artifacts are removed from the ground. But it is significant that up until 1922, and the controversies swirling around the dis- posal of the treasures of Tutankhamun, it was considered quite normal for Europeans, excavat- ing in Egypt, to demand and usually receive up to one half of a tomb's precious contents. These artifacts were needed, so argued many Europe- ans, to attract public interest and private funds with which to finance archaeological research.63 When such a generous division of finds was withdrawn, archaeological excavations in Egypt by Europeans began to taper off; foreign archae- ologists only began to return to Egypt in the late 1950's as part of the UNESCO project to save the monuments of Nubia from the rising floodwaters of the Nile caused by the construction of the Aswan High Dam.64 It seems difficult to attribute such actions to purely scientific motives; Europe- ans, even "Egyptologists," must still have been moved by a desire to possess "treasure," if only for the prestige its ownership would entail.

Europeans have certainly never been in the mood to return antiquities to Egypt. The Ros- setta Stone was taken from the French Gen- eral Menon by his British counterpart General Hutchinson in 1799; it was housed in the British Museum and it was only in 1973 that it was loaned to the Louvre for exhibition. As Brian Fagan, the author of a popular account on the history of Egyptology has remarked: "no one has ever thought of exhibiting it in Egypt."65 In

the early 1980's Egyptian officials sent out letters to thirty foreign museums requesting the return of artifacts. Of the thirty museums contacted, only two replied, apologizing for being unable to comply with the request.66

This cavalier attitude towards the physical re- covery of Egypt's past, that Europeans have the right to excavate, study and export Pharaonic remains however they see fit is rooted in an atti- tude that feels that, in the end, Egypt's past does not really belong to its present day inhabit- ants. Europeans have not just taken over the control of the recovery and reconstruction of the Pharaonic past on a physical level but have also done so on an ideological level. The an- thropologist and archaeological theorist Bruce Trigger has identified three main traditions in interpreting the material remains of the past: na- tionalist archaeology, colonial archaeology, and imperialist archaeology. Nationalist archaeology glorifies the past accomplishments of a particu- lar group, nation, or people. Many of the ar- chaeological traditions alluded to earlier in this paper, Israeli, Mexican, and indigenous Egyp- tian, fall within this pattern of studying and explaining the past. Colonial archaeology was carried out in countries where the native popu- lation was either totally overwhelmed by Euro- peans (large parts of the Western Hemisphere) or where the native population was subject to a long period of European domination. The dom- inant European class, who practiced archaeol- ogy in an exclusive manner, would have no clear historical ties to the past they were studying. The European power would be motivated to glorify their own past, while simultaneously belittling the history of their colonial subjects. Modern in- digenous people were compared to an earlier primitive level of development in the European past and were seen as incapable of achieving material advancement. Imperialist archaeology has been practiced by a small number of mod- ern states, who through the military, economic and political resources at their disposal, have been able to exercise a degree of hegemony over large areas of the globe. Such an archaeologi- cal tradition portrays an imperial state, such as Britain, the Soviet Union, or the United States,

62 Ibid., 97, passim. 63 Hoving, Tutankhamun, 65; Lacau, the Antiquities Direc- tor at the time of the Tutankhamun discovery, disagreed vehemently with his predecessor Maspero; Lacau felt that ar- chaeologists had "no rights" and should be permitted only those finds that the Antiquities Service were not interested in.

64 Wilson, Signs and Wonders, 194; for a more complete discussion of the efforts to save such monuments as the Tem- ple of Ramses at Abu Simbel from submersion see F. Glad- stone Bratton, A History of Egyptian Archaeology (London: Robert Hale, 1967), 257-80.

65 Fagan, Rape of the Nile, 81. 66 Ezzat, "Egypt's Stolen Past," 35-37.

THE PHARAONIC PAST IN MODERN EGYPTIAN NATIONALISM 191

as the logical culmination of world-wide evolu- tionary trends in human development.67

Western examination of the Egyptian past fell into the latter two categories. Foreign archae- ologists were not interested in the Pharaonic past as a component of the Egyptian past and sys- tematically attempted to sever any connections which could be made between the present Egyp- tian past and their ancestors. The term "Egyp- tology" itself, applied exclusively to the study of Pharaonic and Hellenistic Egyptian history, implied the separation of the ancient Egyptian past from subsequent Coptic and Islamic de- velopments.68 Western civilization was shown as the conclusion of trends which had begun in the ancient Near East; Europeans were either the actual or spiritual descendants of the world's first civilization.69 On its crudest level, the iden- tification of Westerners with ancient Egyptians was argued on racial grounds; Europeans and Egyptians were thought to belong to a com- mon "Hamitic" or "Mediterranean" race. Mem- bers of this race were thought to be identifiable by certain physical and cultural traits; cultural traits included a predisposition towards central- ized, efficient autocratic rule. Europeans were thought to have the innate right to rule lesser genetic stock. These racist theories thus not only allowed the West to bask in ancient Egyp- tian glory but also justified the whole imperial- ist project. In a further refinement, as rulership traits were considered intrinsically European any archaeological evidence of a strong bureaucra- tized state, by itself, could be interpreted as evidence of a Caucasian presence.70 Alternately, Western archaeology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century reconstructed a Near Eastern past which consisted of an endless series of ethnic invasions. The Victorian Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie, father of modern scien- tific Near Eastern archaeology, and an advocate of eugenics, assigned the distinct archaeological cultures he found in Egypt to successive con- quests by homogeneous and genetically superior

groups coming from abroad. Such groups would invigorate a culture in the short term, before succumbing to the cycle of degeneracy which made the invasion possible in the first place. Parallels with the European imperialist project, whereby the "backward" and "desolate" East was rescued by a forward looking West seemed obvi- ous to Petrie 's contemporaries.71

Racial reconstructions of the Egyptian past, have of course, fallen out of fashion. Modern scholars recognize that ancient peoples were complex entities made up of a diverse set of linguistic, cultural and physical characteristics, which often do not appear in the archaeological record.72 The Western claim on the "true heri- tage" of ancient Egypt has been forced, over the course of the century, to base itself on more sub- tle justifications. Ancient Egyptians, along with ancient Mesopotamians, were given the status of "honourary Westerners" and their achieve- ments were taught as part of Western civiliza- tion and world history courses.73 The process of diffusion, whereby cultural innovations such as writing, originating in the Near East spread to a still backward but highly creative Stone Age Eu- rope, was used, as a less obviously racist version of Petrie 's eugenic visions, to justify the imperi- alist project and explain why the country which had been ruled by the Pharaohs could so easily be dominated and conquered by Western power. Cultural advancements originated in an area of high culture (such as ancient Egypt via Myce- nean Greece) and spread to backward areas (like Britain); in such an area, exposed to successive waves of more technologically advanced invad- ers, such cultural advancements would reach their highest level of development. The apogee of culture (Britain) could, during the imperialist age of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, "return" its technological and cultural advantages to their source, the now backward East.74

67 Bruce Trigger, "Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist," in Man 19 (1984), 355-70.

68 Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 234. 9 Trigger, "Alternative Archaeologies," 365.

W. MacGaffey, "Concepts of Race in the Historiography of Northeast Africa," in Journal of African History 7 (1966) , 1-8.

71 Neil Asher Silberman, "Desolation and Restoration: The Impact of a Biblical Concept on Near Eastern Archaeol- ogy," in Biblical Archaeologist Ml 2 (1991), 80-81.

11 MacGaffey, "Concepts of Race," 14. Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 234. Christopher Chippindale, personal communication

quoted in Donald Fowler, "Uses of the Past: Archaeology in the Service of the State," in American Antiquity 52 (1987), 237.

192 JARCE XXXV (1998)

An alleged Western "guardianship" of the Egyptian past was also evoked as justification for wresting control of Pharaonic monuments and Pharaonic history from Egypt's indigenous pop- ulation. European "knowledge" of the Egyptian past was seen as just cause for their present subjugation and for a European monopoly on the study and creation of Egyptian history. Thus, Arthur James Balfour, in a 1910 reply to the Brit- ish Member of Parliament J. M. Robertson, who had asked what right Britain had to rule (and assume an aura of superiority) over Egyptians, replied: "We know the civilization of Egypt better than we know the civilization of any other coun- try. We know it further back; we know it more intimately; we know more about it."75 The state- ment recalls the earlier quoted remark that Lacau made to Ahmad Kamal; Egypt's ignorance of its own past allowed or forced the West to expropriate it as its own. Left to their own de- vices, Egyptians would neglect or even destroy the material remains of the Pharaonic past. Pharaonic monuments would have to be pro- tected as part of the "world's cultural heritage" despite Egyptian ignorance and indifference. Mention has already been made of the Rocke- feller museum project and frequent criticism is leveled against Egyptian officials for the pres- ent condition of the museum in Cairo. It is sel- dom explained why Western control of Egyptian antiquities would produce better results than Western financial aid to Egyptian controlled in- stitutions; regional museums in Egypt, such as that at Luxor, have shown few of the problems of overcrowding and faulty conservation associ- ated with the venerable Cairo institution.76

It has often been said that the West would have to excavate the archaeological remains of Egypt (and other developing countries) in order to protect them from tomb robbers.77 It is true that a virtual industry of tomb robbing, domi- nated by certain families of professional thieves, existed in the villages near the Valley of the Kings

during the nineteenth century.78 But such loot- ing began well before the arrival of concerned European scientists or even before the disap- pearance of the Pharaohs. Egyptologist John Wilson describes how during the Twentieth Dy- nasty (1200-1090 B.C.) teams of organized tomb robbers, with bribed temple priests and court officials on their "payroll", found nothing wrong with looting the tombs of Pharaohs, whom Egyp- tian religion still regarded as gods.79 Much of what passed for "archaeology" in the nineteenth century was probably almost as destructive to long undisturbed artifacts as profit-motivated looting.80 It is recognized by archaeologists to- day that current "cutting edge" scientific meth- ods may appear to be little more than reckless vandalism to later generations; at least some of the monuments of Egypt might be better left undisturbed for study by future scholars rather than being subjected to the tender mercies of scientific examination or the enthusiastic atten- tion of tourists.

It may indeed be valid to identify the Phara- onic past as belonging to the entire world rather than a single country, but it does seem suspi- cious that this "world heritage" is deemed too important to be left in the hands of non-Euro- pean nations. Certainly many developing nations recognize that they too play a role in protect- ing the world's common heritage. King Hussain of Jordan, describing his country's efforts to conserve cultural resources, notes: "We are care- takers of a legacy that belongs not only to us, but to the world."81 Developing nations may lack the expertise to adequately preserve or examine their own pasts, but one must question whether such a state of affairs, and Western advantages in these areas, give the West the right to put forth a claim over the Pharaohs. As an indige- nous Egyptology develops and as more conser- vation funds are placed in Egyptian hands, it is reasonable to assume that eventually "knowl- edge" will no longer give the West an ideological monopoly over the Egyptian past.

75 Said, Orientalism, 32. 76 Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 246.

Jane Hubert, "A proper place for the dead: a critical re- view of the 'reburial' issue," in Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions, edited by Robert Layton (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 137.

78 Hoving, Tutankhamun, 44. 79 Wilson, The Culture of Ancient Egypt, 282-88. 80 Bratton, A History of Egyptian Archaeology, 77. 81

Philip J. King, American Archaeology in the Mideast: A His-

tory of the American Schools of Oriental Research (Philadelphia: The American Schools of Oriental Research, 1983), 279.

THE PHARAONIC PAST IN MODERN EGYPTIAN NATIONALISM 193

The Wrong Past

Chairman Mao once observed that "the past should serve the present" and it seems clear that the past is a useful tool (if not a weapon) for any new state or regime as it tries to transform the present.82 However, it also seems clear that not all pasts are equal; a nation has a choice of what interpretations of its past it wishes to emphasis and what views of its history it wishes to ignore. Beyond such a flexibility in interpretation, a nation can either ignore or glorify whole eras of its past. Thus, France may choose to focus on periods of greatness, like the reign of Napoleon, while trying to underplay the "Frenchness" of such periods of national shame as the Vichy cooperation with the Nazis. In post-war Italy, Imperial Rome, whose symbols were extensively used by the Fascists, was looked upon with em- barrassment, while the achievements of the pre- Roman Etruscans were a source of national pride. Long years in which Greeks and Turks cooperated, as subjects of the Ottoman Empire are ignored in favor of more recent conflicts. This selection from a "palette of pasts" need not really be justified in a systematic and scholarly manner. It is not particularly relevant to a na- tion trying to reconstruct an inspiring past that the author of the Code Napoleon tried to aggres- sively dominate neighboring countries, nor that there are moral problems, to say the least, in failing to account for French collaboration with the Nazis, especially when collaborators still hold public office. A nation may acknowledge, in scholarly discourse, that it has not always acted in a saintly manner, but for purposes of nation building it is always better to stress the positive. Thus, in a nation's history, its people will have always consisted of either heroes or innocent victims, never villains. Inhabitants of a nation who have acted in a less than exem- plary manner can be written off as aberrations, as somehow outside the national mission. Thus modern Egypt, if it is at all like other nations, has a considerable degree of maneuverability in choosing its past and Pharaonic Egypt seems simply to be the "wrong past." More than any other reason, certain problematic features of

the Pharaonic past can account for its failure to become an integral part of the Egyptian national project.

As has been explained above, Islam has been generally hostile to the Pharaonic past. Europe- ans have also quelled Egyptian interest in ancient Egyptian history, while claiming this history for themselves. Such an expropriation can certainly no longer be justified on grounds of superior Western expertise and certainly not on any grounds of alleged cultural or racial affinity. Even if the Pharaonic past really does belong to the world, Egyptians also belong to the world community and the fact that they presently re- side in the Nile Valley which produced Phara- onic civilization probably gives them an edge over others in deciding how this civilization should be examined and utilized today.83 But it must be admitted that even in reclaiming their ancient past Egyptians have not always been very enthu- siastic in making it an inseparable part of their present. Such controversies as those surround- ing the tomb of Tutankhamun and the Rocke- feller Museum appear to make of the Pharaonic past merely a weapon to be used against foreign interference in Egyptian internal affairs. In the Tutankhamun affair what appears, at least at first glance, to be the issue is not the fate of the burial place of an Egyptian ruler of the distant past, but the arrogant manner in which foreign archaeologists dealt with the officials and citizens of a newly independent state. The controversy, coming at a critical time of Egypt's develop- ment, could just as well have been triggered by any manner of incident as long as it symbol- ized continued British domination of the coun- try. Despite the short-lived political capital the Wafd Party gained from their confrontation with

82 Mao's quote is cited in Fowler, "Uses of the Past," 238.

83 The modern inhabitants of Egypt certainly do have a marked physical resemblance to the people portrayed on the wall paintings of Pharaonic tombs, but racial claims seem a weak basis for a nation's history no matter who makes them; the rights of modern Egyptians to see themselves as the his- torical heirs of the Pharaohs are probably more firmly based on the fact that they are the current indigenous inhabitants of the country, who should not have to tolerate the domination of their country by foreigners whose historical claims are even shakier, especially if it is done in the name of preserv- ing the past.

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Howard Carter, there was really little sustained effort to transform this conflict into a long- lasting set of nationalistic symbols. As has been shown above, attempts by such groups as Young Egypt to draw on the legacy of the Pharaohs met with little success in the face of rising Pan-Arab and Pan-Islamic sentiments. But the Pharaonic past fell short in several other areas, making it a less than ideal choice for a past which Egyp- tian nationalists could call on their countrymen to emulate.

Ahmad Hassan al-Zayyat, an al-Azhar educated Egyptian and formerly a lecturer in Arabic liter- ature in Baghdad, writing in his cultural jour- nal al-Risala in 1934, raised several objections to Pharaonism from a pan-Arab and pan-Islamic point of view. He notes that there is no clear continuity in culture and attitude between an- cient and modern Egypt; no Pharaonic litera- ture, which could form the core of a modern Egyptian culture has survived. Egypt of the Pha- raohs was an unjust, class oriented and oppres- sive monarchy dominated by the whip. Language determines a community's identity; Egyptians are Arabs because they speak Arabic. Remote Phara- onic descent is not relevant; Egypt can in the end only be a chapter in the book of Arab glory.84 Several of these objections are worth comment- ing on. Ancient Pharaonic Egypt was certainly remote in time and character from modern Arab Egypt, especially in comparison with other possi- ble points of national reference, such as Islam or Arabism. The pyramids at Giza, the most recog- nizable symbol of the Pharaonic past, were built almost five thousand years ago; in comparison Islam and the Arab language came to Egypt less than fourteen hundred years ago. Pharaonic cul- ture itself had for the most part already vanished when Muslim Arab armies conquered Egypt in the 640's; Egypt's incorporation into the Helle- nistic world and the rise of a hostile Christianity had already basically killed Pharaonic civilization. The closure by the emperor Justinian (527-565) of the Temple of Isis at Philae, which involved the destruction of the statue of the goddess and the imprisonment of her priests marked the formal end of ancient Egyptian religion.85 The

complex code of Egyptian thought and religious belief had already been lost. Monuments and icons were meaningless to the observer.86 While language does not always determine one's iden- tity, many separate and even hostile nations share a common language; it must certainly be noted that the ancient Egyptian language is a dead one with virtually no impact on Egypt's modern population. A hieroglyphic revival does not seem to be anywhere in sight. Ancient Pharaonic civilization was, like all the other civilizations of the ancient Near East, highly stratified in na- ture. Modern research has certainly questioned whether it was the "slave state" popularly imag- ined in both the West and the Islamic world.87 But in using history for nationalistic purposes it is perception that counts. If the Pharaohs are perceived as tyrants, then they cannot serve as national role models, even if such a perception is over-simplified and anachronistic. And the remains of the Pharaonic past, visible to the lay public, seem to confirm such prejudices. They consist of tombs, palaces and temples, the relics of a death-obsessed, aristocratic, pagan society. More sophisticated models of Egyptian history, developed by mainly foreign scholars, remain for the most part ignored.

The Pharaonic past is for the most part a con- structed entity. Standing monuments had to be supplemented by the discovery of tombs and the decipherment of a long lost hieroglyphic method of writing. Only then could it be pre- sented to the Egyptian public as a possible pe- riod of history in which they could take pride. For much of the century, as has been shown above, this process of discovery remained an ex- clusively European enterprise. Charles Wendell, speaking on the Egyptian national identity, feels that the Pharaonic ideal could not have origi- nated in Egypt without the direct inspiration

84 Walker, "The Contribution," 142-43. 85 Wilson, Signs and Wonders, 7.

86 Barry Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization

(London: Routledge, 1993), 2. 8 Wilson describes the ancient Egyptians as having a

pragmatic, basically optimistic culture; there was probably some coercion in the building of the pyramids, but genuine religious devotion to the Pharaohs must also be taken into account, the Pharaoh, after all was considered a living god, responsible for ensuring the unchanging cycles of life. John Wilson, The Culture of Ancient Egypt, 83-84, 110.

THE PHARAONIC PAST IN MODERN EGYPTIAN NATIONALISM 195

of Europe.88 It may be understandable then that interest in the distant Egyptian past has re- mained largely confined to local Westernized elites.89 Wendell notes that the Pharaonic past could only be used to "stoke the fires of national- ism" if it was coupled with a call for the defense of the watan or homeland. Pharaonic heritage in itself has not become a serious part of the popular Egyptian consciousness, remaining, in Wendell's words, "an object of sentiment and nostalgia for a few intellectuals."90

Attempts to put forward a Pharaonic identity for Egypt, especially in the early part of the cen- tury, have an artificial quality. They appear awk- wardly grafted to a project of making Egypt more "Mediterranean" or more "European". Such ap- peals would seem to have little chance of reach- ing a larger, mostly Muslim, population. Also, a call to emulate the West would be expected to stand or fall on its own merits, rather than as part of a clumsy promotion of a Pharaonic past with which most Egyptians have refused to iden- tify themselves.

Possible associations between the Pharaonic past and Egypt's Coptic minority also make this era a problematic one for Egyptian nationalists, especially ones trying to promote a united na- tion. The Copts, as Christians adamantly oppos- ing paganism, had traditionally been as opposed to the Pharaonic past as their Muslim neigh- bors, defacing many temples and turning some of them into churches. In the nineteenth cen- tury, in a more nationalistic atmosphere, they had begun to identify the Pharaohs as their an- cestors. The liturgical Coptic language was re- lated to the final stages of the ancient Egyptian language and Copts dominated the early days of local Egyptology.91 The Copts could, through their language and the fact that they had inhab-

ited Egypt before the Arab conquest, consider themselves the real descendants of the Pharaohs, a kind of pure Egyptian aristocracy somehow superior to their Muslim fellow citizens. Such a concept would probably threaten the develop- ment of cross confessional bonds of citizenship and would certainly cause problems for those Egyptians who saw Egypt as a basically Islamic nation.92

Conclusion: The Pharaonic Past - Wrong for Egyptians, but maybe not for Foreigners

The Pharaonic past then is a problematic one for Egyptian nationalists to employ. Popular stereotypes of it are unattractive. Most Egyp- tians are indifferent, if not hostile to it. It is a distant, dead past with few connections to the present; the religion of the majority of Egypt's population portrays it as an age of paganistic ignorance. It is associated with a marginalized minority and with attempts at foreign domina- tion. In addition, possessing this past may, in the long run, cost the nation money. In his analysis of the world wide use of archaeological research, Neil Silberman proposes an addition to Trigger's list of archaeological traditions: "touristic archae- ology"; archaeological research conducted not for ideological or scholarly reasons but simply as an end to attract foreign visitors and their money. He gives as an example the Israeli site of Beth Shean (Hellenistic Nesa-Scythopolis), located near the town of the same name and in a region of high unemployment; almost the en- tire ancient city center has been uncovered with the aid of untrained workers from the local la- bor exchange. Silberman feels that in the rush for the tourist dollar a nation will become a "parody of itself"; archaeological sites will start to reflect what the tourist wants to see rather than historical reality. Negative elements of the past, inequality, brutality, injustice and evil, will be largely ignored in the presentation of monu- ments and in the design of museums, as these elements do not attract revenue.93 Government officials might be tempted to identify the na- tion's struggle to exert control over its own past

88 Charles Wendell, The Evolution of the Egyptian National

Image: From its Origins to Ahmad Lufti al-Sayyid (Berkeley: Uni-

versity of California Press, 1972) 166. 89 Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 246. 90 Wendell, "The Evolution," 163-64. 91 In the 1950's, however, Coptic participation in the

study of the Egyptian past declined dramatically; by 1975 only one of the twenty teachers in the Faculty of Archaeol- ogy of the University of Cairo was a Copt. Reid, "Indigenous Egyptology," 242; "Kibt," in The Encyclopedia of Islam: First Edi- tion, Volume II (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1927), 990.

92 Charles Wendell, The Evolution, 163. 93 Silberman, "The Politics and Poetics," 258-61.

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as one of the elements to which foreigners might react negatively. In Egypt, there might be a temptation to play up the "Victorian archae- ology" of aristocratic pith-helmeted Egyptolo- gists and to downplay the exclusiveness of Egypt's past. Egypt's government, and other shapers of national identity, might find that the Pharaonic past, having little positive effect on the mobili- zation of the Egyptian people, would at the least fulfill a monetary function if handed over to the foreign visitors who appear to have more inter- est in it. Mubarak's recent lavish staging of the

opera Aida at Luxor, would seem to point to such a trend. If this is indeed the case it may mark a final abandonment of attempts to con- vince Egyptians that their nation should try to imitate the Pharaohs and an acknowledgment that the Pharaonic past is in effect a foreign one to most of the nation's population; a popular Egyptian identity must, in the end, be sought elsewhere.

McGill Institute of Islamic Studies Montreal