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A sampling of all things Egypt.
The 13th-century dome and the mosque underwent a years-long restoration process
Egypt's tourism and antiquities minister inaugurated the newly restored dome of the Imam Al Shafi'i Mosque in Old Cairo on Sunday in celebration of World Heritage Day.
A prominent Ayyubid landmark of Islamic Cairo, the Imam Al Shafi'i mosque reopened in November after a three-year renovation.
The dome, which predates the mosque by a few centuries, required more extensive work.
The contract for the extensive restoration of the mosque and the dome, a joint effort by the ministries of tourism and awqaf, or religious endowments, was awarded to the state-owned Arab Contractors Company.
Tourism Minister Khaled El Anany said his ministry oversaw the decorative and cultural restoration while the Awqaf Ministry provided the funding.
The work on the mosque alone cost 13 million Egyptian pounds ($829,000), the Tourism Ministry said.
The dome suffered a great deal of wear and tear over the years because of its location in a densely populated and badly polluted area of Cairo.
Both the interior and exterior of the dome were restored under the supervision of tourism ministry experts in Islamic culture and architecture.
The work was carried by a large crew of technicians working with materials including wood, stucco, coloured marble and metal.
A new drainage system was installed to prevent water damage to the structure, and a new lighting system was added for decorative purposes.
The structural work included treating many cracks in the walls, floors and ceilings, and the replacement of fixtures on the dome, such as its lead cladding, because they were beyond repair.
The dome is inscribed with Quranic text including excerpts from Ayat Al Kursi (Verse of the Throne), one of the holiest verses in the Islamic faith.
Restoration of the inscriptions had to be handled with care because of the age of the structure.
The mosque is named after one of the most important imams of Sunni Islam, Muhammad ibn Idris Al Shafi'i, whose remains are housed in a mausoleum at the dome.
An Islamic scholar and theologian, Al Shafi'i was the first contributor to the principles of Islamic jurisprudence and the founder of the Shafi'i school, or madhab, one of the four most important schools of thought on Islamic law.
Al Shafi'i lived in the 8th and 9th centuries, and the dome was built in 1212 by the Ayyubid Sultan Al Kamil in his honour.
The mosque's construction came a few centuries later during the reign of Khedive Tawfiq in 1892.
The mosque's facelift was a cornerstone of the government's renovation for a large section of Cairo for the opening of the nearby National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation this month.
The opening was marked by the transfer of 22 royal mummies to its halls from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square in a grand parade.
The museum is on the banks of the Ain Al Sira lake, which was an entirely different space a few years ago when it was still inhabited by thousands of Cairo's poorest.The lake has received one of the most intensive makeovers the Egyptian capital has seen in years, turning it into a clean space with restaurants, cafes, artisanal stores and a walkway.
Mr El Anany has been one of the most outspoken voices for the renovation of Cairo's Islamic and Coptic districts, most of which are in Old Cairo, also known as Historic Cairo.
He said one of his ministry's main goals is to highlight Egypt's non-pharaonic heritage sites, which are often overlooked by tourists eager to visit the pyramids and other ancient attractions for which the country is better known.
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![]() The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter, and the Near Eastern Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley, invite you to attend a virtual lecture by Dr. Francesco Tiradritti, Director, Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor The Life and Deeds of Luigi Vassalli: Painter, Patriot and Egyptologist Zoom Lecture. A registration link will be automatically sent to ARCE-NC members. Non-members may request a registration link by sending email with your name and email address to arcencZoom@gmail.com. Attendance is limited, so non-members, please send any registration requests no later than April 30. Glenn Meyer Publicity Director About the Lecture: ![]() Luigi Vassalli (photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons) Luigi Vassalli was born in 1812 in Milan. In 1828 he enrolled at the Brera Academy and around this period he joined the Mazzinian activism but after a failed conspiracy he was sentenced to death, only to be pardoned but exiled. He moved in several places across Europe and later he traveled to Egypt where he began working for the local government. In 1848 Vassalli returned to his homeland to join the revolutionary movements against the Austrian Empire, but after the failure he returned to Egypt where he became a portrait painter and an archaeological guide for wealthy foreigners. Around 1858 he was appointed Inspector of excavations by the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, who was Director of Antiquities at this time. Vassalli assisted in excavations at Giza and Saqqara until 1860, when he returned home to give his contribution to the Expedition of the Thousand led by Giuseppe Garibaldi. After the victory he was appointed First Class Conservator at the Naples National Archaeological Museum; however, the office was soon abolished by the still pro-Borbonic museum management and Vassalli again came back to Cairo. In Egypt he made several archaeological explorations in many sites such as Tanis, Saqqara, Dendera and Edfu from 1861 to 1868. He sent many mummy remains to the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale of Milan and in 1871 he made around 150 casts from monuments exhibited in the Bulaq Museum which he brought to Florence with him. During his short stay here the Italian government asked him to inspect many Egyptian collections in Italy, after which he returned to his duties in Cairo. Still in 1871, along with Mariette he discovered the mastaba of Nefermaat at Meidum, which is well known for the famous scene commonly referred as the "Meidum geese". Vassalli carefully removed the whole scene from the tomb wall and reassembled it inside the Bulaq Museum. This fact sparked a controversy over a century later in 2015, when the Egyptologist Francesco Tiradritti suggested that the Meidum geese scene is a 19th-century forgery possibly made by Vassalli himself, a claim disputed by Egyptian authorities, among them Zahi Hawass. After Mariette's death in 1881, Vassalli became interim director until the installation of Gaston Maspero. He retired in 1884 and returned to Milan and then to Rome, where he committed suicide on June 13, 1887. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Vassalli About the Speaker: ![]() Dr. Francesco Tiradritti (Photo from francetvinfo.fr)
Dr. Tiradritti has taken part in excavations in Italy, in the Sudan and at a several sites in Egypt – including the Tomb of Sheshonq (TT 27) and at Gebelein. He has worked for many years as consulting Egyptologist at the Civiche Raccolte Archeologiche of Milan. Additionally he has taught Egyptology in Enna, Naples, Foggia, Turin and at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. In 2004-2005 Dr. Tiradritti occupied the Dorothy K. Hohenberg Chair of Excellence in History of Art at the University of Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee. In 2013 he was scholar at the Getty Research Institute. He has been a member of the commission for the feasibility study of the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza and for the renovation project of the Egyptian Museum in Turin. He has organized and worked on more than twenty exhibitions on various aspects of ancient Egyptian civilization in Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Czech Republic and in Egypt. He is the author of Ancient Egypt: Art, Architecture and History, published in 2002 in Italian, English, Spanish, & Chinese, and Egyptian Wall Paintings, published in 2008 in Italian, French, German, & English. Dr. Tiradritti is also the editor of Egyptian Treasures from the Egyptian Museum of Cairo, published in 1999 and translated into thirteen languages between 1998 and 2000. He has authored several scientific publications on Egyptology and Sudanese archaeology, and regularly writes for "The Art Newspaper" and "Archeologia Viva". Dr. Tiradritti's research focuses primarily on a semantic approach to archaeology, history of art and the culture of ancient Egypt. About ARCE-NC:
For more information, please visit https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE/, https://arce-nc.org/, https://twitter.com/ARCENCPostings, or https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://www.arce.org/become-arce-member and select "Berkeley, CA" as your chapter when you sign up. |
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About to turn 93 years old, she is as vibrant on the page as ever. In "Antiquities," the latest of her many books, Ozick employs her virtuosic literary style to weave an enigmatic tale about the ephemeral nature of memory and the transience of life. The plot's flirtation with the supernatural will remind readers of her most celebrated stories, including "The Pagan Rabbi," "The Shawl" and "The Puttermesser Papers." So will central themes such as the enduring sting of antisemitism and the push-pull between the sacred and the sinful. And then there is her longtime fixation on Henry James, to whom she pays tribute here by prominently placing his portrait on a chapel wall.
In other words, "Antiquities" is vintage Cynthia Ozick. But whether you're new to her work or a longtime fan, you'll find plenty to entertain as well as to astonish.
Her title is a wry double entendre, referring at once to the elderly characters she depicts and to the collection of Egyptian archaeological artifacts almost obsessively guarded by the novella's narrator, Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie. The year is 1949 and Petrie, a grumpy widower long retired from his law practice and only sporadically in touch with his son, takes solace in writing his memoirs, tapping out the pages between naps on an old Remington typewriter as broken-down as he is.
In one way, at least, his life seems to have come full circle. The once imposing but long dilapidated Westchester building where he now lives is where he had resided in his youth, except that at that time it was the Temple Academy for Boys, a British-styled boarding school to which his parents had packed him off at an early age. The school itself had closed down years before, but more recently it had been converted into a makeshift retirement home for the seven surviving school trustees, all of them alums of long acquaintance.
Petrie prides himself on being the youngest and least infirm among them, but they all share the predicament of having little purpose left in life and no place else to go. Ozick depicts these Old Boys-turned-oldsters as having changed little over the decades from their callow, snobbish boyhood selves. Petrie is still the shunned outsider and chosen target for spiteful pranks. And the trustees who gleefully conspire in old age to gum up the keys of Petrie's cherished typewriter seem unaltered from the supercilious, eager-to-humiliate childhood chums of long ago.
This is the backdrop against which Petrie sets out to reveal in his memoir the uncanny school experience that marked him for life. Ozick simultaneously builds suspense and provides comic relief by having the absent-minded Petrie repeatedly begin to spill the beans, then suddenly meander away to another topic. In these chatty interludes, he lets slip how deeply he cared for his intimate companion and former secretary, Miss Margaret Stimmer. He ruminates about his emotionally distant mother and his father's abrupt and never explained decision to abandon his family and join his distant cousin, the Egyptologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (a real-life British archaeologist, 1853-1942, whose photograph appears as the book's frontispiece) on an excavation on the banks of the Nile River near Elephantine Island. Ozick's narrator (who is fictional, like his father) also details the mysterious Egyptian religious relics that had passed to him from his father upon his premature death, including female fertility figures and a statuette of a long-beaked stork, an animal he later learns was associated with Egypt's ancient deities.
And always he returns to the elusive schoolmate who became the object of his 10-year-old infatuation and source of an underlying lifelong emotional ache, Ben-Zion Elefantin. In a school culture steeped in antisemitism, new student Elefantin, with his red hair, curious foreign accent and Jewish-sounding name, becomes the automatic laughingstock for every pupil except for Petrie, who himself is ostracized simply for trying to befriend him.
They bond over games of chess, during which Elefantin cryptically explains that though he was born in Egypt, he is not Egyptian, and though people assume he is Jewish, his ancestry does not derive from the ancient Israelites. Rather, his heritage is that of the ancient Jewish community from Egypt's Elephantine Island. For Petrie, the coincidence of Elefantin's family home being the same place as the source of his father's artifacts acts like a magic potion, and what happens next leaves him wondering if he has hallucinated everything.
Has he? Petrie repeatedly refers to Elefantin as an apparition, a revenant, an illusion. Was Elefantin merely a dream inspired by Petrie's father's antiquities? From the 1880s on, archaeological digs like those Petrie's father and his distant cousin participated in did indeed discover the remains of a temple, papyrus scrolls and other evidence proving the presence of a previously unknown 5th-century BCE Jewish community on Egypt's Elephantine Island. But that community had long since vanished, making Elefantin's story, if not his very existence, fantastical. Ozick leaves it to the reader to decide the truth of Petrie's encounter with Elefantin and his elusive ancient faith. Indisputable is Ozick's exquisite artistry in rendering yet another resonant and unsettling tale.
Diane Cole is book columnist for the Psychotherapy Networker and the author of the memoir "After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges."
By Cynthia Ozick
Knopf. 192 pages. $21.
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CAIRO — Artists and social media activists started using an Arabic hashtag April 6 saying "Let's watch before we judge" in support of the makers of the series of "El-Malek" ("The King"), after production company United Media Services said it is suspending the series following criticism over alleged historical inaccuracies.
On April 4, United Media Services suspended filming and a committee will review the series' historical accuracy. The series will not be shown during the major TV season of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which began April 13.
The trailer for "El-Malek," which tells the story of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ahmose I, first aired on March 31. It was immediately bombarded with criticism on social media, over alleged historical inaccuracies concerning the characters' appearance, including wardrobe and accessories.
Archeologists including Egypt's former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs Zahi Hawass joined the outcry against the series. He said in press statements that Egyptian actor Amr Youssef was not the right choice to play Ahmose I because Youssef is blond and the ancient king had dark skin with Upper Egyptian features. Hawass also said that Youssef's thick beard as well as some of the costumes were not true to the Pharaonic period, during which ancient Egyptians were clean-shaven and wore white clothing made from linen.
Mounia Fathallah, costume designer for "El-Malek," said in a press statement March 31 that the series is a dramatization, not a documentary. She pointed out that the series, which is based on Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz' novel "Thebes at War," tells of the struggle of ancient Egyptians and their army, led by Ahmose I, against the Hyksos people. She added that some imagination and creativity were necessary because there is very little evidence of how the Hyksos dressed and lived.
Muhammed Adly, critic and scriptwriter, told Al-Monitor that he preferred the series to be shown as it is for it would have been an opportunity for its cast and crew to have the most accurate impression about the audiences' feedback and to accurately identify the mistakes of the series, especially that it is the first trial for the Egyptian drama sector to make a war historical series. According to Adly, the Egyptian experience in that field is limited compared to international cinema and drama makers who started introducing those types of drama since the sixties, "we shouldn't expect the first trial to be free of mistakes" he added.
He expected for "El-Malek" to be among the most successful series during the season, had it been shown, despite the historical mistakes and criticism, pointing out that there are two schools in executing epic and historical series; the first school depends on adapting characters and environment in a realistic way that is close to the real features and body shapes of characters and to the designs of costumes and accessories. The second school prioritizes the popularity and the talents of some stars, even if they do not necessarily fit the characters, they are familiar actors that audiences like and are accustomed to seeing.
Elizabeth Taylor played the role of Cleopatra, but some believe that statues of Cleopatra and her portrait on coins suggest that she was overweight.
In "Gladiator," American actor Joaquin Phoenix portrayed Emperor Commodus without the bushy beard that the statues of the Emperor bear. Also, the statues exhibited in the film were unpainted, while Roman statues were often painted. Today's audiences are used to seeing the ancient statues as white because the paint wears off through the passage of time.
"For me, the first school is the correct one, however, 'El-Malek' can be shown as a series that belongs to the second school, especially if Yousef's bearded appearance is justified by some circumstances like Ahmos staying in war camps for months under siege, or if he was trying to masquerade, with a note that the events of the series are inspired by a true story with a fictional treatment" he added.
Egyptian actor and former tour guide Tamer Farag told Al-Monitor that it is not formalism to have the characters playing ancient Egyptians in El-Malek series appear without beards. He explained that portraying ancient Egyptians as clean-shaven is linked to Egyptian identity and Egyptian archeologists and historians have used the detail to rebuff Israeli claims that Egyptian Jews were the builders. The inscriptions on the Egyptian temples' walls show that the pyramid builders shaved their heads and faces, and the feature distinguished them from the Jews who later settled in Egypt, he added.
Alaa Abdel Aziz, a professor of egyptology at Fayoum University, told Al-Monitor, "Even though we accept the lack of historical resources on the Hyksos as well as the dramatic requirements of look and context, there are still other historical inaccuracies. These inaccuracies point to the production's lack of research. For instance, Egypt's King Seqenenre Tao appears wearing a red crown, though the king wore a red and white crown back then. And a Hyksos queen appeared wearing a gold necklace that was designed for Pharaonic Queen Ahhotep I following the expulsion of the Hyksos."
An art critic who declined to be named told Al-Monitor that the series was expected to face the same criticism regardless of the production company behind it. However, the source pointed out that few critics and social media activists were subjective with their criticism because they adopted a political agenda that considers United Media Services a monopolistic entity, despite the many production companies that are participating in shows this Ramadan season. The source did note that United Media Services has the highest number of productions as it has significant budget and capital.
The critic said that the company's "huge budget" is part of the reason United Media Services is able to postpone the showing of the series, since smaller companies could not bear the significant loss incurred by a delay and re-filming costs.
Film critic Magda Khairallah disapproves of the suspension, while she also objects to the series' content. She told Al-Monitor that halting the filming negatively affects the film industry, as the series is the biggest production of the year.
The costuming and set dressing budget alone exceeded 20 million Egyptian pounds ($1.27 million), said series actor Bassel Alzaro. The series is said to have employed over 1,000 people.
Khairallah added that it is possible to screen the series as is now by adding a disclaimer saying that the scenes are fictional recreations.
Prominent Egyptian actor Salah Abdullah tweeted April 3 that the public was too quick to criticize "El-Malek." The series could be based on fiction or a vision mixing the present with the past, which will not require historical accuracy, he said.
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CAIRO—Speculating that Egyptians began stacking themselves into triangular structures far earlier than previously thought, professors at Cairo University announced Friday that they had unearthed skeletal remains of the first human pyramid. "While little is known about the third dynasty of Ancient Egypt, we now believe King Djoser ordered the construction of a massive, technically difficult human pyramid by over a dozen citizens expertly crouching on top of one another," said lead researcher Dr. Nour al-Busiri, adding that the nearly 5,000-year-old structure, which was found along the West Bank of the Nile river, featured the bones of servants at the bottom, family members in the middle, and finally, the deceased Pharaoh cheering wildly at the top. "While we have unearthed several human pyramids from the Old Kingdom under King Sneferu, we now believe Egyptians were likely experimenting with shoulder stands and basket tosses as early as 2780 B.C. Frankly, this incredible discovery totally reshapes the way we think of early Egyptians and the way they mourned for, and immortalized, the deceased." At press time, Dr. al-Busiri clarified that while conspiracy theorists were spreading vicious rumors, there was no evidence that extraterrestrials had any hand in the elaborate, multi-layered human cheer formations.
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The tiny inscribed pottery shard unearthed at Lachish dates to 3,500 years ago and is the oldest text from the Southern Levant to use alphabetic writing, rather than pictographic, archaeologists say
Archaeologists digging in the ancient Canaanite settlement of Lachish have unearthed a 3,500 year old pottery shard inscribed with what they believe is the oldest text found in Israel that was written using an alphabetic script. Earlier Canaanite texts are known, but they were written using hieroglyphs or cuneiform characters.
The discovery of the alphabetic writing fills a gap in the early history of a script that apparently was developed by Canaanite migrants in ancient Egypt. From the Levant, the writing system would eventually spread around the world, becoming the most commonly used writing system to this day.
Back in Lachish, the tiny shard is the remnant of a clay pot that had been imported from Cyprus and written on using ink in Canaan. Measuring just 4 by 3.5 centimeters, the fragment contains a handful of characters spread over two lines. It was discovered in 2018 by an Austrian expedition digging at Lachish and was published Thursday in the journal Antiquity.
While experts are still struggling to decipher the short text (more on that below), they are confident it can be dated to around 1450 B.C.E, at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. This provides researchers with a "missing link" in the history of the alphabet, connecting earlier alphabetic inscriptions found in Egypt and Sinai to later texts unearthed in Canaan, says Felix Hoflmayer, a researcher from the Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.During the subsequent Iron Age, this proto-Canaanite alphabet would develop into the writing systems used by the peoples of the Levant. The ancient Israelites would use it to pen the Hebrew Bible, while the Phoenician version of the script would be spread by merchants across the Mediterranean, to Greece and then Rome – eventually becoming the Latin alphabet that you are reading at this very moment.
When hieroglyphics confuse
But the origins of the alphabet are still shrouded in mystery. The earliest examples of alphabetic writing were found scribbled on rocks at Wadi el-Hol, in Egypt's Western desert, and at Serabit el-Khadim, an ancient Egyptian turquoise mining operation in the southern Sinai, Hoflmayer explains. These so-called Proto-Sinaitic texts date to the 19th or 18th centuries B.C.E., and scholars generally believe they were written by Canaanite workers or slaves who were living in Egypt, almost 4,000 years ago. Unschooled in the complex pictograms of Egypt's writing system, they adopted some hieroglyphs to represent the sounds of their own Semitic language.
For example, the Egyptian hieroglyph for "house" – "bayt" in both Hebrew and ancient Canaanite – was repurposed to represent the phoneme "B".
One big question for scholars is when and how this early Semitic alphabetic script made its way back from Egypt into Canaan. The earliest securely dated alphabetic inscriptions in the Levant go back, at most, to the 12th or 13th centuries B.C.E. – about half a millennium after their Proto-Sinaitic predecessors.
That's why the newly discovered text from Lachish is so important. "It closes the gap between the early alphabetic writing in Sinai and later texts in the Southern Levant," Hoflmayer tells Haaretz.
There are actually a few other Levantine inscriptions, including one found on a dagger unearthed at Lachish, which may be from a slightly earlier time, but experts are divided on the dating of these texts and whether they truly represent alphabetical writing, he says.
In contrast, the Lachish shard was securely placed in the mid 15th century B.C.E. by radiocarbon dating organic materials that were found in the same archaeological layer as the inscription. Unearthed in a large building that was part of Lachish's Late Bronze Age fortifications, the fragment was once part of a decorated ceramic bowl imported from Cyprus, Hoflmayer and colleagues write in the Antiquity article.
This is not unusual, as during the Bronze Age Lachish was a major town mentioned in ancient Egyptian records. Located midway between Jerusalem and Beer-Sheva, it housed monumental structures and was a hub for imported goods from across the Eastern Mediterranean. Centuries later, in the Iron Age, it would become a key settlement of the ancient Israelite kingdom of Judah, and is mentioned multiple times in the Bible.
Canaanite sugar rush
Going to back to the inscribed shard, the words scribbled on it are difficult to decipher because the text is very short and incomplete. Also, it is unclear in what direction it should be read, since the convention of writing Semitic languages from right to left was only adopted at a later time, Hoflmayer notes.
According to Haggai Misgav, an epigraphist from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the first three letters of the text may spell out the word ebed, meaning "slave" or "servant."
This doesn't mean that the word refers to an actual slave, but was more likely part of a name. Personal names at the time often included the word "servant" along with the name of a local god to invoke the protection of that particular deity or symbolize one's devotion. More recent equivalents of this would be the Hebrew name Obadiah (servant of Yahweh) or the Arabic Abdullah (servant of Allah).
The second line in the inscription is even harder to interpret, but it may spell out the word "nophet" which in Hebrew means "nectar" or "hone2200y." Whether this means that the inscription was meant to mark the bowl as someone's honey pot is unclear, but it is the simple existence of this brief alphabetical text at Lachish in the 15th century B.C.E. that has researchers excited.
"Its mere presence leads us to rethink the emergence and the proliferation of the early alphabet in the Near East," Hoflmayer says.
Because of the dearth of texts from this period, many scholars believed that the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet was introduced to Canaan only in the 14th or 13th centuries B.C.E., at a time when Egypt directly controlled the Levant. But the Lachish shard, which is at least a century older than that, shows that alphabetic script was already present in the Levant well before the Egyptian conquest. It suggests that the spread of this writing system was linked to the ties between Egypt and Canaan, which were particularly strong during the so-called Second Intermediate Period.
During this time (from the 17th to 16th centuries B.C.E.) northern Egypt was governed by the Hyksos, a dynasty of rulers with Semitic roots. While depicted as invaders by later pharaonic propaganda, most scholars today see evidence that the Hyksos were in fact a local population descended from longtime immigrants from the Levant – perhaps those same Semitic workers or slaves who scribbled the first alphabetic texts in the Egyptian desert.
It is therefore plausible that it was during the Hyksos domination that this simple idea of representing sounds with symbols, first used by Levantine migrants in Egypt, migrated back to the land of Canaan. And from there, it would take over the world.
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In collaboration with the Place and the People initiative, founded by Egyptologist Fatma Keshk, Ahram Online launches a series of articles on Egyptian minds that deciphered and safeguarded the intangible heritage of ancient Egypt for generations to come.
The series kicks off with the first Egyptian curator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the author of Egypt's first Ancient Egyptian Dictionary, Ahmed Kamal Pasha (1851-1923).
In an interview with Abdel-Hamid Kamal, his grandson, Ahram Online delves into the life of the unique icon and all the intangible heritage he safeguarded throughout his lifetime and beyond.
Sitting comfortably next to a pile of old albums and a book, Kamel and his wife led us into the life of Ahmed Pasha Kamal, right from the beginning.
"What I know about him, or what my father told me about him, is that he was very polite, very religious, very Egyptian, and a very serious man and we took that after him," Kamel laughs, adding "his name was Ahmed Hussein Ahmed, but in school he was named Kamal (meaning perfection) because he reflected perfection in combining grand ethics and knowledge," he added.
"Ahmed Kamal Pasha discovered the mummy cachette of 1881 in Deir Al-Bahari, Luxor, the same mummies that were just transported from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir to the Museum of National Civilisation a few days ago," explained Egyptologist Fatma Keshk, adding that he was the only Egyptian on the committee sent by the Ministry of Antiquities at the time to try and solve the riddle of many ancient Egyptian jewellery that appeared and were on sale at the time. Ahmed Kamal managed to know the source and led the mummies safely to the old premises of the Egyptian Museum in Boulaq. This incidence was the main theme of the film of great cinema icon director Shady Abdel-Salam, Al-Momya (The Night of Counting the Years, 1967).
"Actor Mohamed Khairy played the role of Ahmed Kamal Pasha in Al-Momya who was the only Egyptian Egyptologist in the committee that was assigned to conduct researches and uncover the story behind the existence of many ancient Egyptian royal jewellery in the west bank of Luxor. This committee, in collaboration with the Egyptian police, managed to uncover the illegal antiquity trade run by the family of Abdel-Rassoul in Al-Qorna on the west bank in Luxor for they were the ones who discovered the mummy cachette there and used to take the jewellery with the mummies and sell them," noted Keshk.
Despite having a true passion for ancient Egyptian antiquities, Ahmed Kamal spent 20 years trying to work at the Ministry of Antiquities.
"When he was in the Taghizeia School, he developed an interest in Egyptology and all the French (scientists) were in control of all the strategic posts in the Ministry of Antiquities back then. So he attended the School of Al-Lisan Al-Masry Al-Qadim (the school for the ancient Egyptian language) which opened his eyes on the greatness of the ancient Egyptian language," remembered Kamel. However, when he graduated, he was assigned as a French language translator at the Ministry of Education then a teacher for 20 years.
"For 20 years he was hoping to work at the Ministry of Antiquities, until finally during the reign of Khedive Ismail, there was a vacancy and he got accepted because khedive Ismail encouraged Egyptians to work in antiquities. So he was assigned the job of a kateb (a clerk of antiquities) at the ministry and from here he excelled. Back in Maspero, the head of the antiquities department admired his brilliance and knowledge and French and then he got promoted and became the first curator of the Egyptian Museum," explained Kamal.
"Ahmed Kamal was outstanding on several levels, "added Keshk. "He was among the first people to study in Egypt's first high school of antiquities, a university founded by German scientist Heinrich Carl Brugsch in 1869 in Egypt. Out of the 12 students that studied there, Ahmed Kamal excelled and the German scientist stood by him but could not find him a direct job in the antiquities. According to numerous resources, this happened because of the discrimination that the foreigners in Egypt practised against him because they wanted to monopolise this field. We do not have evidence, but there could be the fact that this field was quite new in Egypt and the world and Egypt were in the pre-occupation 1870s phase. Egypt's political power was weak and there were so many foreigners living there at that time and they were in control of the field of antiquities. So I do not think that it was easy for them to accept an Egyptian to work with them. However, Ahmed Kamal kept striving until he was assigned a job at the Egyptian Museum in 1880 at the Boulaq premises of the Egyptian Museum," added Keshk.
"I believe he had a very progressive way of thinking. Unlike antiquity specialists who spent years talking with each other or to specialised people but not addressing the public, he addressed the public with published writings and researches in Arabic and French in the 19th century," she noted.
"He conducted excavations in Luxor and Giza and wrote several books on this topic; 25 books in Arabic, and 12 in French. Among his most important achievements, he spent 20 years before his death writing the ancient Egyptian Dictionary which translated ancient Egyptian vocabulary to Arabic and then to French," added Kamal.
Each of the 22 volumes focuses on a letter of the alphabet. It was handwritten. To be more accurate, the one who wrote it was his eldest daughter. Ahmed Kamal dedicated the dictionary to King Fouad who gave him the title "Pasha" for his great efforts.
Kamal died shortly afterwards. The dictionary was never published and it remained with his grandson all those years until last year when the Egyptian Ministry of Culture scanned and printed it. However, the family handed out the original drafts to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina where it is currently being digitalised to be accessible to the public.
One of Ahmed Kamal's favourite quotes was in the text he translated from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. It reads:
"Ye who has left, ye shall return. Ye who slumbers, Ye shall rise again. Ye who goes on, you shall be resurrected. Honour shall be yours in the sky and its glory, in the Earth and its vastness, and in the seas and their depth."