The original Egyptian Museum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Museum) is my favorite of all time. They have so many artifacts that some items, thousands of years old, that might be the centerpiece of a museum in the far younger United States, were used as benches.
I was there in 2011. One day I was the only visitor.
I hung out in the Pharaoh room for a while. Just me and a couple of guys who used to rule the world (https://breckyunits.com/egypt.jpeg).
Tourist numbers dropped after the '97 Luxor massacre, then after the first gulf war, and probably further after the second. It was reasonably busy when I visited several months before the second gulf war, but nowhere near as much as you should expect. There was a queue to see the famous gold death mask.
I was there in 2022 and was told it would open in a month. Glad it's finally open. The original Egyptian Museum has a ton of artifacts but the presentation lacks seriously.
Agreed. I really enjoy the recent trend of museums that sit at a comfortable balance between avant garde/modernist design and an attempt to embody the subject in an accessibly visual and conceptual way. The NMAAHC and NMAI in Washington, DC are a couple of other good examples (though, I'm biased because they're in my backyard). Of course, this is on a whole other level. It really does seem like something you'd fly internationally to visit.
"For 100 years, Egypt’s scientists have watched as their nation’s story was largely told by institutions from Europe and the United States."
Really? I thought Egyptology had been under iron control for at least 30 years, to the point of researchers complaining anything not following the ministry's narrative got shut down (I don't know if they were justified complaints or if the ministry was wrong per se).
From when I toured Egypt a few decades ago, I remember talking to a sculptor who made ends meet selling cheap, mass produced statuettes to tourists (his actual sculptures were quite good, but not something for a tourist like me to take home). He showed me the coffee table book he worked from when he needed to copy an artifact. We pointed out that one of the originals he pointed to was literally just down the road in the Karnak Museum. He pointed out that he couldn't afford the entrance fee. There was no local pricing. I could understand needing to make money with its economic problems, but doing it in a way that kept the history from its poor majority seemed callous. I suspect this mega complex will be no better, not wanting the unwashed to offend the sensibilities of the wealthy tourists.
Yes, archeology in Egypt is tightly controlled by the ministry and people like Zahi Hawass. The roots of egyptology are in Europe, Napoleon founded it.
Egyptology has been an industry for Egypt for a long time, because Egypt depends on it. It has not much to do with what we consider science in the west. The "scientific advancements" in egyptology are merely careful narratives to bring more tourists.
In this case of the new museum, the irony is that the money comes from Japan, and the infrastructure and architecture from Germany.
The purpose of the museum is more tourists, they do not care about their own population gaining knowledge about their own history.
> the museum itself is intended to change how the world sees Egypt, and how Egypt sees the world.
Similarly grandiose claims were made for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (2002), which has failed to do either. If anything, given Egypt's constant political and economic crisis, I'm surprised it's still even operational.
Every now and then I get to run around the main loop in NYC's Central Park. Near the MET Museum there is an Egyptian obelisk, Cleopatra's Needle: https://www.centralparknyc.org/locations/obelisk. Ostensibly an Ottoman Empire gift to the US in the late 19th century... I wonder how many treasures have been plundered from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc... and spread across the world. Things like Cleopatra's Needle are generally OK because they serve the public good and have clear provenance, but many treasures in private homes and elsewhere may not, and should return to their rightful countries of origin.
Just FYI it's not the only Cleopatra's needle. The one on the Embankment, London has damage from zepplin raids.
There is a Tommy Handley radio sketch about the phonetic alphabet from the 1940s show "ITMA" which features "Klimpompidra's niddle" as the phonetic K, which begs the question "how do you spell that" which then recurses...
The people who control Egypt now conquered it 1400 years ago and deliberately destroyed all the cultures that existed before them.
Ancient treasures created by those predecessor cultures are not owned by the people who destroyed the culture they come from. They literally have no connection. Not culturally, and to a large degree not even genetically.
It would be like saying that ancient Native American art is rightfully owned by the Kennedy family.
So that's the moral side.
On the practical side - what a terrible idea, to send irreplaceable ancient human cultural artifacts to be kept in such an unstable, low-trust society. They will not be good stewards. If we care at all about people in future centuries and millennia being able to see these objects, they need to be kept in the most stable countries.
You are correct, and there are genetic studies to back you up. Modern day Egyptians have substantial continuity from ancient Egypt. Even in Ancient Egypt, there was trade and mixture with people from the Levant, but that didn’t massively change Egyptian genetics.
As for your question, you probably suspect the answer - many people will discredit Middle Easterners (including North Africans if you consider them distinct), past and present, inadvertently or not, intentionally or unintentionally. They are the modern day scapegoats, and nothing good can come from scapegoats right?
The biggest boogeyman in particular is the Arab. Muslim Egyptians, which are the vast majority of Egyptians, have a minority % of Arab ancestry. Oh God forbid, people of a shared faith but different ethnicity occasionally intermix. /s
“Arab” is a cultural identity that is not entirely equivalent to genetics. During the mid-20th century, Egypt was a center of pan-Arab nationalism, and even briefly formed a “United Arab Republic” with Syria. That fell through pretty quickly, but even today Egypt calls itself an “Arab Republic”. This isn’t to claim that Egyptian people today universally consider themselves to be Arabs, but many of them apparently do.
Regardless, I would still question the basic premise that contemporary Egyptians have some sort of exclusive claim to the archeological heritage of ancient Egypt. Almost every aspect of ancient Egyptian culture—its law, religion, written and spoken languages—have been long destroyed, forgotten, or replaced, in many cases deliberately. (Yes, I know Coptic is still used as a liturgical language by the Christian minority, but even they natively speak Arabic.) What exactly gives Egyptians an exclusive claim to an ancient culture that’s as foreign to them as anyone else—blood and soil? Maybe I’m being naive but I would prefer to treat the ancient world as the common heritage of all of humanity, with its preservation and study as a common good than to treat it as some sort of private ethno-nationalistic domain.
> What exactly gives Egyptians an exclusive claim to an ancient culture that’s as foreign to them as anyone else—blood and soil?
Extend this logic and then any country who want to consider inclusive claim on this matter to abolish inheritance law. Why do you have exclusive claim to your dead relative wealth? Is that because you maybe lived together or only blood?
Or why only ancient world, let's treat the Modern world like that as well. And then let's distribute the wealth.
The fact that you’re looking at this in terms of wealth and not even in terms of cultural heritage is revealing. Would you rather an Egyptian use the Rosetta Stone for building materials than a French scholar use it to decipher the hieroglyphs?
> Or why only ancient world, let's treat the Modern world like that as well. And then let's distribute the wealth.
This might be shocking to you, but not only am I opposed to blood-and-soil ethnonationalism, but also communism!
> The fact that you’re looking at this in terms of wealth and not even in terms of cultural heritage is revealing
I am not comparing both cases. I am just giving an example to show how your logic and argument is ridiculous.
Ironically the world common heritage that you are describing is core idea for communism. I know that you oppose them but for your racist views, there is no problem into having similar ideas.
And you calling it ethonationlism doesn't change that facts. By the way I can extend this and call each inheritance, culture and everything a group of people did/doing as such. I hope you would support eliminating passports and abolish borders to be consistent (as just another example)
There's a difference between inheriting property from your immediate parents and trying to lay claim to cultures that ceased to exist centuries before you were even born, and there's a difference between allowing a society that exists in the year 2024 to conduct its own affairs and allowing that society some proprietary claim to ancient artifacts that it had no part in uncovering or studying. Your arguments are glib and your resort to incoherent accusations of racism is laughable.
What change do you see in the institutional power of the army that would allow that to happen? And why do you think the Muslim Brotherhood would be so much more radical than it was under Morsi?
The army and governments moved out of kairo into there own city, a retreat in all but name. And isil and the likes set new standards of purity, one must outcompete as a radical to be taken serious. Add to that bread price spikes made by putin.. Then again, i honestly don't care, the past is scanned ans thus eternal. Im more worried for the future..
I don’t see how the move out of Cairo really indicates a loss of control anywhere else. It’s not like all the army bases in the Sinai or Alexandria or anywhere else are going anywhere. And there are good reasons to leave Cairo otherwise—for example, the severe mismanagement of the Cairene urban environment, traffic, &c. As for the second point, there have always been Islamists more radical than the Muslim Brotherhood, and Daësh if anything has less power now than it did at its peak.
It allows for looting the national treasury today.
All large construction projects in Egypt go to the military first. Who then subcontracts it out, essentially paying the generals their cut. Hence why Egypt is building their new capital city, to placate the military elite.
The new capital is also to riot proof their capital. Large dense cities are hard to defend with armies. Hence Myanmar doing the same, even China is building a mini capital to the south of their existing capital.
That being said, this big museum does make sense. Egypt is tourism dependent, and it needs star attractions beyond the scammer infested pyramids. Egypt's reputation amongst tourists has taken a horrible dent due to the extreme concentration of street hagglers, and it needs all the help it can get.
> The new capital is also to riot proof their capital. Large dense cities are hard to defend with armies
Partially, but Cairo is also extremely extremely crowded. It's becoming an economic drag like Jakarta and Manila are in Indonesia and Philipines due to primary city syndrome.
Most planned satellite cities in Egypt end up doing decently well like 6th of October, El Sheikh Zayed, New Cairo, El Sadat, 15th of May, Nasr City, Al Obour, Badr, 10th of Ramadan, etc.
By moving the ministries and the capital, it helps reduce congestion and also makes it easier to expand out.
It also spreads infra capital across 6-7 governates instead of just Cairo Governate.
Egypt is historically much more stable than its surrounding region, all the way back to the Late Bronze Age Collapse. A stable supply of water and being located at a center of intercontinental trade helps.
The water supply of the Nile is no longer as stable as it has historically been. Ethiopia's new dam threatens the downstream supply for Egypt and Sudan.
Suez crisis ended with a tactical defeat of Egypt but a strategic victory over UK and France because both the URSS and the US told us to get home, so I don't think it's a very apt example.
Egypt's tourism revenues hit a record high of $13.6 billion in FY2022/2023. Spending less than 10% to increase the purpose of choosing this country as a destination sounds reasonable, but as long as the P&L balances, I don't see why not.
That's a pretty low bar, and more importantly, Egyptian debt is by and large not in Egyptian pounds, meaning they can't just print their way out of trouble.
I think it is pretty safe to have doubts about Egyptian government profit projections. They also said the same thing about doubling the Suez canal but revenues did not meet projections and now they are planning to expand it again. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/egypt-plans-expand-suez-c...
it is sort of for the government, most of it will end up being taxed one way or another, or at a minimum support people so the government doesn’t have to
Yes, Egypt has faced significant financial challenges. Recently, there have been substantial investments from the UAE, purchasing a city for $35 billion, with potential similar investments from Saudi Arabia. Despite these inflows, concerns about how these funds are managed, particularly regarding military influence, remain prevalent
Ras al-Hekma for those curious. It sounds like a terrible deal on all sides. It's a bad vehicle for UAE money, it leaves Egypt with "35% guaranteed profits" on a planned city, and the UN is busily green washing the entire affair to curry political favor.
> concerns about how these funds are managed
Egypt seems completely squeezed. It's uniquely impacted by both the war on Ukraine and Gaza with the IMF having to step in and give them $3 billion later upgraded to $8 billion in emergency relief. The money is going to evaporate. My concern is there won't be any local economy or businesses left under these policies when it all dries up.
> Ras al-Hekma for those curious. It sounds like a terrible deal on all sides
It actually makes sense.
Most tourism in Egypt comes from Eastern Europeans (especially Russians and Ukrainians), for whom Sharm al-Sheikh is their Cabo.
If you've looked at a map, it's also located in Sinai, where there's an ongoing Muslim Brotherhood turned IS insurgency (which also enflamed neighboring Gaza).
Moving resort tourism to much more defensible Ras al-Hekma works, and the UAE being the New York of the region had enough capital to co-invest to develop it (also didn't hurt to help line up politicians pockets).
And Egypt (with UAE, Saudi, and some Indian capital) has been building out alternatives like Siwa. I actually chatted a eco-lodge owner from Siwa while I was stuck at a layover in Istanbul Airport - a lot of their tourism it now targeting the domestic market, Gulf market, some western hippy types, and Indians.
> My concern is there won't be any local economy or businesses left under these policies when it all dries up
The Egyptian economy is stabilizing and UAE, Saudi, Chinese, and Indian money is flowing in as FDI [0], and pushing reforms accordingly.
Heck, Egypt's GDP Growth Rate in FY22 was 6.6% according to the World Bank, and has always been between 2.5-6% post-coup.
> where there's an ongoing Muslim Brotherhood turned IS insurgency (which also enflamed neighboring Gaza).
Is that Google AI search hallucinations? MB does not have anything to do with Sinai. There were insurgency fueled by several factors (some of them related to your normal normal Military Dictatorship)
> If you've looked at a map, it's also located in Sinai
I don't think you looked yourself in the map. It is located on the other side of Egypt. To the west of Alexandria.
> Moving resort tourism to much more defensible Ras al-Hekma works
More defensible? You really need to cross almost all of northern Egypt (practically invading it) to reach Ras- Elhekma from Sinai.
> And Egypt (with UAE, Saudi, and some Indian capital) has been building out alternatives like Siwa
I am not sure if by building out alternative you mean developing tourism destination because Siwa as a place where people live and flourish existed and was part of Egypt for thousands of years.
They commented Sharm al-Sheikh, not Ras el-Hekma, was in Sinai.
They commented that Ras el-Hekma is a more defensible location than Sharm al-Sheikh in general terms... which you seem to agree with based on your comment about needing to invade Northern Egypt to get to aras el-Hakem.
isn't 8 billion dollars like 4 miles of NYC subway? [0] in the grand scheme of bailouts and liquidity injections it doesn't sound all that critical to me.
Isn't the GDP of NYC alone 3x that of the entire country of Egypt? Yes.
The better question is what fraction of their GDP is this loan? Well, 1.6%. It's notable because while taking IMF loans has been a revolving door policy with Egypt this is the largest yet and the size was increased once already. It's being billed as an emergency loan because it is.
Egypts debt load has tripled over the past year or two and they're stuck at a 10% deficit that's slowly crippling the country.
I had some sense there would be a difference in GDP there, I appreciate the figure. I forget that deficits are different when you owe the money to someone other than yourself.
Egypt's one and only ever democratically elected president was overthrown by the current dictator, who is supported by the West. He doesn't have any incentive to fix any of Egypt's financial problems and is currently building a palace for himself away from the capitol with a gold throne
The "one and only ever democratically elected president" also had zero incentive to fix any of Egypt's financial problems and ... frankly ... was a terrorist candidate.
Sorry "islamist". Which is to say, he uses violence, massacres and even torture to achieve his political aspirations.
The first thing he did when elected was cancel elections, give himself unlimited power.
Ironically that was part of his downfall. Islamists believe there is only 1 islam. So did Morsi. And tried to ally Egypt to Iran. Tried to ally Egypt to the Syrian uprising (to ISIS, in other words). Islamic extremists in all these places, as it turns out, suddenly and violently disagreed with islam's "only one islam" fantasy, did not want to compromise and preferred to (physically) attack his government, with a few dozen dead as result. He lost control of that situation.
And then it turns out the Egyptian army, government did not like their president cooperating with islamists elsewhere, including Hamas, who were attacking and killing people left and right, with Morsi's support. Also he got terrorists inside Egypt, the "muslim brotherhood" to torture and kill his political opponents.
No offense, but Egypt, Egypt's people and the world dodged a SERIOUS bullet when this guy got deposed. A civil war would have been the minimum consequence of him remaining in power.
> he uses violence, massacres and even torture to achieve his political aspirations.
> The first thing he did when elected was cancel elections, give himself unlimited power.
Exactly like the current dictator of Egypt, El-Sisi the secularist, if you want to put things on that plane...
You act like Egypt dodged a bullet by having their own elected leader killed brutally in a violent coup. But the bullet was fired, and is still being fired on them as they're now led by a leader who is not beholden to them at all.
If Morsi was as terrible as you said and people hated him as much as you claim, he would have lost the next election. But there won't be a next election because the governments you didn't mention, who support the dictator, thought it would be better if Egypt never had another democracy so long as their political objectives are met.
I happen to believe in democracy, and I believe it is the best tool against terrible leaders. You may disagree, but don't try to paint your enemies as violent and irrational when you are the one who thinks force should be used to overturn the will of the people.
Inflation at almost 30% and lending rates around that as well. Taxes are being increased by more than 30% as well, mandated by the IMF for past borrowing.
It’s funny to me that people still think $1 billion is a lot of money for a government.
5 million people per year visit the MET in NYC, which is the 5th most popular museum in the world. Tickets are $30. Seven years of revenue is $1 billion.
Almost 15 million people visit the Pyramids of Giza per year. Egypt is the 9th most popular tourist destination in the world.
If only half of those people visit the new museum and spend $30 on admission that means they cross $1 billion in revenue in 5 years, and that assumes nobody buys a damn thing from the gift shop or donates to the endowment.
I imagine the red sea shipping crisis and the new capital are probably a bigger part of the problem, but i cant imagine billion dollar museums are helping.
Modern Egyptians are, as far as I'm aware, descended from Ancient Egyptians, and likely the majority of the population has been Coptic for millennia. Yes, the ruling class has shifted from Egyptian to Macedonian to Roman to Arab to various Turkic groups before shifting to Egyptian Arabic. But the modern culture is a fusion of the Coptic culture with the Arab cultures, in much the same way that modern English culture is a fusion of Anglo-Saxon with Norman culture.
It's not the same case as North Macedonia, where it's recognized that the Slavic Macedonians are a separate group that replaced the Hellenic Macedonians (of which Alexander was a part).
Please source your claim. My understanding is that there was no large-scale genetic replacement, and the Coptic language (descendant of the ancient Egyptian language) was widely spoken until the 18th century or so (it's a strictly liturgical language now). There has been plenty of ethnic and cultural mixing, of course, as in most places (Christianization, Arabization, etc.).
> Egypt has little claim to Ancient Egyptian heritage, essentially the same amount that North Macedonia has towards Alexander the Great. Different people of unrelated culture who came there much later
What with these kinds of claims popping up on HN all the time whenever an Ancient Egyptian related theme comes up.
Copts (Christian Egyptians who still use a form of Ancient Egyptian as their litigurical language) and Muslim Egyptians are genetically indistinguishable, and have been living side by side for generations.
Islam is a religion, and "Arab" is a linguistic identity that is still in the process of forming into a truly ethnic identity despite Khalil Gibran's (a Lebanese Christian American) efforts in the early 20th century.
This is how a Kurd can become the symbol of Arab nationalism (Saladin), a Central Asian Persian the symbol of Islamic science (Al-Khwazrimi), and a Iberian Jew one of the premier physicians and philosophers (Maimonides).
As a Copt, thank you for eloquently saying what I was about to say. Genetic tests explicitly show that Egyptians as a whole are still very closely related to Ancient Egyptians based on mummy DNA samples. I don't understand how people can confidently parrot this whole "modern day Egyptians are Arab colonizers" trope when the peoples of the Arabiab peninsula STILL EXIST and are genetically different from Egyptians.
" "Arab" is a linguistic identity that is still in the process of forming into a truly ethnic identity despite Khalil Gibran's (a Lebanese Christian American) efforts in the early 20th century"
Ethnolinguistic identities only arose in the 19th century, due to rising literacy rates, proto-globalization, and post-Revolution France and America. Before that, identity was primarily based on religion or clan.
While the Revolutions of 1848 failed, it sparked the rise of the idea of "Popular Sovreignity" and "Nationalism", and played a direct role in sparking nationalist movements like in Germany (Bismarck), Italy (Garibaldi), etc.
It was in this milleu that Arab as an identity also started to arise, as opposition to the Ottoman Empire.
I recommend reading "Nationalism and the State" by John Breuilly [0] if you want to learn about the rise of nationalism as an ideology.
Also, Arab as a singular identity only started to arise when Khalil Gibran (a Lebanese Christian who immigrated to Boston as a child in the 1890s) began writing and developing contemporary Arab literature.
Like other early 20th century hyphenated American nationalists such as Valera (Ireland), Sun Yatsen (China), Syngman Rhee (Korea), etc he was influenced by the "great men" of the 19th century.
Egypt is an amalgam. Those people stayed and became Egyptians and interbred. That’s like saying Western Europeans have no claim to Western Europe because it was settled by people from the Caucasus who bred with the natives. Or that the British have no claim to the UK because they were taken over by Romans.
English people are descended from various admixtures of Anglo-Saxons (various Germanic tribes from modern day Denmark and north Germany), the Britonnic Celts who lived there under the Roman Empire before the empire collapsed and the Anglo-Saxons came, Norsemen (who are hard to genetically distinguish from Anglo-Saxons since they come from very similar North Germanic populations separated by only a few centuries; at any rate they conquered a large chunk of northern England that became known as the “Danelaw”) and possibly Normans (who were also Norsemen with maybe some admixture from the other populations in they ruled over in Normandy, though I’m not sure how large of a population transfer came along with that particular conquest compared with the others).
The Britonnic Celts in the western highlands of the former Roman Britain were not easily or immediately conquered by the Anglo-Saxons. Hence, the Anglo-Saxon name for Britonnic Celts eventually became the modern English word “Welsh”. Though note that the Anglo-Saxon term “Wealh” would not have merely referred to the people of modern Wales in particular; any Britonnic Celt was a “Wealh”, hence the other Celtic homeland of Cornwall.
"British are in embarrassing position here since their iconic king Arthur tried to kick them out of Britain and unsuccessfully at that."
You are aware that King Arthur is fictitious?
We treat him in the same way as Germany's King Herman. Mind you, I live near to one of King Arthur "castles" - Cadbury, just north of Yeovil in Somerset. It's not as cool as Tintagel in Cornwall (and lacks the lovely sea views) but it is still a decent iron age fort remains.
We also have the Isle of Avalon (Glasto Tor n that) near here and the Sweet Track and more besides in just this little pocket of England.
Why not look deeper and embrace and enjoy rather than being a twat? You'll feel better for it.
I'm no expert but that is going to need quite a citation. Bear in mind that the term "Briton" is quite tricky.
Stonehenge as a thing has existed from roughly 3000BC onwards. The stones may have come from what is now Wales. The peoples involved are generally called Britons.
Sardinia is an island in the Med. and although there will almost certainly be some small intermixing with what is now the UK and Eire, it will be small.
Perhaps you are conflating Sardinia with Cornwall or something?
To put it quite briefly, the British Isles (and most of Europe) were settled by "Early European Farmers"[0] emerging originally from Anatolia in the early Neolithic. Later in the Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age, Indo-European ("Western Steppe Herder") migrations[1] largely displaced or assimilated them, but today's Southern Europeans retain a significant amount of EEF ancestry (while WSH dominates in Northern Europe), and in Sardinia, for peculiar historical reasons, it actually forms a majority in most of the population.
Stonehenge was begun in the late Neolithic by EEF inhabitants of Britain, but shortly afterward the Bell Beaker (WSH-related) migrations[2] began and the EEF population of Britain was almost entirely replaced within a few centuries[3]. The new migrants still kept working on Stonehenge however ("cultural appropriation"?) and its current state is due to them[4].
All massive scale building is good. Even the unused ones, like Myanmars massive capital and china’s ghost cities. I remember when Reddit constantly whined about how Dubai was stupid to build a massive metropolis out in the middle of the desert.
Dubai isn't a very good example. If anything, it just serves as a example of the ignorance of the comments you were reading. By the time Reddit came into existence, Dubai already had an impressive skyline and had been well established as a thriving trading and business hub. It's also not in the middle of the desert. Dubai is a seaport on the Persian Gulf.
Dubai was also a well-known city in the region long before the building of the skyline. The ghost cities, Myanmar's capital and the new planned Egyptian capital are examples of trying to invent a city inorganically from scratch.
The original Egyptian Museum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Museum) is my favorite of all time. They have so many artifacts that some items, thousands of years old, that might be the centerpiece of a museum in the far younger United States, were used as benches.
I was there in 2011. One day I was the only visitor.
I hung out in the Pharaoh room for a while. Just me and a couple of guys who used to rule the world (https://breckyunits.com/egypt.jpeg).