Egypt is building a $1B mega-museum – will it bring Egyptology home?
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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).
If you're German-speaking, there's a Die Welt documentary from a few years ago which features various people from the project.
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.
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.
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.
edit: my ethics
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.
What's your purpose with even trying to make this argument?
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
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.
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.
> Maybe I’m being naive
I do agree with you.
> 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!
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 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...
To be fair its probably a quick throw away comment you made.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[0] - https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/can-egypts-economic-overhaul-st...
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 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.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-23/in-nyc-su...
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.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/377984/national-debt-of-...
It has not started falling yet, and it won’t particularly if they keep announcing new projects.
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.
> 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.
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.