De-Nile

For over a week Egypt has occupied the top spot in the headlines of the New York Times. If you breeze by CNN, there are images and reports from Tahrir Square of the uprising and resistance of the Egyptian people against President Hosni Mubarak. It is a deeply troubling (and exciting) moment in history.

The last few days I have been in Boston at an intense job fair interviewing candidates for KA. I will blog about that in a couple of days. I had hoped to go to the Museum of Fine Arts, but alas, this trip offered practically no moments at all away from the work at hand. But if I had gone to the MFA, I would have reveled in the great sculpture of pharaoh Menkaure and his wife, and I would have probably done a little reveling in Egypt’s long history. The better you know Egyptian history, that long history of at least 5,000 years, yes, the better you know Egyptian history, the current situation in Egypt comes as no surprise. The power struggle being played out on the streets of Cairo this week has striking parallels from that time of the pharaohs.

One of the greatest thrills of my trips to Egypt in the last few years has been gazing at the famous gold mask of the boy-king Tut. It is every bit as glorious as you might imagine, both serene and monumental and iconic. That mask resides in a room overlooking Tahrir Square, the scene of so much violence in the last week. But when you see that mask, or think about it, it helps to recover the context, the often violent context of Egypt’s past. In 1322 BCE Tut(ankhamun) died unexpectedly and that void ushered in a time not unlike this week in Egypt. Then as now, transitions from one ruler to the next became fraught with danger, as it presented a rare chance for opposition forces inside or outside the country to destabilize the mighty edifice of state power. Tut’s demise caused more than usual disquiet, since there was no obvious heir to the throne, and the late king’s policies proved deeply controversial…ahhh…as I learned in French class from Mr. Hall 30-some years ago: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Then as now, it was the army that stepped in to maintain order. The General of the Army (if you are dying to know the name to add to your rolodex, it is Horemheb—I wonder how Cole Porter might use his name in one of his “list” songs!) assumed the role as Pharaoh without blinking an eye (there is probably a joke in there since the Egyptian eye with that composite view is so striking and familiar). To justify his coup, Pharaoh Horemheb tapped into the Egyptians’ long-standing fear of foreign interference, pointing to those lousy Hittites as potential aggressors if stability and martial law was not maintained. Hmmmm…yes, just like Hosni Mubarak’s supporters justifying their continued hold on power, spreading rumors of those lousy Americans and their potential interference.

In modern Egyptian history every president has risen from the military. Egypt’s two recently appointed vice-presidents are from the armed forces. Thirty-three centuries ago Horemheb nominated another general as his successor. In doing so, he inaugurated a military junta that ruled Egypt with an iron fist for 13 generations.

Not long after this Horemheb character came the legendary Ramses II, the original Ozymandias of Shelley’s poem, who used his friends in the military to impose Egyptian authority across the wider Middle East. In Ramses’ time his influence extended him from the hills of Syria to the plains of Sudan, and Egypt was feared as the superpower in the ancient world. International prestige and military rule are deeply enmeshed in the Egyptian psyche.

Many in the news have called Hosni Mubarak a “modern-day pharaoh” and there are many other examples of how his rule compares to other authoritarian pharaohs. Other kings have posed as national heroes when chroniclers have noted how behind the scenes the leader is hated. Other kings have faced home-grown insurgencies and have responded swiftly and uncompromisingly. There have been few open rebellions over time given the unflinching brutality of the state.

So over the last 5,000 years Egypt’s rulers have grown used to unquestioning obedience from their subjects. In a country with a longer history than most, there is simply no tradition of freedom of speech or public debate. There simply have been only a handful of events like the last week in Egypt. No wonder that Hosni Mubarak and his inner circle seem in denial of the protest and outrage outside their palace gates. As the old joke goes, “Denial is not just a river in Egypt.” Ahhhh….I have never gotten to think of that joke/pun in such a literal way: DE-NILE!!!

No wonder, given the reminders around him, that Hosni Mubark has cultivated the personality cult like ancient pharaohs did, and he has grown rich from the sweat of their countrymen’s labor, like ancient pharaohs did. So too is their response to opposition like the ancient pharaohs. For thousands of years, uprisings were met with crackdowns. One particular gruesome one is from 1950 BCE (let’s just think how ooooooooooooold that is: almost 4,000 years ago!!) when the ringleaders of the uprising were burned alive as human torches to light the perimeter of a temple. I don’t need to go through anymore of the list of abuses and tortures, you get the picture.

So here we are in 2011…thousands of years into this fetid history of crackdowns. Today, tanks stand guard at the pyramids, certainly the greatest symbol of authoritarian rule ever erected. Don’t forget that the pyramids were the tallest structures in the world for almost 3,500 years, until the Eiffel Tower is built in 1889 in France. If you look back to the building of the pyramids, the almost-500 years of obsession with this structure and monument, that age came to an end with a political vacuum following the demise of a long-standing ruler. Factionalism and paralysis marinated in Egypt, the economy collapsed, and Egypt plunged into a civil war.

Ahhhh…the cycles of history. Will Egypt’s history repeat itself? Can we overcome the past? May we dare to hope we can?

Here is the poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley of the ruler Ozymandias:


I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.