Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, in power for ten years and candidate for a third term, has made ancient history a major tool of his domestic and foreign policy.
6 mins
Pharaonic. Built at the foot of the pyramids of Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo, the Grand Egyptian Museum is the temple of superlatives. A billion dollar project. A 45,000 square meter setting intended to accommodate more than 100,000 ancient works, including the treasures of Tutankhamun, and six million visitors per year. The largest archaeological museum in the world.
It still needs to open. Launched twenty years ago, its work is still not completed. Blame it on the financial crisis of 2008, the Arab Spring of 2011, then the Covid-19 epidemic. Its inauguration, constantly postponed, is now expected by February. The Egyptian government in any case wants to show that it takes the matter to heart: the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities indicates that it has “ ordered to establish a timetable for the completion of the work » and called for biweekly follow-up meetings.
A symbol
Although imagined in the 1990s under the presidency of Hosni Mubarak, the Grand Egyptian Museum is symbolic of the policy pursued by Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, a candidate for re-election which he should unsurprisingly win. It is part of the list of government-sponsored archaeological projects celebrated with great fanfare, such as the transfer in April 2021 of 22 royal mummies from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization located in the southern suburbs of Cairo. Transported through the capital on armored military vehicles transformed into funeral boats, they were welcomed by President al-Sissi and 21 cannon shots in front of media from around the world. The population was only able to follow the ceremony on television, the streets having been cordoned off by the police.
Read alsoPresidential election in Egypt: what are the challenges for a suspense-free election?
The objective of this heritage policy is threefold. This involves uniting the population around a common, inevitably glorious, past. “ The mummy parade really helped raise awareness among Egyptians », wanted to believe the former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Khaled el-Hanany, in the columns of the magazine National Geographic in October 2022. “ This tells us that we all belong to a great civilization, that we respect our ancestors. The Grand Egyptian Museum will send the same messages in new and powerful ways: pride, respect, unity and strength. »
This exploitation of ancient history for political purposes is not new. Already in the 1930s, in a context of rising Egyptian nationalism, an ideological movement appeared claiming this ancient past as an integral part of Egyptian identity: pharaohism. It then developed in the 1980s under the regime of Hosni Mubarak and has continued until today. “ The Egyptians mobilize pharaonic figures each time they want to unite the nation around a common reference that creates consensus. The pharaohs are very practical for this, because they transcend the Muslim-Christian divide », observed Frédéric Mougenot, curator of antiquities at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lille, in a France Culture documentary.
Relaunch tourism
This promotion of Pharaonic history also aims to revive a moribund tourism sector which is nevertheless essential to the Egyptian economy – it represents a tenth of the gross domestic product and the main foreign exchange income – which itself is in dire straits. The most populous country in the Arab world has been facing a latent economic crisis for years, aggravated by the war in Ukraine. The Egyptian pound has lost half its value against the dollar, leading to inflation which is now running at 40%.
“ Antiquities are clearly seen by the al-Sissi regime as a means of encouraging the arrival of tourists », considers a French researcher, interviewed by RFI, who had been “invited” by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, like other directors of excavations, to promote Egyptian archaeological sites. The merger of the Ministry of Tourism with that of Antiquities in 2019, then the replacement last year of the person who headed this joint ministry, the Egyptologist Khaled el-Enany, by the former banker Ahmed Issa, would be revealing in this regard.
And when foreign tourists don’t come to her, ancient Egypt comes to them. After the global success of the Tutankhamun traveling exhibition in 2019, Cairo did it again this year with a new tour, this time dedicated to Ramesses II. “ Modern Egypt is proud to share its history », boasted the secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, Mostafa Waziry, on the presentation brochure.
Soft power
Because this is the third objective of this memorial offensive. “ By exalting its ancient past, the regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sissi seeks to restore Egypt to its place on the international scene, where it had been eclipsed by the Gulf countries », notes for RFI Sara Tonsy, researcher in political science at the University of Sant’Anna in Pisa and at Mesopolhis in Aix-en-Provence. This soft power strategy also results in a construction fever and disproportionate architectural projects, such as the doubling of the Suez Canal or the construction of a new administrative capital on the model of Dubai, which houses what is presented as ” one of the largest mosques in the Middle East.
“ What is happening in Egypt today should be compared to what is happening in Saudi Arabia, where here too heritage is being revived with great media coverage and futuristic projects, which are not contradictory with this reactivation of the past. to gain legitimacy among Western opinion », analyzed on France Culture geopolitologist Marc Lavergne, research director at CNRS.
“Not contradictory”, nothing is less certain. The heritage policy pursued by the Egyptian president is selective. And if he has to choose between the past and the future, it is the future that seems to have his favors. This is evidenced by the partial destruction of the City of the Dead, the largest and oldest necropolis in the Middle East, listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, to accommodate a highway network.
Coming to power in 2013 by overthrowing Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi, former Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sissi won the presidential elections of 2014 and 2018 with more than 96% of the vote. Thanks to a constitutional revision increasing the length of the presidential term from four to six years, if he wins, he could retain power until 2030. Pharaonic.