Youssef Nabil's "I Saved My Belly Dancer": An Homage to the Golden Age with Salma Hayek

The Golden Age of Egyptian belly dancing, say from the 1930s to the 1960s, has been an occasional subject of this blog; from the era of Tahia Carioca and Samia Gamal to that of Nagwa Fouad and Fifi Abdou. Islamists and state puritanism have soured the art and reduced it to a bump-and-grind shadow of itself at its artistic peak.

Egyptian artist and photographer Youssef Nabil has evoked the period in a series of photographs and a video entitled "I Saved My Belly Dancer." A selection of photos here, and articles reviewing it here and here. To add to the appeal, the photos and the video star actress Salma Hayek. The Mexican actress is, of course, of Arab ancestry as her name reveals.

It's artsy and the Western theme seems a bit forced. The full video doesn't appear to be online, but a four minute excerpt is below. That is, for those who are still reading and didn't just jump to the video when they read the words "Salma Hayek."

Mohamed Mahmoud Graffiti Walls Spark New Controversy

Back during the turmoil of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 I posted several posts about revolutionary street graffiti in Cairo, especially the much-decorated walls of the American University's downtown campus along Mohamed Mahmoud Street. Now they're the subject of anew controversy. A group known as the Women on Walls Project, founded by Swedish journalist and photographer Mia Grondahl, author of a book on Cairo graffiti, aims to celebrate women and the struggle against harassment through street art. It's a worthy idea, but many revolutionary artists charge that in some cases revolutionary graffiti dedicated to those ho died in Mohamed Mahmoud Street in November 2011, and other memorials to the dead, are being painted over. They are also painting on adjacent Yusuf al-Gindy Street, where I once lived. Grondahl denies that intact graffiti are being painted over and defends the project to both Ahram Online and Daily News Egypt; both are illustrated.

Since I'm reliant on media and social media reports I can't claim to judge the facts from far away. I'd urge you to read the linked articles and judge for yourselves and will welcome comments from those on the ground.

Whatever the merits of the two sides, I'm sorry to see supporters of street art quarreling among themselves, when there are plenty of state institutions who'd paint it all over in a minute if AUC didn't provide a welcoming wall.

Well, at Least They Didn't Use Duct Tape: The Curious Case of King Tut's Beard

The gold burial mask of Tutankhamun is probably the most precious and most famous treasure of the Egyptian Museum,  which in turn is one of the world's greatest museums. Yet, as you've no doubt heard by now, when Tut's beard came loose in cleaning, someone unspecified tried to put it back using epoxy. When the epoxy was visible, someone tried to remove it and scratched the mask.

The Ministry of Antiquities is investigating, but this adds to the concern over the fate if antiquities in Egypt since 2011. The single best known attraction of the museum (and an exhibit whose world tours have earned lots of money), has been repaired (and botched) by museum conservators using the kind of technique a kid might lose to fix a broken toy.

I have no words. Or none of more than four letters at any rate.

At the Smithsonian, the Freer and the Sackler Make Tons of their Art Public, Digital and Free

The Smithsonian Institution has two art galleries that cover the Middle Eastern world as well as East Asia; the Freer Gallery, which houses an originally private collection they can't add to, and the Sackler. Both the Freer and the Sackler have done a magnificent thing: except for some qualifications for commercial use, they have put some 50,000 high-resolution images amounting to over 10 terabytes of data, online and FREE.

Like both of these great collections, the bulk of the images are South and East Asia, but there is a solid core of pre-Islamic and Islamic Middle Eastern material as well. including Persian miniatures, ceramics, and other media.

There are many stories about this new trove online, but your best bet is to go to the Smithsonian website and start browsing.

Another Tribute to George Scanlon, from ARCE

I'm back from vacation, and while I hope that my vacation posts on historical subjects have kept you busy, a lot has been happening in the region and I'll be catching up as time permits.

Scanlon with Nasser, 1969

When archaeologist/art historian George T. Scanlon, the excavator of Fustat, died last month, I linked to several tributes. Let me now link to yet another, a lengthy tribute by Iman R. Abdelfattah at the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) website.Scanlon served twice as Director of ARCE, among his many other accomplishments.

Scanlon at l., with the 90-year old Creswell

The tribute also contains several photos, two of which I can't resist reproducing: the one of Scanlon meeting Nasser, above, on the occasion of the 1,000th anniversary of Cairo in 1969, and the one at right from Al-Musawwar magazine in 1970, showing Scanlon at far left next to another giant of Egyptian art and architecture, Sir. K.A.C. Creswell, who was discussed here.

George T. Scanlon, 1925-2014, Art Historian and Excavator of Fustat

George Scanlon (AUC)

I have belatedly learned that archaeologist and art historian George T. Scanlon died in New York City on July 13 at the age of 89.

In May we talked about potential threats to the excavations at Fustat (Part I, Part II), and anyone with a knowledge of the archaeology of that first Islamic capital of Egypt will be well-acquainted with Scanlon's name (though he also excavated in Nubia). Onetime head of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), and Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the American University in Cairo from 1975-2011 (a post he took up soon after Sir K.A.C. Creswell left), he was an institution in Cairo and at AUC.

Though we met a few times, I didn't know him well, so I will let others pay tribute:

The official AUC announcement.

An appreciation by Maria Golia at The Arabist.

A 2010 tribute in the ARCE Bulletin on the occasion of Scanlon being honored by the Supreme Council of Antiquities (including the inevitable Zahi Hawass), written by Jere L. Bacharach, a historian who did numismatic work on the coins of Fustat.

More Newly Available Online Resources

Two recent pieces of good news for researching online:

From a Shahnameh (British Library)

The British Library has announced that it has uploaded 15,000 images from Persian manuscripts  in its collection. Go to Digital Access to Persian Manuscripts to access.

And the Dutch Institute for the Near East is digitizing its out-of-print backlist and making them available online. At least so far it's all the Ancient Near East. A few titles are in Dutch but the bulk are in French or English.

More and more material for the Ancient Near East is turning up online. I've noted in the past that the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago is particularly generous in this respect. The massive 21-volume Chicago Assyrian Dictionary can grace your bookshelves if you have a couple of thousand dollars to spare, or it can grace your computer for nothing at all if you're patient enough to download the PDFs here. Ditto the Demotic Dictionary for Demotic Egyptian, only completed recently And you might as well download  a Demotic grammar while you're at it, before rubbing elbows with the Ptolemies..

The 10 Best Arab Films?

Via The Guardian. A matter of opinion of course, and since I think I've only seen three of these myself, I probably shouldn't judge.

On the Damaged Dar al-Kutub Manuscript Collection

 We've dealt previously with the damage the January 24 Cairo bombing did to the Museum of Islamic Art across the street from the police headquarters that was the target; an article at Mada Masr goes into more detail on the damage to the other institution in the building, the rare manuscript collection of the Dar al-Kutub Bab al-Khalq (the old Dar al-Kutub). It also outlines the history of Egypt's National Library at that site,dating back to its days as the Khedivial Library.  Both the Museum and the Library are priceless storehouses of Islamic heritage.

Collateral Damage: Islamic Art Museum and Old Dar al-Kutub Damaged in Police Bombing

Museum Facade Damage (Ahram)

Today's massive car bombing at Cairo's Central Police Headquarters in Bab al-Khalq also apparently did significant damage to two key repositories of Egypt's heritage across the street: the Museum of Islamic Art and the old building of the National Library and Archives (Dar al-Kutub), shich houses many of the Library's rare manuscripts and papyri. (The Library has another building along the Nile.)

[Update: This photo gallery at Egyptian Streets suggests the damage to the recently renovated museum is really devastating. More as it becomes available.]

Ahram Online:

TV footage showed wrecked floors of the multi-storey building and a damaged facade of the nearby Museum of Islamic Art. The minister of state for antiquities told journalists in a statement after touring the site that some artefacts and items inside the museum had also been damaged. He said the 19th-century museum building, which was recently rennovated in a multimillion-dollar project, will need to be "rebuilt." Photos show that the building's roof has caved in, floors are covered with shattered glass and wood debris, and the display cases housing the museum artefacts have been smashed.

Library Damage (Ahram)

Another Ahram Online piece on the Dar al-Kutub:

The car bomb which gutted Cairo's central police headquarters early on Friday morning has also caused severe structural damage to Egypt's National Library and Archives (NLA), located across the street from the security directorate targeted in the blast.

Minister of Culture Saber Arab told Ahram Online that all the NLA's lighting and ventilation systems were completely destroyed, while the decorative facade, representative of Islamic architectural styles, had collapsed. He added that all showcases and furniture inside the building had also been badly damaged.

NLA head Abdul Nasser Hassan told Ahram Online that seven unique manuscripts and three rare scientific papyri had also been damaged. Hassan estimated that the losses will cost the government at least LE50 million in repairs.

Let me also share a memory from back in the late 1970s of the Police Headquarters building at Bab al-Khalq. I spent a lot of time among Cairo's medieval monuments on foot, and whenever I was headed to the Bab Zuwaila or Darb al-Ahmar areas, I would walk via Bab al-Khalq, passing right by the fortress-like police station. I remember that the rear of the building contained high, barred windows and apparently contained holding cells; there would always be wives out back, shouting up at their jailed spouses. Later visits to Cairo never took me back to Bab al-Khalq, I don't think.

You May Find This Amusing Though I Feel it Needs Some Explaining First

This is going around. It's funny in one of those "the joke is great after you have it explained to you" ways:

This should be obvious to anyone who has been following Egyptian social media the past few days, and also is pretty familiar with the iconography (in the literal sense of the symbolism of icons) of Eastern Christian saints. (Though the Coptic label is a big clue there. If you know some Coptic of course.) And that's an Omega watch, of course, and Sigmund Freud in the role of Saint Basil of course, and ...

Just in case a few of you are still a little puzzled or don't fit all the above, let's start with General Sisi's dreams.

An audiotape appeared on a YouTube video yesterday, posted  by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. It purports to be (though it's not confirmed genuine) an interview between Egypt's General Sisi and the Editor of Al-Masry al-Youm. In it Gen. Sisi allegedly reveals (though he goes off the record to do it) that for the past 35 years he has had dream visions, in which he saw himself as ruler of Egypt wielding a sword with the slogan "There is no God but God" in red, and wearing an Omega watch.

First, the Arabic audio (transcript in Arabic), followed by an English transcript from this website:

Interviewer: Had you expected to take on the leadership of the Egyptian Army?
El-Sisi: The leadership of the Egyptian army, or something greater than that?
Interviewer: Fullstop.
El-Sisi: I am of the people who’ve had a long history of visions. This is only for you.
Interviewer: Okay, I’ll listen, I’ll only write later.
El-Sisi: 35 years ago…well, I’ve stopped talking about visions 7 or 8 years ago, from 2006.
Interviewer: I understand this part…
El-Sisi: I stopped talking about these things. I said I wouldn’t talk about it again. But I’ve always had visions…
Interviewer: You see yourself on the throne of Egypt?
El-Sisi: No, that’s not it. I’ve seen a lot of things…
Interviewer: That happened?
El-Sisi: That happened afterwards…nobody could explain it. For 35 years, nobody could explain it.
Interviewer: Like what?
El-Sisi: But this won’t be said.
Interviewer: Not in this interview, but whenever God wishes.
El-Sisi: For example, many years ago, I saw in a dream, that I was raising a sword, on which was written “No God but God” in red…this was 35 years ago…
Interviewer: “No God but God” colored red…?
El-Sisi: In red, yes – on the sword, raised like this. Another in which I had on my wrist, a watch, with a very big green star on it…and Omega, and people are asking “Why you? Why do you have this watch?” and I said this watch is named for me, it’s an Omega, and I’m Abdel Fattah, so I put the Omega, with…the global nature, with Abdel Fattah. Not me, the dream, that’s just an example. In another dream, I was told I would be given what nobody else had been given…
Interviewer: Who?
El-Sisi: In the dream, we’ll give you what nobody else had been given. In another dream, I was with Sadat, and I was talking to him, and he told me “I knew that I would be the president of the republic”, and I said to him “I also know that I’m going to be the president of the republic.”
Interviewer: What do you feel when you see your pictures raised next to pictures of Abdel Nasser, and when Abdel Hakeem said you are an extension of the leader, and that you are the most capable of leading the country?
El-Sisi: There’s a prayer I always say, that I could be that.

Okay, that explains (in so far as it is explicable) the red-labeled sword and the Omega watch, and offers at least a clue to the presence of Sigmund Freud. And the spear of course is poking at Muhammad Morsi, and has knocked off his crown.

Now for the rest of the imagery. Despite resembling the typical images, it does not represent St. George and the Dragon (with Morsi as the dragon), but rather the dream of Saint Basil, in which Freud is Basil and Sisi is Saint Philopater Mercurius (a Coptic version of whose name is the label, but the twin swords also give it away).  Here is a non-Sisi version of a similar icon:

Saint Philopater Mercurius  was an early Christan soldier-saint and martyr. Legend has it that the Archangel Michael came to him and gave him a divine sword to go with his physical sword as a Roman soldier: in Arab Christian tradition he is known as Abu Saifain, he with two swords; hence the sword in each hand. He was martyred in 250 AD by the Emperor Decius, the same Emperor he had previously served.

A Cappadocian, he was buried there, but years later the Armenian Church gave some of his relics to the Coptic Church, and he became the subject of popular veneration.

But you can't keep a good saint down. Over a century after his death, in 363, Saint Basil the Great, also Cappadocian, was imprisoned by his former schoolmate Julian, now the notorious Emperor Julian "the Apostate," who had reverted to paganism and started persecuting Christianity anew. Legend says he prayed for deliverance, and in a dream was told he would be President of Egypt with an Omega watch had a vision in which St. Philopater Mercurius appeared and told him that he had struck the Emperor Julian with a lance. Julian was indeed pierced through the liver with a lance in a battle with the Sassanid Perisans, and soon died; Christianity was restored and St. Basil freed.

So that's the rest of the imagery: Morsi is the despised Julian; Sisi wields the twin swords of the saint, but bearing an Islamic slogan. It falls apart a bit in that Freud is Saint Basil, since despite the connection with dreams, it wasn't Freud's dream here, it was Sisi's. And then there's the Omega watch. (At least he didn't dream of a Rolex.)

But you all knew this already, right?

So Sisi's not just Nasser. He's Saint Philopater, but with the Muslim shahada on his sword.

I still don't get the Omega/Abdel Fattah link though.

Seelye Sisters Art Exhibit in Kuwait

Though I haven't seen it I wanted to note that MEI Vice President Kate Seelye and her sister have a  multimedia art exhibit which has opened in Kuwait. The sisters are daughters of the late US Ambassador Talcott Seelye and come from a long line of Americans involved in the Middle East, at AUB and elsewhere; the exhibit includes family photos and is aimed at remembering the positive history of the US role in the Middle East. A Kuwaiti review here.

Intriguing Piece of Ancient Egyptian Art

We've been mired in the third millennium long enough, so it's time for a little Ancient Near East. This intriguing piece from the Egyptian New Kingdom is a cosmetics spoon, apparently for applying kohl. It's delicate and elegant, but what to make of the imagery? (Hat tip to Diana Buja; image via this Spanish-language Egyptology site.)

Well, it's a girl or young woman, and a duck. (Maybe a goose? Let's call it a duck.) Since the girl seems to be wearing only a loincloth and no top, let's assume she's swimming. Duck suggests water; prone position suggests swimming. It's an interesting spoon, but a bit hard to figure out the backstory:

• Is this a really gigantic duck, or a really small woman? If the former there's a 50's sci-fi movie theme here.
• Is she holding on to the duck because she can't swim?
• Or is she perhaps pushing the duck?
• Am I over-analyzing this?

The only one I can answer is the last one: probably yeah. But a fascinating piece. Said to be piece number 1725C, in the Louvre.

Timbuktu's Lost Libraries

All wars lead to some destruction of parts of the world's cultural heritage, but the deliberate burning of books and the destruction of works of art seems a particularly barbarous event. It is especially outrageous when it is done in the name of the very religion that created the books and art. Yet the Jihadis who burned the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu (having already destroyed most of the Sufi shrines in the area) have almost certainly burned far more Qur'ans than Western Islamophobes have ever dreamt of doing. When the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan it was equally appalling, but at least they could claim to be destroying idols; in Timbuktu, the modern Vandals destroyed some of the most precious treasures of Islamic culture.

European Image of Mansa Musa

The golden age of Timbuktu was golden indeed, and the wealth of the 14th Century Emperor Mansa Musa was so vast that even the European map at left considered him one of the main points of interest in all of Africa.

The news is not all bad; locals managed to preserve at least some of the thousands of ancient manuscripts, though just how bad the losses are may take some time to appreciate. But the losses are certain to be profound, however much mitigated.

"Archaeologists Outraged" Over Statue That's Been There 138 Years

Egypt Independent has a piece about how some Egyptian Archaeologists are "outraged" by a statue of Jean-Francois Champollion, the decipherer of hieroglyphics, with his foot on the head of a ruined statue of a pharaoh. In fact:

“The Foreign Ministry did nothing about it,” said Omar al-Hadary, chairman of the Tourism and Antiquities Committee of the Revolutionary Youth Federation on Thursday. “The West will repeat such things if there is no firm reply.”

“This will make us hate the West more,” he continued. “The French learned a hard lesson during their campaign that Egypt gained independence with the blood and lives of its sons.”

“The French government must remove this shameful statue or we will make thousands of insulting statues to put in all squares of Egypt and outside the French Embassy,” Hadary added.

The chairman asked the Ministry of Antiquities to stop all French archaeological missions working in Egypt until a formal apology is issued and the statue is removed. He also requested that all streets named after the Frenchman be renamed. [A main street in Central Cairo is named for Champollion.—MCD]

Now, there's just one thing left out of this story: the statue in the courtyard of the College de France is by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (Americans know him for the Statue of Liberty), and it's been there since 1875.

What, no Egyptians ever noticed it before? Or is this a case of manufactured outrage? An online petition only has a few hundred signatures. France conducted military operations against Egypt at Suez in 1956, but they want to retaliate for an 1875 statue?

Oh, and Egyptian archaeologists: every time you read hieroglyphics, you owe one to Champollion.

Egyptian PM Calls for Graffiti to Return

I don't know whether it's just typical bureaucratic miscommunication in a country which invented bureaucracy and has over 5,000 years of practice, or whether the Egyptian authorities were taken by surprise by the outcry over the removal of the Mohamed Mahmoud graffiti, but now a Cabinet statement is saying that the removal "is contrary to [the Cabinet's] will to commemorate the revolution" and noting:

Prime Minister Hesham Qandil calls on artists and painters and others to turn Tahrir Square into a space worthy of the martyrs of the revolution in order to become a symbol of the Egyptian revolution. He called for it to become a platform for freedom of opinion through wall paintings and graffiti, which reflect the spirit of the 25 January revolution, and the principles and aspirations of the Egyptian people.

As I noted earlier today, they're already being repainted.

"The Walls Will Not Be Silent"

As this post notes, "The walls will not be silent": scarcely had the authorities finished whitewashing the murals on Mohamed Mahmoud street (see my post of yesterday) than artists started filling them again. Bravo.

Whitewashing a Revolution

Yesterday, ostensibly as part of a clean-up of the Tahrir Square area, Cairo city workers painted over the famous blocks-long revolutionary murals along Mohamed Mahmoud Street. Zeinobia's comments here.  Here's a series of photos of the whole thing. This blog has frequently noted the murals, and the efforts by the American University to preserve then, under the graffiti label.

This is a loss for Egyptian culture,  and a triumph for the bureaucratic mind,

Violence in Tunisia Began with Art Exhibit, Then Spread

Tunisia is reeling from a wave of clashes Monday night in the elite seaside community of La Marsa and several other parts of the capital, as well as elsewhere in the country. What began as a protest over an art exhibit which Salafis characterized as un-Islamic has turned into open conflict between apparent Salafis (though he organized movements deny involvement) and the police. Though shots have been fired, apparently with rubber bullets and teargas used, no one has ben killed, though many have been treated in hospitals, and a curfew was imposed in eight governorates. The police stations in La Marsa and other parts of the country have been attacked and ransacked., The US Embassy has issued a warning about the violence in La Marsa, Sidi Bou Said, Carthage and Gammarth, all seaside areas popular with tourists. (Full disclosure: I took my honeymoon in Sidi Bou Said.)

The building tensions over the Printemps des Arts fair at a gallery in La Marsa first led to confrontations and then to a direct attack on the gallery and the destruction of some of the artworks.

Tunisia has generally won praise as a successful transition, but growing violence from radical Salafis in one of the most secularized of Arab countries is increasingly causing concern, Cultural issues increasingly seem to be the battleground, and the attack on the Printemps des Arts Fair was reportedly organized using Facebook and other social media.

Still More on the Cairo Graffiti Walls

I've posted a lot about the graffiti walls around AUC in Cairo; you may recall that AUC was organizing a panel on it earlier this month. Ebony Coletu, one of the organizers, has a well-illustrated piece at Jadaliya under the title "Visualizing Revolution: the Politics of Paint in Tahrir." The pharaonic themes are emphasized, among others.

Read it of course, but most importantly, look at the pictures.