Abdel Nasser and the Antiquities of Egypt
Abdel Nasser and the Antiquities of Egypt
Written by Amr Saleh
Did President Gamal Abdel Nasser neglect the monuments and treasures of Egypt and distribute them to the countries of the world according to his whims, as his opponents spread?!!
To find out the truth about President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s dealings with Egypt’s antiquities, we will review together the book “My Memoirs in Politics and Culture,” which contains the memoirs of former Minister of Culture Dr. Tharwat Okasha, specifically the sixth chapter of the second part of the memoirs, entitled “My Experience as a Member of the Executive Council of UNESCO.” The international campaign to save the monuments of Nubia.
Dr. Tharwat Okasha held the position of Minister of Culture from 1958 to 1962 and from 1966 to 1970. He also served as head of the Egyptian delegation to the UNESCO General Conference from 1962 to 1970.
Dr. Tharwat Okasha says in his memoirs, that the regime of the July 23 revolution was the first to establish a specialized center for recording and studying the history of Egyptian art, heritage and civilization in order to preserve, record and document all Egyptian antiquities.
The regime of the July 23 revolution since 1954 is interested in how to save the monuments of Nubia in Egypt, which includes more than 17 ancient Egyptian temples, including archaeological icons that represent the height of the ancient Egyptian civilization, such as the temples of Abu Simbel, Philae and Kalabsha, especially since the establishment of the Aswan reservoir in 1902 led To threaten the antiquities of Nubia by drowning after the waters of the Nile River began to flood them at the time of the flood each year, Dr. Tharwat Okasha cites a book by French scientist and writer Pierre Loti entitled (The Death of an Elephant) in which he predicts the disappearance of all the traces of Nubia.
Dr. Tharwat Okasha also mentions the poem of the Prince of Poets Ahmed Shawqi, “O you who is deceived in Aswan, a home,” which he wrote in 1910, in which he describes the state of Aswan’s ruins in verses in which he said:
Stand in those palaces in the sea I drowned
Holding each other out of panic
Like virgins hidden in water
I will swim with it, and I will show you
Supervisors of the demise and were
Supervisors of the rising planets.
Dr. Tharwat Okasha says that the beginning of the actual campaign to save the antiquities of Nubia came in 1958, with the start of the implementation of the project to build the High Dam, which studies have proven that the lake that will be created behind it will drown all the monuments of Nubia, and Dr. Okasha tells that the Egyptian government’s thinking about the campaign to save antiquities began after A visit by the American ambassador in Cairo at the time, accompanied by the director of the American Metropolitan Museum, to the office of Dr. Tharwat Okasha, in order for the American ambassador to ask him to buy all the temples and monuments of Nubia, which are expected to be drowned after the construction of the High Dam.
Dr. Okasha says that he asked to meet with President Abdel Nasser after the American ambassador’s offer, and that the American offer provoked the president’s ridicule, who ridiculed the Americans’ refusal to contribute to building the High Dam and then their quest to exploit the process of its construction to seize Egypt’s antiquities.
During his meeting with President Abdel Nasser, Dr. Tharwat Okasha presented to the President his plan to save the antiquities of Nubia, and asked for his support in all international forums so that the campaign to save the antiquities would succeed.
With political and financial support from the Egyptian government during the period from 1958 to 1968, and in coordination with UNESCO and many countries of the world, a project to save the monuments of Nubia was implemented.
Dr. Tharwat Okasha documented all the works of the campaign to save the monuments of Nubia in his book “Insan Al-Azra Tatouk Ramses” and its first Arabic edition was issued by the Egyptian Book Authority in 1971, then UNESCO translated it into French at its expense and distributed it in the world.
The Egyptian Ministry of Culture commissioned the Canadian director “John Finney” to make a documentary film about the monuments of Nubia and the epic of saving them. The film took 4 years to produce, and it was released under the name “The Eighth Wonder.” The title of the film describes the process of saving the monuments of Nubia as the eighth wonder of the world.
The Egyptian campaign saved the monuments of the Sudanese Nuba as well.
The campaign to save the antiquities of Nubia was not limited to antiquities threatened with drowning only, but thanks to dozens of Egyptian and foreign archaeological missions that conducted an archaeological survey of the Nubia region throughout the campaign period, it was able to discover thousands of new pieces of ancient Egyptian antiquities, which currently constitute most of the holdings of the Nubia Museum of Antiquities.
The campaign to save the antiquities of Nubia cost 80 million US dollars, of which Egypt paid one third, while the United States of America, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands and UNESCO paid the remaining two thirds of the eighty million dollars.
The campaign to save the antiquities of Nubia is the first and largest cultural project to preserve the world heritage in modern history, and the process of dismantling and rebuilding the Abu Simbel temples on the Abu Simbel plateau is an unprecedented architectural, engineering and geological work, and it cost at the time of prices 36 million dollars of the cost of the entire campaign .
The donor countries stipulated that they obtain some Egyptian artifacts in return for their contributions to saving the antiquities of Nubia, so a committee was formed of the Egyptian Antiquities Authority scientists to identify and select those artifacts.
The committee settled on donating the Temple of Dando to America, the Temple of Dabod to Spain, and the Temple of Tafa to the Netherlands. For France.
This is the true story through documented testimony from the main hero of the campaign to save the antiquities of Nubia.
The funny thing is that the Shammargi, the liberals and the Brotherhood, while they throw that false accusation against President Abdel Nasser, forget that the largest looting of Egypt’s antiquities began with the French campaign in 1798 and extended throughout the era of the Alawi dynasty.
For example :
In France, there are 4 Egyptian obelisks, three of which were stolen during the French campaign that invaded Egypt (1798-1801), and the fourth was gifted by Muhammad Ali Pasha to France in 1833, and it was located at the entrance to the Luxor Temple, and now stands in the Concorde Square in Paris.
In the Louvre Museum there is a golden Nefertiti mask, a statue of the Egyptian writer, a statue of King Ramses II, a statue of King Akhenaten, and a statue of Amenhotep, in addition to the huge number of Egyptian artifacts that are in the museum, which exceeds 50 thousand pieces, so that the museum was expanded to include 31 halls. New in order to accommodate the Egyptian artifacts that were seized by the French during their campaign to conquer Egypt, and the antiquities that Muhammad Ali Pasha and his sons and grandsons gave to France during the rule of the Alawi dynasty.
In Britain, there is a Rosetta Stone in the British Museum, and the British Museum allocates 7 rooms to display the ancient Egyptian antiquities, which amount to 100,000 artifacts, which vary between antique statues, mummies, furniture, jewelry and historical papyri.
In 2001, the Wondorff Collection was given to the British Museum, which includes 6 million artifacts dating back to prehistoric times in Egypt and Sudan. There is also the Egyptian obelisk that Muhammad Ali Pasha gave to the English in 1831, and it was erected in a square overlooking the River Thames, and in 1826 it was gifted to the British Museum. Muhammad Ali Pasha to King Louis Philippe of France, an Egyptian obelisk that was erected in the Place de la Concorde in the center of the French capital, Paris. In 1879, Khedive Ismail gifted another Egyptian obelisk to the United States of America, which is currently erected in Central Park in New York City.
In 1832, the ruler of Egypt, “Muhammad Ali” Pasha, sold two wonderful pink granite statues of a lion with a human head depicting the Egyptian King “Amenhotep III”, the ninth king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who ruled Egypt in the period between (1391 BC – 1353 BC). M) to the Russian Tsar Nicholas I in the amount of 64 thousand rubles.
Muhammad Ali Pasha had initially sold the two statues to King Charles X of France, but the outbreak of the July Revolution of 1830, which overthrew Charles X’s rule, made the sale of the statues to the Czar of Russia, Nicholas I.
As soon as the two statues arrived in Russia, they were transferred to Saint Petersburg, where they were erected on the corniche leading to the city’s university.
In 1912, the Russian scientist, Vasily Struve, managed to translate the hieroglyphs on the two statues, which read:
“Long live Horus, the great and radiant bull in truth, the law-maker and the caretaker of the earth, the golden Horus, the bull of kings, conqueror of the nine bows, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, lord and landowner of Amenophis III, son of Ra.
The son of Ra, the beloved Amenhotep, ruler of Thebes, and the image of Ra in front of the two lands.
The owner of good eternity .. the owner of life, stability, happiness and health.”
Two Sphinxes for 64 thousand rubles.
Museo Egizie In Italy there is a museum
Which includes 32,500 artifacts on display, including statues of deities, coffins, jewelry of ancient Egyptian kings and their tools in daily life.
This museum was established in 1824, and all its holdings of Egyptian antiquities that were looted and stolen from Egypt before its establishment and which continued after its establishment throughout the period of the rule of the Muhammad Ali family, especially during the reign of King Fouad I, who was fond of Italians, and his entourage includes many Italians residing in Egypt .
.
The map of looted and stolen Egyptian antiquities presented by the rulers of the Muhammad Ali family is not limited to France, England and Italy only, but also extends to the United States of America, Germany, Russia, Denmark and other European countries.
Professor Mukhtar Al-Suwaifi wrote in his introduction to the Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt – which was authored by the Egyptian archaeological encyclopedic Dr. Salim Hassan – revealing the reason for referring Dr. Salim Hassan has retired when he is forty-six years old?!
Dr. Selim Hassan was the first Egyptian to work as an agent for the Egyptian Antiquities Authority, and that was in 1936, and while he was looking at an inventory of the interest’s antiquities, he found that there was an archaeological group that King Fouad had taken and kept in his palace. In Cairo, after the death of King Fouad and King Farouk taking over, Farouk sent the Department of Antiquities to demand antiquities as his property within his inheritance from his father, Dr. Salim Hassan replied to King Farouk that these antiquities belong to Egypt and refused to return the antiquities to the royal palace.
Salim Hassan’s decision caused King Farouk’s anger against him, so he kept trying to get rid of him until he succeeded in his quest by issuing a decision to refer Dr. Salim Hassan to retirement in 1939. After he got stuck in his work and narrowed it down.
After his retirement, Dr. Salim Hassan devoted himself to completing his sixteen-part encyclopedia of the history of ancient Egypt. Which is considered the most important encyclopedia of ancient Egyptian history. In addition to his important book on ancient Egyptian literature.
Professor Mukhtar Al-Sweifi adds in his introduction that the conditions of Dr. Salim Hassan changed for the better after the revolution of July 23, 1952. President Gamal Abdel Nasser sympathized with this great scientist, and understood his destiny that honors Egypt and the Egyptians, so he issued a decision to send him to visit the museums of the world that display Egyptian artifacts.. He decided to appoint him as an advisor to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 1959.. In 1960, the New York Academy, which includes more than 1,500 scientists from 57 countries, honored him and elected him unanimously as a member.
Al-Shamsharji, the liberals, the Brotherhood and those suffering from Gamal Abdel Nasser’s urticaria who followed them depend on telling a lie and then repeating it until it turns into a given information, or on misrepresenting a piece of information and putting it out of context in order to distort the truth of a certain historical fact.
These dirty methods of falsifying history and distorting its heroes cannot withstand the facts, testimonies and documents.
Gamal Abdel Nasser did not neglect the monuments of Egypt, but rather saved it from drowning and loss, and supported the campaign to save it with millions of dollars. Despite the defeat of 1967, the Egyptian government did not stop supporting the campaign to save the monuments of Nubia until the official celebration of the end of the campaign with success on September 22, 1968, not only that but All Egyptian antiquities were documented and recorded for the first time in the history of Egypt, and thanks to the campaign, thousands of new pieces of ancient Egyptian antiquities were discovered.
Photo of an Egyptian postage stamp issued in 1963 as part of the activities of the international campaign to save Egypt’s antiquities.
Sources:
- The book “My Memoirs in Politics and Culture – Part Two: Memoirs of Dr. Tharwat Okasha.”
- “Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt” book: Dr. Saleem Hassan