Pharaonism
The Egyptians came subsequently under the influence of a succession of several foreign rulers, including Persians, Greco-Macedonians, Romans and Arab Caliphates.
By the 4th century, the majority of the Egyptians had converted to Christianity and in 535 the Roman Emperor Justinian ordered the Temple of Isis at Philae closed, which marked the formal end of the ancient religion of Egypt.
[2] During the Middle Ages, the monuments of the ancient Egyptian civilization were sometimes destroyed as remnants of a time of jahiliyyah ("pre-Islamic ignorance").
[3] Local legends claimed the attack on the Sphinx led to a massive sand storm at Giza, which only ended with the holy man's lynching.
[3] In Egypt, the belief in the magical powers of the Pyramids and ancient ruins played a significant role in their preservation.
Additionally, in the Middle Ages, Egyptians created a story associating the Pharaoh mentioned in religious texts with Iran, aiming to salvage pride despite the condemnation in the Quran.
[5] Likewise, Mohammad Ali had a permissive attitude towards Europeans taking ancient Egyptian relics with them, allowing much plundering of various sites such as by the Italian Giovanni Battista Belzoni while a diplomatic posting in Cairo was highly sought after owing to opportunities for looting.
In one of his most well known articles, written in 1933 in the magazine Kawkab el Sharq, he wrote saying: Pharaonism is deeply rooted in the spirits of the Egyptians.
[15] On 6 March 1924, Zaghlul formally opened the tomb of King Tutankhamun to the Egyptian public in an elaborate ceremony held at night with the sky lit up by floodlights, which reportedly attracted the largest crowd ever seen in Luxor.
[15] The long dead Tutankhamun was turned by the Wafd Party into a symbol of Egyptian nationalism, which was why Carter's plans to take the treasures from his tomb aroused such opposition in Egypt.
[18] Starting in 1940, the Young Egypt Society abandoned Pharaonism and sought to reinvent itself as an Islamic fundamentalist party.
[19] "Pharaonism" was condemned by Hassan al-Banna, the founder and Supreme Guide of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, as glorifying a period of jahiliyyah, which is the Islamic term for the pre-Islamic past.
[19] In a 1937 article, Banna attacked Pharaonism for glorifying the "pagan reactionary Pharaohs" like Akhenaten, Ramesses the Great and Tutankhamun instead of Muhammad and his companions and for seeking to "annihilate" Egypt's Muslim identity.
Sadat only engaged in Pharaonism for international consumption, such as when he arranged for the mummy of King Ramses the Great to go to Paris for restoration work in 1974; he insisted the French provide an honor guard at Charles de Gaulle airport to fire a 21 gun salute as befitting a head of state when the coffin containing King Ramses' corpse touched French soil.
In late 2007, el-Masri el-Yom daily newspaper conducted an interview at a bus stop in the working-class district of Imbaba to ask citizens what Arab nationalism (el-qawmeyya el-'arabeyya) represented for them.
[26] Some contemporary prominent Egyptians who oppose Arab nationalism or the idea that Egyptians are Arabs include Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass,[27] popular writer Osama Anwar Okasha, Egyptian-born Harvard University Professor Leila Ahmed, Member of Parliament Suzie Greiss,[28] in addition to different local groups and intellectuals.
Its territorial continuity since ancient times, its unique history as exemplified in its pharaonic past and later on its Coptic language and culture, had already made Egypt into a nation for centuries.
However, some Western scholars today see Pharaonism as a late development, arguing that it was shaped primarily by Orientalism, and they doubt its validity.
[34][35] The Canadian archaeologist Michael Wood argued that one of the principal problems of Pharaonism as an integrating ideology for the population is that it glorifies a period in time too remote for most Egyptians, and moreover, one that lacks visible signs of continuity for the Arabic speaking Muslim majority, such as a common language, culture, or alphabet.
[38] Wood wrote that even the surviving ruins of ancient Egypt, consisting mostly of "tombs, palaces and temples, the relics of a death-obsessed, aristocratic, pagan society," seem to confirm the popular image of a "slave state," while the "more sophisticated models of Egyptian history, developed mainly by foreign scholars, remain ignored".
[36] The ruins of ancient Egypt, with their pompous and grandiose bragging about the greatness of the god-kings who had them built, give the impression of a society slavishly devoted to serving the kings who proclaimed themselves to be living gods.
[36] One of the principal reasons why Pharaonism went into decline starting in the 1940s was because the Quran condemns ancient Egypt so strongly, making it very difficult for Egyptian Muslims to use the symbols of ancient Egypt without causing accusations of abandoning their faith[39] Wood wrote that a principal difference between Egypt and Mexico is that Mexicans can and do incorporate elements from Mesoamerican civilizations like the Olmecs, the Maya, and the Mexica (Aztecs), which are seen as part of a national continuity interrupted by the Spanish conquest of 1519–1521 and resumed with independence in 1821, whereas it is impossible for Egyptians to use pharaonic symbols "without being left open to the charges that such symbols were non-Islamic or anti-Islamic".
[43] The purpose of such theories was to assert the West was the "true heirs" of ancient Egypt, whose people were viewed as "honorary Westerners" with no connection to modern Egyptians.
[46] Similar spectacles, including musical performances in the ancient Egyptian language,[47] followed the opening of the Avenue of Sphinxes later that year.
"[50] The Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Archeology through the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities released a statement on the issue, claiming that Queen Cleopatra was "light-skinned and (had) Hellenic features.
