ABSTRACT

On 20 May 1928, in Bab al Hadid Square, artist Mahmoud Mukhtar unveiled his seminal sculpture ‘The Awakening of Egypt’ or Nahdet Masr. 1 The sculpture evinced Mukhtar's prevailing interpretation of what Egypt's awakening meant to Egyptians – a commemoration of ‘the contemporary reawakening and rejuvenation of the nation in the wake of the anti-colonial revolution of 1919’ (Gershoni, 1992: 19). The nationalism movement not only manifested Egypt's ‘liberation from foreign rule but also marked freedom from the shackles of tradition and the tyrannical burden of a long era of degeneration’ (ibid.: 29). Nationalists credited the work with being a timely display of Egypt's nationalist credentials that symbolized the country's association with political and social change during the 1920s. These nationalists were particularly ‘paving the way for the elaboration of a more positive national image’ extracted from Egypt's cultural and historical identity (Gershoni and Jankowski, 1987: 130). In their view, as in Mukhtar's, only individual nation status could bring the people's minds to the spirit of the ‘true eternal essence’ of Egypt's authentic identity; and only under these circumstances would Egypt be able to generate the essential conditions for developing a modern nation (ibid.) (Figure 14.1).