Shafiga Daulet. Kazan and Moscow: Five Centuries of Crippling Coexistence under Russian Imperialism, 1552-2002 . Hudson, NH: Kase Press, 2003. 826pp. ISBN: 0-615-12254-X

Abstract

Chapter 2 discusses how the tyrannical Pharaoh who confronted Moses in the Qur'an bolstered the revulsion of some medieval Muslims against all pre-Islamic antiquities. But other Muslims travelers, philosophers, Sufis, and peasants reflected on antiquities as telling reminders of the power and wisdom of ancient Egypt. The chapter then describes the halting attempts of the Egyptian state from the 1830s to claim, conserve, and collect antiquities. Chapter 3 describes how, under Khedive Ismail, Rifa'a al-Tahtawi and Ali Mubarak laid institutional foundations for teaching about ancient Egypt and linking the pharaohs to modern revival and the cause of national independence. Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid expounded these themes early in the 20" century, and his intellectual and political heirs came into their own in the interwar period, the subject of Chapter 4. In 1922, Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb came on the heels of Britain's concession of greater Egyptian independence. To Carter's consternation, nationalists won the battle to keep all of Tut's treasures in Egypt. "Pharaonism" swept through elite discourse in politics (palace, Wafdist, and Liberal Constitutionalist), literature (Muhammad Husayn Haykal and Tawfiq al-Hakim), painting, and sculpture. Mahmud al-Mukhtar's iconic granite statue "The Awakening of Egypt" showed a sphinx rising as a peasant woman lifts her head covering. Pharaonism had already peaked before World War II, when Naguib Mahfouz published his first three novels, all set in ancient Egypt. Colla's fifth chapter creatively pairs Mahfouz and Sayyid Qutb, who in 1944 heaped extravagant praise on Mahfouz's Kijah Tiba (The Struggle of Thebes). Kifab celebrates Egypt's liberation from foreign Hyksos rule at the start of the New Kingdom, a clear allusion to longing for freedom from the British yoke. Mahfouz and Qutb soon turned their backs on pharaonism, though in fatefully different ways. Mahfouz began writing the social realist fiction set in the 20"' century that would win him the Nobel Prize but almost cost him his life at the hands of an Islamist assassin. Qutb, appalled by experience of the United States as a student, returned to join the Muslim Brotherhood, spend years in Nasser's prisons, and die on the gallows in 1966. His prison polemics against contemporary Muslim regimes and the West still echo through the Islamic world. The Qur'anic pharaoh of Moses loomed large in his imagination, and in 1981 President Sadat's assassin would proclaim, "I have killed Pharaoh!" Colla's rich readings of the multiple meanings of pharaonic history are an inspired contribution to a growing subfield. Conflicted Antiquities will be a cornerstone for further work on the perennially fascinating topic of ancient Egypt's legacy to cultures near and far that came after it.