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What went wrong?

15th September 2009 by Helena 8 Comments  

It may be a stupid question, but you can’t help wondering as you wander through the Egyptian museum looking at the remnants from what was one of the world’s greatest ever civilisations: Where did it all go wrong?

How come thousands of years ago they were so rich and so talented and intelligent that they were able to bury people with more riches than it would take several families a lifetime to make in modern Egypt, where people earn around $160 a month if they’re lucky?

I am shocked at how poor this country is, and so is Nawal, the writer and activist I interviewed last night. She of course blames it on economic colonialism. As well as non-secular government and a patriarchal society. “We are forced to eat imported food,” she told me last night. “We are perfectly capable of growing our own, but now our agriculture is non-existent.”

Tutankhamun

The answer is clearly to put the women in charge and make the men grow the vegetables. Then they can go back to the good old days.

PS In response to Dom’s comment below (as my own website seems to think that my comments are spam and will not let me post any) my point is this: In England today the majority of people do not live below the poverty line. We have a working and a middle class that is prosperous. Here there seems to be no middle class, 99.9% are poor and the others are rich.  Of course peasants in Medieval England were badly off, but the fact is they don’t live in the gutter today or have to send their children out to work.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009


Filed Under: Politics, Travel, blog --> Tagged With: wrong

8 thoughts on What went wrong?

  • helena says:
    15th September 2009 at 10:55 am

    Testing comments

  • Dom says:
    15th September 2009 at 11:44 am

    Just because the Pharoahs were rich doesn’t mean the country or its inhabitants did not live in grinding poverty. After all, a tour of the Crown Jewels in London would not give you any insight into how the average medieval peasant lived.

  • helena says:
    15th September 2009 at 1:59 pm

    and another thing…I suppose what I am trying to say is that it is tragic how this country, or at least this city, seems to be so far behind a lot of the world when they were once light-years ahead.
    Hx

  • Susan says:
    15th September 2009 at 8:54 pm

    I think it depends on whose in charge of the country ie decision making and the consequences of those decisions. With the Ancient Egyptians, if I remember rightly, Cleopatra made certain fateful decisions that allowed the Romans to take over the country. But looking back at history, what happened to the great civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome? Regarding Egypt today, I was told that many people come from other parts of Africa to Cairo as it is seen as the promised land – just as people from other European countries try to get to Britain. Did you visit the Mummies section of the museum? I found it amazing that people knew how to preserve bodies so perfectly thousands of years ago.

  • mimi says:
    15th September 2009 at 9:26 pm

    Well, Iceland put the women in charge and that seems to be going well.
    Men only muck things up and start wars- def let them grow the vegetables.

  • Jennifer says:
    16th September 2009 at 2:03 am

    I watched a program hosted by…oh, I can’t remember his name now, but he was in Monty Python…anyway, it’s about different types of people who lived during Medieval times in Great Britain. You’d be surprised at how well off the peasants could be. I mean, certainly not living luxuriously, but reasonably well-nourished and living in decent housing. Plus, they had a lot more free time than workers do today! The host of the program really dispelled a lot of the ideas I had about people living in that social class from that time.

  • Sharyn says:
    16th September 2009 at 9:43 pm

    The politics of the middle east and the bulk of Africa are to maintain the status quo of the richest segment of the population and be damned everyone else. These policies are wearing thin as evidenced by the extremist muslim movements and the terrorists that have been fermented in the region. Calling any one of these countries a “democracy” is a misconception. Since Europe, Britain and the United States have propped up and supported these countries and their leaders over the years in our greed for oil and other natural resources, it is no wonder that we are blamed for their economic & societal woes.

  • Philllip Vanderwarker says:
    17th September 2009 at 6:20 am

    There has been tremendous reconstruction in Luxor, where wonderful colonial buildings and architectural gems have been bulldozed to accommodate coaches from the Red Sea resorts. Th local governer would have been better employed raising the standard of living for the fellaheen.

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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