What went wrong?
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.”
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
15 Sep 2009 helena
Testing comments
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.