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Parading Power: Pharaoh-Washing History to Govern the Present and Future
Abstract
In April 2021, the Egyptian government staged its most grandiose spectacle of the 21st century: “The Pharoah’s Golden Parade.” A massive event that landed on the global media stage, this parade centered on the safe transport of 24 mummies from the old Egyptian Museum to the newly constructed National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. In doing so, it traversed a path from Tahrir Square, the locus of the 2011 uprising, to Fustat, the first capital of Egypt dating back to the 7th century. It thus linked two sites of state governance across nearly 15 centuries. This paper examines the parade as an attempt by the state to craft, through elaborate staging, an alternative history of place and identity in order to govern the present and the future. Through a visual, sonic, and spatial analysis of the parade and its official coverage, the paper shows how the state attempted to erase the history and violence of the uprising by resignifying its location. Instead of a site of protests, the overthrow of a president, and state-sanctioned injury and murder, Tahrir was spatially transformed into a stage for the recreation of a glorious ancient Egyptian past as well the current regime’s power. As part of this stagecraft, the parade put forth ideal images of race and gender, and blended military, high culture, and Hollywood aesthetics. An image of an ideal Egypt emerged as a possible future enacted in real-time, aiming to cultivate onlookers as ideal civilized citizens united in praise for the nation and, by extension, its leader. By examining how costume, props, lighting, sound, and media worked together to create a spectacle at the spatial heart of the 2011 uprising, we gain a better understanding of how critical stagecraft is to erasing the threat that uprising posed to the regime’s stability.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
None