Neal Spencer · At the Grand Egyptian Museum: New Pharaonism

The Grand Egyptian Museum, announced at the height of Hosni Mubarak’s rule and styled ‘the largest museum in the world dedicated to the people, history and culture of Ancient Egypt’, opened in November last year with a lavish ceremony broadcast round the world. It is estimated to have cost more than $1 billion ($300 million of which was a loan from Japan) and sprawls over an area the size of seventy football pitches. The financial crash of 2008, the Arab Spring and Covid meant that its construction took almost twenty years. Much has changed in that time. The last decade of construction took place under the military regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who installed one of his generals as its head – the first non-Egyptologist to direct a major Egyptian museum.

To get to the Grand Egyptian Museum, you must arrive by car or bus via the new roads that connect the edge of the Giza plateau to the gated communities and shopping centres that have sprung up in the desert. The physical separation of the museum from Cairo is a little like that of the Getty Museum from Los Angeles, but here it is not merely a matter of space or vistas. The regime is keen to keep international visitors away from sites of popular resistance and the struggle of daily life; a nearby military airfield has been turned into a tourist entry point and renamed Sphinx International Airport. The museum building, designed by the Irish-Japanese firm Heneghan Peng, is understated, slung low in the landscape next to the pyramids. Its steel-framed sloping façades are made up of triangular panels of translucent alabaster and expanses of glass. There is none of the inflated, ill-proportioned pharaonism that can be seen in buildings recently commissioned in Cairo, such as the shiny Bashtil train station. The most impressive areas, the conservation centre and science laboratories, are hidden underground. A consortium led by Hassan Allam Holding, one of the favoured corporate partners of the Egyptian military state, manages the whole facility.

I visited the museum in April and found it remarkably well laid out (as a decidely non-specialist in Egyptology or the curatorial arts) and full of fascinating artifacts. This piece raises a number of fair points, positive and negative,  about the space and what story it tries to tell about Egypt’s past.

The End of Rent Controls Promises Disruption in Cairo - New Lines Magazine

In early 2025, a video went viral on Facebook. In it, a middle-aged Egyptian woman in a black galabiya and patterned hijab addresses President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, telling him that, over the preceding 11 years, she has been on his side, despite “hardship, pain and humiliation.” She says that as life became more and more expensive, she continued to trust his words that Egyptians needed to be patient. She followed him even when people could no longer pay their bills, and half the population went to bed hungry. “But if you take that pen and sign off on Egyptians being kicked out of their houses, that will be the end of our common path, Mr. President,” she says. “If you sign this law, you will lose us.”

The CIA World Factbook is no more | AP News

But the very useful World Leaders page is still there - a very useful and quickly updated list of members of government for every US-recognised country in the world.

Human Rights Watch researchers resign after report on Palestinian right of return blocked | World news | The Guardian

From what I understand, the report had gone through all internal vetting before being blocked by senior leadership, for fear of the potential backlash of being seen as challenging a Jewish-dominated state in Israel.

See also this piece in Jewish Currents which expands on The Guardian’s version. It’s disappointing to see former HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth defend the organization’s decision and argue that the report’s legal argument did not stand despite not having read the report, and that HRW’s legal department endorsed it in review.

Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, Son of Libyan Dictator, Is Killed - The New York Times

Out of nowhere! Seif had been safe since his capture in 2011, ambiguously held by militias in Zintan for years as a hostage but also allowed to hold some meetings and hint at a political comeback.

Iliad Translations

This is a wonderful example of what the web can be - a simple, ad and clutter-free, comparison of various translations of The Iliad into English.

Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi’s New Republic | Verso Books

I’m excited about Hossam El-Hamalawy’s forthcoming new book on the Egyptian security state!

The agents of coercion in Egypt – its military, police, and intelligence services – have been locked in a perennial struggle for power since their inception. Each institution has vied for dominance, shaping and reshaping the country’s political landscape. Yet, the seismic upheaval of the 2011 revolution forced these factions to put aside their differences and forge an alliance in the face of an existential threat: the revolutionary aspirations of the Egyptian people.

He also recently posted a YouTube video about it that explains what it’s about.

CIA to name veteran Middle East case officer as head of covert operations - FT

CIA director John Ratcliffe has chosen an intelligence operative who heads a critical station in a Middle East country to be deputy director for operations, according to several people familiar with the decision.

How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump | The New Yorker

Absolutely scathing reporting. Such a disastrous presidency in so many ways, and such a disastrous party leadership.

Adam Shatz | Remembering Hugh Roberts

On the great historian of Algeria Hugh Roberts, who recently passed away. I got to know him a little when we both lived in Cairo, and fondly remember our many arguments and conversations.

La stratégie séparatiste des Emirats arabes unis

Writing in Le Monde, Jean-Pierre Filiu outlines the separatist strategy of the UAE in Libya, Yemen and Sudan where it has backed violent factions with local agendas that undermine any possibility of national reconciliation and stability: Haftar and the east in Libya, southern separatists in Aden, and of course the genocidal Darfur militias (chiefly the RSF). Translation by AI (Claude):

The “Sparta of the Middle East,” as the United Arab Emirates has sometimes been described, has distinguished itself for more than a decade through a highly militarized and particularly aggressive foreign policy. Such a strategy bears the mark of Mohammed Bin Zayed, the current president of the federation of emirates, and is driven by an obsessive hostility toward the “Arab Spring,” that wave of popular protest that made the dictatorships of the region tremble in 2011.

While the strength of such a strategy may lie in its counter-revolutionary coherence, it leads the United Arab Emirates to support secessionist movements in numerous theaters, accentuating the fragmentation of the concerned states instead of guaranteeing some form of authoritarian restoration.

. . .

The Sudanese tragedy thus brings to a climax the disaster that the UAE’s separatist strategy represents in terms of mass suffering for the populations concerned and the disintegration of the regional order.

What Does Trump Want in the Middle East? | Foreign Affairs

Marc Lynch on Trump’s Gulf visit.

Trump Is Poised to Accept a Luxury 747 From Qatar for Use as Air Force One - The New York Times

If the Qataris also intend to cover the costs of converting the plane to Air Force One specs, that is an even more massive amount of money. That Trump could then own it is absurd.

Hafiz Al-Assad signed Rolex Submariner up for sale. I guess some Syrian Air Force general needs cash.

A quick thought on the escalation between India and Pakistan: it might be a first test of what kind of a world we’re in - especially if U.S. gets less involved, China more, and other actors like Saudi or Qatar play a more significant role than they would have before.

BBC Two - Louis Theroux, The Settlers

Scathing new documentary on settler violence in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Theroux writes about the filming here for Deadline, ending with this:

One of my reasons for wanting to go back, apart from changes in the region itself, was the sense that increasingly the wider world was looking to what is happening in Israel and the occupied territories for clues as to what their own future might look like. Some global populist leaders view the ideology of the settler community as a prototype for a type of nationalism they would like to practise. They regard Israeli settlers as the tip of the spear of what they frame as a global war against Islam. The views expressed by some in the film are part of a much wider and increasingly powerful anti-democratic strain of thinking that is pushing back against notions of civil rights and the rule of law. And so there is renewed relevance to understanding what is happening in the West Bank.

Very proud to see my friend, the fantastic Magnum photographer Moises Saman, win a Pulitzer for his work for The New Yorker. The magazine got two more Pulitzers, including for the work of the Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha on Gaza.

This is a compelling argument for bureaucracy as a safeguard against populist authoritarianism: Bureaucracy Reconsidered - The Ideas Letter

Gazan photographer Samar Abu Elouf’s haunting picture of a nine-year old double-amputee wins, if that even is the right word, the World Press Photo of the Year award: Mahmoud Ajjour, Aged Nine | World Press Photo

Exclusive: Musk’s SpaceX is frontrunner to build Trump’s Golden Dome missile shield | Reuters

Mike Stone and Marisa Taylor report:

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter said.

Musk’s rocket and satellite company is partnering with software maker Palantir (PLTR.O), opens new tab and drone builder Anduril on a bid to build key parts of Golden Dome, the sources said, which has drawn significant interest from the technology sector’s burgeoning base of defense startups.

And this is the icing on the cake for the defense tech bros who hate big government except when it gives them big contracts:

In an unusual twist, SpaceX has proposed setting up its role in Golden Dome as a “subscription service” in which the government would pay for access to the technology, rather than own the system outright.

Best antidote yet to Bill Maher’s (and many others') “why can’t we just get along” garbage, as if fear about Trump was the sign of some sort of liberal/leftist meltdown or inability to cope with a normal conservative president: Wall Street Journal

Semafor, Mohammed Sergie: Qatar joins Gulf peers in backing Egypt with potential $7.5B investment

Michael Wahid Hanna: As Other Partners Struggle with Trump, U.S. and Saudi Arabia Move toward Nuclear Cooperation | Crisis Group

Michael’s piece (although he does not put it in this way) is a reminder of how utterly pathetic the Biden administration’s policy on Saudi Arabia was, on multiple level.

Hossam el-Hamalawy interviews Robert Springborg: Sisi’s Weakness Makes Him More Brutal - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

Jordan Says It Foiled a Plot Against the Kingdom - The New York Times:

The Jordanian authorities said the newer plot included plans to manufacture missiles locally as well as bring them in from abroad, and to obtain explosives and weapons. The plot also included “concealment of a ready-to-use missile, a project to manufacture drones, and the recruitment and training of individuals within the Kingdom and their subsequent training abroad,” the statement said.

A report by the Reuters news agency cited officials saying that the arrests on Tuesday were connected to the Palestinian militant group, Hamas. Since the war between Israel and Hamas began in Gaza, Jordan has countered Iranian efforts to smuggle weapons through the country to Palestinian militants across the border in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to regional and U.S. officials.