Articles

Abstract   In popular discourse, the idea of ‘renaissance’ is rarely associated with Ancient Egypt, but one has to wonder why. Throughout its long history, the land of the Pharaohs underwent a series of transformations, with centralised kingdoms repeatedly disintegrating into a patchwork of regional polities and then being ‘reborn’ several centuries later under unified rule. The reasons for these transformations, and subsequent revivals, were much the same as those we face no

Dr Mostafa El Feki is Director of the New Library of Alexandria. He has been a Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, and has held numerous posts in the Egyptian government, including Ambassador to Austria.   Dr Mostafa El Feki has witnessed five Egyptian presidencies and been prominent in the political sphere for the last four and a half decades. He is well placed to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of each Egyptian President to have serve

Conventional wisdom tells us that the first civilisation to be governed in a manner comparable to our own was Ancient Greece—the world’s first democracy.[1] Such discourse has contributed to popular belief that earlier civilisations, of which Egypt is probably the best-known example, might be interesting in myriad ways but surely have little to offer scholars of modern government. Egypt, according to established narrative, was an absolute monarchy, where Pharaoh did as he ple