The Mamluk period was the most exuberant in Egypt. It lasted from 1250 to 1517, a short period of only 267 years but highly dynamic in art and architecture. No historian has given a documented and defendable reason for this rise yet many spoke of the origins of the Mamluks in Eastern Europe, Anatolia, and the Caucus. Their excellence in design was directly related to the diversity of their population in Egypt and Syria but more specifically in Cairo. A new aesthetic developed in their art and architecture and became uniquely Mamluk. It was a culmination of design influences coming from as far away as Persepolis in the East and al-Andalus in the West. Good trade relations with Catalonia played an important role in the transmission of design ideas and the prosperity of the Mamluks. The doctorate thesis is a study of the sources of Islamic design in several regions and their development. It analyzes examples from the pre-Islamic, Islamic and post-Islamic periods to show how design shared inspirational sources. It traces the aesthetics of Islamic architecture, using twentieth century Spain as a case study, to show how this affected the development of modern and contemporary architecture. / El període Mameluc era el més exuberant a Egipte. Va durar des·de 1250-1517, un curt període de només 267 anys, però molt dinàmic en l'art i l'arquitectura. Cap historiador ha donat una raó documentada i defensable per aquest augment però molts van parlar dels orígens dels mamelucs a Europa de l'Est, Anatòlia i el Caucus. La seva excel·lència en el disseny estava directament relacionada amb la diversitat de la seva població a Egipte i Síria, però més específicament al Caire. Una nova estètica desenvolupada en el seu art i arquitectura, i va esdevenir únic mameluc. Va ser la culminació d'influències de disseny procedents de llocs tan llunyans com Persépolis a l'est i al-Andalus a l'Oest. Les bones relacions comercials amb Catalunya van exercir un paper important en la transmissió de les idees del disseny i la prosperitat dels mamelucs. La tesi doctoral és un estudi de les fonts de disseny islàmic en diverses regions i el seu desenvolupament. S'analitzen exemples dels períodes pre-islàmic, islàmic i post-islàmic per mostrar com el disseny comparteix fonts d'inspiració. Traça l'estètica de l'arquitectura islàmica, amb l'Espanya del segle XX com un estudi de cas, per mostrar com va afectar al desenvolupament de l'arquitectura moderna i contemporània.

Denna studie undersöker gudinnan Hathors funktion i forna Egypten med utgångspunkt från metallurgiverksamheten som Hathor var beskyddare över. Studien undersöker vad för behov som uppstår i metallurgikontexten och hur denna kan ha påverkat och speglats i förställningar kring gudinnan Hathors funktion i forna Egypten. Studien stödjer sig på William Padens teori om religiösa Världar för att därigenom belysa hur behov i en specifik kontext kan spelgas i den Religiösa Världen. Undersökningen baseras på tolkningar av en rad olika forskningsrapporter. Dels etnografiska dokumentationer om metallurgikontexter ifrån Afrika söder om Sahara, arkeologiska utgrävningar från gruvområdet i Timna i Sinai och forskares interpretationer kring gudinnan Hathors funktion i forna Egypten. Ifrån metallurgiverksamheten studerades dels hur den äldre teknologin fungerade och hur den inverkade på religiösa föreställningar och den auktoritära strukturen i Afrika. Därtill vad för sorts belägg som finns för metallurgiverksamhet i Timna i Sinai och hur gudinnan Hathors kults närvaro i gruvområdet kom till uttryck. Dessutom studeras forskares interpretationer som rör gudinnan Hathors kults funktion, auktoritära struktur och kultens förhållande till konungen i forna Egypten. Dessa uppgifter analyserades därefter och studien visar starka indikationer på att gudinnan Hathor skapades och användes i syfte att gagna en begränsad grupps intresse i forna Egypten. Att gudinnan Hathors funktion och de offentliga festivalerna var till för att upprätthålla en auktoritär struktur och vidmakthålla smidessläktets och prästerskapets makt.

<p><p>This dissertation investigates the prominent role of the Mouseion-Library of Alexandria in the construction of a new community of archivist-poets during the third century BCE in the wake of Alexander the Great's conquests. I contend that the Mouseion was a new kind of institution--an imperial archive--that facilitated a kind of political domination that worked through the production, perpetuation, and control of particular knowledges about the world rather than through fear and brute force.</p></p><p><p>Specifically, I argue that those working in the Mouseion, or Library, were shaping a new vision of the past through their meticulous editorial and compilatory work on the diverse remnants of the pre-conquest Greeks. Mastery of this tradition, in turn, came to form the backbone of what it meant to be educated (<i>pepaideumenoi</i>), yet even more importantly what it meant to be a Greek in this new political landscape. In contrast to many studies of politics and culture in the Hellenistic period which focus on the exercise of power from the top down, I explore how seemingly harmless or even esoteric actions, actions that seem far distant from the political realm, such as the writing of poetry and editing of texts, came to be essential in maintaining the political authority and structures of the Hellenistic monarchs.</p></p><p><p>In developing this vision of the cultural politics of the Hellenistic Age, my first chapter examines the central role of the Mouseion of Alexandria in making erudition one of the key sources of socio-cultural capital in this ethnically diverse and regionally dispersed polity. Through the work of its scholars, the Mouseion and its archive of the Greek past became the center around which a broader panhellenic community and identity coalesced. In chapter two, I explore the implications of this new institution and social type through a close reading of Lykophron's enigmatic work, the <i>Alexandra</i>, presenting it as a poetic archive that used philological practices to make the past relevant to a new group of elite consumers scattered throughout the Hellenistic world by re-imagining the conflict between Europe and Asia. In the final chapter, I argue that this new institution gave rise to a new type of man, the archivist-poet. I examine how this new figure of subjectivity became one of the primary means of participating in Hellenistic empires of knowledge through the genre of literary epigram.</p></p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, August 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This study analyzes the travel conventions manifest in the engravings of the thirty-volume Description de l’Egypte produced as a result of the Napoleonic campaign to Egypt in 1798 and published between 1809 and 1828. The first chapter examines the discourse established on Egypt in travelogues throughout the eighteenth century prior to the invasion of the country. I argue that the perceptions developed around the country did not stem from actual experience, but from political and economic motivations that cast Egypt in a light favorable for occupation. I examine how this perception was challenged during the collapse of distance between the French and Egyptians in the process of colonial encounter. Drawing upon medical records and proclamations of the French medical team in Egypt, I examine a specific epidemic known as ophthalmia that led to swollen, irritated eyes and eventual blindness throughout the French army in Egypt. While it is actually caused by Chlamydia, in every appearance it makes in French medical records throughout the occupation, the disease was blamed on the climate, sunlight, and air specific to the land of Egypt. As a result, I argue that the Description’s hyper-real contrasts of light and dark and amplified decay in its representations of the monuments residing in Egypt’s ravaging climate are determined by the manner vision itself was altered by the epidemic of ophthalmia. I then contend that there exists a metaphorical parallel between the decaying pharaonic monuments in the Description and the perceived decay of modern Egyptian society that are linked by misconceptions of Egypt’s climate. I conclude that the effect of Egypt’s climate believed to destroy both physical monuments and physiological disposition was used as evidence to support the larger agenda of French imperialism that justified colonization of Egypt. Lastly, this study examines how Egyptians counteracted the negative discourse of their race by appropriating symbols of their country used in European representations and altering them to develop a national identity. Tracing the time period from French occupation through British colonization, Egyptians were able to galvanize resistance while still working within the confines of colonial control.

In recent years, the issue of sexual harassment in Egyptian society has attracted a significant amount of media attention in the form of newspaper articles, academic studies, television discussion programs, social media campaigns, and blog posts. In this thesis, I examine the language used in samples taken from television discussion programs and videoblogs in which Arabic speakers directly address the topic of sexual harassment, which I term sexual harassment discourse. I analyze the linguistic characteristics of this discourse, with the aim of discovering how speakers make use of various linguistic tools to achieve a targeted reaction or desired response in their audience. I will demonstrate how these tools allow speakers to both achieve an emotional connection with their audience, which I term empathy, or to place themselves within a power hierarchy, which I term legitimacy. Ultimately, I will show that sexual harassment discourse is indicative of an emergent and innovative new kind of public discourse in Egypt. / text

Through a qualitative analysis of messages posted on the micro-blogging application, Twitter, and qualitative research interviews with people from Egypt and the United States who were active on Twitter during the eighteen day Egyptian Revolution in 2011, this study considers why Dr. Theda Skocpol’s theory of revolution proffered in States and Social Revolutions (1979) does not work in the case of the Egyptian Revolution. Skocpol asserts that a weakening of the state vis-à-vis a dominant class within the state or other states is a necessary precondition for revolution. By examining Twitter as a mechanism through which on-the-ground activists in Egypt were able to circumvent repressive state structures and “jump-scales” to a transnational configuration of resistance, this thesis asserts that emergent technologies complicate Skocpol’s assertion that states must be weakened politically and financially prior to the execution of a successful social revolution. / text

Since the 2011 revolution, the media has given much attention to the problem of sexual harassment and assault in Egypt. Attacks against female journalists and protestors have thrust the issue into the international spotlight, but it is a problem that has plagued Egypt for years. The majority of women in Egypt face some kind of sexual harassment everyday. This report is about the men and women who are working to stop sexual harassment and assault in Egypt. / text

This thesis examines and contextualises historically significant aspects of the ways in which David Roberts’ lucrative lithographic publication Egypt and Nubia (1846-49) represented the “Orient”. The analysis demonstrates that Roberts used tropes, particularly ruins and dispossessed figures, largely derived from a revised version of British picturesque landscape art, in order to depict Egypt as a developmentally poor state. By establishing how this imagery was interpreted in the context of the early Victorian British Empire, the thesis offers an elucidation of the connection between British imperial attitudes and the picturesque in Roberts’ work. The contemporary perception of Egypt and Nubia as a definitive representation of the state is argued to relate, not only to the utility of the picturesque as an “accurate” descriptive mode, despite its highly mediated nature, but also to the ways in which Britain responded to shifting political relationships with Egypt and the Ottoman Empire between 1830 and 1869. This political element of the research also suggests a more problematised reading of Robert’s work in relation to constructs of British imperialism and Edward Said’s theory of ‘Orientalism’, than has been provided by previous art historical accounts. A significant and innovative feature of the research is its focus on extensive analysis of textual descriptions of Egypt in early Victorian Britain and contemporary imperial historiography in relation to characteristics displayed in Roberts’ art. This offers a basis for a more specific, contextual understanding of Roberts’ work, as well as historically repositioning nineteenth-century British picturesque art practice and the visual culture of the early Victorian British Empire.

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