Land of civilization

That’s what the signs say on the way to Saqqara, where the step pyramid and the artefacts found within, now well-housed and displayed in the nearby museum, suggest that it was  true 4500 years ago.  But was it really true then, and is it true now?

The children working in the nearby carpet-making “schools” suggest that reality is far from today’s notion of a civilized ideal.  Ditto the sad sack villages on the way to and from the ancient glories, where women cover, though full burkha is rare.  Egypt is poor and its countryside traditional.  It likely was not a lot different in ancient times.  Who knows how badly the peasants (modern thinking seems to be that they were not slaves) who built the step pyramid lived?  Certainly the ancient Egyptians did not live long:  40 years seems to have been the life expectancy in ancient Egypt, compared to 70 or so today.

Listening to the current (post-revolutionary, appointed) governors of Cairo and its Giza and Kalyoubia suburbs, modern Egypt seems to be facing sharply increased challenges–especially with poverty, jobs, water and sanitation–while resources are declining.  Expectations, they said, are high, and needs expanding.  The governor of Kalyoubia suggested that the only solution is to be found in captitalizing the intellectual capacity of the population, but the Wharton school graduate didn’t say how he would do it.  The governor of Cairo, an engineer with a good degree and distinguished background, sounded less confident.

Laila Takla, a member of the commission preparing the new Egyptian constitution, offered a more upbeat perspective.  People to people contacts of the sort promoted by Sister Cities International (the organization whose meeting I am attending in Cairo) promote mutual knowledge, understanding and respect, leading to a culture of peace and justice.  This is what is needed, she said:  acknowledgement of differences but recognition of equality.  Her focus, as in her recent book, was on Christian/Muslim relations.  A Christian herself, Takla noted the Muslim misunderstanding of the trinity as referring to more than one God, and Christian misunderstanding of jihad as referring to physical violence rather than inner struggle.

Takla counts herself an activist for citizen-to-citizen diplomacy.  The question is whether people like her and those they inspire can help draw on that intellectual capital and contribute to solving the problems the governors face.  We’d best hope the answer is yes, because that really would make for a land of civilization.