Territorial Nationalism or Pharaonism:
The origins of Egyptian Nationalism can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century to the first Egyptian revolution led by Ahmed Urabi, an officer in the Egyptian army, which called for an end to the rule of Muhammad Ali’s family, an Albanian/Ottoman ruler to limit the European influence in Egypt, it campaigned under the nationalist slogan of “Egypt for Egyptians”. Most historians regard Mohamed Ali, who ruled Egypt from 1805 to 1849, as the ‘founder of modern Egypt’ and the architect of its first developmental project.[1] Mohamed Ali, who was of Albanian origin, came to Egypt as a soldier in an Ottoman garrison only to witness Napoleon’s invasion and conquest in 1798. Urabi’s revolution was a primordial form of nationalism linking Egypt’s heritage and geography with the right to their land. This ideology constituted the beliefs of the right-wing Al-Wafd party in Egypt, established by Saad Zaghloul, a follower of Urabi.
The birth of modern archaeology and the discovery and transporting of ancient Egyptian monuments into Europe had a significant influence on Egypt’s intellectuals. In pursuit of a national identity that rejected foreign occupation –both Ottoman rule and European colonialism –artists, writers and other intellectuals extracted iconic forms from their visual heritage to represent what it meant to be Egyptian. These icons of the past carefully presented and displayed would reflect the country’s vision of present and future. As a result, a form of territorial nationalism, also named Pharaonicism, emerged and became particularly popular following the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922. The Pharaonist philosophy identifies “a unique and durable Egyptian national essence persisting from the Pharaonic era to the present” and argues that people of contemporary Egypt were the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians possessing similar traits and abilities.[2] Therefore, ‘Egyptianism’, or the search and identification of a modern Egyptian identity was a result of multiple factors, most prominently, Ottoman rule, colonialism, and archaeology. These three factors continue to influence the imagined construct of Egyptian nationalism.
[1] Osman, Tarek. Egypt on the Brink: from Nasser to Mubarak. Yale University Press, 2010.
[2] Gershoni, Israel, and James P. Jankowski. Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The search for Egyptian nationhood, 1900-1930. Oxford University Press on Demand, 1986. P.164