The events of recent days in Egypt are tragic and ominous: for the Egyptian people, for the wider Middle East, and for democratic values. But they are not surprising – not, at least, to anyone who knows the long and complex history of the Nile Valley. Neither the ruthless suppression of the opposition nor the army’s interference in the political process – nor even the power-struggle between military and religious authorities – is a new phenomenon. All have their roots, and their precedents, in Egypt’s distant past, in the days of the pharaohs.
The current struggle for national influence between the Egyptian army and the Muslim Brotherhood has been going on for 85 years, ever since the Brotherhood’s founding in 1928. Four thousand years ago, another power-struggle between competing factions – a conflict that started as a war of words but quickly escalated into full-scale civil war – wracked Egypt for four generations. Read More »