Egypt, Sinai, Bedouin

INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH: The overall objectives of the University of Toronto expedition to South Sinai include tracing pharaonic routes and camps en route to the turquoise and copper mining region, investigating pharaonic and indigenous camps, mines, and their material culture assemblages in this region, and assessing Egypto-Sinaitic cross-cultural relations within this region. The 2000-2001 reconnaissance work and 2002 excavations in South Sinai focussed on Site 346, a New Kingdom anchorage and copper smelting camp beside the Red Sea, located at the northern end of El-Markha Plain and west of the mining region around Serabit el-Khadim. A topographic map was generated for Site 346 and this mound yielded a limited repertoire of pottery, copper furnaces, copper nodules, and crucible fragments, grinding stones and pounders, lithics, some faience beads, marine shells, urchin spines, and fish bones.  A surface survey revealed two contemporary, small pottery scatters (Sites 346a-b) two km to the south.  The project also investigated a circular, limestone structure (Site 345), 1.7 km to the south of 346.  In addition, the project has incorporated satellite image interpretation to isolate vegetation signatures and associated water sources within the arid environment of El-Markha Plain, thereby detecting potential archaeological sites for ground reconnaissance work. This report concentrates mainly on the results of the 2000-2001 reconnaissance, but incorporates some preliminary results from the 2002 excavations.

What is the relationship between Mizrahi feminism and Israeli ultranationalism? What is the relevance of gender justice activism to the 2014 Gaza War and Israel’s foreign policy?

Wrapped in the Flag of Israel Second Edition examines neoliberal bureaucracy in the Global South using feminist critical race theories. It interrogates the relationship between the State of Israel and its Mizrahi single mothers who are at the forefront of Mizrahi feminism. It also presents a model of bureaucracy as divine cosmology that preempts the agency of disenfranchised Mizrahim who are Israel’s demographic majority. Mizrahi protests fall flat when the Israel-Palestine conflict dominates the headlines. While most studies of neoliberal bureaucracy employ a Foucauldian or Marxian lens, this book illustrates how Israeli bureaucracy draws on a theological essence that fuses religion, gender, and race into the foundations of citizenship. It sets out to understand why Mizrahi mothers remain loyal to a state that injures them though its bureaucratic system.

The extensive Afterword to the Second Edition connects intra-Jewish racial and gendered dynamics to the 2014 Gaza War. It tracks sequences that began with social protest and ended with elections that bolstered Israel’s political right. In between came bloodletting between the IDF, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel’s neighboring Arab states. The 2014 Gaza War was a watershed, but not only in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Under the smokescreen of war, Israel accelerated neoliberal economic reform. The first victims of this restructuring were Mizrahi single mothers. Palestinians, however, would pay the highest price for Israel’s Mizrahi-Ashkenazi rift.

On 21 May 2013, I was bestowed the Heart at East Lifetime Achievement Plaque in Tel Aviv's Cinematheque. “Heart at East” is a coalition of 20 NGOs dedicated to promote community consciousness as it exposes and defies Israel’s folkloric marginalization of Mizrahi cultures. Formed in 2009, Heart at East was meant to remedy the extreme inequality in the allocation of public funds and other resources distributed by the Israeli regime to cultural institutions. The Heart at East Lifetime Achievement Plaque was established by these Mizrahi NGOs as an alternative to the Israel Prize, the state’s most prestigious lifetime achievement award. The Israel Prize recognizes contributions to the categories of humanities, natural sciences, culture and arts, and national contributions. Its award ceremony is on Israel’s independence day. Most recipients of this award, however, have been Ashkenazi. The Heart at East Lifetime Achievement Plaque aims to remedy this bias by recognizing the lifetime achievements of Mizrahi community authors, artists, musicians, scientists, and grassroots leaders coming from Israel’s majority citizenry. Below is a link to the Hebrew-to-English translation of the powerpoint presented by the Heart at East MC at the ceremony:

Please consult the book's 2nd edition, above

Three prints of the 1st edition were sold between April 15, 2014 - July 31, 2015. The book went out of print and its adventures in publish-land are discussed here:
https://www.academia.edu/41932472/Jadaliyya_-_New_Text_Out_Now_Author_Interview_with_Smadar_Lavie_on_Wrapped_in_the_Flag_of_Israels_Revised_Edition_with_the_New_Afterword._January_20_2020

This article uses a variety of theoretical approaches on literary criticism, biblical scholarship, orientalist studies and gender studies to explore a chapter in the story of Jabal Mūsā, a desert site traditionally associated with the biblical Mount Sinai. In 1822 Burckhardt’s Travels in Syria and the Holy Land was published. It was the first book to question the biblical identification on the basis of archaeology and topography. Hundreds of essays followed, arguing for or against contestants for the ‘Mount of the Law.’ The controvercy largely conformed to the religious, cultural and gender diversity of the body of authors. Accounts by Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian visitors as well as by female travellers, irrespective of religious persuasion, did not share the critical tone of male Protestants. The latter’s attitude was founded on their certainty of the literal truth of the Bible, their rejection of ecclesiastical tradition and their anti-monastic feelings. During the period in question, Jabal Mūsā was measured, described, sketched and photographed but also questioned and dismissed, a tradition followed by scholars seeking alternative ‘Mount Sinais’ in the peninsula, Negev or Arabia to this day.

"Creativity and play erupt in the most solemn of everyday worlds as individuals reshape traditional forms in the light of changing historical circumstances. In this lively volume, fourteen distinguished anthropologists explore the role of creativity in social life across the globe and within the study of ethnography itself.

Dedicated to the memory of Victor Turner, the volume is at once playful and political, bridging innovative theory and practice."

Frederic Boissonnas travelled across Egypt during the interwar period. The photographic expeditions covered the land from the sand dunes and oases of modern Western Desert of Egypt to the Red Sea Mountains and Sinai Peninsula, and as far as Nubia in the south. With the spirit of an experienced traveller who is stepping into explored lands in the late travellers age, Boissonnas succeeded to reintroduce the traversed landscapes and its people through a classical eye in modern time. His travels showed passion to the desert monastic communities. Most of Egypt’s physical geography was well-mapped at the time by the Anglo-Egyptian Survey of Egypt post the Great War. Unlike the early travellers, Boissonnas traversed Egypt through an established railway network, automobile roads, caravan routes and steam boats, all visualised on an unusual classical travel map with modern transport lines. Nevertheless, many of Boissonnas’s photographs documented unconventional landscape perspective, while others reflected conventional pilgrims’ and travellers’ scenes with unprecedented aesthetics. The glass plates are invaluable. They survived the odds of humanity, unlike their counterparts of the “Ordnance Survey of the Peninsula of Sinai” in 1868-69 CE (lost in Southampton Ordnance Survey headquarters in WWII) and the plates of the “American Colony of Jerusalem” in late 19th-early 20th centuries CE (lost in the Levant in1948 War)―a reminder of the current lost heritage in the region. Frederic Boissonnas’s complete collection had brought to life the state of the landscape in 1920s-30s CE before it was about to change once and for all.

The romantic, nineteenth-century image of the Bedouin as fierce, independent nomads on camelback racing across an endless desert persists in the West. Yet since the era of Ottoman rule, the Mzeina Bedouin of the South Sinai desert have lived under foreign occupation. For the last forty years Bedouin land has been a political football, tossed back and forth between Israel and Egypt at least five times.

Egypt faces a well planned project of decomposition and partly annexation.

In 2014, in two articles, I explained what Egypt needed to do to avert Sinai's secession. The Egyptian government failed to implement any serious measure and the country will soon face worse developments.

First published here:
https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/2014/10/26/what-egypt-needs-now-part-i-sinai/

Mount Sinai: A History of Travellers and Pilgrims examines the history of Hagia Koryphē (in Greek) or Jabal Mūsā (in Arabic), a mountain peak above the Monastery of St Catherine at South Sinai in Egypt, known for centuries as the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God, as described in Exodus. The book explores the ways in which the landscape of the summit was experienced and transformed using textual criticism, historical analysis, art history, and, for the first time, archaeological interpretation. Beginning in the third century, when the identification with the biblical ‘Mount Sinai’ was established, the narrative extends through to the early twentieth century. Covering the natural environment, the Bedouin and early Christians, the importance of Mount Sinai in Muslim tradition, the cult of St Catherine, pilgrimage, as well as the scholarly, artistic and tourist phenomenon of the nineteenth century, Mount Sinai: A History of Travellers and Pilgrims is a comprehensive and complete history of this remarkable place.

https://www.hauspublishing.com/product/mount-sinai/

‘Lucid and original; a veritable feast of interesting stories about Mount Sinai’s extraordinary past.’ - Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

‘As a traveller and pilgrim to Sinai on numerous occasions and now a Trustee of the St Catherine's Foundation, I greatly enjoyed George Manginis's Mount Sinai and learnt much from it…The book is a learned and delightful companion to God-trodden Sinai.’ - Richard Chartres, Bishop of London

‘This book is an absolute mine of riches, reflection, and information… would strongly encourage anyone to pay a visit to this remarkable place of history, holiness and tradition. I recommend this book highly.’ - Vincent Nichols, Cardinal of Westminster

‘This book gives an invaluable insight into the evolution over two millennia of Mount Sinai as a sacred site and a place of spiritual quest.’ - H.R.H. Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan

‘George Manginis has trawled archives and published accounts to create the biography of the mountain, telling the story of the devout, the scholars and the tourists who have helped shape its history. His book is likely to stand as the last word on one of the world's most enduring places, unless an angel appears to tell the divine side of the story.’ - Anthony Sattin, author of Young Lawrence

BOOK REVIEWS about one author or another are quoted and this enriches bibliographic information. Each glossary entry starts with the Arabic word, but according to its root in Arabic script, not as it appears in the original. The glossary contains phrases (e.g. amr, pi. umur, comprises twelve such phrases) in the text in Arabic. However, these are not translated in the glossary and not all of them occur in the English text of the work, as mentioned above. Thus the glossary mainly helps readers who are not ignorant of Arabic. Despite these remarks the publication under review is definitely a contribution. It exhibits precision and high skill. The only transcript, ascertained for the time being, of Ar-Risala as-salahiyya ft ihya" as-sina'a as-sihhiyya has gained academic currency. This enriches literature on the history of medieval Arab medicine. The faithful and intelligible translation makes Ibn Jumay"s work accessible to readers who are ignorant of the language of the original.

ABSTRACT: This lecture focuses mainly upon this author's excavations, findings, and analysis of a late Old Kingdom fort at Ras Budran in el-Markha Plain, South Sinai, and the broader context of both its time period and East Mediterranean in general. In essence, the time period (Dynasty 6), need, and placement of the fort seem to suggest a felt need for such added security in South Sinai (where no earlier fort/forts have been found --yet).  After covering the findings from the fort, the lecture proceeds with a broader discussion. In the context of 2,300-2,200 BCE, climatic change (namely increasing aridity and a few major droughts) plays a definite role in the "collapse" (decline) of Egypt’s Old Kingdom ca. 2,200 BC, while several other factors also played a significant part (albeit much debated regarding their exact role in relation to climate).  Increasing aridity toward end of Old Kingdom translated into droughts, which in-turn created famines and led to internal & external instability.  At the time of the late Old Kingdom, Egypt’s neighbouring city-states in Palestine (Early Bronze Age III) shifted into a mostly de-urbanized landscape (Early Bronze Age IV: ca.2300-2000 BCE): i.e., reflecting strife. During the same EB IV period, Syrian city-states become much more impoverished, but fared better than de-urbanized Palestinian to South. Egyptian accounts from Dyn.6 report Bedouin massacres of Egyptian expeditions to the Red Sea and in northern Nubia, alongside accounts of military expeditions into Palestine and allusions to forts (or fort-building) along the eastern frontier. Later (propagandistic) Egyptian accounts hearken back to Asiatic Bedouin incursions into the East Delta, and general unrest in peripheral regions (drought?). Evidence for dramatic rise in Bedouin seasonal campsites in EB IV northern Sinai Peninsula: i.e., potential enemies on Egypt’s E. frontier.  Evidence for late OK destruction and mass burials at major East Delta city (Mendes), which may suggest civil strife, incursions, or other things. Evidence for the establishment of late Old Kingdom fort(s) in South Sinai, which may suggest a new circumstance where earlier forts are unknown (as of yet). Other evidence, however, suggests that the E. Desert and Sinai Bedu were always somewhat hostile and a threat, such as Egypt’s felt need to have troop escorts here, build fortified camps, and subdue Bedouin tribes.  The situation in Dyn.6 (early EB IV) seems to have been a dramatic intensification of former conditions: i.e., Bedu hostility and conflict over marginal resources (i.e., Egyptian exploitation of local wells, game, etc.).  Despite all these factors, which are related to climatic factors, Egypt also displays non-climatic factors that had been building in Old Kingdom and also contributed to its “collapse”: i.e., a “last straw” scenario?  The lecture continues with a discussion of various factors leading up to the decline/collapse of the Old Kingdom in Dynasty 6.  A series of summary text slides are placed at the end of the lecture to provide a quick reference and narrative to the main points.  UPDATED: 3 April, 2023. Adding in selected sources, and some minor edits and formatting.

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In an earlier article titled 'What Egypt needs now – Part I, Sinai', I suggested a series of measures that the Egyptian government must take immediately to make sure that civil order and concord will prevail in the area and nationwide. These measures are expected to thwart an existential threat against Egypt's national integrity. The existing threat is very real and the dangers tremendous. In the present article, I will reveal covert insinuations made by a key Israeli minister, proceeding through textual analysis. These hints do not augur well for Egypt's territorial integrity and must therefore be taken very seriously.
First published on 27th October 2014 here:
https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/what-egypt-needs-now-part-ii-an-existential-threat-must-be-thwarted/