Egypt
Raya the Ripper?
Over a century ago, in the red-light district of Egypt’s port city Alexandria, two sisters partook in a series of murders. Raya and Sakina became synonymous with pure evil. But did they really kill sex workers for a few gold bracelets? New evidence suggests otherwise.
The Zigzag’s Tale
For years, I’ve been on an architectural odyssey, a quest for the origins of the zigzag. Curiosity was first sparked in 2005 after buying and restoring my Ottoman courtyard house in Damascus. Round all four courtyard walls, there was a distinctive decorative design — a trio of horizontal zigzags. My Syrian architect speculated it might be an ancient Mesopotamian pattern, but neither he, nor anyone else I asked, had any idea why it was chosen or what it signified.
The Artist Who Captured a Bygone Cairo
Menhat Helmy was a pioneering printmaker and painter, and among the first Egyptian artists to create elaborate etchings that captured the intricacies and minutiae of life in Cairo during unprecedented socioeconomic changes that transformed the country under former president Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Preserving the Coptic Language
Titi Maurice is a native speaker of Coptic, which puts her in a group of only hundreds worldwide. “As long as Coptic exists, no matter how small the number of speakers, it connects us to ancient Egypt,” she says. Now a number of initiatives are aimed at reviving that connection to the language of the pharaohs.
What a Hunger Strike in Egypt Says About Power
Only when I experienced prison myself and grasped the power dynamics did I understand: Prisoners go on hunger strikes not because they cannot resist anymore but because the only act of resistance left to reclaim their body is to destroy it.
In Egypt, Foreigners Dominate Belly Dancing
Foreign belly dancers, who hail from Eastern Europe, Latin America and the United States, were brought in to fill the space left by Egyptian dancers and now uphold what is viewed as a quintessential Egyptian art.
How a Goat Discovered Luxor’s Ancient Egyptian Treasures
About 40 feet inside the temple area, the archaeologists were disappointed to find just a single coffin. One of their Egyptian workers, however, discovered a small crevice in the ground that revealed they were standing on an artificial plateau that ultimately led to yet another undisturbed grave, this time a mass of priests.