Daniel L. Selden

Ruins: Egyptology, Sayyid Qu†b and the Logic of the “Luxor Massacre”

Miṣr means a dividing line between two things. – Ibn Qutaybah

the renewed assault on the antiquities of the ancient Near East offers an occasion for a more historicized, as opposed to

aesthetic, reflection on this Islāmicate cam-paign. Here are two narratives that speak past one another across the millennium and half that separates the historical constellation of their respective speech genres—the quoti-dian seriality of late twentieth-century Ameri-can news reportage and the poetic inimitabi-lity (i`jāz) of the Glorious Qur´ān:

ajab 17, 1418 AH: Six gunmen from the Vanguards of Conquest (Tala´i` al-Fataḥ), an organization of anti-government activists, massacred sixty-two tourists at Deir el-Baḥri, an archaeological site and major tourist attraction across the Nile River from Luxor, Egypt.

Armed with automatic firearms and knives, the six assailants were disguised as members of the security forces. They descended on the Temple of Hatshepsut [+sr-Dsr.w] at around 8:45 AM and killed two armed guards at the site. With the tourists trapped inside the temple, the killing went on systematically for forty-five minutes, during which time many of the bodies, especially those of women, were mutilated with machetes. They used both guns and butcher knives. A note praising Islām was found inside one of the disemboweled tourists.1

n the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate: God promised to those who believe and do deeds of righteousness that they will have forgiveness and a great reward. But those who disbelieve and deny our signs (āyāt)—these are the companions of Hellfire [Qur´ān 5:9-10]. Fir-

`awn, Hāmān and their forces stood among the corrupt. So Fir`awn said, “Council, I know of no god for you apart from me. Hāmān, kindle a fire for me over the clay and build me a towering edifice (ṣarḥ) so that I may climb to the god of Mūsa (ilahi Mūsa), for I consider him to be a liar” [Q 28:38]. So we barred Fir`awn from the path and reduced his works to rubble (tabāb) [Q 40:37]. We made them a thing of the past and an exemplar (mathāl) for people of the future [Q 43:56].2

                                                            1 Cf. “70 Die in an Attack at an Egyptian Temple,” The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/ 18/world/70-die-in-attack-at-egypt-temple.html. Retrieved 8-27-14. Wikipedia: s.v. “Luxor Massacre”.

2 Compare T. L. Dumn, “Telefear: Watching War News” in B. Masumi, The Politics of Everyday Fear. Minnea-polis, 1993: 307-22, with S. Vasalou, “The Miraculous Eloquence of the Qur´an: General Trajectories and Individual Approaches Journal of Qur´anic Studies 4.2 (2002), 23-53. 

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Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. Deir el‐Baḥri. 

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The story of Fir`awn and Hāmān, whose details the redactors of the Qur´ān scattered over several suwar [sing. sūrah], constitutes one of the principal proof texts that justify—for some Mus-lims, at least—the massacre at +sr Dsr.w (M. Eg.: “Holy of Holies”) as something more than just another random terrorist attack. The Qur`ānic tale centers on a double typological displacement, syncretizing various ver-sions of Genesis, Exodus, and Esther that circulated throughout the Late Antique world not only in Arabic, but also in Hebrew, Aramaic, Ge`ez, Pārsīg, and Greek—which makes this a par-ticularly rich, as well as complex, instance of the literary phe-nomenon that Geza Vermes termed the “rewritten Bible.”3 In the first place, the Qur´ān relocates the story of the Tower of Babel from Shin`ār (Babylonia) to Miṣr (Egypt). Here Fir`awn—which sometimes figures as a title, at others a compo-site figure that condenses all the kings of Egypt into one—has his vizier Hāmān construct for him a ṣarḥ (صرح) made out of bricks (later Islāmic commentators gloss this as a “tower” [mij-dal]), which collapses almost as soon as it is built: “God struck at the foundations of their building and, from above, the roof fell down upon them and whence this doom had overcome them, they knew not” [Q 16:23].4 Late antique Jewish com-mentary on the Tower of Babel, as well as rabbinic discussions of Pharaoh's architectural ambitions, provide the background that facilitated the fusion of these two episodes in the Qur´ān:

Nimrôd stood first among the leaders of the cor-rupt, whose iniquity and godlessness came to a cimax in the building of the Tower of Babel. His councilors had proposed the plan of erecting the tower and Nimrôd agreed to execute this plan in the plain of Shin`ār. This enterprise was an outright rebellion against God, with three sorts rebels among the builders. The first party said: “Let us ascend to heaven and wage warfare against Him.” The second party said: “Let us ascend to heaven, set up idols, and pay worship to them there.” And the third party said: “Let us ascend

to heaven and destroy Him with our bows and arrows.” They never slackened in their work, and from the dizzying height they constantly shot arrows toward heaven which, returning,

                                                            3 G. Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies. 2nd ed. Leiden, 1973: 67-126. 4 See K. van Bladel, “Heavenly Cords, and Prophetic Authority in the Qur´ān and its Late Antique Context,” BSOAS 70 (2007), 23-46; G. S. Reynolds, The Qur’ān and Its Biblical Subtext (New York, 2010), 97-106; A. Silverstein, “The Qur´ānic Pharaoh” in New Perspectives on the Qur´ān, ed. G. S. Reynolds (New York, 2011), 467-77.

East Iranian Qur´ān. c. 1180 CE

Meidum Pyramid. c. 2600 BCE 

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appeared to be covered with blood. They were thus fortified in their delusion and cried, “We have slain all who are in heaven.” Thereupon God turned to the seventy angels who encompass his throne and said, “Come, let us go down and there confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech.” So it happened and from that moment no one knew what the other said. As for the unfinished tower, a part sank into the earth and another part was consumed by fire. Only one third of it remained stan-ding: whoever passes by it forgets all that he knows.5 The councilors and elders of Egypt came to Pharaoh and said, “See, the people of the children of Israel have become stronger and mightier than we. Therefore give us council as to what to do with them so that we can gradually destroy them, lest they become too numerous in our land.” Pharaoh responded to the elders as follows: “This is the plan that I advise regarding the children of Israel from which I will not waver. Pitom and Ra`amsēs are cities not fortified for battle. Thus, it is in our interest to arm them. So go, deal cunningly with the children of Israel. Proclaim in Egypt and Goshen: “The king has commanded us to build Pitom and Ra`amsēs and to fortify them for battle. Those who agree to construct with us shall have their pay given to them daily at the King's order.'“ So the elders, the councilors, and the whole of Egypt did according to the word while the children of Israel

continued to work, receiving their dai-ly wages as usual, since some Egyp-tians were still la-boring with them. After a time, how-ever, all the Egyp-tians had with-

drawn and, turning against them, they became officers and taskmasters over Israel. Then they refrained from giving them their wages. By these and other ruses, the Egyptians suc-ceeded in overmastering the Israelites, and once they had them in their power, they treated them with undisguised brutality. In the end, the building of Pitom and Ra`amsēs turned out to be of no advantage to the Egyptians either, for scarcely were the structures completed when they collapsed or were swallowed whole by the earth.6

The late Rabbinic compilation Midraš Šĕmôt adds the following details: “Pitom and Ra`amsēs. Rav and Shmuēl [disagreed on this point]. The first said that Pitom was the city's real name and the reason why it was called Ra`amsēs was because each portion as it was built crashed (mitrosēs). The other maintained that its real name was Ra`amsēs, and the reason that it was called Pitom was because the “mouth of the deep” (pi těhôm) swallowed them one by one” (1.10).

                                                            5 L. Ginzberg, The Legend of the Jews, trans. H. Szold, 7 vols. (Baltimore, 1998): 1:177, 179-80; condensed.

6 Ibid. 2:246-49; condensed. Targum Neofiti I to Exodus identifies the two cities at as Tanis and Pelusion.

Scene of Construction. Tomb of Rekhmire. c. 1425 BCE. 

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Early Muslim commentators recognized that the Qur´ān deliberately conflates what both the Hebrew Bible and the Rabbinic tradition had considered two distinct and largely unrelated tales. Across several of its suwar, the Qur´ān effectively folds the story of Nimrôd's idolatry into Fir`awn's construction of what are no longer cities but rather a ṣarḥ, or monumental edifice. The principal point of tangency, then, that allows the first tale to stand in for the second is the theme of construction coupled with collapse: both Nimrôd's tower and Fir`awn's ṣarḥ fall, only to sink—partially, at least—into the ground. By contrast, most secular Euro-pean scholars, who in general reject the revelatory nature of the Qur-´ān, continue to credit this sort of narrative “bungling” to Muḥammad who out of his supposed ignorance “failed” to keep his Bible stories straight. So Ludovico Marracci, Confessor to Pope Innocent XI (1611-89 CE), Professor of Arabic at La Sapienza, Rome, and the first to translate the entire Qur´ān into Latin, comments on these passages:

Mahumet has mixed up Sacred Stories. He maintained that Pharaoh ordered the construction of a lofty tower from the top of which he could see the God of Moses which, if accu-rate would be inferior to him. There is no doubt that Mahumet borrowed the story of this tower from the story of the Tower of Babel. It is certain that in the Sacred Scriptures there is no such story that is related to Pharaoh.7

What escapes Marracci here, as well as the long line of Western critics who have succeeded him, is that narrative conflations of this type constitute one of the hallmarks of late antique Levantine-Mediterra-nean letters and as such constitute part of the “horizon of expec-tation” for the reception of the Qur´ān.8 Where the “miracle” (mu`ja-zah) of the Qur´ān lies, then, is precisely here: in the deftness with which each sūrah weaves its source materials together, as well as in the economy of its literary, philosophical, and religious allusions, all of which each sūrah recasts into internally rhymed prose (saj`). This constitutes the context into which the Qur´ān introduces the rhetoric of its own inimitability: “If you doubt any part of what we have given from on high, step by step, upon our servant, then produce a sūrah of similar merit, and call upon anyone else but God to bear witness

                                                            7 L. Marracci, Alcorani textus universus ex correctioribus Arabum exemplaribus. Padua, 1698: 526 n. 1. For a more recent accounting, see http://www.1000mistakes.com/1000mistakes; retrieved 9-1-14.

8 See, for example, D. Selden, “Guardians of Chaos,” Journal of Coptic Studies 13 (2011): 117-55. On the notion of “horizon of expectation,” see H. R. Jauss, “Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissen-schaft,” available at: http://latina.phil2.uni-freiburg.de/reiser/einf_jauss.pdf; retrieved 10-15-2014.

Kufi Basmala

ISO/IEC 16023 Bar Code

Pac‐Man

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for you—if what you say is true!” [Q 2:23]. The Qur´ān at no point denies its connections to other literatures of the Late Antique: it only claims to have no rivals.9 The second tale that the Qur´ān links to the story of Fir`awn comes from the Book of ´Esthēr which in Late Antiquity circulated in various differ-ent versions: the Hebrew mĕgillāh (“scroll”), mul-tiple (re)compositions in Greek, plus at least two Aramaic targumim—to say nothing of its trans-lation into Coptic, Syriac, Latin, Ge`ez, and Ara-bic.10 Jewish and Christian tradition both hold that Nimrôd oversaw the building of the Tower at Ba-

bel, but in the Qur´ān—which never mentions Nimrôd—it is Hāmān whom Fir`awn calls upon to build his ṣarḥ. The Qur´ān plucks the name of Fir`awn's architect directly out of ´Esthēr, in which Hāmān figures as the vizier to ́ Aḥašweroš, the king (מלך melek) of Iran. Not only does Hāmān use his office to persecute the Persian Jews: eventually, he persuades the king to exterminate all Israelites living within the bounds of his domain which, according to the Hebrew Bible, stretched “from India to Ethiopia” [Est. 1:1].11 Now ́ Esthēr—´Aḥa-šweroš's queen—was unbeknownst to him herself a Jewess, a fact that she reveals to the king only at the eleventh hour, just in time to foil Hāmān's plot. ´Esthēr thereby saves God's “holy people” (`am qādôš), while ´Aḥašweroš has Hāmān hung for treason. In Rabbinic literature, therefore, Hāmān figures as the archetypal adversary of the “children of Israel.” In the Talmud Bavli, for example, Rav Matna elicits a graphic pun that lies concealed within the Hebrew text: “Where is there a reference to Hāmān in the Tôrâ?—'Is it from the tree . . . ?' ( עץה המן )” [bḤullin 139b]. Matna alludes here to the passage in Ge-nesis where Yahweh questions Adam as to whether he tasted the fruit of the forbidden tree [Gen. 3:11]. The three consonants that make up Hāmān's name (h-m-n: also occur here in precisely this same ( ָהָמןorder, to form the question, albeit based on different morphology and syntax: “Is it from?” (ֲהִמן), according to Matna, implicitly asso-ciates ´Aḥašweroš's genocidal vizier with man's original transgression against God. Similarly Tractate Sotaḥ 9b likens Hāmān to the serpent that tempted Eve, while Rava remarks at bMegillah 13b: “No one knew evil speech (lāšôn rā`āh) better than Hāmān.”

                                                            9 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR0f5jQGRjc. Retrieved 8-4-2014. 10 See G. S. Reynolds, The Qur´ān and Its Biblical Subtext (New York, 2010), 97-106. 11See further E. R. Glickman, Haman and the Jews. Jerusalem, 1999.

Gabriel speaks to Muḥammad. Tabriz, 1307 CE.

Hanging of Hāmān. c. 1450

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By associating Fir`awn directly with Hāmān, then, the Qur´ān points out that these two arch-adversaries of the Jews remain essentially compact—two miscreants with the same agenda: they both conspire to annihilate the “children of Israel” (Banū Isrā´īl), to which the Muslim com-munity (ummah) has now become the appointed heir. Just as the Qur´ān recalls, “O Children of Israel, remember the favor that I bestowed upon you and that I preferred you over all other worlds” [Q 2:47], so it addresses the followers of Muḥammad: “You are the best of the nations raised up

for men; you enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong” [Q 3:110].12 The ṣarḥ that Fir`awn has Hāmān build, then, functions as an allegory of those who have “evoked God's anger and gone astray” [Q 1:7]: just as in the Classical Egyptian expression oAj sA “tall-backed” (i.e., “arrogant”), so height here becomes a metaphor for pride. Thus, Fir`awn's tower aims not only to show the Egyptians that he is as “lofty” as the god of Mūsa, but also that they neither have nor need any gods other than Fir`awn. So the world historian Abū Ja`afar Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (224 – 310 AH) records the following exchange in his Tārīḫ al-rusul wa ’l-

mulūk: “Gabriel said: 'O Muḥammad! I have not loathed any creature as much as I have loathed two men: One of them was a jinnī named Iblīs, when he refused to bow down to Adam; and the other is Fir`awn, when he said: “I am your highest lord”'“[481]. The final quotation here comes from the Makkan Sūratu ´l-Nāzi`āt [79:16-26]:

His Lord called to [Mūsa] in the sacred valley of Ṭuwa: “Go to Fir`awn, for he has in rebellion risen high (ṭaġa), and say to him: “Would you purify yourself and let me guide you to your

Lord so that you should fear Him?” Then [Mūsa] showed [Fir`awn] the Great Sign, but Fir`awn denied and disobeyed, and turned his back hastily. Then he summoned his people and proclaimed: “I am your highest lord.” So God seized him [and made him] an exam-ple—both last and first. Indeed, here we find an instructive lesson (`abra).

From the perspective of the Qur´ān, then, the ruins of Pharaonic Egypt serve a precise historical and religious function. They neither constitute the “cinders and sepulture” that Joachim du Bellay mourns in his Antiquitez de Rome (1558), nor do they awaken the sublime as was the case for C.-F. Volney, contemplating the ruins of Palmyra, in his mediation Les ruines (1791):

                                                            12 See further, R. Farrin, Structure and Qur'anic Interpretation (Ashland, 2014): 9-21.

 هللا

Allāh 

Jerusalem.  Qubbat aṣ‐Ṣaḫrah. Kipat ha‐Sel`a. 

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Hail, solitary ruins, you sacred tombs, and silent walls! It is you that I invoke, to you that I address my prayer. Yes! Although your aspect averts, with secret terror, the common gaze (les regards du vulgaire), it excites in my heart the charm of a thousand sentiments and thoughts. What useful lessons! what affecting and profound re-flections you suggest to him who knows how to consult you. 13

Given the Qur´ān's characterization of Fir-`awn and the motives that it attributes to him for engaging Hāmān to build his tow-er, Islāmic scripture naturally displays no nostalgia for the ruins of the Pharaonic past. Rather, as visible signs of the age of ignorance (jāhiliyyah), the shattered ṣarḥ, and by extension all the fragments of Fir-`awn's building projects, not only stand as witness to the historical truth of the Qur´ān. They serve both as a sign of God's authority as “lord of the worlds . . . and master of the day of doom” [Q 1:2 and 4], as well as an example (mathāl) of the fate that awaits miscreants—the “companions of Hellfire”—who disobey His prophets (anbiyā´) and deny His messengers (rusul)—who in this case was Mūsa, the prophet whom God sent specifically to the Banū Isrā´īl. What retains its importance for Islām, then, are the Egyptian ruins in their state of ruin, mo-numental structures that God purposely destroyed in order both to create an enduring reminder

and to set an example for mankind to come. According to ḥadīth, moreover, Mu-ḥammad took the trouble to visit Memphis where, with a single damnatory glance, he shattered into pieces all the idols that still remained.14 It is only in their fracture, then, that the monuments (ṣarḥān) of Miṣr (“Egypt”) signify within Islāmic thought. Later Muslim chroniclers, accepting Mu‐ḥammad’s charge to “travel through the earth and find out the consequences of those who denied the truth,”15 filled in the details of Fir`awn's fall and set them in world

                                                            13 C.-F. Volney, Oeuvres, 2 vols. (Paris: Fayard, n.d.): 1:169. Cf. See I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, ed. W. Wie-schedel (Frankfurt/M., 1974): 164-84.

14 C. Decobert, “Imaginaire de la Conquête, imaginaire de la Croisade,” Le Miroir égyptien, ed. R. Ilbert and P. Joutard (Marseille, 1984): 153.

15 Qur´ān 30:42.

Ruins of Palmyra. Syria 

Broke Obelisk.  Tanis. 

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historical perspective: chronologies, king lists, topographies were all worked out, along with recon-structions of the social, religious, and political practices of the period.16 What was at stake in Pharaonic history, however, was—as al-Ṭabarī stressed—not simply the fates of individual re-creants or any particular heretical belief, but rather a whole way of life, an entire system of ideas, values, and traditions, that stood fundamentally opposed to the world order willed by God.17 Though this antagonism and resistance informed almost every aspect of ancient Egyptian culture, it was most evident in the large-scale building projects, which, following up the statements of the Qur´ān, al-Ṭabari and his successors understood to be the material embodiment of the perversity of the regime. An anecdote related by Muḥammad b. `Abdullāh al-Kisā`ī (c. 490 AH) tells, in an emblematic fashion, of one Egyptian king who built palace after palace specifically in order to elude a voice that urged him to acknowledge and submit to God:

Fir`awn saw a man coming out of the walls of his palace biting his nails and saying, “O Accursed One, do you think that your Lord is blind to all your evil deeds . . . ?” Fir`awn was terrified and moved to another palace, but the same man came to him and said, “O Accursed One, you will be destroyed to the end of time if you do not believe in God!” So Fir`awn moved to yet another palace. He continued to move from one palace to another until he had built forty palaces, but always he saw the man. The last he built on a magnificent scale and called it Heliopolis on account of its beauty. 18

This direct link between architecture and apo-stasy found its most immediate expression in the reliefs and inscriptions that covered the walls of the Pharaonic temples. Far from constituting a repository of ancient wisdom, Muslim his-torians identified these carvings as talismans and texts intended for profanatory use. Some struc-tures the scholars interpreted as large alchemical laboratories replete with “chambers for pulver-izing, pounding, condensing, separating, filtering,” etc.,19 while at other sites discrete statues or images were credited with thaumaturgic powers.20 An oft mentioned magical relief from the reign

                                                            16 For an overview of the chronology, see al-Bīrūnī 84-98. The principal accounts are synthesized, with references, by Wiet 16-29.

17Abū Ja`far Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, The History of Prophets and Kings 1:445-89.

18 Muḥammad ibn `Abd Allāh al-Kisā`ī, Tales of the Prophets, trans. W. Thackston, Jr. (Boston, 1978), 212-13.

19 Ibn Waṣīf Shāh, Account of Egypt, cited by Taqī ‘l Dīn al-Maqrīzī, Description topographique et historique de l’Egypte, trans. U. Bouriant and P. Casanova, 4 vols. (Paris, 1895-1920), 1:103.

20 For an overview, see O. el-Daly, Egyptology: The Missing Millenium. Walnut Creek, 2009.

Medinet Habu.  Thebes. 

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of Queen Dalūkah is described by Abū al-Ḥasan `Alī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn `Alī al-Mas`ūdī (282 – 345 AH) as follows:

During her thirty-year rule, the queen endowed Egypt with temples and statues, and she contrived magical devices. In the temples, she placed images of all peoples who might attack Egypt on every side, together with pictures of their steeds, be they horses or camels.

She also had depicted there the peoples of Syria and the Maġrib who might invade the country by sea. Into these temples, which were remarkable for their solidity and di-mensions, she gathered all the secrets of nature, the properties inherent in minerals, animals, and plants, choosing for this the moment most favorable according to the movements of the stars and the influences above. By this means, when an army left al-Ḥijāz or al-Yaman to invade Egypt, the camels or other figures represented in the temples disappeared under the ground: the foreign army immediately experienced the same fate, and the soldiers or animals were destroyed. If the invasion came from Syria, the same thing happened to the figures turned toward the side from which the army advanced, and the destruction of these images caused the annihilation of the real

army as well. It was the same for the armies coming out of the Maġrib or maritime expeditions directed from Rome, Syria, etc. Thus, he sovereigns and foreign peoples feared the Egyptians and kept from making them their enemy. 21

As Abū Zayd `Abdu r-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad b. Ḫaldūn (732 – 808 AH) explained: “The temples of Upper Egypt are remnants of sorcery attesting to the cultivation of magic in ancient Egypt . . . These things were later declared forbidden and illegal [so that] the sciences concerned with them were wiped out and vanished . . . The sword of religious law hangs over them and prohibits their choice as an object of study.”22 Traditionists identified many specific sites with places mentioned in the Qur´ān, though Leo Africanus reports that virtually any ancient rubble in the Maġrib might

                                                            21 Alī b. al-Ḥusayn al-Mas`ūdī, Kitāb Murūj al-Dhahab wa Ma´ādin al-Jawhar, ed. C. Barbier de Meynard and P. de Courteille, rev. C. Pellat, 5 vols. (Beirut, 1966-74), 2:399-400; translation: Les prairies d’or (Paris, 1962-???), 2:306-7. 22 Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddimah 3:128 and 89.

Tiles depicting foreign enemies. Tomb of Ramesses II. 

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be ascribed to the Pharaonic period, even if patently of Greco-Roman date,23 and this ultimately made it an ob-ject of taboo. The proscription against Fir`awn's ruins did not, how-ever, render Muslims in Egypt or from elsewhere in the Is-lāmic world insensitive to their magnificence. Ibn Jubayr, for example, who passed through al-Fusṭaṭ on his way from Ġarnaṭah to Makka in 579 AH, considered the py-ramids at al-Ğīza one of the wonders of the Islāmic world,24 and visitors who stayed longer in the city generally took the opportunity to explore more distant sites as well. `Abd al-Laṭīf of Baghdad, for example, who spent time with Mūsa b. Maimūn and Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn in 603 AH, made the short trip to Memphis, which he later recalled in his Account of Egypt: Despite whatever has been seen to be the causes of its destruction, the ruins [of Memphis] still offer to the spec-tator a combination of wonders that so confounds the un-derstanding that even the most eloquent men

would undertake to describe them in vain. The more one gazes upon the city and its remnants, the greater the admiration it in-inspires; and every additional glance at the ruins is a fresh source of rapture. Scarcely do they give birth in the mind to one idea before they suggest another still more admirable; and the moment you satisfy yourself that you have reached a perfect comprehension of the whole, they convince you that what you have conceived still falls short of the truth.25

Heretical or not, the physician goes on to discuss the carvings at the site and, after a detailed consideration of their tech-nique, style, and especially the rendering of the human form, he concludes: “The beauty of the sculpted faces and the pro-portions of the body represent one of the supreme achieve-ments in the realm of art. They are as perfect as can be

                                                            23 G. Ramusio, “Della descrizione dell’Africa e delle cose notabili che quivi sono per Giovan Lioni Africano,” Navigazationi e Viaggi, ed. M. Milanese, 3 vols. (Torino, 1978 [1550]), 1:217-18.

24 Ibn Jubayr, Travels of Ibn Jubayr, trans. R. Broadhurst (London, 1952): 45-46

25 `Abd al-Laṭīf, Historiae Aegypti Compendium, arabicè et latinè, ed. J. White (Oxford, 1800): 118-20.

Abu 'l-Qāsim al-`Irāqī, Kitāb al-`Āqalīm Alchemical text with hieroglyphs

Head of Ramesses II.  Memphis. 

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rendered in stone.”26 The scale, engineering, and aesthetic value of these monuments attracted many intellectuals, and by the Mamlūk period a voluminous corpus of specialized literature on

Egyptian antiquities (āthār) had accumulated, characterized by an amalgamation of Egyptian, Arab, Hebrew, and Greek scholarly sources, as well as fabulous inventions.27 When al-Maqrīzī came to compose his chapter on pyramids in the middle of the fifteenth century CE, he was able to consult over two dozen treatises on the topic al-ready in circulation, as well as a large body of occasional literature and celebratory verse.28 Whatever their historical or aesthetic appeal, however, the ruins visible across North Africa and along the Nile still mainly stood as cautionary re-minders of a regime whose complete eradication had been a necessary condition for the rise and establishment of the true faith: it was precisely in their corrosion and decay that they stood as pal-pable witness to the righteousness and prophetic

vision of Islām. It hardly comes as a surprise, then, that the call to repair and reconstruct these fallen and half-buried monuments issued not from Muslims, but from European merchants, travelers, dip-lomats, and esthetes who began to visit Egypt in increasing numbers from the late seventeenth century CE on. “What appeal, what secret penchant [draws me to] this malformed jumble of ruined palaces and fallen temples?” J. B. Coeuilhe asked in 1768. “Turning architect, I gather, I organize, I recombine this mass of fragments in my mind, where all at once majestic monuments arise.” Likewise, architectural histori-ans such as J. B. Fischer von Erlach took the sketches of the Egyptian antiquities brought back by travelers

                                                            26 Ibid. 128.

27 To cite only the most famous: Ibn Zūlāq’s History and Praise of Egypt, the Annals of al-Musabbiḥī, Ibn Waṣīf Shāh’s Account of Egypt and its Wonders, Murtaḍā b. al-`Afīf’s Book of Marvels, al-Maqrīzī’s Opinions and Observations on the History of the Districts and Monuments of Egypt, al-Qalqašandi’s Glimmer of Dawn for the Dimsighted.

28 Arabic text and translation in E. Graefe, Das Pyramidenkapitelin al-Makrīzī’s ‘Khiṭaṭ’ (Leipzig, 1911).

Nectanebo I. Decorative slab. 

Description de l’Egypte.  Thebes.  A. vol. II, pl. 86

Selden xii

to the Nile valley and began to reconstruct the ruined buildings in hopes that through “intervention [and] reasonable conjecture, they might “rescue the monuments from the injuries of time.” 29 Pic-torial “restitutions” of this type quickly gave rise to the idea of material “restoration,”30 and by the

end of the eighteenth century, public officers, most prominently A.-C. Quatremère de Quincy, began to promote the conser-vation and refurbishment of the scattered remains:

It is crucial, both for history and for the arts in general, to prolong the existence of architectural monuments, to arrest their de-terioration, and to complete them, where there is still time, by reestablishing what is missing on the model of the parts that still

survive . . . In preserving ruined buildings, . . . [one needs] to restore their integrity, as far as this is possible, either by replacing the original materials, or by substituting ones that are similar, or disencumbering [the structures] from debris, or sweeping away the earth that conceals their foundations, or the overgrowth defacing them. 31

For Egypt, with its “numberless fragments of columns and heaps of ruined constructions,” 32 this not only entailed an “obligation . . . to reproduce the totality of [the buildings’] disposition, with its proper arrangement, relations, and proportions,”33 but posited a vast program of archaeological inquest, recovery and reevaluation. “If Egypt were possessed by a Nation sympathetic to the fine arts,” Volney wrote with his eye on the horizon, “we should find there resources for an understand-ing of the ancient world such as elsewhere earth denies us . . . Until that time, perhaps not so far distant as one thinks, we must put off our desires and our hopes. It is then that we shall be able to dig the whole land of the Nile and the deserts of Libya . . . where the monuments covered in the sands preserve themselves in trust for the coming generation.”34

By and large, European ruinistes remained ignorant of what Okasha el-Dakly has called the “missing millennium” of Muslim scholarship devoted to the Pharaonic era which included                                                             29 J. Fischer von Erlach, Entwurff einer historichen Architectur (Vienna, 1721), Preface.

30 For the terminological distinction, see A.-C. Quatremère de Quincy, Encyclopédie méthodique: Architec-ture, 3 vols. (Paris, 1788-1825), 3:286-88.

31 Ibid. 3:314.

32 Ibid. 1:27.

33 Ibid. 3:286.

34 Volney, Voyage 1:256-57.

J. Fischer von Erlach.  Theban Pyramid. 1721. 

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studies of al-qalam al-bar-bāwī (“the pen of the ru-ined temples”, i.e. hiero-glyphs) and al-qalam al-kā-hinī (“the pen of the priests”, i.e. hieratic), as well as Pha-raonic science, medicine, and magic.35 For the resi-dents of Ottoman Egypt, however, the Qur´ān's dir-ective to study the means by which Fir`aun's regime re-sisted the order of God was one thing; but European de-signs to excavate and re-construct the monuments of his architect Hāmān, was quite another, and this proved disquieting to say the least. When European travelers arrived and began measuring and drawing every Pha-raonic ruin that they could find, Egyptians tended to react with suspicion, if not outright hostility, something that the Europeans unfortunately misconstrued as ignorance or malice.36 Using the pro-file of the first pylon at Edfu as the inspiration for a more sleek modern office or apartment com-plex—as does Volume I of the Napoleonic Description de l'Égypte (1809)—came dangerously close in the eyes of the Egyptian `alīm (“scholars”) to reviving the order of Pharaonic Egypt. In fact, reading through the accounts of European travelers to Egypt from the mid-seventeenth century CE through the early nineteenth one cannot help but notice the over proportionate num-ber of fallāḥīn who murdered Europeans at or near Pharaonic sites where robbery does not seem to have been a motive. This was potentially one quick and dirty way to deal with “unbelievers”

(kuffār) who had the tem-erity to rush in where angels feared to tread, particular-ly individuals intent on re-storing the very monumen-tal buildings that both the Qur´ān and later Islāmic tradition had declared ta-boo. In one sense, then, the executions carried out at Fir`awn’s spurious and

                                                            35 O. el-Daly, op. cit.

36 See, for example, C. Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern, 2 vols (Copenhagen, ???). 

Description de l'Égypte.  Thebes.  2nd ed. 1825. 

Description de l’Égypte.  Memphis.  A. vol. 5, pl. 9 (1809). Detail

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sacrilegious “Holy of Holies” (+sr-Dsr.w) on 17 November 1997 by the Vanguards of Conquest, one militant Islāmic group among others operating in contemporary Egypt, continued this tradition, though more methodically and on a much larger scale.

In fact, between 1992 and 2015 there have been over forty-five fatal attacks on tourists at Egyptian museums or archeological sites—many inspired by the wahhābī mission of al-Qā`ida37—with the goal of ridding the country of all individuals primarily interested in pre-Islāmic Egypt, but with little or no concern for Egypt’s welfare as an ortho-dox Islāmic state.38 While Muslim law (šarī`ah) in no way prohibits the study of Egyptian hieroglyphs, it does provide an asymmetric challenge to the ostensibly “secular” and “disinterested” reconfig-uration of `Ilm al-Miṣrīyāt into “Egyptology” as an “independent” and “scientific” field of knowledge-production, now centered in the West. To study hieroglyphs, therefore, is to embark upon a venture, it is to enter —and to intervene within—a culturally contested field, where there is not just one witness to the “truth” of the discipline but two. German, Latin, Japanese—one risks little today in learning to read The Sorrows of Young Werther, Os Maias, or The Tale of Genji. To study classical Egyptian, however, to edit the Coronation Hymns of Sesostris III, to trace the paleography of the Temple of Esna: this is to stir up the dust, to revivify the rubble of jāhiliyyah, which is therefore to take up—whether consciously or not—a position within politics on a world order. In a legacy that derives from Francis Bacon, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant, Western scholars confidently link Egyptology to man’s potential for Enlightenment, a “science” validated by its struggle to over-come what even Tertullian had already recognized in the second century CE as the “absurdity” that stands at the heart of Christian faith.39 Contemporary Muslims, however, at least those who follow in the footsteps of the Egyptian activist and martyr Sayyid Quṭb,40 consider the intervention of Egyptology a as matter of ethical finitude—not only as part of a Manichean struggle of good against evil, but a signifying practice which ultimately devolves upon the fate of the soul.

How many cities, teeming with sin, have We laid to waste! They lie in desolate ruin, their walls abandoned and their proud palaces empty. Do people not see how many

                                                            37 See, inter alia, J. Burke, Al-Qaeda (London, 2004); R. Ibrahim, ed. The Al Qaeda Reader: Essential texts of Osama Bin Laden’s Terrorist Organization (New York, 2007); M. W. S. Ryan, Decoding Al-Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle Against America (New York, 2013). 38 For an accounting, see http://www.usdivetravel.com/T-EgyptTerrorism.html. 39 Tertullian, De carne Christi V, 4: “prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est.” 40 S. Quṭb, Milestones (New York, 2006); S. Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb: The Theory of Jahiliy-yah (New York, 2006).

The Face of Egypt 

Selden xv

generations We have destroyed before them? They walk amidst the very ruins where once they dwelt. Surely in this there are signs (āyāt) for people of discernment. [Q 22:44 and 20:128]

Ultimately, then, as the Sūrat Ṭāhā points out,  the matter hinges on the semiology of ruins: considered as a sign, the nose missing from the Great Sphinx at el-Ğīza means one thing to an Egyptologist trained in Chicago, Paris, London, or Berlin but quite another to العراق في سالميھالو الدواه

that is, to the currently emergent Islamic— موالشاState of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). At the same time, however, this renders the two positions—both articulated as part and parcel of the ca-pitalist world system—two sides of the same po-litico-historical coin, that is, as Theodor Adorno famously put it: “two halves [of an integral free-dom] that do not add up to make a whole.” So George Bataille, anticipating Martin Heideg-ger,41 proves less sanguine about the prospects of modern technology and science for the gen-eral project of enlightenment: 42 The “man deprived by fear of the need to be a man” has placed his greatest hopes in science. He has renounced the character of totality that his acts had as long as he wanted to live his destiny. For the act of science must be au-tonomous and the scientist excludes all human interests external to the desire for knowledge. A man who bears the burden of science has exchanged human destiny’s concern for living with a concern for the discovery of truth. He

passes from the totality to a part, and serving this part demands that the other parts no longer count. Science is a function that developed only after occupying the place of the destiny that it was to have served. For it could do nothing as long as it served.

It is a paradox that a function could only be fulfilled on the condition that it become an end in itself.

The totality of sciences that man has at his disposal is due to this sort of fraud. But if it is true that the human domain has increased because of it, it has been at the cost of a crippled existence.

                                                            41 M. Heidegger, “Die Frage nach der Technik,” Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingun, 1954). 42 G. Bataille, “L’apprenti sorcier” (1938), sec. III, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. D. Hollier et al., 12 vols. (Paris, 1970-88), 2:523-37.

           Erection of the Luxor Obelisk in Paris 1836.

Selden xvi

“By diverse means,” Michel de Mon-taigne reminds us, “we arrive at the same end” (à pareille fin).”43 Ac-cordingly, the Islāmicist proposition that the antiquities of Egypt should remain as wreckage in testimony to the truth of the Qur´ān and the En-lightenment notion of “perfectibility” that drives the modern discipline of Egyptology turn out to be mirror images of one another. While one revels in the materially of the ruin per se, the second—under the guise of recuperating dilapidated “moni-ments”44—increasingly fragments this process by way of an ever-growing voltige of sub-specialties—archaeology, papyrology, linguistics, art and architecture, ar-chaeobotany, archaeodentistry, archaeastronomy, geometry, and so on—each of which as Bataille stresses, has developed less in conversation with the others than as ends in and of themselves. The European eye, as the plates to the Description de L’Egypt amply demonstrate, is an atomizing gaze. Whether one starts out, then, from the Qur´ān or from the Description de L’Egypte (1809-22), we wind up both literally and metaphorically—with “a “heap of broken im-ages, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief And the dry stone no sound of water.”45

Do not ask, my heart, where love has gone. It was a citadel of illusion that has collapsed.

Fill my cup and let us drink to its ruins. Tell the story for my sake: long have I watered

them with tears.

—Umm Kalthūm

                                                            43 M. de Montaigne, Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1962 [Pléiade]), 11.

44 Cf. E. Spenser, The Faerie Queene I, v: “His goodly corps . . . Was quite dismembered, and his members chast Scattered on every moutaine, as he went, That of Hipoolytus was left no moniment”

45 T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land” (1922), ll. 22-24.

Umm Kalthūm at the Great Sphinx 

               Description de L’Egypte (1809) 

Umm Kalthūm at the Great Sphinx