Egyptian Historical Research and Writing on Egypt in the 20th Century

Abstract

A few years ago the Egyptian government appointed a committee of historians with a mandate to re-write the history of Egypt, making it commensurate with current needs. Those who opposed the plan raised indignant cries of ‘revisionism’ on the one hand, to be countered by equally heated accusations on the part of those who were in favour of the undertaking that much of the works of the past had been mostly white-wash attempts, or panegyrics addressed to the royal family and the old regime, and that the history of Egypt needed to be properly written. The reactions that the project aroused made it demonstrably clear that Egyptians had become keenly interested in their own history, in the manner in which it was written and in the people who were writing it. It should therefore come as no surprise to note that the number of Egyptians writing on the history of Egypt has multiplied rapidly within the last two decades.