16 - 22 August 2001
Issue No.547
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 16 - 22 August 2001 Issue No.547 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Al-Ahram:
A Diwan of contemporary life (403)
It has become a tradition for the Ministry of Education to sponsor student field trips to Egypt's main historical sites especially surviving Pharaonic monuments in southern Egypt. These trips add a lot to the educational experience of school children and remain an ideal way to instil national sentiments and pride in young Egyptians. This tradition, in fact, goes back to 1926 when Ali Maher Pasha was minister of education. In this instalment of the Diwan Dr Yunan Labib Rizk* recovers Al-Ahram's coverage of the very first student excursions as well as the diaries of one of the travelling students published on its pages
Diaries of a field trip
Ministry of Education and university officials have always been keen to organise winter student trips to Upper Egypt. The Pharaonic monuments in Luxor are considered an ideal way to fire national pride and the enormous reservoir created by the High Dam inspires a sense of well being, a confidence that this accomplishment has permanently relegated the "lean years" to Old Testament lore.
Top: King Fouad; above: Ali Maher Pasha
It is commonly thought that student excursions only became a regular feature of the school curriculum following the construction of the High Dam in the 1960s. However, a reading of Al- Ahram issues of the winter of 1926 tells us otherwise. That season's editions inform us that it was Ali Maher Pasha who first introduced this practice after he became minister of education under the Ziwar government in 1925. Maher's pro-palace sympathies and hostility to the Wafd Party are well known. Yet, he commanded widespread respect for the devotion with which he expanded primary school education in fulfilment of the 1923 constitution's provision to guarantee free and compulsory basic education.
Maher also took a number of important initiatives to enhance educational services at other levels. One of these was to promote educational excursions, which prompted him to create a separate department within his ministry to supervise such activities and appoint as its head a senior ministry inspector. It was typical of the dedication he brought to his work that he continued to take an interest in the arrangements for the trips and would personally appear at the train station to see off departing students. An item in Al-Ahram of 21 January 1926 illustrates this:
"The Ministry of Education has decided to send five groups of students from its elementary and secondary schools and its special and higher level institutes to Luxor, Kom Ombo and Aswan in order enable students to tour these three areas and see the antiquities they possess. Each group will consist of 150 students and teachers. The ministry has arranged that every fifteen students be accompanied and supervised by a teacher. A physician and two nurses will also travel with each group. All other possible arrangements have been made to ensure their comfort throughout the trip, which includes the train journey, food, hotel accommodation, boat rides on the Nile and other activities -- all for the price of two pounds to be paid by the student."
The article goes on to report that the first of these student tours had left the capital on the morning of Wednesday, 20 January 1926, under the supervision of the principle of Al-Raml Elementary School. Their train had departed at 8:30am, yet, "in spite of this early hour, His Excellency the Minister of Education Professor Ali Maher Pasha came to the train station to bid the group farewell. He was accompanied by Abdel-Fattah Sabri Bek, Ali Omar Bek and Mohamed Amin Lutfi Bek, who are senior officials in his ministry."
In an expression of his concern for the students' welfare, the minister called over the principal appointed as the tour supervisor and "instructed him to watch over the students, especially the elementary school pupils entrusted to his care, as though he were their second father, and to remain vigilant over all their comings and goings to ensure that they return safely and in high spirits from their trip." The students' safe and happy return, the minister added, "will contribute to promoting and expanding these educational excursions in the future."
Readers may have gained the impression from this news report that Ali Maher Pasha demonstrated special concern on this occasion due to the distance and duration of the journey. They would soon discover, however, that he was equally attentive to students' welfare on much shorter expeditions. On 29 January 1926, Al- Ahram reports that the minister of education visited Al-Nasseriya Elementary School in order to welcome a group of students from Zaqaziq Elementary School "who have come to Cairo on an educational excursion in the company of the principal of their school." The report continues: "The minister was greeted by loud applause, and when he asked the students how they felt they benefited from this tour he was greatly impressed by the acuteness of their observations and the soundness of their replies. The minister supplied the visiting students with much useful information on the places they had visited, which included the Islamic Antiquities Museum, the National Library, the Egyptian Antiquities Museum, the Geographical Society Exhibition, the Coptic Museum and the Mosque of Amr Ibn Al-'As. Then, he left the school to cheers and applause as energetic as when he arrived."
As though having taken their cue from the minister, the Egyptian press, too, turned its attention to this new form of extracurricular activity, and Al-Ahram was perhaps the most assiduous in this regard. It instructed its correspondents in the provincial capitals to wire in news about student groups about to depart on the Ministry of Education sponsored excursions to Upper Egypt, it had one of its reporters in the capital cover the students during their stopover in Cairo and it had its correspondents in Upper Egypt relay news of the excursions to those parts. Coverage occupied an entire column in the 30 January issue, a sign of the importance the editors of the newspapers attached to this student activity.
By this time a third excursion had set off to Upper Egypt, and the newspaper reports that the minister had once again made a personal appearance at the train station. If form may have called for this gesture, since he saw off the two previous groups of students, clearly a deeper commitment to the welfare of the students and to the future of the programme was also involved. The minister's subordinates picked up on this message, as did Al-Ahram, in its detailed coverage.
The newspaper went on to list the schools that were participating in this excursion: Al-Tawfiqiya, Al-Khedewiya, Al- Saadiya, Fouad I, Al-Fayoum, Al-Minya and Assiut. That all these were secondary schools indicates that the tours were organised according to educational level. It is also interesting to note that students from all these schools, even those in Upper Egypt, had to assemble first in Cairo before heading southwards. If students from Al-Minya and Assiut had hoped to hop on the train as it passed through their cities, they were to be disappointed. On the other hand, their hearts probably leaped at the opportunity to go to Cairo and see the sights in the nation's capital.
The final item in this column was the report from Al-Ahram's correspondent in Maghagha, on hand to cover the "express" train's first brief stop in Upper Egypt. A delegation of the city's notables had turned out to greet the students at the platform, the correspondent reported, after which "the students departed on the same train, all in the highest spirits and fully conscious of the great benefits of this excursion."
Soon, Al-Ahram presented its readers with a surprise that turned out to exemplify the Maghagha correspondent's observations. Beginning on 12 February, the newspaper featured a series of daily articles beneath the headline, "Ten days between Luxor and Aswan: A description of the Ministry of Education student excursion." The author of these articles, a certain Ahmed Ali, described himself as one of the student leaders of the first group. Although Ahmed tells us that there were 200 students and teachers on his tour and that most of the students were from the elementary level, he, himself, must have been a secondary school student. For one, his writing reflects that he had fully digested the excessively rhetorical style in which students of the time were inculcated in secondary school composition classes. An episode, for example, might open: "The train was speeding as sleekly as a leopard over the sand in Qena when the disk of the sun appeared to rise from the west, a phenomenon, we learned, that was due to the train's course around the bend of the Nile in that area." Nor was it unusual for him to quote verses from the poetry he would have had to commit to heart in school.
The stop over in Luxor on the way south was very brief, since the sightseeing was to begin from Aswan, which is where Ahmed began writing his account. Still, one imagines the young writer with a small notebook in hand to jot down his impressions along the way. As he looked out of his train window, he would have noted: "Sand upon sand; no plants or animals in sight. The people are poor, wretchedness etched in their faces. Were it not for the Nile coursing next to the train and the narrow spots of green spattered here and there like tattoo marks on the hand, we could have denied that we were still here on Egyptian land beneath Egyptian skies."
What a contrast Aswan made to all that barrenness. It loomed into view "in its shimmering gown, buoyant and beautiful, with its towering date and dom palms, and relieved us from the strain and discomfort of the journey. As soon as our feet touched the ground, we felt as though we were in one of the suburbs of the capital."
The Aswan tour featured a full programme: the Aswan Dam reservoir, the quarries and the Ptolemaic temple, the tombs of the Nubian princes from the Pharaonic era, as well as a trip to the islands of Elephantine and Philae. It is easy to imagine how Ahmed held his readers in thrall with the perceptive descriptions and ample information he supplied.
The name Aswan, he tells us, derives from the ancient Egyptian word for "market." This was the juncture just above the first cataract to which traders from Sudan brought elephants, which they displayed for sale on the island. That is how Elephantine derived its name. Although some have claimed that the island was so called because it is elephant-shaped, Ahmed scoffed at the notion, especially after having seen it first hand.
In Pharaonic times, Ahmed explained, Aswan was "little more than the seat of the governor-general appointed by the Pharaoh over that province and the Nubian lands to the south." As such, the city had little historic significance for ancient Egypt, "which is why one finds no royal tombs there." Nevertheless, he is quick to add, not wishing to do the city injustice, it was extremely important because of the enormous quarry which provided the Pharaohs with stones for their temples and granite for their obelisks.
Apart from serving as the site for the elephant market, Ahmed Ali informs his readers, the Elephantine had an ancient nilometer, discovered by the French expedition in 1801 and renovated under the Khedive Ismail. The island also boasted a small antiquities museum.
The second island the students visited, Philae, was known in Pharaonic times as "Pi-Lak," or the island of the "lak", meaning corner. The Coptic Egyptians shortened it to "Pilakh" and the name underwent a further transformation under the Arabs to "Bilaq." This is where the famous Anas Al-Wujud palace is situated.
Unfortunately, the students were unable to tour the palace due to the annual flooding of the Nile. It only becomes visible between August and December when the Nile floods recede, he informed his readers. Nevertheless, Ahmed found certain information worth relating. Anas Al-Wujud, he wrote, was the name of the protagonist in one of the tales of A Thousand and One Nights. However, in spite of the Arabic name, this was not an Arab palace. Indeed, it was not a palace at all, but rather an ancient temple constructed by Ptolemy Philadelphius. The epithet Philadelphius, he added, is Greek for "the man who loves his brother," which was ironic since this particular Ptolemy murdered his brother.
Next on the programme was the Aswan Dam. Constructed in 1898, the dam created a reservoir "that extends just over 300 kilometres to Wadi Halfa. The dam is approximately 2,000 metres long and nine metres wide and cost a total of about five million pounds by the time it was heightened in 1912." The experience of walking across the dam was exhilarating: The water gushed through the openings generating a froth "like fluffed wool" and "the tumult of the water cast a fine mist in the air that was bedecked with the seven colours of the sun, creating a rainbow."
Next on the itinerary was the quarry. This was where the ancient Egyptians carved the area's igneous stone into blocks to be transported down the Nile to build their monuments at Thebes and other capitals. Alongside the quarry stood what Ahmed dubbed "the nursling" obelisk: "It is 92 metres tall, ten and a half metres wide and engraved on three sides, the last side remaining to be weaned from its mother's breast. When I saw it, I dubbed it the 'nursling' because it appears to be sleeping against the cliff like an infant in its mother's arms." Ahmed went on to explain that, according to some historians, the obelisk was left incomplete because of the sudden death of Amon Hotep III of the 18th dynasty who had begun it and the accession to the throne of Amon Hotep IV (or Akhnaten the apostate as he was called by the priests of the god Amon whose cult that Pharaoh abandoned). The succession of Akhnaten and his new cult brought an end to all works dedicated to the god Amon, one of which was the obelisk still suckling at the breast.
Any tour to Aswan is incomplete without a felucca trip on the Nile, and this activity was planned for the third day. Ahmed related: "The boats slid between islets and rocks, then set anchor alongside a low island where we got off. We were eager to learn of all the types of plants and vegetation on it, but we only found date and dom palms and a few vegetables, although we did see some specimens of the famous castor-oil plant. Were it not for that narrow cultivable strip of land north of the city the life of the people of Aswan would depend solely on the produce of these islands. "From Nubia to the outskirts of Qena the course of the Nile passes through nothing but cliffs and desert," he commented.
The felucca trip proved to be an occasion to recite some of the facts he learned in his geography classes. Over the millennia the waters of the Nile "shaped and deepened the river valley through the force of its powerful current and the large rocks it carried." He continued, "All rivers are like men: they run wild in their youth and grow sedate with age. Thus, as the Nile advanced in age the force and turbulence of its current began to fade gradually like notes plucked on the oud (lute), and instead of the boulders of its youth, it came to carry the minute fragments of these stones in the form of silt and microscopic grains, which it deposited along its course, thereby raising the river bed after it had once worked to deepen it."
As the reader continues with Ahmed's geological survey of the area it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine that this was the work of an ordinary secondary school student. One, therefore, suspects that he found some help in drafting this portion of his article following his return to Helwan. In all events, he proceeded to discuss the types of stone formed in the earth's crust: igneous, sedimentary and composite, all of which could be found in Aswan. He was particularly interested in the first type: "Many elements and minerals enter into their formation. Chemists have analysed their composition and drew up formulas so as ensure that their varieties are not confused with one another." The most important types of igneous rock to be found in Aswan were quartz -- "a very hard mineral that cannot be scratched by a pocket knife, and known there as marble," feldspar and kaolin "from which china is made."
Ahmed's heart felt heavy as he left Aswan and watched that "beloved" city disappear into the horizon behind the awesome expanse of desert through which the students' train passed on its journey back north. The endless desolateness was only interrupted by the occasional village, where the train made a brief stop and villagers rushed to the windows to sell straw baskets and fans to the passengers.
However, the young student's melancholy lifted as soon as the group approached Kom Ombo. Suddenly that narrow strip of vegetation engulfed by desert on both sides opened up into "vast green fields of tall and slender sugarcane stalks." These were farmed by a foreign company that had set up a large sugar processing plant on that estate. Such industries were certain to capture a young and curious mind: "Although there are many things I might forget, I will never forget our visit to that factory where the raw cane that had been cut from the ground with all its precious essence and its fibrous roughage was transformed into the purest sugar." He also recalled the pang of regret he shared with his fellow students that "this company was not operated by Egyptian management and Egyptian finance."
As a resident of Cairo's southern suburb, Helwan, Ahmed would never have seen the narrow gauge railways familiar in the rural Delta. But he saw one in Kom Ombo and it struck his fancy. The "village train," as he called it, had "the wheels and rails of a train and the trotting gait of a donkey. It reminded us of those toy trains sold to children in festivals. How charming was the shrill whistle it emitted to warn the animals that blocked its path. It never once hushed its voice along its course, and I knew it was declaring itself master of the land that day."
The temple in Kom Ombo was naturally the main reason for the stop in that Upper Egyptian town. Ahmed observed that it was quite unlike other Pharaonic temples in construction and design, since, in fact, it was actually two temples, not one. The first was devoted to the worship of the crocodile god Sobek,"because this area until quite recently was a habitat for crocodiles, although they have now vanished." The second temple was dedicated to the worship of the god Hathor. At that temple the students also saw the holy well adjacent to the Nile. Ahmed described visiting that edifice: "One enters a large portal, then passes through a corridor to the hall of pillars, emerges into a spacious courtyard after which one enters the sacred chamber on the walls of which are carved reliefs of the kings offering sacrifices to the goddess."
Al-Ahram readers must have been greatly disappointed to discover that Ahmed's chronicle came to a halt on 4 March 1926. In his last instalment Ahmed described the students' brief visit to the temple at Edfu after which they were to proceed to Thebes, "or the Paris of yesteryear." The newspaper offered no explanation for the sudden silence. Perhaps the editors felt that the young secondary school student had already taken up enough space, for it is difficult to imagine that Ahmed stopped sending in his articles. In all events, Ahmed's absence did not keep the newspaper from continuing its coverage of the educational excursions, if not quite as extensively as before.
On 28 March, for example, the newspaper published a letter from a reader who related that he encountered one of the student excursions in Aswan while he himself was touring that area. The writer happened to have the occasion to follow some of the discussions between students and their teachers and was shocked to learn that one teacher was unable to supply his students with clear answers on several questions. Then, as the teacher continued to betray his ignorance the students began to make snide remarks. When the teacher proved unable to answer a question regarding the presence of some round, black stones on one of the sites, one of the students quipped that the Pharaohs used to play football with them. The appalled writer went on to urge the Ministry of Education to be more exacting in its selection of the teachers it appointed to accompany the students on their excursions. What a pity it was to squander this unique educational experience by taking students to Egypt's precious historical sites, giving them time to take group photos and then leaving without having taught them anything. One suspects that the writer's caution went unheeded, for even today we find that educational excursions have become extended picnics, during which students sing songs, chew on sugarcane stalks and feast on freshly picked tangerines.
* The author is a professor of history and head of Al-Ahram History Studies Centre.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page