Trial of Bartholdi – Al Mal newspaper

A question of Egyptian consciousness!

The year 2022 witnessed the predominance of strategic thinking over the topics of my articles, which concern Egypt as it should be, in the midst of global changes, in a difficult reality, for a critical future, with boring people struggling with food, lackluster media, virtual culture and economic crisis! At the end of the year, my vision as a lawyer and writer followed the continuation of years of absence of the concept of “question” from the Egyptian consciousness! This concept cannot be reduced to problems – not problems – the economy, the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the dollar frenzy, infrastructure development, the explosion of public debt, religious inflammation, fluctuations in public services and other issues and problems concerning the governance of Egypt, and not his values. It is littered with street and satellite TV debates that try to create a problem, despite the possibility of solving it by changing strategies, management and decisions. Contrary to the issues of community values ​​and morality that are not solved with these tools, but with intellectual, educational, psychological and practical methodologies and strategies that deal with and penetrate the self-awareness, class and social consciousness of citizens, in order to revive their moral, religious and social values. It is inconceivable that a law or decision can be returned or the values ​​of dignity, originality, brotherhood, respect, honor and pride can be bought.

The collective, perceptive, external awareness of the circumstances surrounding the society does not require the same awareness of values ​​as the members of this society deal with the same surrounding circumstances! Therefore, although the problems affecting the management of Al-Masry have a collective consciousness that accepts, rejects or rebels against them, the values ​​of individuals in dealing with them differ according to their awareness of their own values! Otherwise, for example, greed and exploitation, trade in need, honor, religiosity, bribery and other negative practices that reflect the decay of the values ​​of their owners would not appear. No, or the Egyptian collective consciousness, since the issue of English colonialism, has not agreed on a common moral value or value, in an issue that affects the self-awareness of the citizen, and is gradually maturing to form a collective consciousness to solve it!

My articles from 2022 traced the disintegration of the Egyptian collective consciousness into a vessel of burning problems and tried to emphasize the importance of the existence of the service for the Egyptian consciousness, until in December I noticed the problem of presence (a statue of the French scientist Champollion) squatting in the Sorbonne square, like a marble scar in front of the face of Egyptian civilization and dignity, highlighted by the French idealist Frederic Bartholdi, Its structural structure was designed by Gustave Eiffel in 1875, embodying the French scientist Champollion, resting the left side of the shoe on the head of the Egyptian king (Thutmosis III)! I have already published 4 articles in which I call for the artistic and historical persecution of Bartholdi (within the documented historical background of the artist’s relationship with Egypt and international standards for plastic arts), the removal of the statue from its place, for violating Egyptian dignity.

Despite the outbreak of the crisis on the surface of angry media since 2013, followed by the continued French refusal to remove the statue as an expression of Egyptian-French ties and proof of the cultural climate in France, despite this, Egyptians’ awareness of the crisis did not go beyond computer screens and newspapers! Many have classified it among the problems that should be decided sovereignly, or carve a statue that insults Napoleon in Tahrir Square, or discuss it as a cultural luxury, or leave the statue for another 150 years, and grandchildren deal with its time…etc.! And all of these are collective consciousness, including the crisis with the problems of our time, so that every citizen could deal with it with his awareness, understanding and personal balance, from the values ​​of dignity, originality, brotherhood, respect, patriarchy, and pride!

It is not surprising that the positions oscillated between complete ignorance, neglect, arrogance, fanaticism, conciliatory, exploitation, silence, deafness or resourcelessness, all of which indicate that the Egyptian collective consciousness is sick, lacking in dignity and pride. in its civilization and brotherhood as a society in solving (questions of its values). Not the problems of his stomach and his mind! The vision is not an insult or an exposure of the Egyptians, but a diagnosis of a disease that affected their values, and the mechanisms of the components of the collective consciousness (education, media, culture, religion) helped them to reach that level of underestimation or normality to crown the head of the Egyptian king with French shoes before 150 years, designed by the artist Bartholdi to perpetuate For the insult of Khedive Ismail in the image of the symbol of his civilization, set in motion by his eternal marble revenge, our legacy of pain of lack of resourcefulness and arguments of interpretation of time!

My vision is that the statue of Champollion as Bartholdi’s artefact is the first (a matter of Egyptian collective consciousness) since 1956 that affects the Egyptians’ values ​​of dignity, originality, brotherhood, respect, patriarchy and pride, and deserves to be based on a complete system for the revival and renewal of their collective consciousness, as an opening for a new international Egyptian opera. , worthy of contemporaneity with the proclamation of the Second Republic and the mental image of a new Egyptian worthy of it.

This is not a party, religious, sphere or artistic sectarian question, etc., but a question of addressing and awakening the feelings and consciousness of every Egyptian about the truth of his identity, the dignity of his origin, his pride in his civilizations, his respect for the present and his hope for his future. Despite all our achievements, projects, struggles, dreams, frustrations, planning, strategy, strength, wisdom… There is a king’s head and Egyptian dignity that are mortgaged, under the shoes of historical lies and personal hatred, waiting to be released. from the new Egyptian consciousness.

Let Bartholdi’s trial be the case for the return of Egyptian consciousness in 2023!

* Egyptian jurist and writer

‏[email protected]