Egypt's Ministry of Culture celebrated its 50th anniversary at this year's Cairo International Book Fair. Nevine El-Aref was there Egypt's Ministry of Culture turns 50 this year, and to celebrate the event the Cairo International Book Fair (CIBF) organised a series of lectures during its first week relating to the ministry's history and to its long-standing efforts to preserve Egypt's cultural heritage and promote culture throughout society. The first two lectures reviewed the ministry's history and creation. According to the historian and academic Ahmed Zakaria El-Shalaq, Egypt's modern history began in the 19th century, historians usually considering this century to have been Egypt's "revolutionary era" when Mohamed Ali exerted great efforts to modernise the country by creating an educational system modelled after the one used by the French, nationalising agricultural land, reforming and expanding the army, and introducing industry and technology. Disseminating modern culture was also part of Mohamed Ali's modernisation programme, El-Shalaq said, and he sent educational missions abroad and built new cultural institutions that were the ancestors of the modern Ministry of Culture. According to Saber Arab, head of Egypt's national library, the Dar Al-Kotob, who also spoke at the fair, the Al-Alsun language school, the first of its kind dedicated to translation, had been set up in the 19th century, as had Egypt's first newspapers and journals, which served as a widow onto the country for the foreign communities that then started to appear in Egypt. The establishment of the national library itself and the Bulaq printing house, one of the Arab world's first printers, took place in the 19th century, as did the arrival of waves of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants in the country, many of whom became active in journalism or publishing. Also as part of the first two lectures, Emad Abu Ghazi, deputy head of the Supreme Council for Culture, said that the 19th century had witnessed the first modern efforts to preserve the country's ancient history and its historical monuments. A national museum had been established in the Cairo district of Bulaq, he said, which later grew into the Egyptian Museum, and the famous Graeco- Roman Museum has been established in Alexandria. In the third and fourth of the lecture series, speakers considered the modern Ministry of Culture's activities to preserve Egypt's ancient history and its archaeological sites. During its 50-year history, for example, the Supreme Council of Antiquities, one of the ministry's agencies, has been responsible for the restoration of many ancient monuments, among them the Sphinx in May 1990, the gigantic statue of Queen Merite-Amun, daughter of the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II in Sohag, the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir Al-Bahari on the west bank in Luxor, and of many monuments in Islamic Cairo, where some 242 monuments have been restored. The council has also been responsible for setting up new museums in the country and developing others, among them the Nubia Museum in Aswan, the Alexandria National Museum and Alexandria Jewellery Museum, the Islamic Textiles Museum in old Cairo and the Rashid Museum. Other museums are in the pipeline, including the Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Fustat, the Grand Egyptian Museum on the Giza Plateau and the Crocodile Museum in Kom Ombo. The Coptic Museum has also been developed by the council, while Cairo's Islamic Museum is under restoration. Another of the ministry's agencies, the National Centre for Translation, is engaged in a comprehensive programme to translate 3,000 books in Arabic into 27 foreign languages. This programme, started six months ago, is being implemented in phases and will be complete in 2011. According to the minister of culture, Farouk Hosni, the translation programme aims to foster dialogue between cultures, and through its programme of translation of foreign works into Arabic it aims to introduce Egyptian readers to the best that has been written in political science, economics and the social sciences. Among the ministry's other agencies, the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces (GOCP) aims to raise cultural awareness among the population as a whole, particularly among young people. The GOCP is now responsible for some 540 cultural venues, including performance spaces and public libraries. It organises activities in folklore, music, acting and literature. However, one of the best known of all the ministry's many agencies is probably the General Egyptian Book Organisation, the ministry's publishing arm. This organisation has seen a number of new initiatives in recent decades, among them the Family Library project, set up under the auspices of Mrs Suzanne Mubarak, which aims to provide good quality books at low prices. During its 15 years of operation, the Family Library has produced some 70 million books, attracted 21 million readers, and established some 18,000 libraries across Egypt, the programme as a whole winning the 2009 Social Creative Award from the Arab Thought Foundation.
