Director (Cultnat)

Can you explain to us why and how this center was created?

In fact the idea start about 20 years ago, and we started even the experimentation of it nearly 13 years ago within another small department in which we were experimenting with these new technologies in order to document heritage and so on. We stayed like that from 1990 to 1995, and then the idea died. But at that time in that center there was a gentleman working with us named Ahmed Nasif - it just happened that he was my student, he has a masters with me, so he is a computer engineer - and he was witnessing what I was doing at that time. He saw the passion that I had towards this idea and also he was aware of the district. I was giving public lectures and public conferences about the mathematics and science of ancient Egypt, and I was doing that as a scientist at that time, so I think it took really 10 or 15 years to build the awareness in the different fields around us. Then I went to Paris in 1995, and I was appointed as a cultural attaché of Egypt in France, and then I was ambassador of Egypt in the UNESCO, and gained much experience in international relations. And when I came back from Paris, in 1999, it just happened that Ahmed Nasif became the Minister of Communication and Information Technology - a ministry created for the first time. And by that time the Minister of Culture, Dr Farouk Hosny, was aware as well of what I was trying to do, and he even gave me a permission three years before, in order to get ancient flutes out of the Egyptian museum and play them in order to try to rediscover the ancient Egyptian musical scale. We did that and an American scientific channel (Scientific American Frontier) came to Egypt and did a documentary about our experiment. So I took 15 years before the start of this center, to prepare the people with our idea, with the Ministry of Culture and with Ahmed Nasif. He was on my team, so we did a lot of things together even in this experimentation, then he became Minister of Communication just after I was appointed to UNESCO, so when I came back I told him that it was high time to start a real center for this experimentation that we made before, and he agreed and then we started the idea the 1st January 2000. He got interested the idea and he had in his mind at the first step to find a sponsor or a real owner for it. Then in 2002, the Library of Alexandria was inaugurated, and we thought that this center had to be connected with it. So we sat together - me, Dr Ahmed Nasif and Ismail Serrg El Din, the director of the library - and we decided on a very nice formula: the center will be affiliated to the library but with a continual support from the Ministry of Communication because it combines culture and heritage.

So it is under the umbrella of the Ministry of Communication?

Yes, so we have the two hats as I said, and we have a presidential decree that says that we are affiliated to the library of Alexandria and the Ministry continues to support us.

Other members of the cabinet have been student of yours, such as the present Minister of Information, is that correct?

Yes, correct, and Mr Ahmed Darwish, who did is masters with me, is now the Minister of the State for Administration Development.

So let’s say that this was the process of creating awareness among authorities,

Who weren’t authorities at that time.

Exactly. And what about the younger generation right now, was there enough awareness of the richness of cultural heritage in Egypt?

Not really, and many people ask me this question, how come an computer engineer became that interested in cultural heritage? Actually I prepared my PhD in France, about 30 years ago, in the 60’s, and during that period I have been ashamed of myself because I saw that small children in France of the age of 10 or 12 years knew more about Egypt than me. Then when I came here I became very anxious to know more about my country and this culture, and I started learning, and automatically I coupled this with scientific knowledge. So really this ambition came from the period I was in France preparing my PhD, and I think that is the same situation today: most of the young people in Egypt are not very aware of the worthiness of their country and I always say that in France there isn’t a single week without a special issue of one of the news or magazines about Egypt, but here you can’t find anything.

And in order to improve the situation here, this center is here?

I think we are working on that.

Do you think that this specific interest that you are maintaining in France toward the cultural heritage of Egypt, is it something specific in France or is it present in all Europe?

France in particular, and all over Europe in general. Why France in particular? I think that the French feel they have discovered Egypt, because during the time that Napoleon invaded Egypt, it was the first time in history that he brought this amount of scientists and this group really discovered Egypt and they made a very famous book about describing everything here (La Description de L’Egypte), the old monuments, the present thing, or the past thing, and the faun and flore of Egypt, this created interest, and during the same time they found the Rosetta stone and it opened to all the treasure of the ancient Egyptian civilization. So it’s Champollion, and the French, who are considered as the first Egyptologists of the world. That’s why the French think they have discovered Egypt. And then started all the egyptomania in France and in all the other places.

Please tell us about the international joint projects that you have? Of course I saw that there are many projects with the European Commission, also with the IBM cooperation, and with UNESCO, but let’s start with the European Commission.

With the European Commission we have now ten projects; three of them are finishing and three are starting so we have more or less seven projects running with the European Commission. There are now a lot of projects between Europe and the Mediterranean countries, so we are part of many of those projects, especially in the field of culture. Each one has its particularity; one project called “Strabon” is co-ordinated with the French institute. Strabon was a geographer and a historian - he wrote a lot about the Mediterranean area, so we selected is name as a symbol. In this project every country selects part of is cultural heritage and builds a database about it, and we build a portal from where you can all this data in different countries and so you can visit this website and find all this heritage as if they were designed in one single place. Another project is “patrimoine partagé” about the common patrimony in the area of 19th century architecture. So we have put all this architecture together. And then a 3rd one, for the traditional method of irrigation.

What about the cooperation between the Center and the IBM and the UNESCO?

With IBM it’s a nice story because I don’t know if everybody is aware of this or not. IBM and many other technical companies try to show that they care for culture and so on. During the last 10 years IBM has developed a lot of cultural projects in different countries. They contribute to the culture, so we approached each other, just one year after our creation, and I asked if Egypt might be the next step. They asked me to present what we are doing, and our program, and at the beginning they planned to work with the Egyptian Museum, but when they saw our vision, and the spread of the culture that we are creating, they changed their mind, and decided to work on the integrity of what the Egyptian culture had to offer. Finally we came to an agreement that we’ll treat all the aspects, that’s why we called this project “Eternal Egypt”. And then we created many other things; first the hosting until now was in the USA, so we are now changing it to Egypt, in two months the full hosting will be here. Number two, we are developing e-modules about certain parts of the Egyptian history. Number three is an e-commerce so that we can sell the Egyptian photographs, and the fourth thing is that we are producing the kiosk for eternal music, of course one here, one in the Alexandria Library and the other one in the Egyptian Museum. So it’s branching now into other activities. And then with UNESCO, actually it is just a continuation of my activities there. I’m still in contact with people there. And there is a program called memory of the world, and they help us for producing CDs about Arab manuscripts. We have organized with UNESCO a regional workshop for the people of Middle East for how to manage archaeological sites. We have four or five different activities and we have made a very important study with UNESCO that is considered one of its co-strategical approaches to Egypt’s cultural heritage. UNESCO considers this as one of its studies for a country to show how it really manages his heritage.

You mentioned museums before; I would like to know if from the government, are there plans to create new museums in Cairo, or in the country, like in Rosetta? And any plans to improve the infrastructure of the existing ones?

In fact, in Cairo in particular, there two big museums under construction, one of them is the new Great Museum on the Alexandria Road and this is about 500 million dollars. And then there is another one, sponsored as well by UNESCO, called Direction Civilization Museum.

Do you know if there are any other similar plans to create something like this center of documentation in other Arabic countries?

This is one of the conclusions and one of the outcomes of this major project, by the way, as we got closer to each other, and we started to see what was happened here, they start building similar centers. So actually in Morocco last year they opened a center almost similar, and in Jordan as well they’ll open one similar. So the idea is spreading and we are cooperating of course.

Tell us more about yourself, you are professor in computer engineering, you have been professor for several ministers of the present cabinet; do you still teach at the university?

No I stopped teaching last year.

So you stopped teaching, you work here, and you have been in charge of this center the last six years; when you look back, what makes you proud?

The comments that we receive from the visitors here, some of the comments are really something shocking to you because you’re doing things without being aware. I like very much when the people come here and say that they feel the work and the passion of the people who work here. And the second comment we commonly have is that people feel that they are proud to be Egyptians and that they are proud of our history and heritage. Often they tell us that it brings hope to them. So looking back, I feel really proud when I hear people say they like this place, and that here they find something they can’t find everywhere else: a unique application of the information, and all the latest technology used in a unique way in this center. And it is a good showcase for the Smart Village and for the government. And most of the visitors are political and technical people like Ahmed Nasif, Kofi Anan.

When you say visitor, it’s always by official invitation?

Yes, only by invitation.

Now if you look at the future, I mean this institution is supported financially by the government and by investment but what would you like to see realized in the coming future?

In the coming future I see it having the ability to sustain, in order to not be fully dependant on the government, because during the last period they supported us, but this won’t be possible forever; in the future other priorities will appear. So we are trying to create this source of income. Then with the success that we have now, we would like to improve it, and to have bigger activities, and to show more heritages, and more aspect of our fantastic culture. This is the main target of the future.