• Heritage, Preservation, and Decolonization: Entanglements, Consequences, Action?
• William Carruthers (bio)

The Ramses II statue from Mit Rahina, Egypt, just after its installation outside Cairo’s Ramses Station in the 1950s. Photograph by Van-Leo, courtesy of the American University in Cairo Rare Books and Special Collections Library (Van-Leo Collection).

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Until the 1950s, a colossal statue of the pharaoh Ramses II lay on the ground at the archaeological site of Mit Rahina (ancient Memphis), just south of Cairo in Egypt. In January 1955, however, Wing Commander ʿAbdal-Latif al-Baghdadi, Egypt’s Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs, visited the site as part of the process of preparing for the statue’s removal to central Cairo.¹ The Wing Commander had been busy overseeing modernization work in the city in the years after Egypt’s 1952 Free Officers’ coup, an insurrection directed against continued British influence in the country and its unpopular monarch, King Faruq. Gradually, the coup had turned into a revolution whose figurehead was Gamal Abdel Nasser. And in a plan repurposed from Egypt’s colonial era, Ramses was to be a centerpiece of this national recalibration: moved, preserved, and re-erected with great fanfare, his statue would stand in the square by Cairo’s main railway terminus.² A permanent fixture outside the bustle of what now became known as Mahattat Ramses (Ramses Station), press stories made certain that the statue became a symbol of Egypt’s pharaonic glories remade through the labor of its population. One article even stated that “it should be recalled that the majority of the workmen [restoring the statue] are from the Saʿid [Upper Egypt]. They take pride in the work . . . because they consider themselves the grandchildren of Ramses II.”³ As Nasser became a major figure and Egypt became a major player in the era of global decolonization, the Cold War, and nonalignment (not to mention pan-Arabism), Ramses became material—and carefully managed—proof of the florescence of the country’s move to independence and its link to the Egyptian masses. Almost overnight, the pharaoh’s statue moved from fallen icon to object of revolutionary heritage. Enmeshed within the institutions and networks of post–1952 Egypt, Ramses as preserved artifact made revolutionary spectacle material.

Yet fifty-one years later, in 2006, the Egyptian government under the presidency of Husni Mubarak moved Ramses’ statue back through Cairo to a location adjacent to the Great Pyramid, just under twenty miles to the north of Mit Rahina on the Giza plateau. Again with great fanfare, anticolonial revolution begat neoliberal—and neocolonial—heritage preservation, an ironic rejoinder to the Nasser era’s subversion of a colonial-era project that had aimed to curate the symbolism of the past. Retracing [End Page iii]

Ramses II being moved through Downtown Cairo to Giza, August 26, 2006. Photograph by, and courtesy of, Barry Iverson.

most of his earlier route in reverse, Ramses now became a symbol of another Egyptian regime’s ambitions. The statue’s new location was the site of the still-to-be-completed Grand Egyptian Museum, whose construction has been funded since 2008 by soft loans funneled through JICA, the Japan International Cooperation Agency.⁴ Moving Ramses to Giza constituted not only a symbol of the Mubarak regime’s intentions but also a signal to donors and debtors that Egypt was a state that would, now and in the future, repay investment. At the time of writing, the regime of the current Egyptian president, ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, desperate to promote economic growth in the country, is pushing hard for the Grand Egyptian Museum’s completion. Pictures of the Ramses statue often sit at the center of this work, alongside images of the conservation labs and Egyptian specialists charged with caring for the thousands of objects that form the institution’s collection. These days, national spectacle in formerly colonized countries comes preloaded with (inter-) national debt. And ironically, that same spectacle allows international donors and experts to claim the ethical upper hand as calls to decolonize heritage and preservation gain in...

• 遗产，保护和非殖民化：纠缠，后果，行动？
• 威廉·卡鲁瑟斯（生物）

1950年代在埃及开罗的拉美西斯站外安装的拉美西斯二世雕像，来自埃及米特·拉希纳（Mit Rahina）。Van-Leo的照片，由美国大学在开罗的稀有书籍和特殊收藏图书馆（Van-Leo收藏）提供。

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直到1950年代，埃及开罗以南的Mit Rahina（古代孟菲斯）考古遗址在地上躺着一张庞然大物的法老王拉美西斯二世雕像。然而，1955年1月，埃及市政和农村事务大臣翼司令员阿卜杜勒·拉迪夫·巴格达迪（Abdal-Latif al-Baghdadi）参观了该遗址，这是准备将雕像移交给开罗市中心的一部分。^1个在1952年埃及自由军发动政变后的几年里，联队司令部一直忙于监督这座城市的现代化工作，这场暴动是针对英国继续对该国及其不受欢​​迎的君主法鲁克国王的影响而发动的。政变逐渐演变成一场革命，其革命人物是贾马尔·阿卜杜勒·纳赛尔（Gamal Abdel Nasser）。在从埃及殖民时代重新规划的计划中，拉美西斯将成为这次全国性调整的核心内容：搬迁，保存并以大张旗鼓重新竖起，他的雕像将站在开罗主要铁路终点站的广场上。^2个在如今被称为马哈塔特·拉美西斯（Ramses Station）熙熙outside的环境之外的永久性固定物，新闻报道确定该雕像成为埃及人民通过其劳动重建的法老荣耀的象征。甚至有一篇文章说：“应该记得，大多数[恢复雕像]的工人来自萨伊德[上埃及]。他们为这项工作感到自豪。。。因为他们认为自己是拉美西斯二世的孙子。” ³在全球非殖民化，冷战和不结盟（更不用说泛阿拉伯主义）时代，纳赛尔（Nasser）成为主要人物，埃及成为主要参与者之后，拉美西斯（Ramses）成为了重要资料，并且经过精心管理，证明了该国行动的光辉历程。独立及其与埃及人民的联系。几乎一夜之间，法老的雕像从堕落的圣像变成了革命遗产。拉美西斯（Ramses）被保存在1952年后埃及的机构和网络中，作为保存下来的人工制品制成了革命性的眼镜材料。

然而五十一年后，即2006年，在侯斯尼·穆巴拉克（Husni Mubarak）总统领导下的埃及政府将拉美西斯的雕像通过开罗搬回了开罗，靠近吉萨高原米特·拉希纳（Mit Rahina）以北二十英里处的大金字塔附近。再次大张旗鼓地进行的反殖民革命催生了新自由主义和新殖民主义遗产保护，这与纳赛尔时代颠覆了殖民时代计划的讽刺性重新结合，该计划旨在策展过去的象征意义。追溯[第iii页结束]

拉美西斯二世于2006年8月26日从开罗市中心搬到吉萨。照片由Barry Iverson友情提供。

拉美西斯在他先前的绝大部分路线上都背道而驰，如今已成为另一个埃及政权野心的象征。这座雕像的新位置是尚待完工的大埃及博物馆的所在地，该博物馆的建设自2008年以来由日本国际协力机构JICA提供的软贷款资助。⁴将拉美西斯迁往吉萨不仅是穆巴拉克政权意图的象征，而且还向捐助者和债务人发出信号，表明埃及是一个现在和将来都将偿还投资的国家。在撰写本文时，现任埃及总统阿卜杜勒·法塔赫·西西（Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi）迫切希望促进该国的经济增长，正在为埃及大博物馆的竣工而努力。拉美西斯雕像的照片经常摆在这项工作的中心，还有保护实验室和埃及专家负责照料构成该机构收藏品的数千种物品的图像。如今，以前殖民国家的国家景象预载着（国家间）国债。具有讽刺意味的是