Reflections among antiquity

IT is, I suppose, a sign of diverse friends at different stages of life when one receives a mix of end of year greetings.

On one extreme are the boundlessly positive lists of all the good things that happened in the year, and the confidence of more next year. On the other are those who declare that the last 12 months were horrible and may the ensuing 12 be at least less painful.

In between are those that celebrated the good and lamented the bad, but the most reflective are those that asked questions – not because they are looking for sympathy or comfort, but to invite in self-improvement: what did I achieve this year? Whose lives did I impact for the better? How could I be more efficient, more empathetic, more assured?

Egypt provided a wonderful setting to do this. I do not mean Cairo, about which I wrote 13 years ago during my only trip prior – “from my window seat the traffic looked dreadful, like millions of luminescent red ants choking chaotic, labyrinthine passageways” – an observation I would repeat today.

Rather, I mean the stunning landscapes of Aswan and Luxor, and the even more gorgeous riverscapes of the Nile between those two ancient sites. Something about a sublime sunset shimmering against life-giving water puts the mind simultaneously at ease and in a position to think about those weighty questions and come up with partial answers.

Still, one has to be disciplined about brainpower when visiting the site of an ancient civilisation. Normally when visiting a country, there is of course a certain amount of learning required to understand the people, institutions and mood, and can consist of a few centuries of history.

There is usually some origin myth, a period of strife and renewal, the formation of institutions, the emergence of patriotic art and culture, progress in science and innovation, maybe a civil war and the emergence of a national hero.

In the case of Egypt, there are millennia of history, and matching triangular structures with different periods of the Pharaonic era does rack the brain. Navigating the period after that is also rather dizzying, from the Greco-Roman period, the arrival of Islam (itself divided into the various caliphates beginning with the Rashidun and ending with the Ottoman), the periods of French and British influence including the Kingdom of Egypt, and then the creation of the Republic of Egypt to more recent events like the deposition Hosni Mubarak in 2011 during the Arab Spring (which was of much interest to many Malaysians) to the administration of the present day.

The recent death of former US president Jimmy Carter elicited this response from President El-Sisi, whose face adorned billboards across all the urban areas I visited: “President Carter was a symbol of humanitarian efforts and diplomacy, as his profound faith in peace and justice has inspired many individuals and institutions around the world to follow in his footsteps. His significant role in achieving the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel will remain etched in the annals of history, and his humanitarian work exemplifies a lofty standard of love, peace and brotherhood.”

It is a statement that invites much pondering about the state of leadership then and now, with President Joe Biden about to be replaced by Donald Trump, and the state of geopolitics, with Israeli aggression on Palestinians continuing to occur, with impacts on economics and domestic politics all over the world.

As Malaysia steps up to the responsibility of chairing Asean in 2025, the demands and expectations to lead on issues as diverse as climate change and sustainability, economic integration and trade policy, and human rights – specifically the displacement of people arising from conflict and discrimination – will all be heightened and demand more coordinated thinking within our government.

The Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) is certainly hoping for greater impact from Malaysia’s contributions, and as a member of the Malaysian Advisory Group of Myanmar, I hope that real progress can be made towards a lasting peace, secured by a real commitment to human rights, that benefits not only Myanmar but the entire region.

In the Valley of the Kings, I was unprepared to see the mummy of King Tutankhamun so well-preserved. He died about 3,300 years ago, making him by far the oldest human I have ever seen.

Also in Luxor was a mosque built atop an ancient Egyptian temple, Quranic inscriptions alongside hieroglyphic homages to the pharaohs – a dichotomy more profound than that of the Ayasofya (where I prayed after its reversion to a mosque in 2020) – and bound to enrage many Malaysian Muslims.

Between 2025 BC in ancient Egypt to 2025 in Malaysia today, I wondered how much the human condition has really changed. Happy New Year!

Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin is founding president of Ideas.

The views expressed here are the writer’s own.