Political Sports: Egytptian Pharaohs, Persian Magis, Idol-worshipping Pagans, (What About Hezbullah)
Watched the US-Egypt soccer game (Confederations Cup). I also followed on Arab web sites. al-Arabiya site had the following headlines at different times throughout the game:
“Pharaohs on verge of victory….”,
“Pharoahs behind one goal, still optimistic…”,
“Pharaohs behind two goals…”
“Pharaohs behind three goals…..”
“American team kills the dream of the Pharaohs…..”
Finally, today’s headlines: “Team may have lost because the players had women in their rooms the night before…”.
We are good at finding excuses, and the guilt lies with some professional ladies of some other country, rather than with the players and their managers. So far the Egyptian government has not blamed Hezbullah, not yet, but anything is possible on De Nile. At least the Egyptian team managers can be fired: they are not all princes like most Gulf sports teams.
They refer to the Egyptian team as the “Pharaohs” favorably, I would not say affectionately. It is calling them a good name- which it is. When relatins with Egypt are bad, they use the term as derogatory.
Yet some of the same Arab media political columnists, almost exclusively in the Persian Gulf region, also like to call Iranians “Magis”, which they use in a derogatory way, referring to the priests of their ancient Zaroastrian religion (they mix the name of the priests for the name of religion itself, our petro-intellectuals). This was started by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and has continued by his old friends during periods of tension with the rulers of Iran.
The ancient Egyptians worshiped their Pharaoh, their God-Kings (God-kings: maybe this last one appeals to some of us in the Gulf. A God-king can be an absolute unelected tribal monarch, perhaps even more so than an unelected absolute supreme ayatollah), sometimes they worshiped beetles, cats and eventually Caesar Augustus and Nero- just as the people in Hijaz worshiped their clay idols, their tribes or…..who knows what else. As for the peoples of ancient Najd…..let’s not even go there!
But, then again all our ancestors were either Pharoah-worshipers, Zaroastrian Magis, idol-worshiping Pagan lovers of al-Lat and al-Uzza, Christians, Jews, or other (whether all this was better or worse depends on one’s taste). But Pharaoh’s spirit lives, with none of his glory.
Cheers
mhg
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