Propaganda

I've been avoiding cabs for my last week in Cairo. Instead I've been walking everywhere I want to go, which turns a 1-hour trip into a 4-hour trip but gets me into areas of Cairo I wouldn't have seen otherwise. The buildings in the older parts of the city are almost universally in some state of collapse, but still impressive.

Anyway, I decided it was time for me to go see the Citadel and the mosques it contains. The Citadel was originally built by Saladin in 1176, but every successive ruling group has added to or modified the fortress and its contents. The Mamluks expanded the walls of the fortress and built a set of mosques inside. Muhammad Ali got rid of most of the Mamluk's mosques and built his own massive mosque, which is still standing, on top of the rubble.



The most recent modifications have been to convert the entire fort into a tourist attraction. The highlight of this, at least for me, was the National Military Museum. Formerly the residence of the royal family until the Abdeen Palace was built, it now houses historic weapons, dioramas depicting Egypt's military since Pharaonic times, and absolutely hilarious propaganda.

Walking through a timeline of modern Egyptian military history, I was surprised to learn that Egypt has actually been at peace with its neighbors for most of the 20th century. Following the glorious revolution in 1952, in fact, there have only been two engagements worth mentioning - Egypt bringing peace and stability to Yemen and Egypt's victory over Israel in 1973. Those of you who thought there was another war with Israel in 1967 were mistaken. Nothing happened in 1967. Don't look at the Sinai behind the curtain.



Part of the massive recounting of the October War. It was interesting that coverage of the war ended with the ceasefire - the Egyptian Third Army that was surrounded by Israeli forces apparently didn't exist.



Easily my favorite sign in the entire museum. "Some of the Egyptian forces ____ as martyrs in defense of their country." What are you talking about? No one died. Seriously. While I'm assuming this was actually some bizarre typo, Egypt does have a history of very blatant censorship.