Definitely read the previous post first to get a sense of tourism in Egypt before reading this.
Egypt has a long history, so they make do with what they got; they export it. Tourism makes up 6-7% of Egyptian GDP (according to a World Bank report and an Egyptian government website). A high percent of tourism is totally understandable when the place is a luxurious, beautiful island like Hawaii or a romantic city like Paris, but when all you got to offer is something that has nothing to do with your culture, then something, somewhere went wrong.
Egyptian towns are even sacrificed for this economic focus on ancient Egypt. Here's a story from the Egyptologist tour guide in Luxor (this guy was actually very intelligent, spoke english perfectly, but I could never tell if he was genuinely in love with Egyptology or his exuberance was more a product of his paycheck). He told us that there was another town very close to Luxor that was filled with ruins and likely had monuments underneath the town. And with the biggest smile on his face, he told us that the government is paying for the cost of relocating every citizen of that town to make it available for tourists to see the ancient stuff. Even if the government successfully "relocated" these people (which I doubt would happen), the idea that they are kicking people out of the land that most likely their great great grandfathers lived in is slightly repulsive in exchange for a little bit for tourism cash.
Here's one opinion from Slackman's article that I hyperlinked, "We feel the might of this history when we get paid ... but if we don't get paid, we feel nothing."
So, a question that arises seems to be: Do the Egyptians derive identity from ancient times or is just for the money?
The answer: From what I've seen, the answer, for the most part, is it's about the money. Ancient Egypt is used as a tool to develop modern Egypt. And, truthfully it works. The most western places are the hotels situated in Luxor and Aswan or right across from the Egyptian National Museum in Cairo.
And clearly, there are no more animal sacrifices or polytheistic practices or women walking around topless (let alone showing their elbows or knees). So, of course, it's not like any hieroglyphic from the ancient Egyptian culture.
But from what I have seen, there's still ancient Egyptian culture floating around. Something like the Library of Alexandria might've only been built for money (a topic that I will revisit in a future post), but there is a sense of pride that the Egyptians have in ancient Egypt. They were one of the first great civilizations. Egypt is something to be proud of. The pyramids and all the ancient things are truly amazing (just check out the picture of Abu Simbel below).
When Egypt is compared to countries I have heard the long history of Egyptian culture invoked more than once to argue for Egypt's superiority. For example, in a conversation about Saudi Arabia and Egypt, a point was made that Saudi Arabia is simply a product of oil because it was just a big place with a lot of tribes in earlier history; on the other hand, Egypt is a product of history and culture and it produces something more than just raw materials.
Just some thoughts on a country trying to stay balanced on top of a pyramid.
