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Magdy Mustafa 

The wave of protests that swept the United States after the death of the American citizen George Floyd, who breathed his last breath under the knee of an American policeman with it on his neck, did not fade away, until American museums rushed to collect the graffiti, pictures and slogans that were raised in those protests to include them as part of the American memory It should not be forsaken.

As much as those concerned with the American memory are keen to acquire what resulted from these protests and preserve them for future generations, as much as the Egyptian authorities in the summer of 2013 were keen to erase the January 25 2011 revolution from the memory of Egyptians, especially in Tahrir Square in the heart of Cairo, where millions of Egyptians gathered before 10 Years and brought down the system.

Tahrir Square is a symbol charged with political connotations whose name crossed borders, being the cradle of the January 25 revolution (European - Archive)

Summon rams of the pharaoh

Nearly a decade after the January 25 revolution, the Egyptian government changed the shape of Tahrir Square - which was a witness to the events and was occupied by anti-regime protesters at the time to tighten control over the square, which had acquired great symbolic connotations - in an effort to prevent future protests.

The change went beyond a process of systematic blurring and sweeping of the memory of the place. Officials called it "beautification" to become the square of Tahrir Square "developed along the lines of famous squares in Europe" in the words of the officials in charge of the "sovereign obliteration" operations, and they put new lighting for the surrounding buildings that were repainted Private security guards were deployed in the square.

In this context, 4 pharaonic statues were transferred from their place in the Luxor Temple in southern Egypt to Tahrir Square in a controversial process that was opposed by many archaeologists and Egyptologists, and Egyptologist Monica Hanna signed with a group of those interested in Egyptian antiquities a petition calling on the Egyptian authorities not to move the statues from their place the original.

Antiquities experts warned that moving these pharaonic antiquities to the crowded square in the heart of Cairo would expose them to intense heat and air pollution, which would make them vulnerable to damage, but those in charge of the "memory erasure" process in the name of cosmetology ignored these warnings and the four statues were moved by the rams that connect the Luxor Temple At Karnak temple, southern Egypt, they are statues in the form of a sphinx with a ram's head.

In addition to those rams, a Pharaonic obelisk of pink granite belonging to King Ramses II was moved - on several parts - from the ancient San Hajar area in the Sharkia Governorate, and it was restored and installed in the middle of the square on a high base.

Describing that process, Khaled Fahmy - a professor of history at Cambridge University - who participated in the January 25 revolution and ran a short-lived committee to document it, said, “I think the main message is that people have no connection to the square, and that the square is not theirs. This square belongs to the state.”

4 An ancient pharaonic symmetry that was transferred from southern Egypt to Tahrir Square to surround a Pharaonic obelisk that was brought from the Eastern (European) Governorate

Floyd and Editing

Tahrir Square is a symbol fraught with political connotations, as its fame reached horizons and its name crossed borders around the world, as it was the cradle of the Egyptian revolution that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak and was a tourist destination for Egyptians and foreigners coming to Cairo.

Those who visited the square during the January 25 revolution will realize how graffiti artists have inflamed the revolutionaries' enthusiasm, as their drawings accompanied all the events, and documented the manifestations of corruption and crimes that the revolutionaries had gone out to topple the regime that blessed them.

The adjacent paintings in all Egyptian squares and streets, especially in and around Tahrir Square, became the largest open art museum in history.

But the niqab mentality wanted to erase it and uproot it from its roots, pledging and warning that what had happened in the January 25 revolution "will never happen again."

The obliteration of Egypt's modern history calls for a return to the incident of the killing of the American citizen George Floyd and the protests that followed, although it concerned one individual, while what happened in Egypt related to a country with a population of close to 100 million people.

When the popular protests reached their peak in the United States, the trustees of the Smithsonian Institution, which includes a group of American museums, went to the protesters' areas to collect signs, signs, pictures, and other things that doubled there during the protests as "worthy of documentation of a historical moment worthy of preservation in museums."

"We acknowledge that we are in a period of transformation in the United States. We are listening to communities. We will document this important moment with responsibility and respect through a variety of objects and stories from Washington DC and across the nation," the National Museum of American History said in a statement.

Nine curators of the Smithsonian Museums, funded and run by the US government, also spoke with protesters and later took some of the banners that are displayed.

"The artwork that was on the panels captivated me. The curators documented the names of the artists and photographers, and identified things that might be important to preserve them. If we don't collect these things, who knows what happens to them," said one of the curators.

The repeated argument of the Egyptian authorities, which has always been used to obscure the graffiti of the January 25 revolution in Egypt, is that these actions are often from unknown persons, and that goes beyond that argument to criminalize this inheritance and considers it acts in violation of the laws and an assault on the property of others, but the situation in reality is pressure with heavy shoes On the legacy of the revolution that preceded his cry of George Floyd .. I cannot breathe!