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Changing Gods in Egypt

[Los Angeles Times] Timothy Garton Ash - They're changing gods again at the pharaoh's palace, 26 years into the reign of President Hosni Mubarak, age 78. Politics, seen from the perspective of 5,000 years of Egyptian history, is something very different from what you find in American civics textbooks. It's about rulers borrowing, bending and merging gods, ideologies and legal systems, adapting to internal and external forces, mixing coercion and patronage, sharing some of the spoils where necessary, but always with the goal of maximizing your own power and wealth and hanging on to it for as long as possible - for yourself, and your children, and your children's children. The gods come and go; what endures over the millenniums is men's lust for power and wealth and their vain quest for immortality. The writer is professor of European studies at Oxford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
2007-03-09 01:00:00
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