Egypt’s government wants to erase a historic cemetery
Ancient beauty may give way to ugly modernisation
In the City of the Dead the living dwell beside the departed. Cairo’s vast necropolis, which dates back to the seventh century, sprawls over a thousand hectares, its narrow, winding streets lined with the ornate mausoleums of Mamluk sultans and 20th-century revolutionaries. But it houses a breathing community, too: it is home to perhaps as many as half a million Egyptians.
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This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Bulldoze the buried”
Middle East & Africa September 9th 2023
From the September 9th 2023 edition
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