The Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in presence of several world leaders, opened a museum in Egypt on 1st Nov, 2025. It is named “Grand Egyptian Museum” and it is the world's largest museum dedicated to one single culture, a long extinct culture.
While, it is commendable to preserve for posterity, the remains of the civilization of the ancestors, my mind struggles with a disturbing thought: While on one hand we enthusiastically try to immortalize remains of the long dead civilizations in books, movies and museums, on the other hand are working relentlessly towards pushing to extinction and death some still living or barely surviving civilizations that have so far resisted their destruction by the ‘civilized’ us!
The history bears the fact that despite their military debacles and waning material and political power at the hands of foreign invaders and occupations, the way Egyptians lived, their civilization, their gods and culture remained almost intact. Certain periodic political instabilities owing to their weakened leaderships, economic struggles, famines, invasions and occupation by the Greeks, Assyrians, Persians, Romans annexation after Cleopatra VII’s defeat etc factors did result in Egypt’s overall decline. However, despite its decline, Egypt's cultural legacy was still intact. That is, till the establishment of the Church of Alexandria in the first century CE when things began to rapidly change.
Under Romans, with the edict of Milan, the Christianity was legalized in 313CE, culminating in Christianity becoming a ‘State Religion’ in 380CE. A large population was converted to Christianity, eventually making the legacy of the great Egyptian culture extinct. In the course of competitive religious supremacy, when Islam came into existence, Egypt's religious landscape changed again, sealing for ever any possibility of revival of ancient Egyptian culture.
As a result, today, there is no one in Egypt for whom Pharaoh Ramesses II is any inspiration. Nor is there anyone in Egypt who worships Ra (the sun god), Osiris (the god of the underworld), Isis (the mother goddess), Horus (the sky god), and Amun (the king of the gods). There is no one who can give conclusive and definitive information on construction methods of awe inspiring mighty pyramids nor is anyone available to tell us real stories behind the Sphinx. All that is left is ruins of pyramids in the desert and the rest of the things that can be carried away as exhibits in the museums.
The successors of worshippers of Egyptian gods are now curious onlookers, paying for watching the remains of their ancestors. Like rest of us, I too paid to watch what mummies looked like, the bare walls of interior of great pyramid of Giza, the sarcophaguses, bought a clay bust of Tutankhamen as souvenir, ate traditional Egyptian breakfast dish, ful medames, commonly known as just ‘ful’(made from fava beans) with ‘khubz’ (flat bread made from wheat), left for home with troubling questions of dying ancient civilizations.
It is a pattern. The path from living culture to dead culture and then relegation to museums, is repeated all along. Be it Greeks, Romans, Norse, Celts, Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, and numerous others, heathens or pagans cultures, their remains are only to be found in museums. Other still surviving ancient cultures, who have resisted total destruction, such as Hinduism, Judaism, Canada’s First Nations faiths, Australian Aborigines’s faith, Faiths of Pagans of various shades, Zorastrianism, Faiths of Bahais, Kurds, Druze etc are under mortal threat of extinction, sooner than later, under the boots of Christianity and Islam driven by scripture supported competitive religious supremacism.
None of us should feel threatened irrespective of the faith we subscribe to. However the onus lies with leaders of predatory religions. The leaders of evangelical faiths could inculcate the idea of respect for others, not as an abstract notion but as an intellectually and spiritually deducible idea that every human is created by God, making every individual divine and therefore unworthy of contempt, hatred or violence but worthy of unconditional respect.
The Hindus, Jews, Canada’s First Nations, Australian Aborigines, Pagans of various shades, Zorastrians, Bahais, Kurds, Druze etc. are suffering from constant onslaught from the predatory and dogmatic religions like Christianity and Islam. They are subjected to overt or covert contempt, hatred and ruthlessness. Evangelists clergy of the church spreading ‘good news’ and Mosque imams and maulans extending dawas (invite to join Islam) run charities with the ultimate motive of relegating these cultures to Museums and imposing sharia laws. It is perhaps unfair to fully blame adherents of Christianity or Islam because the very scriptures of these two religions give sanction to the supremacist mindset to their followers. Holy books implore them to ‘save’ souls of unfortunate pagans or heathens. They are called names and branded “devil worshippers” and their deities are damned as ‘demonic’. For them even Gandhi is a devil worshipper and his soul should have been saved.
While the Zoroastrians and Bahais have lost all their territories in the places of their origins, the territories of Hindus around the place of their origin has significantly shrunk (shown in the map) since the advent of Christianity and Islam. The surviving faiths need protection the way we protect endangered birds, animals and fish because their numbers and scriptural openness leave them vulnerable. They do not mean harm to anyone nor their scripture support harming anyone and therefore expect courtesy of no harm from others.
It is arrogant to think that others are somewhat less and are deficient in some ways and unless they submit to my god and my religion they are condemned forever. And it is vicious vilification of others to brand them as devil worshippers and brand their deities as demonic. These two makes for a lethal cocktail, dehumanising other and making them a fit target for religious conversions, harassments, threats, deprivations and in worst case even genocide. In 1990, a call was given by way of slogans like "Raliv, Chaliv ya Galiv" (in local Kashmiri language-"convert, leave, or die") that led to genocide and exodus of Hindus from Kashmir. It is estimated that between January and March, 1990, about 110,000 Hindus left Kashmir, never to return. further shrinking Hindu territory even in this time and age.
Religious supremacy has a tendency of manifesting as a political weapon and power. Neutering evangelism can depoliticise the general population and can serve world peace. Deemphasing evangelical streak in the religions can help vulnerable surviving cultures of the world to feel less threatened.
Religious competitiveness is not helpful to the world. Mutual respect is. Lets sensitize us, let the Grand Egyptian Museum inspire us how not to destroy cultures.
Original Map Source Ishvara7 at English Wikipedia. — Samuel P. Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations”, CC BY-SA 3.0, at https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3259955 (And modified by the author to reflect 300BC Hindu Influence Sphere)
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