It seems to me that there are two distinctly different and bitterly antagonistic cultures on the earth. Both have existed since time immemorial, the … - Taha Hussein

Egypt has a culture which is international but which, at the same time, reflects the calm, eternal personality of ancient Egypt. It can nourish and enlighten other peoples and afford them a kind of pleasure which they may or may not be able to derive from their own cultures.

Egyptian culture may be clearly analyzed into the ancient Egyptian artistic component, the Arab-Islamic legacy, and the borrowings from the best of modern European life.

The future of this cultural work—its continuity or its decline—hinges on the existence of a (political and cultural) national agreement between state and society on the fact that culture is a strategic necessity that cannot be delayed, partitioned or rely on individual or private initiative. It is, in short, institutional work, a state project worthy of a country with an ancient civilization established on a mindset shaped by the arts. This project represents a building operation for a people’s spirit, a nation’s conscience, an identity’s anchoring, and a revolution’s triumph over the advocates of obscurity and backwardness.