Water in Egypt
Water in Egypt is an interactive Media Mapper developed by Meklit Abebe. The mapper geospatially ties connections between Al-Kawākib (illustrated magazine) archives and Egypt's central waterbodies: the Aswan Dam and the Suez Canal. The goal of the mapper is to examine the interactions between media and Nasser’s nationalism-stirring projects that unified citizenry, in part, by pinning 2D archives to a multi-dimensional geographical model.
As a case study for the Aqueous Earth Catalog, these 7 points highlight the Nile and surrounding waterbodies as an active agent in the political landscape of mid-50s (and 60s) Egypt. By mapping archival print media rather than film, this project expands the Catalog’s focus on material embeddedness and the Global South, illustrating how water functions as a conduit for land sovereignty.
Why Egypt?
This project is based on qualitative research conducted at the Library of Congress, with additional artifacts sourced from the American University of Cairo. The archival artifacts are primarily sourced from the African and Middle Eastern Division’s collection of Al-Kawākib. Arabic text from these images may not be fully visible, but are translated into English. Aimed at expanding the field of "Blue Humanities," this map visually presents the interactions between state-controlled waterbodies, public perception, and media to show that water is a generative force of political and cultural imagination.
learn more about the researcher: https://meklitabebe.org
About the Media Mapper
What is it?
The Media Mapper is an open source framework intended to be used as a starting point for building a web application geared towards exploring Media throughout time and space.
The project was dreamt up by Ennuri Jo as a way to explore the relationship between media and water. Funding for this project was provided by the University of Pennsylvania, Penn. The framework was developed by Ben Tyler and Lost Creek Designs.
Please see the GitHub repository for more information about how you can get started with the project!