Popyrus is the name of a magazine set up as a graduation project by a group of six undergraduate students in Cairo University’s Faculty of Mass Communication that reflects their desire to publish a real magazine on Egyptian culture and heritage presented in a way that appeals to young people.
The students write features and news pieces about culture, archaeological and urban heritage, individuals, cinema and art, and sport. The magazine also features videos on its Facebook page and website that highlight cultural events and traditional arts and crafts.
Malak Ahmed, co-founder of Popyrus, said “the magazine is about revitalising the Egyptian heritage and focusing on historical places. The name comes from two words, the first is ‘pop’ meaning the popular readers whose attention we want to attract, and the second is part of the word ‘papyrus’, the type of paper used by the ancient Egyptians.”
In addition to print copies, the magazine also has a website and sites on Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube. The students have been working on the magazine for the past two years, and their professors encouraged them to publish more issues as a graduation project during their last year.
“At first, we used to discuss writing about the ancient Egyptians, but then we included other topics, like the Metaverse. Then we thought about making the main theme of the magazine reviving Egyptian heritage,” Ahmed said.
“Our target audience is mainly young people because some may pass by monuments or sites without knowing their historical importance. We wanted to raise the awareness of youth about places, heritage, and folklore.”
They try to do this through offering a variety of topics to their readers in a diary-like style in order to convey first-hand experiences. It is largely this that makes the magazine different from others.
“The main criteria for Popyrus are that it should be written from reliable sources and have good photographs,” Ahmed said. In fact, “one of our biggest problems is the availability of sources, though we can overcome this by seeking alternative ones.” She cited the examples of the directors of museums in Egypt the magazine had interviewed, for example the Jewellery Museum in Alexandria, as well as professors who are experts in their field and tourist guides who can speak about many of the places the magazine visits.
One story Ahmed worked on had to do with the statue of Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps, often seen as the 19th-century developer of the Suez Canal, that used to stand in Port Said. “It was the strangest story I have ever written,” Ahmed said, “a kind of quest for the de Lesseps statue.”
“I started the story thinking that the statue had been sent to France, but it turned out that it was still in Egypt. Accordingly, the peg I was using for the story changed, and I went to Port Said looking for sources.”
Working in journalism has given Ahmed many practical lessons. “I learnt that I must be patient while I am working on a story, as well as that I should look for credible sources. This effort in terms of travelling and seeking sources was the best thing that happened to us while working on our graduation project,” she said, adding that through group work the team also learnt to work with one another. Ahmed now wishes to “continue working in journalism after this magical experience of Popyrus”.
Abdel-Rahman Wael is a co-founder of Popyrus who writes in the culture section. “We write stories that are short enough to have places for pictures and because the attention span of young people is very short,” he said, adding that for this reason there is a need to grab their attention and ensure that they get the information they want in a nutshell.
“I prefer writing about cultural topics, especially about touristic areas in Egypt. I enjoyed writing about the Grand Egyptian Museum, for example, and learnt that to get a valuable story you must exert some effort. I enjoy video-editing the most,” Wael said.
Although they have been trained effectively by their studies, Wael acknowledged that they need more practical training to gain more experience as writers.
“I still need to work on my writing skills. I also need to learn more journalistic modern skills. After my graduation project, I feel that I am ready to work in the field of journalism. Of course, I may face some difficulties, but I feel that I am ready,” he said.
AIMS: Farah Ahmed, also a co-founder of Popyrus, says that the magazine aims at correcting misconceptions about Egypt.
“Whenever we write about anything, we always focus on the positive side, and we try to link it to history and youth. This is a way of making young people feel proud of their country,” she said. They aim to get more young people to visit the places they talk about in the articles and learn more about them.
“I sometimes get feedback from friends who read my articles who tell me that they went to visit the places I wrote about because our articles encouraged them to go,” she said.
Ahmed explained the idea behind the logo of the magazine, which is composed of an image of an ancient Egyptian scribe sitting next to a papyrus plant. “Our idea was to link the past to the present, which is why we chose to use the famous image of an ancient Egyptian scribe and wrote the name of the magazine in the colours of the Egyptian flag, red, white, and black.”
“We included the image of the papyrus plant to explain the name of the magazine to readers.”
One of the most enjoyable stories Ahmed has written was on the Nefertiti Cultural Salon. “I like chatting with people and getting the information I need from them. The people in charge of the salon were very helpful,” she said.
“Another story I enjoyed writing was about funerary rituals from the times of the ancient Egyptians through the Greek and Roman eras until the present. I learnt a lot of information that I did not know, especially about funerary rituals during the Coptic era,” she added.
Like her colleagues, Ahmed sometimes has difficulty finding appropriate sources for her stories. However, the main problem she faces is the quality of the pictures. “Sometimes the pictures we get are not of good quality, so I take my time to seek good ones. I sometimes even prepare the pictures before writing the story to overcome this problem,” she said.
She also likes reading the stories her colleagues write. “My colleague Samaa Mohamed loves football so much that she writes in the sports section of the magazine,” she said, adding that Mohamed also writes in the food section and writes about food that modern Egyptians eat that was also eaten by their ancestors.
“Fatma Abdel-Aziz writes in many sections. She wrote an interesting article in which she interviewed Amr Selim, an adventurer who travels with a bike and is a tourist guide at the same time,” Ahmed said.
Al-Ahram Weekly Assistant Chief Editor Nader Habib is one of the professors of the students behind the Popyrus magazine.
“This group is one that I was very happy to teach,” he said, adding that they had started the magazine when they were in their third year at university. “I invited them to my office in Al-Ahram so that they see what it is like to be in a real newspaper building. We then started brainstorming together, and I asked them to focus on sections they prefer to read about and start writing possible stories for them.”
“We came up with the idea of writing about Egyptian culture and linking it to young people, since many other people write about fashion or football. I myself was inspired by a book by Milad Hanna, The Seven Pillars of Egypt, that argues that Egypt was founded on seven civilisations starting from the ancient Egyptian civilisation and passing through the Greek, Roman, and Arab civilisations until the present,” he said.
“Egyptian civilisation is full of treasures that everyone should know about, especially Egyptian young people. For this reason, we thought about publishing a magazine that talks about this civilisation that is composed of seven civilisations. I encouraged them to work on more issues of the magazine as a graduation project because their work was so good. I also convinced professor Nermeen Alazrak, vice dean of the Mass Communication Department of the Canadian International College and former head of the Faculty of Mass Communication, English Department, at Cairo University, to let them work on it as well,” Habib said.
“I asked them to prepare ideas in the summer for the next year, and we prepared four issues. We also designed a website since most students prefer to read via their mobile phones,” Habib elaborated.
SUCCESS: For her part, Alazrak says that “a successful magazine should address an audience from different backgrounds. It should not just discuss one issue. It should not be a copy of what has been done before by colleagues in previous years.”
Students should also respect the ethics of journalism. “The sources students choose should be credible, and the information they provide should be accurate. A journalist should respect his or her audience. They should never publish rumours. They should not violate anyone’s right to privacy. Of course, the more the content is unique, the more attention it grabs.”
“I always ask the students whether they have enough stories to make a magazine or not. In the case of Popyrus, the students were enthusiastic and knew what they were going to work on. I was happy to approve the work for their fourth year as well,” Alazrak said.
Teaching Assistant in the Journalism Department of the Faculty of Mass Communication Marlyn Ayman, who also supervised the Popyrus project, added that the group started it in year three when it was a type of training for them, as students are required to train by designing a website for a digital magazine and a blog.
“They came up with a magazine that discusses cultural heritage and ties it to the present, hence the name Popyrus,” she said.
“In year four, the group started working on the second issue of Popyrus. They are a very talented group and had very good ideas. The theme they started with was of ideas linked to ancient Egyptian civilisation. By the second term, it was Ramadan, so they started writing about Egyptian cultural heritage during the holy month. They wrote about the mesaharaty [the person who wakes people up before the beginning of a day of fasting] and the people who make konafa [a type of oriental sweet].”
The articles attempted to tell young people more about the traditions they still practise that were practised by their forefathers.
Ayman listed some of the drawbacks the students faced and how she and others helped them overcome them. “Finding contacts was a difficult task, and we tried to help them reach the contacts they needed. Habib was one of the people who supported them in this,” she said.
“I hope that the group will continue issuing Popyrus even after they graduate. Maybe they can find a source of income for the magazine and turn it into a real magazine in the near future,” Ayman concluded.
A game out of the box
“Mysteries of Egypt” is a game that was released as a gift with the last issue of the magazine Popyrus. It is similar to the game of Snakes and Ladders, but each square tells a part of Egypt’s history, and the square with the flame represents a blocked square because a problem occurred in Egypt there, resulting in a full turn delay if landed on. The winner of the game is the one who reaches the tower of the Administrative Capital. As for the game tokens, they represent historical figures, with each player using one of them, such as King Mina, Queen Cleopatra, Amr ibn Al-Aas, Sultan Salaheddin, Sultan Al-Zaher Baybars, Mohamed Ali Pasha, president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, and the Egyptian woman who has endured much in her life to make Egypt free and strong.
The goal of the game summarises that of the magazine and the website, which is to educate the youth about Egypt’s grand history and the life and culture of the authentic Egyptian people that have shaped its identity throughout the ages.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 29 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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