Over the past few years, there has been more and more interest among many young people in Egypt about ancient Egyptian civilisation and specifically about the ancient Egyptian language.
This growing interest might be linked to soprano Amira Selim’s captivating performance of a song in ancient Egyptian at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (NMEC) in Cairo following the Pharaohs Golden Parade when 22 royal mummies were transferred from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the NMEC in April 2021.
The Yaro Foundation, meaning “heaven” in ancient Egyptian, is an NGO founded in 2016 that aims to meet this interest and teach young Egyptians about many aspects of Ancient Egyptian civilisation.
Medical doctor, Egyptologist, and co-founder of the Yaro Foundation for Egyptian Civilisation Wassim Al-Sisi told Al-Ahram Weekly that “the aim of the Yaro Foundation is to spread ancient Egyptian civilisation and to bolster the identity of modern Egyptians, since the history of ancient Egypt shows that Egypt was a pioneer in everything.”
“Moreover, the word civilisation is related to the word civility, meaning politeness, good manners, and the respectful treatment of others.”
“I remember being in New York a few years when a specialist in ancient civilisations told me that despite present hardships civilisation is still under the Egyptian skin. The ancient Egyptians were highly civilised and respectful to other men and to animals and even to plants. They believed that after death when the soul came to be judged the judges would ask whether that person had ever caused tears for anyone,” showing the care shown towards other people, Al-Sisi said.
“When they asked whether the deceased had been cruel to animals, the answer would also have to be no if the judges were to judge favourably. This shows the care the ancient Egyptians exercised towards animals.”
Overall, Al-Sisi said, the aim of the Yaro Foundation is to remind today’s generations of the virtues of their ancestors. “The message is to show people how remarkable their ancestors were,” he said, adding that the ancient Egyptian civilisation was also the foundation for others, including the Greek and Roman.
“Yaro aims to strengthen the connection between modern Egyptians and their ancestors as well as their country today, teaching them about identity and loyalty. Loyalty stems from love, love from admiration, and admiration from knowledge, which we foster through our activities,” Al-Sisi said.
An important aim of the foundation is to illuminate what may be dark areas of history. “Some Egyptians today may not know about the greatness of ancient Egypt, for example. They may not know that ancient Egyptian doctors were the first to perform a cataract operation, the first to implant teeth, and the first to fix fractured bones. Ancient Egyptian doctors discovered Bilharzia and treated it with suppositories,” he said.
Most of the foundation’s activities take the form of lectures for young people about their history. It works in 21 governorates and has organised a total of 11,000 activities, including a mobile museum with models of original artefacts made by young people, workshops in Egyptology, field trips to museums, hieroglyphic writing lessons, cinema evenings, sculpture workshops, restoration workshops, and educational games.
The foundation has published five books on Egyptology and 36 booklets for children about the most famous kings of ancient Egypt and their accomplishments, main archaeological sites, and the values of their ancestors. Some 27,000 people have attended the foundation’s activities, 75 per cent of them young people and children.
The 463 seminars and 26 workshops organised by the foundation were supervised by 58 university professors specialising in Egyptology and 130 volunteers, according to an information booklet.
INITIATIVES: Executive Director of the Yaro Foundation Hala Al-Talhati gave more details about the initiatives.
“Yaro signifies that Egypt is God’s heaven on Earth. It underlines the fact that its people, the ancient Egyptians, established this great civilisation. This is why we are offering our activities to enable Egyptian young people today to repeat the glories of their ancestors,” Al-Talhati said.
“Our Together initiative bridges the gap between young people living abroad and their country, for example, so that there is a tie between them and their homeland and helping to raise awareness about culture and history. We are trying to create bridges between the current generations and their ancestors the ancient Egyptians.”
Coordinator of the Together initiative Rosemary Manqarious explained that it “is for all Egyptian young people around the world, so that they are more aware and can learn more about their country and its great civilisation.”
“It started with a simple idea. We wanted to reach out to every young man and woman in Egypt in all the different governorates and those living abroad and understand more about their ideas, dreams, and aspirations. We wanted to tell each young Egyptian that Egypt is always with you. Young people then started to come up with methods of communicating with Egyptian young people living abroad, and we successfully started with the Egyptian community in Canada, building connections with NGOs there,” Manqarious said.
CEO of a well-known electronic car parts exporting company Ahmed Magdi is a participant in the Together initiative. “I am the owner of one of the biggest companies exporting electronic car parts to suppliers in countries worldwide. I am offering job opportunities to Egyptian young people as a way of standing by and encouraging them,” he said.
Heidi Al-Guindi, also involved in the initiative, is the founder of an application that helps cotton producers reach cotton merchants. “As a teenager, I would read in schoolbooks about Egyptian cotton and its history. I visited the Mahalla Al-Kobra textile factories, and I was amazed. By the time I graduated, I found that they had shut, and I wanted to do something to make Egyptian cotton regain its glory,” she said.
“Inspired by the state’s digital transformation programme, I came up with an application that connects farmers producing cotton for the local market and helps them to export to Europe,” she added, also saying that she has started designing and manufacturing clothes made out of cotton waste.
More broadly, the foundation and initiative have organised a programme that provides various answers to the question of who we as Egyptians are. “Many people wanted to know who we as Egyptians are genetically, asking whether we are genetically related to the ancient Egyptians,” Al-Talhati said.
“Scientist Margaret Kendell, a geneticist, showed by working with Egyptian scientists like Yehia Zakaria, Somaya Al-Alfi, and Tarek Taha that 97.5 percent of the Egyptians have the same genes. Some 90 percent of Egyptians even had genes from Tutankhamun’s family,” she said.
“We founded the Yaro Foundation in 2016, but we only started to operate in 2019 as it took us three years to set out our plans in detail,” Al-Talhati said. “We wanted to determine the message we were conveying and who our audience would be and how we would convey it.”
“After setting out our plans, we started to visit schools and youth centres. We have also been co-operating with the Ministry of Youth and Sports, and through it we have visited many governorates and reached a lot of young people. We have also been partnering with the Ministry of Immigration.”
Al-Sisi, in particular, has produced 10 documentaries about the history of Egypt for the Ministry of Immigration, including films on the ancient Egyptian rulers Ramses II and Tutankhamun, the Pyramids, sports in ancient Egypt, ancient Egyptian medicine, ancient Egyptian music, papyrus and how it was made, and writing and Hieroglyphics.
They were made through a presidential initiative, Etkalem Masri (Speak Egyptian), which aimed at connecting Egyptian young people living abroad with their roots in Egypt through Egyptian Arabic.
“We also partnered with the Ministry of Culture to organise the Ahl Masr (Inhabitants of Egypt) presidential initiative that focuses on human development in Egypt, especially in the fields of healthcare and social support. We took part in the Haya Karima presidential initiative that aims at upgrading the lives of the inhabitants of rural areas,” Al-Talhati said.
They have also partnered with the ministries of antiquities, education, and social solidarity, as well as NGOs like Misr Al-Kheir.
“One thing we have developed is an ‘Egyptian timetable’, a sort of time map of Egyptian history,” Al-Talhati said. “This shows people the different periods that Egypt has lived through and the events it has witnessed. It shows the factors of strength and weakness in each era and what were the causes of them.”
“Our workshops and seminars for children and adults are given by Wassim Al-Sisi or Mamdouh Farouk, head of the Imhotep Museum, and we also organise trips for university students accompanied by Egyptologists. Our cultural weeks or days for children feature story telling workshops, theatre work through which we narrate the stories of our ancestors, and Hieroglyphic writing workshops in which we teach children the Hieroglyphic alphabet.”
There are also workshops on new archaeological discoveries and the ways in which these are increasing knowledge about our forefathers. “We organise sculpture-making workshops in which we either use clay from Aswan or synthetic materials to make statues inspired by ancient Egyptian artefacts, including famous pieces like the Tutankhamun mask and the Nefertiti bust,” Al-Talhati said.
“We organise games like Snakes and Ladders that teach young people about ancient Egyptian ethics. The game is inspired by the trials the soul was believed to go through in ancient Egypt and the 10 good and bad traits that the ancient Egyptians thought it possessed.”
TRUTH-TELLING: To refute untrue theories about ancient Egyptian civilisation that may circulate on social media and in some international media outlets, Al-Sisi takes the opportunity when he is abroad to give lectures, sometimes leveraging invitations to medical conferences — he is a medical doctor — to do so.
“I lecture about ancient Egyptian civilisation at scientific conferences, usually during the opening session if I am asked to talk about medicine in ancient Egypt. For example, if it is an event about pharmacology, I lecture about pharmacology in ancient Egypt. If it is about dentistry, I lecture about dentistry in ancient Egypt. If it is about urology, I lecture about urology in ancient Egypt,” he said.
However, his main problem is time, owing to his professional activities. “A main problem is the shortage of time because I have a private hospital and two clinics to run. I work from 7am to 7pm and am free only two days of the week,” he added.
“The Yaro Foundation started as a dream 20 years ago as a centre for enlightenment that would combat untrue accounts of ancient Egyptian civilisation,” Al-Talhati commented.
“Today, we offer our services to Egyptian young people as they are the builders of the future of Egypt. We want to implant proper values in them and to carry the message of their ancestors to them so that they can reproduce the glory of a great civilisation.”
Among the foundation’s future plans is a proposal to join the National Academy for Training in a project that is part of a presidential initiative targeting teenagers about Egyptian identity. “We will be organising activities that will help deliver information and instill patriotism in them,” Al-Talhati concluded.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 14 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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