Since its inauguration in 1969, The Cairo Book Fair has become a central hub of Middle Eastern publishing and cultural exchange, drawing millions of attendees from dozens of countries to the Egyptian capital each January. This year, the edition’s theme was ‘Read. . . In the beginning was the word’, emphasising the importance of early texts and the evolution of language. Here, Susan Curtis reports from the event and its varied offerings—which includes the announcement of a pivotal title in Egyptology and its first translation into Arabic.
In January of this year, I attended the Cairo Book Fair, one of the biggest fairs in the world and a hub for international exchange and the celebration of Arab literature. The fair exceeded all expectations with over 5.5 million visitors—more than eight hundred thousand attending on the busiest day—marking a record-breaking attendance in the fifty-six years of the fair’s history. This year’s edition took place over a period of twelve full days from 23 January to 5 February, with dedicated event spaces for panels, discounted books, and poetry evenings. Amongst the wide-ranging discussions, one announcement made this year’s event truly stand out: the launch of the first Arabic translation of The Age and Purpose of the Pyramids, as Indicated by Sirius by Mahmoud Bey, an essential text in Egyptology first written in French, then translated into English by Tessa Dickinson in 2023, and finally, in 2025, brought back to Egypt in its first Arabic translation by Youssef El Sherif from Al-Arabi.
I attended the fair as the director of my company, Istros Books, joining the ‘Cairo Calling’ publishers fellowship programme, which, together with a group of thirty-five publishers from a diverse array of countries, offers a unique opportunity for global collaboration. Attendees engage in personalized, one-on-one meetings with publishers from across the Arab world, with the support of a dedicated team of ‘angels’—student volunteers from the Translation & Languages faculty of Badr University, keen to practise their linguistic skills and to promote Egyptian culture. In a city whose infrastructure and customs can sometimes be surprising, challenging but also charming, their devoted duty to our care was both touching and most welcome. The angel initiative is one aspect that makes the Cairo Calling Fellowship programme a unique experience and brings the participants in closer contact with Egyptian society, beyond the usual rights meetings.
The programme runs under the supervision of Sherif Bakr, who also serves as General Manager of Al-Arabi Publishing and Distribution and was instrumental in the Arabic publication of Mahmoud Bey’s foundational text, as well as a key figure of the fair. At the opening ceremony, his introduction of the fellowship set the tone for the Cairo Book Fair’s collaborative atmosphere: ‘It’s almost impossible to decipher the Arabic publishing market without the help of professionals and enthusiasts—this is the premise on which we build the Cairo Calling programme.’
Al-Arabi is a Cairo-based pioneering publisher of translated fiction and nonfiction books from all over the world, with over five hundred translated titles from more than sixty countries, and their fifty-year history in the business has taught them the benefit of international cooperation, openness to new cultures, and the importance of making face-to-face contacts in a global business market. One of the publisher’s initiatives, ‘Historical Papers’, is a collection of texts dating from the 1800s to the middle of the last century, which presents views of Egyptian history, culture, and way of life from an outside perspective, translated into Arabic. On this series, Sherif remarks, ‘In this way, we hope to highlight misconceptions, reinterpret and open a discussion on how our history has been presented by outsiders in the modern era.’ The Arabic translation of Mahmoud Bey’s The Age and Purpose of the Pyramids, as Indicated by Sirius is the most recent of these newly translated texts, and with it comes the fascinating history of such a cornerstone piece of Egyptology.
The Age and Purpose of the Pyramids, as Indicated by Sirius was originally written in French by the astronomer, scientist, and engineer Mahmoud Bey in 1862. His ground-breaking treatise on the connection between these ancient structures and the movement of the Dog Star allowed him to offer a new date on their original construction based on his own astronomical observations. Mahmoud Bey’s text was published in French in Alexandria in 1865 and thereafter in a slightly altered Belgian edition, but was subsequently consumed by the winds of time and never published in English nor in his native Arabic.
Robert Temple of Eglantyne Books, himself a well-known author on Egypt (The Sphinx Mystery, 2009, Egyptian Dawn, 2010) took it upon himself to remedy this situation, and after a long search, was able to purchase a rare original manuscript of this text in French from a dealer in Saudi Arabia. It was this old and delicate document that was then painstakingly translated into English from the handwritten text by PhD student of Egyptology Tessa Dickinson and published in English in 2023.
In his introduction to the text, Temple recounts Mahmoud Bey’s (1815-1885) origins in the Western Delta north of Cairo and his subsequent enrolment at the Naval School of Alexandria. Although Mahmoud was an Egyptian, his tutorship under a French professor at the Cairo school of Engineering in a time of Ottoman rule, and subsequent employment in Paris, meant that his academic work was not written in Arabic and was intended for an audience outside his homeland.
Learning of this story at the time of its English publication, I contacted my friend Sherif Bakr of Al-Arabi, who jumped at the chance of bringing this lost classic home through an Arabic translation. It was thus a culmination of a handful of scholars’ dedication to promoting Mahmoud Bey’s work that brought the text back to Egypt at the 2025 Cairo Book Fair.
In the Arabic foreword by Dr. Khaled Azab, ‘Archaeology from myth to science’, Dr. Azab discusses how Mahmoud Bey’s work had been lost to the average Egyptian, despite Bey being one of the founders of modern Egyptology and a pioneer of scientific archaeology in his own county, with the thoroughfare Al-Falaki (which translates as ‘Engineer or Astronomer Street’) in Cairo being one of the only well-known tributes to his legacy—until now, that is. ‘The study (book) in your hands, dear reader, restores the reputation of a great scholar!’ wrote Dr. Azab at the end of his new foreword to this old work. To this achievement, Sherif Bakr expressed pride and determination for the future of Egyptology in Arabic:
Since the opening of the GEM Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo a couple of years ago, there is growing interest in ancient Egypt. More than ever, we need to know the history of those times from a wide range of viewpoints. For us it is a great shame that most scholarship about ancient Egypt was written by foreigners and was rarely translated into Arabic. It’s time to give Arab readers and researchers the space for their own material. We are so proud of this work, written so long ago, has finally been returned to us through the Arabic translation.
I wish to thank Sherif Bakr and the team at Al Arabi for their fine publishing work and their hospitality during my stay, along with Fatimah Abbas of FALA and Publishers Without Borders, who facilitated the panel discussions on AI in publishing and international children’s literature, as well as taking care of the general programme during our stay at the fellowship.
Susan Curtis is the founding director of Istros Books, an independent publisher of contemporary literature from South East Europe, based in Bloomsbury, London. A former teacher, Susan has lived for periods in Belgium, Croatia, Italy and Slovenia, working with refugees and in schools. She writes poetry (Diary of a Divorce, Arc Publications, 2020; Axonas/Axis, mimosa, 2024) and also translates from Croatian/Serbian.
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