The Buried Quotes

“Some slogans of modern political revolutionaries—“ Make America Great Again”—echo the way that Akhenaten and other pharaohs manipulated nostalgia in order to justify change.”
― Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution

“Akhenaten’s kingship provides an unintended caricature of all modern leaders who indulge in the trappings of charismatic display.”
― Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution

“Average Egyptians take pride in their pharaonic history, but there’s also a disconnect, because the tradition of the Islamic past is stronger and more immediate. This is captured perfectly by the design of Egypt’s currency. Every denomination follows the same pattern: On one side of a bill, words are in Arabic, and there’s an image of some famous Egyptian mosque. The other side pairs English text with a pharaonic statue or monument. The implication is clear: the ancients belong to foreigners, and Islam belongs to us.”
― Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution

“All the women who worked in the shops were unmarried, and invariably they were fascinated by the relationships of their foreign bosses. “They’re equal,” Rasha, the assistant at the Chinese Lingerie Corner, said about the couple whom she worked for. “And they discuss things. They have arguments, but they talk about it. Egyptians just try to dominate.”
― Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution

“Rasha had been employed by two different Chinese shops, and she said that after this experience she would never work for an Egyptian. She described the Chinese as direct and honest, and she appreciated their distance from local gossip networks. “They keep their secrets,” she said.”
― Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution

“But our here and now is just a blip along the continuum.”
― Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution

“...to see the real thing in the right place - it was special. It left a very important mark in my memory.”
― Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution

“For some reason, it had become a tradition for tourists to throw money into the hole in front of the Sphinx. Of all the strange things that foreigners and rich Egyptians did at the ancient sites, this ritual most impressed Sayyid and his family.”
― Peter Hessler, The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution