Figure
Mahmud Mukhtar
Sculptor of "Egypt’s Awakening"
1891 – 1934
Lifespan.
Biography
One of the first graduates of Cairo’s School of Fine Arts. He designed the statue "Egypt’s Awakening": a peasant woman with her hand on the head of a rising sphinx. It was paid for by public subscription and unveiled in 1928.
Key facts
Certainty: Established
"Egypt’s Awakening" was unveiled in 1928, combining a pharaonic symbol with an Egyptian peasant woman.
- Israel Gershoni, James P. Jankowski (1986) “Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900–1930” Oxford University Press