Cyril Collot - Salah

It was all the fault of the pharaohs and the English.

Take Amenhotep II, seventh monarch of the eighteenth dynasty. An inscription on the Stele of Archery, discovered near the Sphinx, reads: he mastered horse riding and there was no one like him [] His bow could not be bent by anyone and no one could catch him in the races. That was not all: it was also said of the sovereign who reigned over Egypt from 1427 to 1401 BC that he could handle a 30-foot long oar. Quite an undertaking.

Amenhotep II was not the only athlete pharaoh.

Take Ramesses II (127913 bc), one of the most powerful and famous rulers. On the obelisk in Romes Piazza del Popolo, he is described as Lord of the Panegirie, a Greek word used to refer to athletic contests in Ancient Egypt. He is said to have been an impeccable archer, who was skilled at chariot racing, rode camels and horses and was unbeatable at swordsmanship.

Were these isolated cases? No. All rulers, including Hatshepsut, the second female pharaoh (147957 BC ), had to complete a three-lap race around two ritual constructions. For many the ceremony represented a primitive Olympics, for others a symbolic rite of rejuvenation for the pharaoh, who justified his or her power in front of courtiers and the gods. The event was held every three years from the 30th year of their reign. It may not have been an Olympiad in the modern sense, but it does demonstrate how important athletic prowess was both for demigods such as the pharaohs and for young Egyptians needing to temper their physique and character.

Wrestling, boxing, horse riding, archery, running, long jump, high jump, javelin throwing, weightlifting, fencing with poles and sticks, swimming and rowing were the most popular and widely practised disciplines. There were precise rules of competition, sports facilities built ad hoc, impartial referees, or at least proclaimed as such, and different coloured uniforms to distinguish the teams. The winners were rewarded with large collars that covered their chest and shoulders. Even the losers were recognised for their competitive spirit in a style worthy of Pierre de Coubertin. See, for example, the report of a race, there and back, between the Royal Palace of Memphis and the Faiyum Oasis, held in the sixth year of the reign of the Pharaoh Taharqa (690667 BC ). The stele erected to commemorate the event recalls that the ruler personally accompanied the race on his chariot, through the desert and, after the race, distinguished the first among them to arrive and arranged for him to eat and drink with his bodyguards. He distinguished those others who were just behind him and rewarded them with all manner of things.

Ball games deserve a chapter in their own right. Many different kinds of balls have been discovered in Egyptian tombs. Made of wood, clay and leather, stitched and filled with straw, strips of papyrus or pressed palm leaves. With diameters ranging from three to nine centimetres, these also included coloured balls and some that were extremely heavy. Yet they are seemingly handled with ease by the figures in the painting in the main chamber of the tomb of the Governor Baqet III (circa 2000 BC ) in the necropolis of Beni Hasan to the south of Cairo. Four girls, two on the shoulders of their partners, are depicted throwing and catching spheres. It was a pastime that seems to have been reserved for, or at least favoured by women. Boys preferred to hit a ball with a palm stick, similar in shape to the ones used in modern day field hockey. But this was not merely a game for young people. During the eighteenth dynasty, under the reign of Thutmose III (148125 BC ), one of the great leaders and strategists of Egyptian history, a ritual came into being and was documented on the walls of the Temple of Deir el-Bahari: in the presence of a deity (usually Hathor), the king hits the ball with a stick, symbolically destroying the devils eye of the serpent god Apophis.

Speaking of balls Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the Greek historian who travelled along the Nile in around 450 BC , described the scene of a group of young men kicking a ball made of goatskin and straw in the second book of his Histories (Euterpe). In short, as was true of many other ancient civilisations from China to Japan, from Imperial Rome to the peoples of Mesoamerica playing with a ball was both ritual and entertainment in the Egypt of the pharaohs. But it was the British who turned a game played for centuries and centuries into a sport. They formalised it, dictated its rules, stamped it with the label football and exported it all over the world. In 1863, thirteen delegates from clubs in England and Scotland met at the Freemasons Tavern in London to found the Football Association and to set down the laws of the worlds most popular sport in black and white. Nineteen years later, the British invaded Egypt in support of the Khedivate to counter the rise of nationalism, thereby gaining control of the Suez Canal, a maritime route vital to the British Empire. They exported their game, their rules and their customs. Football arrived with the occupying troops. The British soldiers built pitches and set up goals on their bases. The Egyptians looked at them strangely at first as was the case more or less everywhere dismissing them as mad Englishmen. They collapsed into fits of laughter when they saw the soldiers in shorts running around after a ball. But things changed quickly and puzzled looks soon turned into imitation. Football spread like wildfire from the cities. The first Egyptian team was formed in 1883, principally of players from Cairo, under the leadership of its captain Mohamed Effendi Nashed. They challenged the British, their masters and mentors, winning on several occasions at least according to Egyptian reports, which add, perhaps with more than a touch of nationalism, that Nasheds eleven beat their foreign occupiers, at least symbolically. Nine years on football experienced a boom. In 1892, physical education in schools became compulsory, a decision that led to the formation of a great many football teams.

The dawn of the 20th century saw the birth of the countrys great clubs. The Al Ahly club was founded as a sports club for Cairos students on 24 April 1907. Its first president was Englishman Michael Inse. On 5 January 1911, also in the capital, a Belgian lawyer George Marzbach founded Qasr Al-Nil, a club for non-British expatriates. The club was open to everyone, Egyptians and foreigners; no one was excluded for ethnic, economic or social reasons. In 1952, after several changes of name, it became known definitively after the district that occupies the northern part of the island of Gezira: Zamalek.

Al Ahly and Zamalek, the two teams that have dominated Egyptian and African football ever since. Thirty-nine league titles, 36 Egypt Cups and twenty international trophies for the Red Devils of Al Ahly; twelve league titles, 25 Egypt Cups and five African Champions Leagues for the White Nights of Zamalek. Derbies at the Cairo International Stadium have been known to attract up to 100,000 spectators.

But lets go back to the early years of the last century. On 11 September 1916, representatives of the British forces and the Egyptian clubs met in Cairo to form the EEFA, the Egyptian-English Football Association. The first official competition was held that same year: the Sultani Cup, under the patronage of Sultan Hussein Kamel, was open to British and local teams. The British won the first five editions, a domination interrupted in the 192122 season by the club that would go on to become Zamalek.

On 21 May 1923, Egypt was the first Arab nation and the first African country to join FIFA. This is not its only record. It was also the first African nation to participate in an Olympics, in Belgium in 1920, when its team lost 21 to Italy in the qualifying round in Ghent; it was also the first to play in a World Cup, in Italy in 1934, where it lost 42 in its opening game against Hungary, but gave birth to the first star of African football: Abdulrahman Fawzi, who scored two goals for the Pharaohs. It would also be the first country to win the Africa Cup of Nations in 1957. Egypt beat Ethiopia in the final 40, with a brace from El-Diba, who scored all four goals and became the top scorer with a total of five throughout the competition.