«Тахиййат»: Сборник статей в честь Н. Н. Дьякова

m 78 n Magda El-Nowieemy World. Egyptian intellectuals grew up in an environment where European culture was coming to be taken for granted as an option for men of education and standing. There was a constellation of cultural interests centered heavily on travelling to Europe to import ideas about the classics but with some room for Arabization. Take for one Rifaah Rafie Al-Tahtawi (1801–1873). These two stages have an importance for our understanding of the current interest in Egypt in Classical Antiquity (see El-Nowieemy 2009). My present paper takes as its subject the reception of Greek culture, and is therefore also intended as a contribution to the assessment of the transmission of classical Greek culture into the modern era. The Arab perception of Hellenism is mani- fested in cross-cultural adaptation, in which Socrates goes East. In determining the scope of this paper, I have narrowed my focus to one representative Egyptian creative piece of writing. It is a play written by Ahmed Etman, an Egyptian scholar in Greek and Latin Classics, and a comparatist as well. The play is under the title of “A belle in the prison of Socrates” . This play is originally written inArabic, and published, in Egypt (Etman 2004). Later it was translated into English, and published in England (Etman 2008a). The play shows how members of one culture view other cultures, and what use they make of other cultures in their own world (for classical receptions in the modern Arab World, see Etman 2008b; Pormann 2010). The play is adapted from Greek philosophy, Greek literature and Greek historiography. The author reworked them in an Egyptian sarcastic drama. Seriousness, hu- mor, and comic seriousness figure largely in the play. Yet, it goes beyond the boundaries of Greek culture, beyond the period of time in which the Greek philosopher Socrates lived (469–399 BC), and beyond the boundaries of the regional politics of the ancient polis (the Athenian city-state). This combina- tion of ancient and modern in one play makes ancient history endlessly fresh. The writer influentially links the Arabic tradition to the Greek, presenting both in a global dress. His drama involves the history of the West, as well as the his- tory of the East. It rises to universality by exposing, not only the Arab world's problems, but also the problems of the world as a whole. In my present paper I address myself to the following main points: how, with a look back to ancient Athens, the author examines many questions of political life, ancient and modern. How this play dramatizes the issues of war and peace, the failings and dangers of false democracies, manipulative govern- ments, deceptive power, environment, drugs, etc. in a global context that goes beyond both the Egyptian and the Greek traditions. How the author represents implicitly a whole world of contemporary people and things which lie outside the actual discourse of the Athenian past. Etman has used a subject from his own sphere of interest. Being a clas- sicist, he is sufficiently familiar with the ancient evidence (this play is not