The Invention and Reinvention of the Egyptian Peasant

The Egyptian Peasant

I wonder if my father has ever read Richard Critchfield's Shahhat: An Egyptian 1978 (in a translated form maybe?), or the colonial eurocentric discourse was so overwhelming, so that he kept reminding me that our village, like any other Egyptian village, barley has a name?

I am more inclined to accept the second guess since he was a government official, first in the village administration council and eventually int he nearby town council,  and most probably had this idea from his predecessors and colleagues, before making it his own motto. Cf. Timothy Mitchell,The Invention and Reinvention of the Egyptian Peasant, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2 (May, 1990), p. 132-133, where he speaks of Critchfield's portrait of Shahhat, a village in Luxor near Kings' valley: