Egypt, 1938

[Just Joe]

I'm thinking about setting my next adventure in Egypt in early 1938. Research is not my forte, and my goal is only to be historically accurate in broad outline, so I thought I'd just pick your brains and see if anybody knows and is willing to share anything useful.

 

I imagine there are a modest number of British troops supplemented by local, mainly arab, troops with British officers. I want the game to take place in a region where an ancient Egyptian tomb could plausibly be found, but preferably not too close to a major population center. I'm thinking maybe there's a town on the Nile with a modest British presence (a platoon of British-officered local troops, a gunboat, and a few colonial police and bureacrats?). A long day's travel away from there is a small oasis village with no British presence. And less than a day's travel from there is a hidden tomb.

 

Does any of this strike any of you as implausible. Do you have any suggested changes or additions to what I've described?

[Markdoc]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

A few points:

 

Yes, there were small numbers of British troops in Egypt at the time, but Egyptian troops served under their own officers: the only Brit.s in the Egyptian army were a small number of trainers and liasion. The army was mostly made up of conscripts, but you could pay for someone else to do your service so in general the quality was *extremely* low. basically only those people too poor to avoid it or poor enough to take a pittance to serve for someone else.

 

A good setting for the adventure you describe might be Aswan. At the time there was a custom post and tiny army base there, with a british resident. Steamships sailed to Aswan from Cairo, but the falls at Aswan meant that was the end of the line. There may have been British troops there in small numbers from time to time, but it was mostly Egyptian forces, patrolling the border with Sudan.

 

Aswan back then (before the dam) was the butt end of nowhere, surrounded by uninviting deserts. There is a spotty chain of oases extending southwestwards into Sudan, many of which have been inhabited since ancient times - there are still quite extensive ruins at some of them. In addition, the area around the Nile, both upstream and downstream is littered with muslim, early christian, greek, roman and pharonic remnants, including tombs of every size.

 

Last off, note that although Egypt allied with the British, that was mostly because they were afraid of Italian-dominated Libya: the upper class - including many of the officers in the army - was often openly pro-nazi and Egypt did not officially join the allies until 1945, when it was clear the Nazis were about to go under. Throughout the war Cairo and Alexandria were hotbeds of intrigue and spying and the British intelligence officers assigned to Egypt often penly despaired of getting official action against hostile spies: there was also a communist/soviet underground, although the Egyptians were much keener to suppress them.

 

That should give you something to go on with.

 

cheers, Mark

[Just Joe]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

Wow, Mark. That by far exceeded my expectations. Thanks.

[Toadmaster]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

A quick search on google turned up a few sites that might be helpful

 

some history

http://encarta.msn.com/sidebar_461500278/1938_Egypt.html

 

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/09/01/html/ft_20010901.2.html

 

http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/petriedigsindex.html

 

http://homepages.force9.net/rothwell/Egypt.htm

 

 

 

and here are some that might be useful to add some color to handouts

 

http://www.snap-dragon.com/egypt_1938-1939.htm

 

http://www.travelbrochuregraphics.com/Airline_Pages/Airlines_14/MISR1.htm

 

 

Sounds like an interesting game, I love the between the wars period of history, good luck

[Barton]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

Not Egypt, Ethiopia! In 1938 it was controlled by the fascist Italians. The country is also the home of a very old sect of Christianity. You could have burial sites with Holy relics, and fascists; both Italian and German varieties! What a great pulp setting!

I ran a one shot at RockCon based on it and it was great! The combative players got to shoot at Nazis and Blackshirts (Italians). The scientists checked out a spooky Holy burial site with strange relics. A lot of fun!

If you are interested I can post some links to various internet sites and books I used for it.

[Markdoc]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

If you want to do Ethiopia (it was called Abyssinia back than) instead, remember that the Ark of the Covenant is there (well, supposedly..). It's kept in a church in Axum, although it was carried off and hidden during the italian occupation. No one is allowed to see it except one or two selected priests (presumably your head explodes otherwise).

 

Axum itself is the site of an ancient pre-christian civilisation which was really into building giant stone obelisks: so there's plenty of weirdness there too.

 

The Italian occupation was a pretty brutal era - hundreds of thousands died. Funnily enough, a couple of weeks ago I was at Debre Libanos in Ethiopia, a monastery where the Italians massacred over 500 priests and deacons as a reprisal for an attempted assassination of the Italian governor.

 

cheers, Mark

[Just Joe]

Re: Egypt, 1933?

 

Thanks to all for your suggestions so far. I would be very happy to hear more, though I don't expect to be working on this adventure much for at least a few weeks. I'll probably be running it in February. I mentioned it when I had a few days to think about it, but other things are interfering with my ability to put much time into it now.

 

BTW, it turns out I got confused on my dates. I have to go back and dig up my notes, but I think the first adventure took place in 1932 (in the Sudetenland -- I had originally planned it for just weeks before the Germans rolled in, but later settled on a much earlier date). The second adventure was in Norway in '32 or '33. The third will probably take place in '33. Any revisions to your comments in light of the revised dates would be welcome, though not expected.

 

I'm pretty sure I'll stick with Egypt for this adventure, but (a) I'm not ruling out the possibility of action on both sides of the border, and ( Ethiopia/Abyssinia could make a great place for a later adventure. So Barton, by all means please post those links and name those books!

 

Toadmaster, thank you for those links. They were a mixed blessing, since they inspired me to spend an hour or two searching for the "perfect" links, which I never found. But yours and others I found were useful, and I even stumbled upon a Call of Cthulhu in Turin site that may well tempt me to run a subsequent adventure in that city. (My game is not CoC, but there are Lovecraftian influences, and even just the fact that the site gives information about a European city in the 30's is useful).

 

Lastly . . .

 

Funnily enough' date=' a couple of weeks ago I was at Debre Libanos in Ethiopia, a monastery where the Italians massacred over 500 priests and deacons as a reprisal for an attempted assassination of the Italian governor.[/quote']

 

Mark, I'm not sure it's appropriate to use the word "funnily" in the same sentence as the phrase "massacred over 500 priests and deacons" . . . (What is the emoticon that indicates that, whereas I am not joking, neither do I do take the matter as seriously as one might expect from my words alone, and that I am sympathetically disposed toward the individual I am addressing? Because it would be absurd to write all of that out).

[Markdoc]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

Yes well, I meant "funnily enough" as meaning funny-peculiar rather than funny-ha ha, but to be honest, my funny-o-meter is probably skewed way off normal anyway since a) I'm a doctor and I work from time to time in what we might kindly refer to as the squalid corners of the world.

 

One needs a certain perspective if you are going to discuss where you are going for dinner after the operation, over sombody's open chest.....*

 

Thus my reflection on seeing the tomb of memorial to the martyrs of Debre Libanos was that it looks disturbingly like a public toilet....

 

Anyhoo, more on topic - if you run the action back to the early 1930's the only thing that would change in Egypt is that the local nabobs were more generically anti-british than pro-german, and the Egyptian army would be even more disorganised than it was in 1938.

 

cheers, Mark

 

 

*true story - after some open chest surgery, the surgeon in charge went to put his watch back on - and couldn't find it (It had been off to the side of the surgical instruments, since in this facility there was no seperate scrub room). There was a long pause, everybody checked around and then they all looked at the guy who had just been closed up. Just as the doctor was calling for a consulting anaethesiologist to see if the guy could be put under again, the head nurse pulled it out of his pocket and went "ha ha, just kidding"

[lemming]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

*true story - after some open chest surgery' date=' the surgeon in charge went to put his watch back on - and couldn't find it (It had been off to the side of the surgical instruments, since in this facility there was no seperate scrub room). There was a long pause, everybody checked around and then they all looked at the guy who had just been closed up. Just as the doctor was calling for a consulting anaethesiologist to see if the guy could be put under again, the head nurse pulled it out of his pocket and went "ha ha, just kidding"[/quote']

I got your original intent, but then I worked too much with Coroners to ever have a normal sense of humor.

[Markdoc]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

I got your original intent' date=' but then I worked too much with Coroners to ever have a normal sense of humor.[/quote']

 

Oh I figured that was the case - it was really just an excuse to tell the "where did I leave my watch?" story

 

cheers, Mark

[gewing]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

This reminds me of why I never had a chance to have a "normal" sense of humor. My mom is a nurse, My dad is military, a gunsmith and shooter, and I grew up with doctor jokes and hunters.

 

Now I work in security with ex military, and ex cops. Dark senses of humor all around!

[Just Joe]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

I got your original intent' date=' but then I worked too much with Coroners to ever have a normal sense of humor.[/quote']

 

I got the original intent too, but was amused by the incongruous word choice and couldn't resist commenting.

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

If you want to do some further reading, Nagib Mahfouz is a very famous egyptian author (Nobel Prize in Literature) who wrote several novels that are praised for there description of life in Cairo from the 30's to the 50's

 

TB

[Just Joe]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

If you want to do some further reading, Nagib Mahfouz is a very famous egyptian author (Nobel Prize in Literature) who wrote several novels that are praised for there description of life in Cairo from the 30's to the 50's

 

TB

 

That sounds interesting. Can you (or anyone else) make a more specific recommendation? Checking amazon.com was insufficiently informative.

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Egypt, 1938

 

That sounds interesting. Can you (or anyone else) make a more specific recommendation? Checking amazon.com was insufficiently informative.

Try under Naguib Mahfouz (Arabic transliterations are always hit or miss, this spelling of his name is not what I would have translated it to)

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=NAGUIB%20MAHFOUZ/002-5431135-1589612

 

The Cairo Trilogy of novels seems to cover the time period (1917-1950s)

 

TB