Denshway Museum
Villages struggle story in a museum
On the 93 anniversary of Denshway incident, Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak today inaugurates
Denshway National Museum in Menofeya governorate. The museum was rebuilt
to witness and immortalize the historic story of the Egyptian peasants struggle
in Denshway village against the then British colonialism.
The museum was designed by the consultative engineer Hany el-Meniawi to
host all cultural activities besides Denshway incident. However, it comprises
all historic documents on the event, as well as different instruments used
in agriculture at that time such as the waterwheel and the shadoof.
Besides an administrative building, the museum comprises 5 show halls in
which all sequences of the historic struggle are represented, in addition
to number of sculptures, paintings and a diminutive pattern of the old Denshway
village made by the engineer Essam Safyy Al-Dein and the artist Mahmoud
Mabrouk.
The building also includes a roofless theatre,
cultural centre, music hall, VIPs hall and an atelier as well. The museum,
built on an area of 2850 sq.m, cost some LE4 million, in addition to some
LE1.5 million were allocated to the artistic purposes.
Denshway in brief
In 1906, Denshway village was under the British colonialism. The British
soldiers used to mistreat peasants, take their possessions, burn their
crops and kill their children, women and old men as well. Such measures
stir up people in Denshway, so, they resisted and revolted, by no weapons
but their willingness and faith. First, they were able to make the British
soldiers draw back but later, they were faced by different shapes of arbitrariness
and many were killed. On the other hand, a British soldier died affected
by a sunstroke but the British colonists were not convinced by the reason
of the death and accused the peasants of killing him. Then there was a
trial, a very unfair trial where 4 of the villages youth were executed
while many other were put in jail.
Models of the works represented at the museum
32 painters and sculptors were chosen to feature, by their own thoughts,
the historic event on all dimensions. Among the paintings represented
are, the two scenes of the trial and the judgment execusion, made by the
painter Sabry Mansour, the preliminary trial represented by a committee
of a foreign judge, the governor, a lawyer and a clerk, before them stand
a number of charged people, made by the artist Ahmed Nabil. Also there
are paintings of Mohamed Tarawi, who chose two scenes to depict naming
them "Head of guards bleeding and "Sergeant Paul", while
the painter Ibrahim Hegazi chose the incidents beginning to be the topic
of his painting.
All painters, could successfully express the event and could, by their
own touches, colors and shadows make us feel as if they were painted at
the same time of the event.
After all, Denshway incident is a very special
Egyptian epic of dignity and sacrifice, however, Denshway museum is an
important cultural event to put Denshway village among the Egyptian tourist
sites.
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