- This article is about a fictional subject in the Wild Cards universe that has a non-fiction inspiration. For an article on Wikipedia about the real world subject, see Wikipedia:Egypt.
Egypt is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia. Most of its territory lies within the Nile Valley of North Africa and is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west.
History[]
Egypt was the site of a major wild card outbreak at the city of Port Said in 1948. Over one thousand people died and at least thirteen new aces were created. Later that same year, a group of aces led by Khof entered the Israel-Palestine war, bringing it to a stalemate.
Some time around 1970, an archaeologist named Opet Kemel witnessed a miracle when he saw a young boy summon clouds to bring rain to his father's fields. Kemel thought the boy to be a reincarnation of Min, an ancient Egyptian god of crops, and saw this as a sign that the old gods were returning. He had recently uncovered an ancient temple at Luxor, and used this location to draw other aces and jokers to him. Together they began teaching the Old Religion, and made a name for themselves as the Living Gods, mixing religious practices with showmanship to tap into the tourist market.
By the mid-1980's a Syrian ace, the Nur al-Allah had started to build a new power base within the Middle East, with a goal to unite the Arab world in a fundamentalist Islamic regime. Perceiving Opet Kemel's growing religion as a blasphemy, he launched a series of attacks against the Temple of the Living Gods. These proved to be largely unsuccessful until the temple was visited by several delegates from the 1987 WHO Tour. The Nur invaded while a ceremony was taking place and raked the interior with gunfire before being stopped by the visiting American aces.
Subsequent hostilities saw a split in the Living Gods, with some of them emigrating to the United States of America, while Kemel and others remained and built a new temple on the west bank of the Nile, across the river from Luxor.
In 2007, Egypt's new president, Kamal Farag Aziz, drew Egypt into the Caliphate, a union of Arab states led by the Nur al-Allah. On the eve of Egypt's inclusion, the Nur was assassinated, and the new Caliph quickly set about ordering the extermination of all Egyptian jokers. Kamal Farag Aziz led his fanatic Ikhlas al-Din in a brutal genocide that saw surviving jokers fleeing south along the Nile. The Living Gods mounted a token resistance, but they too could do little to stop the might of the better equipped force. It was then that a number of American aces waded into the fray and slowed the advance of the Egyptian army. A final battle was staged between these newcomers, with the Americans, the Living Gods, and Egyptian jokers on one side, and the Righteous Djinn among the Caliphate's forces on the other. The fighting ended when the Djinn was killed and the Egyptian army fled. Kamal Farag Aziz was deposed in the following days.
The geopolitical landscape of the country was radically altered after the conflict. The Living Gods, and those Egyptians who had sided with them, claimed the entire south east quarter of Egypt as a safe haven for jokers and kept the region separate from the Caliphate. This area they named Old Egypt, apparently in reference to their Old Religion. Old Egypt is protected by the Living Gods, and in particular Sekhmet the Destroyer bonded with the American ace Drake Thomas, whom they took to calling Ra after the Egyptian sun god.
Selected Reading[]
- Wild Cards Volume IV: Aces Abroad - "Down by the Nile"
- Wild Cards Volume XVIII: Inside Straight