Autumn Atum Egypt Watch

Someone arrogating all power to himself in Egypt.
It's not as if there's no track record of this sort of thing when the post lies vacant. Unsuccessful attempts at arrogating all power to oneself, for whatever good it's going to do, are followed all down the ages in Egypt by endless further attempts to do the same on the part of others. There's never been a recorded time when someone wasn't after the job.
So this round it's Egypt president, the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Mursi making a grab for it in the aftermath of the suspended massacre in Gaza.
It is said that Patriarchy cannot fail Egypt, but that Egypt shall always fail Patriarchy given time.

Egypt

…as it ever was:

Four months after the fall of Hosni Mubarek, the winners have begun to take shape. The military averted the prospect of a Gamal Mubarek succession and maintained the power it has held since Nasser’s coup d’état of 1956. The Moslem Brotherhood has emerged from decades of persecution to potentially become new Egypt’s new powerbrokers, and the Salifist groups, once outlawed, are now organizing political parties. So far, Egypt’s revolution has bolstered the standing of all parties, except the young, secular, progressive activists whose dreams and courage first ignited it.
—Christian Vachon at The Rumpus

"Atum" of the Patriarch, heh heh.

Atum (Ra manifested at sunset)
by way of Wikipedia. 

Hosni Mubarek, deprecated as ruler of Egypt, has transferred himself to Sharm el Sheik, which is a lot like not being in Egypt, for most values of Egypt, and probably as far as he might be expected to get away from Egypt for now given the understandable reluctance of other nations to take him in and the countervailing bulk of Egypt's people insisting that he must nevertheless go.

He didn't take his form of government with him, but rather left it in the hands of the military. The state of emergency persists as the sun sets in Sharm el Sheik.

Atum goes off. What will replace him but Ra again in the morning?

Civilization 6000

Currently Cairo deserves attention. Egypt has been expressing civilization in an unbroken sequence of daily events for more than six thousand years. People who've inherited what's resulted from that prodigious expenditure of time and effort are not presently satisfied with their lot. People of Cairo have dragged with them to Midan al-Tahrir [Liberation Square] for the past couple of weeks all the burden of influences those six thousand years of events have bestowed on them thus far, and have demanded, as immediate recompense for the condition in which they now find themselves, that the one in charge of Egypt, Hosni Mubarek, be removed.

There are other demands that may or may not have unconditional support from everyone in Tahrir Square. Oh, sure, cancelling the State of Emergency declared by Mubarek shortly after Sadat's assassination and under which he's ruled as he sees fit for the past thirty years. That. Probably only the revanchist few in the crowd who think that a permanent state of emergency is as likely an organizing principle of civilization as any other, would argue that, yes, Mubarek must go, but the state of emergency should continue with somebody else in charge of it. It's really not that kind of crowd. Not that such calculation is absent outside Tahrir [COUGH USA COUGH].

Mubarak, at any rate, is scheduled to ease himself out in less than half an hour. Yet another in that yet unbroken line of momentous Egyptian events to add to the thus-far continuous lot of them.

UPDATE: Mubarak draws the line at relinquishing power, admits that the state of emergency just might be eased eventually at some unspecified future date given suitable conditions down the road. Ahem.