Eternally Vanishing: Adam Henein and the memory of Egypt

Adam Henein’s museum in the Giza village of Harraniya sits like a relic in its own right. Now, it is tucked away behind a canal running parallel to a main road where, a mere few decades ago, the property’s yard merged into fields that stretched toward the pyramids in a hazy distance. It is not a museum in the grand, polished sense but something more essential—a space full of artefacts that could’ve been unearthed rather than built, timeless rather than new. It still has this exceptionally warm feel; it was his house and atelier a few rounds of expansion and remodelling ago. 

Outside its doors, the world moves in slow erosion. The farmers still walk through what remains of their shrinking fields, their donkeys still carrying their loads, possibly aware that their unlucky owners can’t afford the overdue upgrade of a vehicle. The city in the distance expands and decays in equal measure. Yet, within these walls, Henein’s sculptures stand like testaments to something permanent: birds carved in weightless form, biblical scenes stripped to their most essential gestures, Umm Kulthum’s presence distilled into the simplest of shapes. Like the museum, his work does not fight time—the two coexist, nodding to antiquity here, to a simple villager relaxing under a tree there. 

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 01 | Order Here

Ancient Egypt still casts its impossible shadows on us Egyptians daily, three giant gravesites visible from rooftops miles away, their sheer size continuing to shock those who drive past. The massive statue of Ramses II that spent years collecting dust and car smog in the pharaoh’s eponymous square across from the train station dwarfed the bridges surrounding him. Now, it looks even bigger in the gleaming halls of Grand Egyptian Museum. Most Egyptians, myself included, approach these relics with a certain nonchalance handed down with time—until they catch us off guard. And it’s always a rude awakening. 

But beyond these fleeting moments of awe – of seeing the Great Pyramid’s outline from a rooftop in the leafy suburb of Maadi, of Ramses towering over you like a dinosaur from Jurassic Park – what is our connection to these monuments? Every Egyptian has probably asked this at least once. After all, they were as foreign to Cleopatra, two and a half millennia later, as they are to us today. We know seeing them in person is the trip of a lifetime for retired European and North American couples, but what are they to us? Reminders of the greatness we never witnessed? Symbols of a civilisation’s decline? Proof that people are fleeting, but material grandeur is forever? 

Back in the day, if these questions kept you up at night, you’d typically study Egyptology only to find yourself working as a tour guide for these couples two or three economic crises later. Today? You start a podcast and theorise, citing other YouTube videos that you’ve watched. But what about artists? Ancient Egyptians documented their history through sculptures, frescoes and carvings—what became of Egyptian art? As a Cairo University student, I used to drive past Mahmoud Mokhtar’s iconic sculpture, Egypt’s Renaissance in Giza, without a second glance, the same way kids would slide up and down the paws of its shiny granite sphinx. It is this very sculpture that marked the birth of the Egyptian modernist movement. It came at a time when the 1919 revolution awakened national pride, when Egyptians were reclaiming their land and identity from British occupation. People pooled money together to erect that statue. They were naming their children Isis, Amasis, and Ramses. Saad Zaghloul’s mausoleum, designed by Mustafa Fahmy, looked like an ancient temple. 

And yet, many of these artists and architects still filtered their Egyptian roots through a Western lens, shaped by their education in Paris or Rome. Then, in the 1950s, an artist emerged as an antidote to this. Born in 1929 to a Coptic silversmith, Adam Henein took his first field trip to the Egyptian Museum at the age of eight. While his classmates listened to their teacher, he slipped away, running past display cases and drinking in the faces, the bodies, and the hands carved in stone. He came home that day, sat with a lump of playdough, and sculpted his take on Akhenaten. His father placed it in the shop window like something precious. 

Henein didn’t yet know what it meant to be an artist. He simply connected with materials, shaping them and letting them shape him back. A decade and some change later, he graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Cairo and moved to Luxor, where he lived among the sprawling open-air temples wedged between the vast desert and the farmland lining the Nile’s banks. Then he left Egypt altogether—first to Germany, then Paris, where he immersed himself in Giacometti and Brâncuși. These artists taught him about the essence of sculpture, about stripping form down to its soul. But instead of pulling him towards Europe, they did the opposite. They sent him back, artistically, to Egypt. 

When Henein returned, he illustrated Salah Jahin’s poems for Sabah El Kheir magazine as his day job, his lines bringing life to one of Egypt’s most iconic voices. He then received a grant and took a sabbatical, rediscovering Cairo through Islamic and Coptic art, folk traditions, and oral histories. Then, in Aswan, he saw it—a bird perched on a bamboo stick at dawn and, in that moment, he understood something about lightness, weight, movement, stillness and how they can coexist, something he would seek to channel for the remainder of his career. 

But he left again. An invitation to exhibit in Paris turned into 20 years abroad. The renowned Egyptian psychoanalyst Moustapha Safouan bought one of Henein’s sculptures for his Paris home and the sculptor, feeling the pull of the city, stayed. Paris liberated him—not in that outdated colonial sense, but in a creative one. It freed him from the looming weight of Egypt’s monuments, the expectation of responsibility, and the reverence that came with sculpting in their shadow. He simplified and stripped his work even further, perfecting that lightness he always sought, reimagining forms in ways his admirers still find inconceivable—almost as if a reaction to the weight lifted off his shoulders from attempting to echo what he saw in the museum. 

That lightness he always referenced would become the defining element of his work. Whether sculpting icons like Umm Kulthum and Salah Jahin or bringing his take on Noah’s Ark to life, he sought to capture essence rather than mass. His papyrus paintings of Saint George channelled the spirit of Coptic iconography. At the same time, his sculptures of daily Egyptian life – farmers, donkeys, birds, beggars – were pared down to their purest forms, at once minimalist and surreal. He saw Egypt, modern and ancient, not as shapes or forms but as conversations, moments and movement. 

Henein’s career wasn’t just a long-extending act of homecoming to a spirit of millennia past but for those surrounding him, too. In the 1980s, he befriended another young Egyptian artist in Paris named Nabil Boutros. Like many Egyptians of his age, Boutros didn’t get to live Egypt’s modernist movement firsthand; they didn’t have many classmates named Ramses and Amasis. Religion had very much taken the upper hand against nationalism. The visual artist’s notion of Egypt and its artists at the time was that they were behind, that Europe was the be-all and end-all of modern art. 

Yet, Henein’s Egyptian roots were always there, a stark reminder that he didn’t belong in Europe either. When asked how he kept his roots close, he revealed that when he relocated to Paris, he locked himself in a room and began to draw everything he remembered of the Egyptian Museum from memory. Once he’d drawn enough, he knew Egypt wasn’t going anywhere from his heart. Henein didn’t just influence Boutros’ craft, quietly pushing him to embrace art’s uncontrollability and a certain lack of control, but slowly bringing him closer to home. In fact, Boutros was one of many artists who Henein took under his wing, developing their craft and influencing their connection to home wherever they found it. 

Henein’s unbreakable bond with antiquity would play an unexpected role in leading the restoration of the same relics he looked to for inspiration. By 1989, the Sphinx needed a hand. Bad restoration attempts had already taken place, but when the Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny, looked for the right person, there was only one answer. No one knew the shapes and contours of ancient Egypt better than Henein; it was already in his hands, veins and work. After finally agreeing, albeit reluctantly, the process took nearly a decade, finishing in 1998. The way the Sphinx was restored is perhaps still a rare occurrence in archaeological conservation and restoration, akin to how an ancient stone worker would have—not as a contractor, but as an artist. 

In many ways, what you see in Henein’s work – besides the beautiful shapes and mind-boggling abstractions of farmers, of passersby, of something as grand as Noah’s Ark or as small yet incredibly complex as his jagged but effortlessly flowing bronze rooster – is a call to pause, to notice. A sigh so long it spanned 70 decades and a few millennia. A call to wait, pause at a moment, at a detail, at a bird on a bamboo stick, at Umm Kulthum catching her breath between verses. He didn’t have to learn about ancient Egypt (although he did) before feeling a connection with it. But he made it his mission to deepen that connection just by observing with wide eyes and an open heart. 

Instead of giving in to decay, he held steadfast. Instead of shipping off his collection to museums, he kept it on his own land, leaving it there as a quiet monument. You can no longer see the pyramids from his museum’s yard, and there’s no plaque on the Sphinx with his name on it. But if you look closely, at the curve of the bronze in the rooster’s tail, at the toes of his warrior sculpture, at the shadow cast by the owl, and the tilt of Umm Kulthum’s head, you’ll find a portrait of Egypt—quiet, yet enduring.

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 01 | Order Here