If you have spent any time deep in the digital preservation halls of the , or if you have browsed the restricted indexes of the Official Gazette , you may have stumbled upon a ghost.
The archive describes her as a "liaison." But a liaison of what?
According to a recently declassified footnote from the (The Egyptian National Library and Archives), Vivianne DeSilva was the acting Overseer of Recovered Assets . vivianne desilva, the official egypt
The official record states she died in a hotel room overlooking the Mediterranean in 1961. The cause of death is listed as "exhaustion of the spirit."
Her name is .
Vivianne DeSilva appears in the official records of the (circa 1937-1945). She was not Egyptian by birth, but her papers bear the seal of the Kingdom—later the Republic—stamping her existence as officially sanctioned .
The Official Egypt is obsessed with provenance—where something came from and where it is going. In the lead-up to the 1952 Revolution, thousands of artifacts and private papers were "lost." Yet, whenever an audit was conducted by the King’s Cabinet, the line items always zeroed out. If you have spent any time deep in
The Alexandria Archive: Unearthing Vivianne DeSilva in the Official Egypt