Egyptian sculptors

Sculpture is Egypt's oldest great art: for three thousand years the pharaohs' sculptors carved granite, limestone and wood into figures of perfect calm. Modern Egyptian sculpture began by reconnecting with that past. Mahmoud Mokhtar, one of the first students of Cairo's School of Fine Arts, created Egypt's Awakening, a peasant woman beside a rising sphinx, unveiled in 1928 as a symbol of the nation. Gamal El-Sagini later made sculptures and hammered copper reliefs about Egyptian life and politics.

Adam Henein took the search furthest, with timeless figures in bronze and granite; he also led the design team that restored the Great Sphinx and founded the Aswan International Sculpture Symposium, where sculptors from around the world carve local granite each year. Today artists such as Ghada Amer, Moataz Nasr and Susan Hefuna work with sculpture, installation and craft on the international stage. The list also includes Armenian-Egyptian sculptors of Cairo and Alexandria. These are Egypt's sculptors, most looked-up first. See also Egyptian artists.