Soliman Gamil

Born in Alexandria in 1924, Soliman Gamil was an Egyptian composer, qanun player, and musicologist who dedicated his career to reconstructing the music of ancient Egypt. He studied composition at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris and won national and international prizes, including awards from Leipzig and the Critics Society in London. From 1963 he composed for film and theatre using reconstructed Pharaonic instruments — harps, flutes, lyres, and percussion — built from archaeological and iconographic evidence. In 1969 he founded the Egyptian Folkloric Music Orchestra, affiliated to the Ministry of Culture. He died in 1994.