Cairo (Etihad)
The former Egyptian Minister of Culture, Dr. Gaber Asfour, died today, Friday, at the age of 77, after suffering a health illness that led to his stay in intensive care for several days, and the funeral will take place tomorrow from Cairo University.
Dr. Gaber Asfour, the former Egyptian Minister of Culture, was born in March 1944, and obtained a bachelor’s degree from the Arabic Language Department at the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, and then obtained a master’s and doctorate degrees at the same university.
Asfour rose to scientific positions, where he was appointed as a teaching assistant at the Department of Arabic Language in 1966, after which he headed the Department of Arabic Language at the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University.
Asfour held several positions during his career, including the Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council for Culture from January 1999 to March 2007, as well as the position of Egyptian Minister of Culture twice, the first in 2011, succeeding former Minister Farouk Hosni, but then resigned immediately from his position for health reasons, and the second period of June 2014 to the end of February 2015.
During his life, the former Minister of Culture won several awards, most notably the award of the Ministry of Culture in 1984, the Tunisian Cultural Medal from the President of the Republic of Tunisia in 1995, the UNESCO Prize for Arab Culture, and the State Appreciation Award in the field of literature.
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