Until now, Egypt"s unsolved mysteries were just the real period when the Sphinx was built and whether his face was that of Khufu, Khafre or some other character, remodeled once to praise one of the kings who erected the great pyramids of Giza.

Well, politics has now added another one: "the Egyptian revolution". They haven"t chose the flower or the color to name it after, but it has been labeled a revolution, as soon as the violent protests against the Mubarak became serious enough to warrant extended live feeds by the BBC or CNN. However, neither the "live broadcasts", nor the ambiguous statements by the leaders of the world"s powers do enough to explain what"s happening. So, what is happening?

The answer would be easy: there is a search for "an alternative to Mubarak". Like most "growth dictatorships" of the 20th century, the regime in Egypt has at the top of the power pyramid a "patriarch", who is considered the guarantee of the continuation of the country"s modernization process, which was begun by "the great founder", in this case Anwar el Saadat, the irreplaceable pillar of the country"s stability (in other words, the one strong enough to keep the Army and the Intelligence Services in check) and an essential partner to the geo-political players involved in the great "confrontation for peace" in the Middle East. This is the standard portrait of Khosni Mubarak, in his more than 30 years that he has led Egypt.

Regimes of this nature have the advantage of stability, and, like in the case of Egypt, a reasonable degree of success when it comes to development. For a population of about 80 million inhabitants, in 2010, Egypt had a GDP of about 500 billion dollars, which has been growing for the last 10 years, generated by an investment rate which has exceeded 15% of the GDP a year. The about 26 million of Egyptians, which may up the active workforce,