The Egyptian: A Novel (Paperback)

Mika Waltari was a prolific and versatile writer whose historical fiction, of which The Egyptian is the premiere and defining opus, treats the great turning points of world history with a voice and perspective that bring to mind the sweep of a James Michener, the gently ironic familiarity of a Mark Twain, and the authorial presence of a William Faulkner.

The Egyptian ostensibly relates the autobiography of Sinuhe, a baby boy found in a basket among bullrushes who rises to become a doctor and advisor to pharaohs, during the coming of age and regency of the pharaoh Ekhnaton, who attempted to overturn established religions and replace them with a new one worshiping a new god. (Waltari contrives to make this element of the plot vaguely suggestive of the birth of Christianity more than a millennium later.) Through his travails and his travels, Sinuhe meets people of all stations of life in many areas of Egypt and its neighboring countries, informing us on many details both grand and minute of ancient Egyptian life and history.

But the true genius of The Egyptian is that it is really not about Egypt or ancient times at all. Rather it is about every nation and every civilization, every people in every time in every place of the world. It is about each of us readers, the joys and sorrows of our own lives, and about the social and governmental institutions to which we find ourselves subject. He records with dispassionate clarity the entire spectrum of human and social behavior, from the most exalted of aspirations, emotions, and deeds to the most debased, in himself as unflinchingly as in others. Whoever we are, wherever and whenever we live, we cannot help but recognize ourselves and our own times.

Most endearing of all is the voice in which Sinuhe addresses us. By turns grave and common, earnest and witty, naïve and sly, it cannot be captured in a brief review. However, this personal translation from Finnish of the opening paragraph may provide a taste:

"I, Sinuhe, son of Senmut and his wife Kipa, am the author of this work. I write not to glorify the gods, for I am weary of gods. I write not to glorify pharaohs, for I am weary of pharaohs' deeds. Rather for my own sake do I write this. Not to flatter gods, nor to flatter kings, nor out of fear, nor out of hope for the future. For I have experienced and lost much in the years of my life, and am untroubled by trivial fears; and I am weary of the hope of immortality, as I am weary of gods and kings. Only for my own sake do I write this, and in that respect I believe that I am different from all other writers past and future." [Paragraph excerpted and translated under fair usage provision of international copyright law for the purpose of literary review.]

If I could carry with me through life only a single novel as an enduring source of inspiration and sound perspective, I would mourn the loss of many others - but I would choose The Egyptian.

I remain, to this day, fascinated by the twists and turns of the plot, by the characters' reactions both to the times and to one another. Mr. Waltari weaves a tale in which the slightest shift in the awareness of any of the characters might have brought about a different ending. If only they had been wiser! If only...

And yet I am in awe of Mr. Waltari's talent. In "The Egyptian", he tells a tale that grows stronger in the telling, with every telling, until the reader is transported to a place remote in space and time. A fantasy, and yet it MIGHT have really happened!

This book is a treasure to own or give, and I'm glad it's still in print.