The Egyptian: A Novel

Fifty years ago, my High School english teacher asked the class to write an essay on a favorite book. I chose to write about Mika Waltari's "The Egyptian." I started my essay with the opening sentence from the book. That sentence still resonates with me today and I still can recite the opening paragraph by heart. I have read many books in the years since that High School assignment, and "The Egyptian" still holds a special place in my heart. It remains a favorite. I highly recommend this book as one in which the reader can be carried along by a wonderful story told by a consumate writer. The universal question of what in this life really matters is skillfully explored. People who have seen the awful movie adaptation may shy away from the novel. Don't. If you like to become totally engrossed in a compelling story, you will be hard pressed to find a better book. If you have an interest in ancient Egypt (which is not necessary for enjoyment), you will be absolutely blown away by the meticulous research behind the narrative. "The Egyptian" was a huge success when it was first published, and is a real classic that deserves to be read from generation to generation.

I first read The Egyptian when I was 14 and just beginning to understand the beauty of more complex books. The first chapters didn't appear very interesting to me, but as I continued reading, I suddenly realized I had been swooped into an amazingly realistic ancient world full of excitement, sorrow, wisdom and more. The whole experience was memorable since it's been very few times when a story I've been reading has felt as incredibly real as Sinuhe's story did. The Egyptian jumped right on the top of my list of best books.Mika Waltari truly is the most skillful writer I know - where he learned it, I have no idea. His books, especially The Egyptian, have something that appeal to all kinds of people from all over the world. Perhaps it's the art of describing the feelings that each human being experiences sooner or later, and the way he is able to make a story from ancient Egypt seem like it could happen even today. People don't change, only their surroundings do.The Egyptian is a wonderful and sad story. Especially recommended to everyone who likes history, but I really think that it's a great book for everyone who's interested in mankind - and in particularly good stories.

The Egyptian set in the Amarna period of Ancient Egypt during the reigns of the pharaohs Amunhotep III, Akhenaten and Horemheb, covering the concluding years of the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom (1386 - 1293 BC), an ear in Egyptian history that was marked by significant religious and political upheaval. The Egyptian is Sinuhe, a physician of unknown birth origin who was wrapped and cradled in a reed boat floating down the Nile. As he narrates his life story, which transcended years of warfare, plague, and fierce battle between gods. On the outside The Egyptian delineates the history of Egypt through its inveterate religious devotion to many gods. At the core of the novel finds one man's lifelong journey through many countries, like Babylon, Crete, and Mitannia, to knowledge. Sinehu possessed such lonely idealism that motivated him to devote his life searching for something so intangible yet greater than he beyond his understanding did. He was not ready to merely worshipping the gods - in fact, he insisted on questioning traditions and thus marked him as an outsider of his own culture. The spine of the novel concerns the ferocious contention between Aton and the Ammon. Pharoach Akhenaten sought to disestablish the old gods with a relatively unknown deity called the Aton as the Ammon, the present godly sponsor, had accumulated so much wealth and power that the Ammon priests began to rival to that of the Pharoach. In order to achieve balance of power between Ammon and the throne, Akhenaten deposed the ancient gods and established Aton as a new state divinity. No sooner had Akhenaten adopted the new deity than Sinuhe ineluctably became entangled in conflict between tradition and innovation. Sinuhe must choose between the way of the heretic Pharoach and the old corrupt system that had blinded many and robbed the freedom of Egyptians. Miki Waltari deftly uses a prose style evocative of ancient texts that is comparable to Naguib Mahfouz's work in modern Egyptian literature. Unlike Mahfouz, Waltari's book is the first major novel set in ancient Egypt during the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom in 14th century BC The Egyptian, comibing history, research and imagination, is a timeless re-creation of such largely forgotten era over a prodigious interval of time. The book captures the nuances of war, intrigue, power struggle, wassail, romance, horror, and lavish scnenes of violence. From Sinuhe's intransigence to worshipping false gods springs forth a tale of death and love, man's corruption, cruelty, and lust for power and the warfare between two value systems and religions that amazingly reflect our world today. 2004 (19) © MY

Mika Waltari's "The Egyptian" tells us the story of one physician of ancient Egypt, Sinuhe, set against the background of the reign of the fourth pharaoh Amenhotep, whose attempt to impose monotheism on his polytheistic country was one of the strangest and most fascinating experiments of early civilization. Sinuhe is a foundling, adopted by a lowly physician, and in the tradition of ancient times, trained to follow in his adopted father's footsteps, coming of age at the same time a decisive event is about to take place: the death of the reigning pharaoh, Amenhotep III, around 1380 BC, and the accession of his son, Amenhotep IV, who styled himself Akhenaton. Sinuhe is a loner and a wanderer, whose self-imposed exile from his native country takes him to Syria, the ancient Hittite kingdom of Hatti, and Crete, before finally returning to Egypt, at the same time that Akhenaton attempts to overthrow the reigning god Ammon and his priests, and install his own vision, Aton, the one and eternal god, in Ammon's place. As a political move, trimming Ammon's power in Egypt may have been a wise idea; the priests' power had grown so great that it was challenging that of pharaoh himself. But as a religious experiment it was a disaster, especially in a country as rigidly conservative as ancient Egypt where change of any kind was anathema. We see Akhenaton as a visionary out of touch with reality and with his people, a tragic figure doomed to failure. And we share Sinuhe's ambivalence about this enigmatic figure, intrigued by pharaoh's vision of one just god who brings equality to all mankind, but repelled by the spreading social chaos this vision brings with it, especially when it threatens his own security and the lives of those he loves.Waltari bring us some of the people that have only existed in the pages of history books -- Akhenaton himself, his incredibly beautiful wife Nefertiti, his scheming, conniving mother Queen Taia, the boy king Tut, and Horemheb, the military general who became pharaoh after Akhenaton's death plunged the country into near anarchy. But "The Egyptian" fortunately doesn't read like a history textbook; Waltari makes ancient Egypt and his characters come vibrantly alive. And Sinuhe himself is wholly believable; a man of his own time and all time, sometimes wise, sometimes foolish in the extreme, trying to find his own place in his world, sometimes succeeding and sometimes not. Waltari is not only a great novelist but a fine historian, and he kept the background scrupulously accurate. The book is true to its time and its location, and Naomi Walford's excellent translation into English keeps the reader moving along effortlessly from the first page to the last. "The Egyptian" is Waltari's masterpiece; it's one of the best historical novels ever written.

If one reads no other novel by a Finn, one must read Waltari's "The Egyptian." It is arguably the greatest work of Finnish literature in much the same way that Dvorak's New World Symphony is arguably the greatest work of Czech music. Each brings a national influence to what has essentially been an international masterpiece from its very inception. An American bestseller for a period after its first publication in English, The Egyptian has remained stubbornly popular throughout Europe with every new generation of literate readers.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