The Tallest Literary Pyramid: The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Opening the cursed tomb of a pharaoh was my childhood dream. I was fascinated by the ancient culture, hieroglyphs and pyramids. I read all I could about these things.

Then I got a novel, The Egyptian, by Mika Waltari, a Finnish novelist. It was a Christmas gift from my mother, who had seen my monomaniac interest in Egypt. I was 12 years old.

Since that Christmas, The Egyptian has been with me, especially its main character, Sinuhe.

I read it almost every year. And it still fascinates me and keeps me reading, imagining, crying, laughing, and pondering life. Since my teenage years, the book has revealed its hidden layers, taking me to the core of its mystery: what it is to be a human buried deep in the pyramids of customs, cultures and communities.

But still, I feel that I have not opened all its secret vaults and hidden chambers.

“He who once drunk of Nile water will forever yearn to be by the Nile again.”― Mika Waltari, The Egyptian.

Fast backwards 3300 years and fast forward a lifetime

The Egyptian is about an outsider, Sinuhe, who didn’t know his parents and family. The old couple he called his parents picked him up from the river Nile, where somebody put him in a little basket skilfully made of reeds and left him floating to his death.

And so was Sinuhe’s destiny sealed: to be floating through his life, not knowing for sure but constantly guessing, curiously trying to find answers but never becoming truly satisfied and free of doubts.

Senmut, whom he called father, was a physician of the poor and forgotten. Sinuhe learned from him the value of the art of medicine, but unfortunately, not wisdom.

Senmut and his wife Kipa were humble people and troubled to see Sinuhe’s restless soul dragging the young man to the worldly dangers of lust, loss, love and longing. They gave him everything but didn’t get anything back — until it was too late for them to enjoy their son’s brilliance.

Instead of embracing them with his love while living, Sinuhe, filled with regret, guilt, and shame, finally mummified them to give them eternal life in death.

This betrayal and loss is the pain that keeps the reader turning pages. You try to shout to Sinuhe to make him see his actions and himself in them, but Waltari has captured him inside the iron bars of narrative that won’t let Sinuhe free. And the skill of Waltari is such that he won’t let the reader free either, not even after they have turned the last page where it reads:

“I, Sinuhe, the son of Senmut and of his wife Kipa, write this. I do not write it to the glory of the gods in the land of Kem, for I am weary of gods, nor to the glory of the Pharaohs, for I am weary of their deeds. I write neither from fear nor from any hope of the future but for myself alone. During my life I have seen, known, and lost too much to be the prey of vain dread; and, as for the hope of immortality, I am as weary of that as I am of gods and kings. For my own sake only I write this; and herein I differ from all other writers, past and to come.” ― Mika Waltari, The Egyptian.

A tome of two parts and 15 chapters.

Part one: Journey to the world

The Egyptian is a long novel through the highs and lows of Sinuhe’s colourful life.

In part one, Sinuhe takes us with him to his happy childhood. We see the wonders of the land of Kem and its glorious capital, Thebes. Its buzzing life surrounds little Sinuhe, feeding his curiosity and lust for knowledge.

He becomes an apprentice to a local physician and eventually starts serving the old pharaoh’s court. He sees this opportunity as his chance to succeed. However, his life turns when he encounters the first blow of destiny (or his foolishness) in the form of a woman, NeferNeferNefer, who is so beautiful that her name has to be said three times in awe. She is a seductive and manipulative woman who takes away young Sinuhe’s innocence and drains his parents’ meagre fortune.

To forget, to regret and to rebuild his life and wealth after NeferNeferNefer’s deceit, Sinuhe was forced to sell himself into slavery.

As a slave, Sinuhe met his pragmatic, funny and streetwise companion, Kaptah, who purchased Sinuhe free with the money Kaptah had earned as a slave himself. And so begins their Journey through the known world — two former slaves, one educated and eloquent but foolish, one streetwise, witty and loyal rock in the stormy waters of Sinuhes’s life.

This part of Sinuhe’s Journey is a hectic pursuit for knowledge and wealth that Kaptah guards like a manager of a rock star. While Sinuhe is blissfully blind to the worldly realities, Kaptaht makes the most of them, saving not only money but also Sinuhe’s rear parts more than once.

Sinhue and Kaptha travelled to Syria, Babylon, Mittani, and Hatti before arriving in Crete. In the city of Knossos, he learns about the cruel legend of the Minotaur. Every year, a young woman had to be sacrificed to this monster. One of them is the beautiful Minea.

Sinuhe falls in love with Minea, but this love ends in tragedy, leaving deep scars on Sinuhe. He starts to doubt, becomes sceptical, and feels the distance between him and the world.

In his deep sorrow and pain of losing Minea, Sinuhe decides to sail back to Egypt. Again, with the help of Kaptha, he gets onto a ship and drifts away from his adventurous youth.

In the first part, Sinuhe becomes an adult and loses his belief in goodness in people. He is no longer a wide-eyed and bushy-tailed explorer but a man who has already tasted death, loss and betrayal. He is ready to face himself because he already knows the world.

Part two: journey to the self

But during the years of his travel, Egypt has changed. When Sinuhe returns, society will be in turmoil. People suffer; the old regime is toothless and full of ceremonies conducted by the established religious leaders, the priests of Ammon.

A new, monotheistic religion became the obsession of the young pharaoh Akhenaten. He wanted to establish the reign of the only god, Aten and govern as his manifestation on earth. This religious upheaval leads to societal and political conflicts.

Amid the societal tension, Sinuhe meets the young pharaoh and becomes his confidant and healer. Akhenaten is a tormented, sickly and obsessed young man. He wants only the best for the people but causes the worst for all.

Eyewitness of vile visions and misleading missions

Sinuhe sees this all. He witnesses the madness of the power and those who are power-hungry. He tries to justify the deeds of the barmy ruler and support him — he sees the intent but does not understand its impact. The old power, the priesthood of Amon, throws oil to the flames that are ready to burn the mighty Egypt to the ground.

In that power struggle, the young military man, Horemheb, seized the moment, took the power, and became the new pharaoh. Sinuhe knows him, and he knows Sinuhe — the only witness of everything. But instead of killing him, Horembeb sends his eloquent and all-lost friend to exile, where Sinuhe writes his life.

But before the rise of the new pharaoh, Sinuhe had to face the final blow of his destiny. The only true love of his life, Merit, and her son he didn’t know was his son, too, were killed by the rioting mob during the uproar agitated by the priests. It was the final straw that broke the neck of Sinuhe’s self-betrayal. Sinuhe has finally seen his life naked, without any glory or hope.

Mummiefied within the shrouds of loss but still living

There was nothing left for Sinuhe in life, but maybe that’s why Horembeh saved it. And perhaps we, as the readers, needed to read about Sinuhe to avoid his fate.

Tears come still to my eyes when I think of gentle Merit and the little son of the enigmatic Sinuhe, who might have had royal blood in his veins. Their death is cruel and unnecessary and a consequence of Sinuhe’s total blindness to see true love and belonging. Until it was too late.

The royal blood, fanatics and power-hungry manipulators have been poisoning the lives of ordinary people for thousands of years. They might have built pyramids but destroyed lives. But life goes on. People are born from those who were killed, and the history repeats itself. And we are blinded by our falsehoods and arrogance.

“So foolish is the heart of man that he ever puts his hope in the future, learning nothing from his past errors and fancying that tomorrow must be better than today.”― Mika Waltari, The Egyptian.

The pyramid of all historical novels

Mika Waltari’s novel is a marvel, but it has been noted that it contains one historical mistake: Waltari included sandflies in the Sahara desert, where they do not exist.

Apart from those sandflies, Waltari shows us ancient Egypt and its neighbours with vivid colours, smells, shapes, and eternal human beings occupying them in a comprehensive panorama and touching close-ups. You cannot help but feel ancient Egypt come alive in your imagination by reading the story of Sinuhe.

The Egyptian is not a mummified history but a living, moving and touching flow of times through people making, shaping and taking their self-importance and vanity to microscopic scrutiny.

It is a vivid, accurate and evocative tale of what it means to be a human now when times are again crushing us against the cold and unforgiving wall of conflicts, confusion and catastrophes.

“There is no difference between one man and another, for all are born naked into the world. A man cannot be measured by the colour of his skin, or by his speech, or by his clothes and jewels, but only by his heart. A good man is better than a bad man, and justice is better than injustice — and that is all I know.” ― Mika Waltari, The Egyptian.

Mika Waltari has written many literary pyramids, but The Egyptian is the tallest and most sibylline of them all. Its size is overwhelming, but once you tip your toe into the flow of its Nile, you are transported thousands of years back.

And when you return, you are not the same because Sinuhe has taught you through his life the thousands of years old mysteries of what it is to be a human in this time and the future.

How Hollywood Destroyed Egypt

Mika Waltari wrote The Egyptian — named initially in Finnish as Sinuhe — during WWII when Finland was fighting against its overwhelming enemy, the Soviet Union. The novel was published in 1945, right after the war ended and Finland remained independent.

Against this historical backdrop, the novel gains even greater historical relevance. Waltari, a master of historical transformations, describes the megatrends of changing tides in history with almost photorealistic accuracy and brilliant creative touch. He can show you the trend and then make you dive into the lives of the people who either drowned or surfed on those trends — over and over again through the centuries.

The Egyptian became an instant bestseller.

Even Hollywood was fascinated by it. It was filmed as a historical spectacle in 1954. It should have not been done. The movie destroyed the literary masterpiece and flopped for a good reason. It didn’t have a single stroke of Waltari’s genius in it.

However, Waltari’s novel has stood the test of time. The original Finnish version remains as modern, relevant, and disturbing as it was in 1945. The English translation is surprisingly well done, allowing readers to immerse themselves in the nuanced world Waltari brings to life.

When you open this book, you open the tomb of a pharaoh, Akhenaten, and the curse of it is that you will be haunted by its content for the rest of your life and beyond.

“For I, Sinuhe, am a human being. I have lived in everyone who existed before me and shall live in all who come after me. I shall live in human tears and laughter, in human sorrow and fear, in human goodness and wickedness, in justice and injustice, in weakness and strength. As a human being I shall live eternally in mankind. I desire no offerings at my tomb and no immortality for my name. This was written by Sinuhe, the Egyptian, who lived alone all the days of his life.” ― Mika Waltari, The Egyptian.