Amazon.com: The Egyptian: A Novel: Mika Waltari: Books

Review

"Waltari successfully combine[s] research, imagination, and the cunning of a good tale-teller in bringing the generation of Akhnaton to life.” —New York Herald Tribune

"A grand immersion into an epic tale." —Philadelphia Inquirer

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
First published in the United States in 1949 and widely condemned as obscene, The Egyptian outsold every other novel published that year, and remains a classic; readers worldwide have testified to its life-changing power. It is a full-bodied re-creation of a largely forgotten era in the world's history: the Egypt of the 14th century B.C.E., when pharaohs and gods contended with the near-collapse of history's greatest empire. This epic tale encompasses the whole of the then-known world, from Babylon to Crete, from Thebes to Jerusalem, while centering around one unforgettable figure: Sinuhe, a man of mysterious origins who rises from the depths of degradation to become personal physician to Pharaoh Akhnaton. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

Hardcover
Publisher: Putnam Pub Group (T) (June 1949)
ISBN-10: 0399102345
ISBN-13: 978-0399102349

Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (91 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #748,066 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

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First Sentence:
I, SINUHE, the son of Senmut and of his wife Kipa, write this. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
blood stancher, skull surgeon, corpse washers, holy sickness, royal linen, copper gates, golden whip, shoulder cloth, forbidden valley, heavy chariots, golden house, light chariots, royal headdress, false king, wine fumes, pleasure houses, reed boat, carrying chair, golden boat, roasting pit, poor quarter, poppy juice, reed swamps

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Pharaoh Akhnaton, House of Life, House of Death, Princess Baketamon, Lower Kingdom, Prince Shubattu, Western Land, Avenue of Rams, City of the Dead, King Aziru, Sinuhe the Egyptian, Day of the False King, Princess of Mitanni, Son of the Wild Ass, City of the Heavens, Two Kingdoms, Book of Life, King Burnaburiash, King Shubbiluliuma, Queen Nefertiti, Queen Taia, Hold Gaza, Pharaoh Amenhotep, Princess Baketaton, King of Babylon

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Customer Reviews

91 Reviews

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.7 out of 5 stars (91 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

90 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A magical historical novel, June 8, 2003

By	JLind555 - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Egyptian: A Novel (Paperback)

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.

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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Full-bodied recreation of the 14th century BC Egypt, April 18, 2004

By	Matthew M. Yau "Voracious reader" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Egyptian: A Novel (Paperback)

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

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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Arguably the greatest work of Scandinavian literature, November 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Egyptian (Library Binding)

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, na�ve 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.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars If you can get through it... a good story
The biggest obstacle in reading this for me was the dated language. Whether this is because it's a translation or because it was written a long time ago, it doesn't read like... Read more

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3.0 out of 5 stars Not such an interesting read
I know I am completely in the minority here, but I am being honest when I say that this book just didn't grab me the way it grabbed everyone else. Read more

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4.0 out of 5 stars Superb
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Published 12 months ago by J. A. Hunsinger

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply, LIFE
This book was suggested to me by a cardiologist before embarking on a career in medicine. It is very deep and talks to your soul about the human condition, and what we share in... Read more

Published 12 months ago by Jakkkke

5.0 out of 5 stars The Egyptian - an earthly struggle for the ethical
There are a million reviews of Waltari's work out there already, so I won't plague the internet with yet another in-depth one. Read more

Published 15 months ago by Valisa Sipila

4.0 out of 5 stars Walk like an Egyptian -- travel preparation for Egypt
I read this book sometime ago. I see no reason to recreate the wheel now. There are already dozens of competent, in-depth reviews of the literary contribution and the story... Read more

Published 16 months ago by Kenneth D. Gartrell

4.0 out of 5 stars The Egyptian: A Novel
Well written and historically accurate. Many of the main character's decisions were not logical given the events at that time. Read more

Published on May 9, 2007 by M. Cooney

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