Naguib Mahfouz: Three Novels of Ancient Egypt

Cleopatra’s era is closer to the invention of the iPhone than it is to the construction of the pyramids of Giza. A podcast episode that I listened to years ago pointed this out. The fact still blows my mind. When they are mere numbers written on a page, the breadth of history’s timeline cannot be fully grasped until such a comparison is made; but to make those epochs come alive is a task for the novelist.

Khufu’s Wisdom is set in Ancient Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty (circa 2625 – 2500 BCE). Khufu, also known as Cheops, whose sarcophagus rests in the Great Pyramid of Giza, is the pharaoh to whom Egypt’s biggest pyramid is commonly attributed when people are not busy attributing it to aliens. Rhadopis of Nubia in the Sixth Dynasty (circa 2350 – 2710 BCE), gravitates around a courtesan and King Merenra’s short-lived reign. Thebes at War, set between the Seventeenth to Eighteenth Dynasty (1630-1292 BCE), reimagines the interval when Egypt was ruled by the Hyksos or “foreign kings”.

I have read several works by Naguib Mahfouz before taking on this trilogy but have found this to be the easiest to read and the most entertaining thus far! Yes, the language is grand and often pompous — it has to match its pharaonic subjects! Yes, some details can be politically incorrect by today’s standards — the publication years of each volume are as follows: 1939, 1943, and 1944! But reading this made me feel like a very young girl again; one who cannot help but be swept away with abandon into wondrous tales of the past. How I was able to imagine the stories as grand cinematic adaptations in my head is proof of Mahfouz’s skill as a storyteller!

Although the stories are easy to read, they are not as simple as they seem on the surface:

Khufu’s Wisdom is a classic contemplation on fate and duty, and about the difficult submission to both. My favorite passage comes from a secondary character who asks the protagonist, a skilled warrior, “And now, tell me, are you reading anything useful? …the virtuous mind never dismisses wisdom even for a day, just as the healthy stomach does not renounce food for a day… The virtue of the science of war is that it trains the soldier to serve his homeland and his sovereign with might, though his soul does not benefit at all. And the soldier who is ignorant of wisdom is like the faithful beast — nothing more… if the soul isn’t nourished by wisdom then it sinks to the level of the lesser creatures.”

It was in Rhadopis of Nubia where I felt the political undertones deepen. While it also questions the role of beauty and art, there are questions posed to corruption in theocracies and the tricky relationship between king and clergy. In the hall of Rhadopis, politicians and all manner of men gathered to be entranced, even though it was believed to be a most dangerous thing to set eyes upon her. Her tragic tale left me wondering whether she inspired Salman Rushdie’s Enchantress of Florence and whether she is, as I continue to reckon Rushdie’s enchantress, an allegory for Power.

Thebes at War is the most dramatic out of all the three and a most fitting finale for the trilogy. It is where one will find this line, “Weeping is no use, gentlemen. The past will disappear into ancient times and obliteration so long as you are content to do nothing but mourn it.” 

Mahfouz is a man who did more than mourn Egypt’s past. He has built literary edifices forged from existing architectural wonders and archaeological findings, constructed modern allegories out of ancient lives and times, and transformed them into timeless political missives — knowing that there will always be those who are doomed to forget and repeat the follies of history.