Naguib Mahfouz: Three Novels of Ancient Egypt

Zaya, one of Mahfouz's many varieties of female beauty, has caught the eye of the inspector of the pyramid, Bisharu, and does not fail to see survival for herself and the child in getting him to marry her. Mahfouz's conception of beauty includes intelligence, he may be claimed to be a feminist, particularly when, in later novels he is depicting a Muslim society where women's place is male-decreed. This is a bold position in twentieth-century Egypt, though nothing as dangerous as his criticism, through the lives of his characters, of aspects of Islamic religious orthodoxy that brought him accusations of blasphemy and a near-fatal attack by a fanatic. Djedef chooses a military career; his ‘mother’ proudly sees him as a future officer of the Pharaoh's charioteers. While his putative father asks himself whether he should continue to claim this progeniture or proclaim the truth? Pharaoh Khufu has been out of the action and the reader's sight; almost seems the author has abandoned the subject of Khufu's wisdom. But attention about-turns momentously.

As Djedef rises from rank to rank in his military training, Pharaoh has the news from his architect: the pyramid is completed, ‘for eternity… it will be the temple within whose expanse beat the hearts of millions of your worshippers'. Fulfilment of Khufu's hubris? Always the unforeseen, from Mahfouz. Khufu has gone through a change. He does not rejoice and when Mirabu asks ‘What so clearly preoccupies the mind of my lord?', comes the reply, ‘Has history ever known a king whose mind was carefree?… Is it right for a person to exult over the construction of his grave?’ As for the hubris of immortality: ‘Do not forget… the fact that immortality is itself a death for our dear, ephemeral lives… What have I done for the sake of Egypt?… what the people have done for me is double that which I have done for them.’ Khufu has decided to write ‘a great book', ‘guiding their souls and protecting their bodies’ with knowledge. The place where he will write it is the burial chamber in his pyramid.

Mahfouz puts Khufu's wisdom to what surely is the final test: attempted parricide when Khafra's professed love for his father is shown to mask an impatience to inherit the throne. This horror is foiled only by another: Djedef killing Khufu's own seed, Khafra. What irony in tragedy conveyed by vivid scenes of paradox: it is the sorcerer's pronouncement that is fulfilled, not the hubris of an eternal abode. Djedef of divine prophecy is declared future pharaoh, after a moving declaration by a father who has seen his own life saved — only by the death of his son. He calls for papyrus: ‘that I may conclude my book of wisdom with the gravest lesson that I have learned in my life'. Then he throws the pen away. With it goes the vanity of human attempt at immortality; Khufu's wisdom attained.

The second novel of the trilogy opens in Hollywood if not Bollywood flamboyance with the festival of the flooding of the Nile. The story has as scaffold a politico-religious power conflict within which is an exotic exploration of that other power, the sexual drive.

This is an erotic novel. A difficult feat for a writer; nothing to do with pornography, closer to the representation of exalted states of being captured in poetry. The yearly flooding of the Nile is the source of Egypt's fertility, fecundity, source of life, as is sexual attraction between male and female.

There are two distractions during the public celebrations before the Pharaoh; omens. A voice in the throng yells ‘Long live His Excellency Khnumhotep’ and the young Pharaoh is startled and intrigued by a woman's golden sandal dropped into his lap by a falcon. The shout is no innocent drunken burst of enthusiasm for the prime minister. It is a cry of treason. The sandal isn't just some bauble that has caught the bird of prey's eye, it belongs to Rhadopis.

The Pharaoh, ‘headstrong… enjoys extravagance and luxury, and is as rash and impetuous as a raging storm', intends to take from the great establishment of the priesthood, representative of the gods who divinely appoint pharaohs, the lands and temples whose profits will enable him to construct palaces. His courtiers are troubled: ‘It is truly regrettable that the king should begin his reign in confrontation.’ ‘Let us pray that the gods will grant men wisdom… and forethought.’ His subjects in the crowd are excitedly speculating about him. ‘How handsome he is!’ His ancestors of the Sixth Dynasty ‘in their day, how those pharaohs filled the eyes and hearts of their people'. “I wonder what legacy he will bequeath?'

A beautiful boat is coming down the Nile from the island of Biga. ‘It is like the sun rising over the eastern horizon.’ Aboard is ‘Rhadopis the enchantress and seductress… She lives over there in her enchanting white palace… where her lovers and admirers head to compete for her affections.'

No wonder Mahfouz later wrote successful film scripts; already he knew the art, the flourish, of the cut. Rhadopis of Nubia is the original femme fatale. The ravishing template. Not even descriptions of Cleopatra can compare. The people gossip: enthralled, appalled, ‘Do you not know that her lovers are the cream of the kingdom?'; spiteful, ‘She's nothing but a dancer… brought up in a pit of depravity… she has given herself over to wantonness and seduction'; infatuated, ‘Her wondrous beauty is not the only wealth the gods have endowed her with… Thoth [god of wisdom] has not been mean with wisdom and knowledge'; sardonic, ‘To love her is an obligation upon the notables of the upper classes, as though it were a patriotic duty.'

Mahfouz is the least didactic of writers. He's always had nimble mastery of art's firm injunction: don't tell, show. Overhearing the talk one's curiosity is exhilaratingly aroused as if one were there among the crowd, even while unnoticingly being informed of themes that are going to carry the narrative.

Prime minister Khnumhotep favours, against the Pharaoh's intent, the priests’ campaign to claim their lands and temples as inalienable right. The bold challenge of calling out his minister's name on a grand public occasion has hurt and angered the Pharaoh; his chamberlain Sofkhatep and Tahu, commander of the guards, are concerned. There's juxtaposed another kind of eavesdrop, on an exchange between these two which goes deeper than its immediate significance, dispute over the priests’ possessions. Tahu urges Pharaoh, ‘Force, my lord… Do not procrastinate… strike hard.’ Sofkhatep, ‘My lord… the priesthood is dispersed throughout the kingdom as blood through the body… Their authority over the people is blessed by divine sanction… A forceful strike might bring undesired consequences.’ Pharaoh chillingly responds, ‘Do not trouble yourselves… I have already shot my arrow.’ He has had brought to him the man who cried out, told him his act was despicable, awed him with the magnanimity of not ordering him punished, declaring it ‘simple-minded to think that such a cry would distract me from the course I have set upon… I had decided irrevocably… that from today onward nothing would be left to the temples save the land and offerings they need.'

Something that does distract the young Pharaoh from problems of his reign is the fall from the blue — the gold sandal. Sofkhatep remarks that the people believe the falcon courts beautiful women, whisks them away. Pharaoh is amazed: the token dropped in his lap is as if the bird ‘knows my love for beautiful women'. The gold sandal is Rhadopis's, recognized by Sofkhatep. Tahu seems perturbed when Pharaoh asks who she is; a hint dropped of a certain circumstance that will give him an identity rather different from official one of general. He informs that she is the woman on whose door distinguished men knock. Sofkhatep adds, ‘In her reception hall, my lord, thinkers, artists, and politicians gather… The philosopher Hof… has remarked… the most dangerous thing a man can do in his life is to set eyes upon the face of Rhadopis.'