page_title: The Egyptian
section_title: Plot
hierarchical_section_title: The Egyptian / Summary / Plot
caption_attribution_description: English: Relief of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and two daughters adoring the Aten. 18th dynasty, reign of Akhenaten. Français&#160;: Akhenaton et sa famille accomplissant une offrande pour le Globe Aton (dalle trouvée dans la tombe royale). 18e dynastie, règne d'Akhénaton
context_page_description: The Egyptian is a historical novel by Mika Waltari. It was first published in Finnish in 1945, and in an abridged English translation by Naomi Walford in 1949, from Swedish rather than Finnish. Regarded as "one of the greatest books in Finnish literary history", it is, so far, the only Finnish novel to be adapted into a Hollywood film, which happened in 1954.
  The Egyptian is the first and the most successful, of Waltari's great historical novels, and which gained him international fame. It is set in Ancient Egypt, mostly during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten of the 18th Dynasty, whom some have claimed to be the first monotheistic ruler in the world.
  The novel is known for its high-level historical accuracy of the life and culture of the period depicted. At the same time, it also carries a pessimistic message of the essential sameness of flawed human nature throughout the ages.
context_section_description: Sinuhe recounts, in his old age at his location of forced exile by the Red Sea coast, the events of his life. His tone expresses cynicism, bitterness and disappointment; he says humans are vile and will never change, and that he's writing down his story for therapeutic reasons alone and for something to do in the rugged and desolate desert landscape.
  Sinuhe begins his life as a foundling discovered in a reed boat in the Nile, and grows up in the poor part of Thebes. His adoptive father Senmut is a doctor, and Sinuhe decides to walk in his footsteps. As an assistant to a royal doctor who knows his adoptive father, Sinuhe is allowed visit the court, during a trepanation on the dying Amenhotep III – here Sinuhe, the young crown prince Akhenaten and Horemheb meet for the first time. Well educated, Sinuhe sets up a clinic and acquires the sly and eloquent slave Kaptah, who will be his companion and close friend throughout his life.
  One day he gets acquainted with the gorgeous woman Nefernefernefer and is bewitched by her. Nefernefernefer gets Sinuhe to give her everything he owns – even his adoptive parents' house and grave. When the woman has realised that Sinuhe has run out of possessions, she gets rid of him. Ashamed and dishonored, Sinuhe arranges his adoptive parents to be embalmed and buries them in the Valley of the Kings (they had taken their lives before eviction), after which he decides to go to exile in the company of Kaptah to Levant, which was under Egyptian rule at the time.
  In Syria, his medical skill earns him fame and wealth. During an Egyptian military operation in Syria, he re-encounters Horemheb, serving as a military commander. From this, Sinuhe is commissioned to travel at his expense in the known world to determine what military potential the established nations have.
  Sinuhe, in company of Kaptah, travels first to Babylon where he engages in science and socializes with the city's scholars. One day he is summoned to the sick king Burraburiash, whom he manages to cure. Soon Kaptah is selected for the traditional day of the false king, where the city's greatest fool is king for a day and then killed. A young Cretan woman named Minea has been recently acquired to the king's harem against her will; during a feast Sinuhe, in the process of falling in love with her, smuggles Minea and Kaptah from the palace and flees with the two to the neighboring country Mitanni. From there they proceed to Anatolia and to the fast-growing Hittite empire. Sinuhe and his companions feel unhappy about the militarism and tough rule of law that characterize the kingdom of the Hittites, and they decide to leave Anatolia and sail to Crete, Minea's homeland.
  Minea has grown up with the mission to sacrifice herself as a virgin to the local bull god who lives in a mountain cave at the sea. Sinuhe is horrified by this and fears that he will not see her again. In the evening before Minea should enter the mountain cave, they marry each other unofficially. A while after Minea has been escorted into the mountain cave, Sinuhe enters the cave in search for her. He finds Minea's dead body and the remains of the Cretan god (described as a bull-headed sea serpent), and realises that she has been killed by the god's high priest Minotaurus to prevent her from returning and telling the god is dead. Sinuhe loses his mind from grief, but Kaptah eventually succeeds in calming him down and convinces him that it's best to move on and return to Syria.
  In Syria, Sinuhe returns to medical profession and successfully regains his previous status. He notices, however, that the Egyptian sovereignty in the area has now begun to be questioned and threatened. This rebellious mood is triggered not in the least by the Syrian, Hittite-friendly Prince Aziru, whom Sinuhe still befriends, among other things, through a medical assignment.
  One day Sinuhe decides to return to Egypt. He sails to Thebes and opens a clinic for the poor in the same neighborhood he grew up in. He does not get rich in this, being driven by ideological motives instead. His slave Kaptah (now rel
caption: Pharaoh Akhenaten with his family worshiping the solar disc Aten. In the novel, Akhenaten seeks to bring about an utopia with his new religion.
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