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Pharaoh (Prus novel)

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Pharaoh "Ramses XIII" (center) with high priests Herhor (left) and Mefres in Jerzy Kawalerowicz's 1966 film based on Bolesław Prus' novel Pharaoh.

Pharaoh (Polish: Faraon) is the fourth and last major novel by the Polish writer Bolesław Prus. It was composed over a year's time in 1894-1895 and was the sole historical novel by an author who had earlier disapproved of historical novels.

Pharaoh is a study of mechanisms of political power, described against the backdrop of the fall of Egypt's Twentieth Dynasty and New Kingdom. It is, at the same time, one of the most compelling literary reconstructions of life at every level of ancient Egyptian society.

Pharaoh has been translated into a score of languages. In 1966 it was adapted as a Polish feature film.

History of publication

Pharaoh, like Prus' previous novels, originally appeared in newspaper serialization (1895-1896); unlike them, however, it had first been composed in its entirety, rather than being written in chapters from issue to issue. The first book edition, in three volumes (still minus the remarkable epilog, which would later be restored), appeared in 1897. Except in wartime, the book has never been out of print in Poland.

Subject

Pharaoh's story covers a two-year period ending in 1085 B.C.E. with the demise of the Egyptian Twentieth Dynasty and New Kingdom.

The late Polish Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz wrote of Pharaoh:

"The daring conception of [Prus'] novel Pharaoh... is matched by its excellent artistic composition. It [may] be [described] as a novel on... mechanism[s] of state power and, as such, is probably unique in world literature of the nineteenth century.... Prus, [in] selecting the reign of 'Pharaoh Ramses XIII' [the last Ramesside was actually Ramses XI] in the eleventh century [B.C.E.], sought a perspective that was detached from... pressures of [topicality] and censorship. Through his analysis of the dynamics of an ancient Egyptian society, he... suggest[s] an archetype of the struggle for power that goes on within any state. [Prus] convey[s] certain views [regarding] the health and illness of civilizations.... Pharaoh [...] is a work worthy of Prus' intellect and [is] one of the best Polish novels."

The protagonist, Ramses, learns that those who would oppose the priesthood are vulnerable to cooption, seduction, subornation, defamation, intimidation or assassination. Perhaps the chief lesson, belatedly absorbed by Ramses, is the importance, to power, of knowledge or science.

As a political novel, Pharaoh became a favorite of Joseph Stalin's. Its English translator, Christopher Kasparek, has recounted presciently wondering, well in advance of the event, whether President John F. Kennedy would meet with a fate like that of the book's young protagonist.

Inspirations

Pharaoh drew from many sources for its inspiration. Depicting the demise of Egypt's New Kingdom three thousand years earlier, the book also reflects the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's demise in 1795, a century before Pharaoh's completion.

A preliminary sketch for Prus' only historical novel was his first historical short story, "A Legend of Old Egypt." This remarkable short story shows clear parallels with the subsequent novel in setting, theme and denouement.

"A Legend of Old Egypt," in its turn, had taken inspiration from contemporaneous events: the fatal illnesses of Germany's warlike Kaiser Wilhelm I and of his reform-minded successor, Friedrich III. The latter emperor would, then unbeknown to Prus, survive Wilhelm, but only by ninety-nine days.

In preparation for composing Pharaoh, Prus made a thorough study of Egyptological sources and actually incorporated ancient texts into his novel like tesserae into a mosaic. Drawn from one such text was a major character, Ennana.

For certain of the novel's prominent features, Prus — conscientious journalist and scholar that he was — seems to have insisted on having two sources. Thus the historical Egyptian Labyrinth was described in the fifth century B.C.E. in Book II of The Histories of Herodotus by the Father of History, Herodotus, who visited Egypt's entirely stone-built administrative center, pronounced it more impressive than the pyramids, declared it "beyond my power to describe," then proceeded to give a striking description that Prus incorporated bodily into his novel. The Labyrinth was made palpably real for Prus, however, by an 1878 visit he made to the famous ancient labyrinthine salt mine at Wieliczka, near Kraków in southern Poland. According to the foremost Prus scholar, Zygmunt Szweykowski, "The power of the Labyrinth scenes stems, among other things, from the fact that they echo Prus' own experiences when visiting Wieliczka."

Another dually-determined feature of the novel is the "Suez Canal" that the Phoenician Prince Hiram proposes digging. The modern Suez Canal had been completed by Ferdinand de Lesseps in 1869, a quarter-century before Prus commenced writing Pharaoh. But, as Prus was aware in chapter one, it had had a predecessor in a canal connecting the Nile River with the Red Sea (during Egypt's Middle Kingdom, centuries before the period of the novel).

A third dually-determined feature was inspired by a solar eclipse that Prus had witnessed at Mława, a hundred kilometers north-northwest of Warsaw, on August 19, 1887, the day before his fortieth birthday. Prus likely was also aware of Christopher Columbus' manipulative use of a lunar eclipse on February 29, 1504 — while marooned for a year on Jamaica — in an incident which strikingly resembles the exploitation of a solar eclipse by Ramses' chief antagonist, Herhor, high priest of Amon.

Finally, a fourth dually-determined feature relates to Egyptian beliefs about an afterlife. In 1893, the year before beginning his novel, Prus had started taking an intense interest in Spiritualist mediumism, attending many Warsaw séances. Modern Spiritualism had been initiated in 1848 in Hydeville, New York, by the Fox sisters, Katie and Margaret, aged 11 and 15, and had survived even their 1888 confession that forty years earlier they had caused the "spirits'" telegraph-like tapping sounds by snapping their toe joints. Spiritualist "mediums" in America and Europe claimed to communicate through tapping sounds with spirits of the dead, eliciting their secrets and conjuring up voices, music, noises and other antics, and occasionally working "miracles" such as levitation. Contemporary Spiritualism inspired several of Pharaoh's most striking scenes, especially the secret meeting at the Temple of Seth in Memphis between three Egyptian priests — Herhor, Mefres, Pentuer — and the Chaldean magus-priest Berossus.

Prus, a disciple of Positivist philosophy, harbored an abiding faith in the redemptive virtues of science. As such, he was aware of Eratosthenes' remarkably accurate calculation of the earth's circumference, and the invention of a steam engine by Heron of Alexandria, centuries after the period of his novel, in Alexandrian Egypt. In chapter 60, he fictitiously credits these achievements to the priest Menes, one of three individuals of the identical name who are mentioned or depicted in Pharaoh: Prus was not always fastidious about characters' names.

Prus indeed took characters' names where he found them, sometimes anachronistically or anatopistically; at other times he apparently invented them. The origins of the names of some prominent characters may be of interest:

Popularity

As a "political novel," Pharaoh since 1895 has gained fresh relevance with each decade. The book's undiminished popularity with readers, however, is as much due to more universal qualities: to a critical but sympathetic view of human nature and the human condition, and to an implicit advocacy for the cultivation of knowledge as a means to mankind's spiritual and material betterment. The book is written in limpid prose, suffused with poetry, leavened with humor.

Pharaoh has been translated into a score of languages: Armenian, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Ukrainian. In 1966 it was produced as a Polish feature film.

References:

  • Zygmunt Szweykowski, Nie tylko o Prusie: szkice (Not Only about Prus: Sketches), Poznań, Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1967.
  • Herodotus, The Histories, Newly translated and with an Introduction by Aubrey de Selincourt, Harmondsworth, England, Penguin Books, 1965, Book II, pp. 160-61.

See also

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