Voices from the Other World by Naguib Mahfouz Page A

fourth story is fashioned in part from a classic Egyptian text,
The Tale of Sinuhe
. In “The Return of Sinuhe,” Mahfouz includes many of the ancient story’s elements— but adds a crucial one only vaguely implied in the Middle Kingdom original: the romance. Parkinson, one of
The
Tale of Sinuhe’s most famous translators 2 and a renowned expert on ancient Egyptian literature overall, calls the nearly four-thousand-year-old poem “a fictional work of the highest artistry.” He is equally enamored of Mahfouz’s version—which Parkinson has hailed as “wonderful.”
    The fifth and final story offers an appropriately spiritual exit from Mahfouz’s ancient Egyptian universe. “A Voice from the Other World” astoundingly anticipates, by at least three decades, the popular wave of “out-of-body experience” literature that swept the publishing world in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet it is almost certainly set in the time of Rameses II (r. 1198–1166 BC), as the story’s protagonist appears loosely modeled on Pentaweret (Pentu-wer)—once thought to have composed the epic poem that he inscribed on this king’s monuments trumpeting the (much-disputed) triumph over the Hittite forces at Qadesh. Likewise, the other period details are for the most part plausible. These include Mahfouz’s description of the tomb and its contents, his reference to the feast of Isis, plus his repeated use of the ancient (and still extant) Egyptian identification of the West—the land of the sunset—as the abode of Death. And, with one or two minor exceptions, Mahfouz renders the methods of mummification employed in the New Kingdom with gruesome precision. Even more importantly, however, he creates a truly vivid glimpse into that other existence after this one—and his vision is sanguine.
    And so this quintet of vintage tales has been saved from the near oblivion that for many years had claimed them. The same fate had befallen his three early pharaonic novels, as well:
‘Abath al-aqdar
(
Khufu’s Wisdom
, 1939);
Radubis
(
Rhadopis
, 1943), and
Kifah Tiba
(
Thebes at
War
, 1944). They had been overshadowed by his splendid Cairo Trilogy (
Palace Walk, Palace of Desire
, and
Sugar Street
) and other works set in modern Cairo and Alexandria. But no more. Thanks to the American University in Cairo Press, which brought out his brilliant 1985 novella
al-‘A’ish fi-l-haqiqa
, set in ancient Egypt, under the title
Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth
(translated by Tagried Abu-Hassabo), in 1998, these hidden historical gems will soon make their debut in English. (They began to appear in Europe, principally in French, Italian, and Spanish, in the 1990s.)
    Together with this book, they launch a much-deserved introduction of some of the master’s finest (but most unusual, and least familiar) works to readers of English. Like their ninety-year-old author, their spirits, for all their wisdom, remain forever young—though they speak with voices from a world much different from the one for which he is best known.
    The translator thanks Roger Allen, Kathleen Anderson, Hazem Azmy, Brooke Comer, Gaballa Ali Gaballa, Zahi Hawass, Prince Abbas Hilmi, Shirley Johnston, Klaus Peter Kuhlmann, Mark Linz, Bojana Mojsov, Richard B. Parkinson, Donald Malcolm Reid, Veronica Rodriguez, Rainer Stadelmann, Paul Theroux, Peter Theroux, and David Wilmsen for their helpful comments on the present work, as well as Kelly Zaug and R. Neil Hewison for their excellent editing. And, above all, he thanks Naguib Mahfouz—for patiently, as always, answering endless questions about these stories.

Evil Adored

    Before the first king ruled on the throne of Egypt, the great valley of the Nile was divided into independent districts, each with its own god, religion, and sovereign. One of these nomes, called Khnum, was famed for its fertile soil, favorable climate, and plentiful population. Yet its