"Ancient Egypt from the Inside": The Life of Sinuhe, 4000 years on

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:01]I've been working on the life of Sinuh which is the undisputed masterpiece of ancient Egyptian writing. One of the great classics of world literature. It's been described as the first novel in human history, an Egyptian version of the Odyssey, an early version of the Exodus. It's many things, but at heart it's a fictional tomb memoir that tells of an official's life. And it gives us a sense of ancient Egypt from the inside.

[00:00:29]Not the idealizing narratives, but actually the human heart, the worries, the the [music] upsets of a life that goes really rather badly wrong. I think the poem takes us away from the great orientalist stereotypes [music] of ancient Egypt as ancient, alien, weird, religious. It takes us to the heart of the matter. common humanity [music] and really it's a very recognizable poem in some ways. It speaks absolutely to the modern age. It's all about how do you find a life in a foreign culture? How do you represent foreign cultures in the language and the ideas of your own world? It really can speak to the heart still and that's something I sensed early on and I think it's something the more you read it the more you feel that immediacy, that viscerality. [music] a great friend, the actress and novelist Barbara Euing is somebody I'd worked with about performing Egyptian works.

[00:01:23]And so as part of the commentary, [music] we had her record a reading of the poem to hear the pauses, the silences, to get the sense that something is going on underneath the words. I think that's something you can so easily miss even in a class. But when a performer is in front of you face to face, when you hear the words fresh and full of emotion, then it really it hits the heart, which is what it was designed to do.

[00:01:50]>> Look, Sinuhei has returned as an asatic, an offspring of the Syrian nomads.

[00:02:04]and she gave a very great cry.

[00:02:14]Reading the original, I find it impossible not to weep at the recognition scene. And it really has the whole weight of the book [music] behind it. And it's very simple. A woman screams, a man faints. But it it gets to the heart just like the recognition scene in King Lea. [music] It's the simplicity, the artistry, the complexity of the emotions, the conflicting emotions going on is very immediate and I think at that point time is is really not such a a difficult chasm to cross. It [music] is a stunningly composed work of art.