A groundbreaking new translation of the only historical novel by noted Polish writer Boleslaw Prus. " . . . unique in world literature of the nineteenth century"--Czeslaw Milosz Imbued with poetry, leavened with humor, and graced with moments of transcendent beauty, Pharaoh offers a compelling picture of life at every level of ancient Egyptian society. As the story unfolds, Egypt is experiencing internal stresses and external threats that will culminate in the fall of its Twentieth Dynasty and New Kingdom. The young Pharaoh Ramses learns that challenging power leaves him vulnerable to seduction, defamation, intimidation and even assassination. The ultimate lesson learned by Ramses is the power of knowledge. Prus is a distinctive voice in world literature and was Joseph Conrad's favorite Polish writer. This new edition of Christopher Kasparek's translation of Pharaoh vividly brings this extraordinary novel to life. It includes a detailed foreword and annotations, based on extensive research and textual refinements, that will enhance the reader's appreciation not only for ancient Egypt, but also for Prus' composition process. Pharaoh has been translated into twenty-three languages and was adapted as a 1966 Polish feature film.

This historical fiction novel is set at the end of the reign of Pharaoh Ramses XII and the beginning of the reign of the young Pharaoh Ramses XIII. It is a long novel, but full of detail and with an intricate plot line. It shows the difficulties the young Ramses XIII had in trying to navigate a route for himself through the power of the priests and other political bodies. For anyone who enjoys this period in history, this is a must-read.

This book examines how the army developed as an engine of socio-economic and cultural integration in Egypt under Greco-Macedonian rule.

The book consists of three essays and is an extension of Freud’s work on psychoanalytic theory as a means of generating hypotheses about historical events. Freud hypothesizes that Moses was not Hebrew, but actually born into Ancient Egyptian nobility and was probably a follower of Akhenaten, an ancient Egyptian monotheist. Freud contradicts the biblical story of Moses with his own retelling of events, claiming that Moses only led his close followers into freedom during an unstable period in Egyptian history after Akhenaten (ca. 1350 BCE) and that they subsequently killed Moses in rebellion and later combined with another monotheistic tribe in Midian based on a volcanic God, Jahweh. Freud explains that years after the murder of Moses, the rebels regretted their action, thus forming the concept of the Messiah as a hope for the return of Moses as the Saviour of the Israelites. Freud said that the guilt from the murder of Moses is inherited through the generations; this guilt then drives the Jews to religion to make them feel better.

First published in the 1940s and widely condemned as obscene, The Egyptian outsold every other American novel published that same year, and remains a classic; readers worldwide have testified to its life-changing power. It is a full-bodied re-creation of a largely forgotten era in the world’s history: an Egypt when pharaohs contended with the near-collapse of history’s greatest empire. This epic tale encompasses the whole of the then-known world, from Babylon to Crete, from Thebes to Jerusalem, while centering around one unforgettable figure: Sinuhe, a man of mysterious origins who rises from the depths of degradation to get close to the Pharoah...