Thursday, May 31, 2018

The Egyptologist, by Arthur Phillips


A lengthy epistolary novel set within a frame tale.  Ralph Trilipush is an Oxford-educated Egyptologist from Harvard who has convinced the wealthy father of his fiancée, and some of his somewhat shady friends, to finance an exploration to find the tomb of the perhaps mythical King Atum-hadu.  His belief in the actual existence of this king is based on a few fragments of papyrus discovered while he was stationed in Egypt during the First World War.  Reaching from Australia in the late 1800s, to Egypt during and after the war, and into 1954, the main action takes place in the last months of 1922, when Howard Carter was on the verge of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in the same area Trilipush where hopes to find his king.  The plot is too intricate and complex to even attempt to summarize, and half the fun of this book is figuring out who is actually who and what has actually happened.  The other half is the witty writing.  As Trilipush meets with disaster after disaster in his quest, he spirals into a kind of madness.  Fame, fortune, and academia are all skewered.  With the St. Louis Art Museum hosting an exhibit of recent archeological finds from Egypt, it was particularly fortuitous to have this 2004 novel recommended to me.   Confusing at first, but rewarding as one proceeds.  383 pp.

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