Too Marvelous to Ignore and Too Mysterious to Comprehend

By Mirella Hodeib - Daily Star - Beirut, Lebanon
Friday, August 17, 2007

The Pyramid Texts, which evolved into the Book of the Dead, are the oldest religious writing from ancient Egypt that are known to us today.

A collection of spells and legends, the texts form the basis of much Egyptian religious theology and literature.

The oldest of the Pyramid Texts were found, in the form of funerary inscriptions, on the walls inside the Pyramid of Unas in the region of Saqqara.

In myriad, diverse ways, they describe the resurrection and ascension of the pharaos to the afterlife. What binds them together is their emphasis on the eternal existence of the king and their tendency to equate the sky with the realm of the afterlife.

Gamal al-Ghitani's "Pyramid Texts" was first published in Arabic as "Mutun al-Ahram" in 1994. An English edition, by award-winning literary translator Humphrey Davies, was published earlier this year by The American University in Cairo Press.

Ghitani uses the ancient texts as a point of departure, interpreting them, extrapolating from them and twisting them into fiction in a volume that is more a collection of stories than a novel. His take on the original Pyramid Texts is as intriguing and mesmerizing as the spells that are thousands of years old. They are, as Ghitani writes, "too marvelous to ignore and too mysterious to comprehend."

The great secret of the pyramids and the mystery of man's place in the universe are recurrent themes in the book.

Ghitani's volume demands a slow, ponderous read. But the subject matter crackles with controversy. Readers who are genuinely interested in (and relatively knowledgeable of) mystical and spiritual writings will consider Ghitani's book a gem; those who prefer their literary texts more concrete and grounded will probably find themselves flipping through the pages in frustration.

Yet Ghitani, considered by many to be Egypt's "cultural guard," plays on the slippery nature of the original spells to build his story, putting forth a series of meanings, disciplines and theories about life and death, and intertwining them all to form an engaging, at times magical tome.

Before he was a major contemporary novelist and an accomplished literary critic, Ghitani worked as a craftsman. He designed intricate carpets, and the influence of that labor permeates his writing, which exudes both serenity and a wild imagination.

As with the Pyramid Texts found in Saqqara, Ghitani's tales are not easily deciphered. They raise numerous questions about the quest for knowledge, death, resurrection and the afterlife.

Ghitani was born in 1945, into a poor family from Sohag inUpper Egypt. When he was a child, he and his family moved to the infamous Al-Hussein neighborhood of Old Cairo, where he trained as a carpet maker. Later, in 1969 he joined the editorial team of the daily newspaper Akhbar al-Yawm, a leading Egyptian newspaper.

A prolific writer, Ghitani is now the force behind the weekly supplement Akhbar al-Adab, Egypt's leading literary publication. He has published 13 novels and six collections of short stories. "Zayni Barakat" is probably his best-known novel in English translation.

In structure, Ghitani's "Pyramid Texts" follows the architecture of the pyramids themselves. The 14 spells that make up the book, each more abstract than the one that came before, grow shorter and shorter from beginning to end, eventually tapering into thin air. The last page of the book reads: "Nothing. Nothing. Nothing."

History and personal consciousness are the pillars of "Pyramid Texts." Even the most mystical of images carry strong social, political and psychological content. Ghitani's writing is, in fact, deeply entrenched in the traditions of Sufism and mystical Islam, all filtered through a fascination with ancient Egyptian civilization.

At times, echoes of Khalil Gibran sound in the text. At others, the shadow of Ibn Arabi's pantheism crawls across the page. Similar to ancient Egyptian mythology, where the pharaos and gods merge into singular entities, the author explores a thing and its opposite, such as knowledge and ignorance, and immortality and transience.

Davies' translation succeeds in rendering the author's meticulously crafted and notably sensual accounts. Responsible for translating Naguib Mahfouz's "Thebes at War," Elias Khoury's "Gate of the Sun" and Alaa al-Aswany's "The Yacoubian Building" Davies conveys Ghitani's prose with clarity and elegance. He captures the author's intricate meanings and symbols.

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