Read the Places

The Thebes of The Egyptian

The physician Sinuhe tells the story of his life across the turbulent reign of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten in fourteenth-century-BC Egypt. Waltari anchors it in the real ancient geography of the Nile: Thebes with its great temple of Amun, the House of Death across the river where Sinuhe learns his craft, Akhenaten's new sun-city of Akhetaten raised in the desert, the old capital of Memphis, and the far cities of the east to which Sinuhe's wanderings carry him.

Author
Mika Waltari, 1945
Places
5

Open the interactive map →

The early books0% in
Merit

Thebes and Karnak

The early books

Map of Thebes and Karnak today
Thebes today

In teeming Thebes, under the shadow of Amun's great temple, Sinuhe practises medicine among rich and poor and loves Merit, the tavern-keeper's daughter, the one steady tenderness of his restless life. The city, priest-ridden and magnificent, is the fixed point against which the coming religious upheaval is measured.

The early and middle books

explicitSinuhe's Thebes is the real ancient capital of Waset at modern Luxor, dominated by the vast temple of Amun at Karnak; the city is the home he returns to and the tavern where the woman he loves, Merit, works.

Open in Google Maps ↗Street View ↗

Book 125% in
Sinuhe

The House of Death, Thebes

Book 1

Map of The House of Death, Thebes today
Thebes today

Ruined young by a woman and by his own folly, Sinuhe is driven to the House of Death among the embalmers on the west bank, and there learns the trade and the disillusion that shadow him ever after. The city of the dead, opposite the city of the living, gives the book its long meditation on mortality.

Book 1

explicitAcross the river on the Theban west bank, near the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings, lie the embalmers' workshops, the House of Death, where the disgraced Sinuhe learns the craft that seals bodies for eternity.

Open in Google Maps ↗Street View ↗

The middle books50% in
Akhenaten

Akhetaten (Amarna)

The middle books

Map of Akhetaten (Amarna) today
Thebes today

As royal physician, Sinuhe follows Akhenaten to the gleaming new sun-city of Akhetaten, watching the visionary, ruinous king try to replace all the old gods with a single loving Aten. Waltari makes the doomed capital, abandoned within a generation, the emblem of an idealism too pure for the world it tries to remake.

The middle books

explicitThe pharaoh Akhenaten raises a wholly new capital, Akhetaten, in the desert at the site of modern Amarna, dedicated to the sun-disc Aten; the real short-lived city is the seat of his religious revolution.

Open in Google Maps ↗Street View ↗

The later books75% in
Horemheb

Memphis

The later books

Map of Memphis today
Thebes today

In Memphis, the old administrative and military capital, the pragmatic soldier Horemheb gathers the strength that will restore the old gods and, in time, make him pharaoh. His cold realism, set against Akhenaten's failed dream, embodies the book's bitter lesson about how the world is actually ruled.

The later books

explicitMemphis, the real ancient capital at the head of the Nile delta, is the northern seat of power and of the army; the hard general Horemheb rises there toward the throne as Akhenaten's kingdom fails.

Open in Google Maps ↗Street View ↗

The travel books100% in
Sinuhe

Babylon (the wanderings)

The travel books

Map of Babylon (the wanderings) today
Thebes today

Sent abroad and driven by curiosity, Sinuhe journeys through Babylon and the other kingdoms of the age, gathering knowledge and disillusion in equal measure. His wanderings widen the book into a survey of the whole ancient world, everywhere finding the same cruelty and the same fragile human decency.

The travel books

explicitSinuhe's travels as a physician carry him east to Babylon and other great cities of the ancient world; Babylon, on the Euphrates, is a real city, far outside the Egyptian setting.

Open in Google Maps ↗Street View ↗