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Away with the Pharaohs


 

The Guardian 20 March, 2004 The House of the Eagle by Duncah Sprott, (480pp, Faber 12.99) is the first instalment in what its author has predictively titled "The Ptolemies Quartet", a sequence of historical novels that will follow the arc of the Pharaohs through 12 generations from the death of Alexander the Great to the fall of Cleopatra. Sprott's publishers are talking him up as the natural successor to Robert Graves and Mary Renault, both prose magicians who were able to feel their way into cultures which, from the outside, seemed pretty much unreadable: a scattering of signs, surfaces and hot sand. On the evidence of The House of the Eagle, Sprott has that same wondrous ability to shape-shift, merging his authorial voice with that of Thoth, the ibis-headed Egyptian god of writing and wisdom, who watches from a distance as the rough-and-ready warriors of the ruling Ptolemy dynasty set about turning themselves into living gods. The point - and Thoth is very clear on this - is that the Ptolemies are Greeks from Macedon, and entirely alien in outlook, habit and custom to the Egyptians over whom they rule. Boy love, for instance, is their norm, to the point where sex between a man and woman starts to seem slightly seedy, a self-serving way of building dynasties through the production of heirs, spares and marriageable girls. When anyone from this odd, rotten family does try to follow their heterosexual hearts it nearly always ends in tears, not to mention banishment and bloody murder. As teen-agers, Ptolemy Keraunos and his half-sister Arsinoë Beta do the deed, are sent in punishment to opposite corners of the Mediterranean, but still manage to end up 20 years later as husband and wife, with ghastly consequences (both Aristotle and Sophocles hover over Sprott's text like gloomy godfathers). The Ptolemies, in Thoth's astringent view, are a degenerate bunch. When they are not oiling up each other's muscles, they spend their time decorating favourite crocodiles with priceless jewels, fantasising about their daughters' breasts and simultaneously bargaining with and ignoring their native gods. Homer it is not. Still, they prosper wonderfully, with the patriarch Ptolemy Soter moving from mere Satrap - a glorified salaryman - to Pharaoh, a divine being who will quite possibly live for ever. Sprott is brilliant on the texture of this transformation. The Ptolemies may have followed the breeze from sticky Memphis to coastal Alexandria, but nothing can stop the constant drip-drip of sour-smelling sweat, stinking up the andron where the men live and beading the upper lips of the women who weave and wait in the cellar-like gynaikeion . Everything about this world is available to Sprott: there is no spatter of diarrhoea, cure for sea sickness (swallowing lizard juice), private thought or public bluster to which he does not have access. Just like his alter-ego Thoth, Sprott is an all-knowing pedagogue, able to shrink time and space to make his thick-headed audience understand how one thing leads to another. The really blistering achievement of The House of the Eagle, though, is the way Sprott manages to keep his readers engaged in the story while disciplining himself to write in a prose style that might be described as "translation-ese". Think back to the very best Latin-to-English exercise you ever managed, and you will have the flavour of how Sprott sounds. For instance: "At first Demetrios tried to storm Rhodes from the landward side, but for some curious reason he did not trouble to close off the harbour, so that Ptolemy was able to send in supplies from the seaward side, his fleet now being fully repaired." The idea of reading nearly 500 pages of this relentlessly flattened narrative - hardly a metaphor or simile in sight - might seem unappealing. But after the first few pages something extraordinary happens, and you find yourself lulled by the story's relentless onward push. Horrific events glide by, all the more ghastly because they barely ripple the surface of the prose. When Keraunos is punished with anal rape, or Arsinoë Beta threatened with being eaten by a horse, or vultures peck contentedly at endless dead eyes, the shock is all the greater because Thoth's sing-song delivery never skips a beat. For all its feigned transparency, this is a supremely knowing book. Besides the obvious influence of Graves and Renault, you will find nods to Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet and something of the ambition of Midnight's Children . And then, of course, there are all those Penguin translations of Greek and Latin texts half-remembered from school, with their slightly jerky rhythms (there are only so many ways of rendering an ablative absolute into elegant English). Don't, though, be put off by the density of the book's hinterland. The House of the Eagle slips by like a bad dream that leaves you feeling still shaken in the morning. And that is meant as the highest compliment. (Reviewed by Kathryn Hughes)
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2.7 hectare ‘Crystal Lagoons’ to be built in US$600 million Sharm El Sheikh luxury resort
2.7 hectare ‘Crystal Lagoons’ to be built in US$600 million Sharm El Sheikh luxury resort

Chilean company to showcase quartet of MENA projects at Cityscape Global; including latest Egyptian project as development of world’s largest crystalline lagoon gets underway (26/09/2012)
ACCOR Hotels Middle East Unveils Their Exciting Summer Promotion
ACCOR Hotels Middle East Unveils Their Exciting Summer Promotion

Discover the Middle East and Egypt this summer filled with great summer deals, loads of surprises and rewards with Le Club Accorhotels. (05/07/2012)
UNWTO welcomes new Egyptian President’s support for tourism
UNWTO welcomes new Egyptian President’s support for tourism

UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai, has congratulated Mr. Muhammad Morsi on his election as Egypt’s new President and applauded his support for the tourism sector, as expressed in the Preside (04/07/2012)
Partner country Egypt at ITB Berlin
Partner country Egypt at ITB Berlin

Grand opening ceremony on 6 March 2012 – numerous cultural events with typical national attractions at the world’s largest travel trade show – interactive communication via Facebo (24/02/2012)

Showing 4 news articles
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Egypt

The news that published in Islamic Tourism Trade Media

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The articles which appeared in Islamic Tourism magazine

Egyptian Museum's incredible treasures dazzle visitors

  Issue 69

Balloon's give bird's-eye views of glorious Luxor

  Issue 69

The Glory Of The Pharaohs Lives On In Luxor

  Issue 68

Ashmolean
Age of the Pharaohs in all its glory
  Issue 67

Nile cruises showcase the incredible legacy of the Pharaohs

  Issue 67

Egypt's incredible archaeological sites and gorgeous beaches are expected to lure tourists back

  Issue 65

Adventure Travel: Crossing Egypts Western Desert With Satnav

  Issue 62

SHARM EL SHEIKH

  Issue 62

Journey Through The Afterlife
Ancient Egyptian Book Of The Dead
  Issue 60

Mystical, Magical Cairo

  Issue 55

Famed Egyptian archeologist really digs his work

  Issue 52

Petrie Museum
Showcasing life in Ancient Egypt
  Issue 51

El Gouna
Red Sea Coast, Egypt
  Issue 49

The Nile, the mysterious source of life

  Issue 44

Egypt's most popular coffee shop chain challenges Europe

  Issue 42

Egypts glorious past serves tourism trade well

  Issue 41

The Talaat Moustafa Group
Leading real estate and tourism investment organization
  Issue 37

Sukaina Bint Al-Hussein
Oppressed by the Umayyad’s, Welcomed By Egypt
  Issue 30

Advert
MTC television
  Issue 30

The eighth meeting
of Pan-Arab tourism in Cairo
  Issue 29

The new seven wonders of the world

  Issue 28

Advert
MTC
  Issue 28

Advert
MTC
  Issue 27

The 7th Mediterranean Travel Fair

  Issue 26

Egypt’s Eastern Desert
The Final Frontier For Tourists
  Issue 26

Celebrating The Saints’ Birthdays In Egypt
Transforming Nights Into Illuminated Days
  Issue 26

Tourism
A revolution in Egypt's red sea
  Issue 25

Luxor
The 'Open-Air Museum'
  Issue 24

Pharaohs'
Village
  Issue 23

The Hajj and Umrah Fair
2006 in Cairo
  Issue 23

Mediterranean Travel Fair
Infinite Ideas, Endless Inspiration
  Issue 23

International Conference
On Food And Tourism
  Issue 23

Food & Tourism
An Approach To The World Of The Future
  Issue 22

Greenery In The Desert
The Other Side Of Egypt
  Issue 22

Advert
al-Multaqa advert
  Issue 22

Tourism in Egypt
From Islamic and economic points of view
  Issue 21

Travel Fair
The mediterranean Travel Fair
  Issue 20

Aswan
A journey to the land of the pharaohs
  Issue 20

Pyramids
Treasures and Traffic
  Issue 19

Advert
Mediterranean Travel Fair - www.mtfcairo.com
  Issue 18

Oases Tourism
Nature, Culture and Adventure
  Issue 18

Cairo
6th International Forum of Hadj, Umrah and Inter-Arab Tourism
  Issue 18

El-Alameen
Soldiers' hell metamorphosis into a paradise for tourists
  Issue 18

Tourism Related
Foreign Investments Economic Opening of the Arab World?
  Issue 16

Integrated Tourist Complexes in Egypt
From El-Goun to Port Ghalib
  Issue 14

The Mediterranean Travel Fair

  Issue 14

Mosques of Cairo
Marvelous models of Islamic architecture
  Issue 13

Health Tourism
in Egypt
  Issue 12

Ramadan in Egypt
Stories, Spirituality, Festivities and fellowship
  Issue 8

Exhibitions
Mediterranean Travel Fair
  Issue 8

Cairo
Great success despite the shadow of war
  Issue 6

News
Arab ministers of tourism discuss: Liberalization of Arab services in Tourism
  Issue 5

Cairo
The mediterranean travel fair
  Issue 5

Alexandria
Bride of the mediterranean
  Issue 5

News
Progressive Improvement in promoting Tourism in Egypt
  Issue 4

Cairo
An Academic Tour of Cairo
  Issue 4

The Agha Khan
Award for architecture 2001
  Issue 2

Tourism news
in Staggeric Tourism & Aviation
  Issue 2

News
5.5 Million Tourists a year to Egypt before 11 September 2001
  Issue 2




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