Le Cafe Singe Bleu Serving generous portions of history and mystery from our monthly menu Volume 1, Issue 2, February 2003
Death Comes As The End
Agatha Christie
1944
Time: about 2000 BC Place: the west bank of the Nile at Thebes, Egypt
Should you read this book? Mais Oui!
The Characters:
Renisenb
- newly widowed, she has returned to her father's household to forget her grief
Yahmose
- big, slow and stolid, her elder brother
Sobek
- a handsome braggart, the ka-priest's second son
Imhotep
- the ka-priest, keeper of the tomb of a wealthy Egyptian, provider for his large household. Why did he have to acquire a concubine?
Satipy
- the wife of Yahmose, she bullies everyone
Kait
- dull and stolid wife of Sobek, she lives for her children
Henet
- the housekeeper, she cringes and whines, watches and waits
Esa
- mother of Imhotep, even her great wisdom can't keep her safe
Hori
- Imhotep's scribe and man of business, and Renisenb's confidant
Ipy
- Imhotep's youngest son, badly spoiled, or is he just bad?
Nofret
- young and beautiful, she is Imhotep's concubine and intends to be something more
Kameni
- a scribe and kinsman, he loves Renisemb
Teti
- Renisemb's young child
Opening lines
Renisenb stood looking out over the Nile.
In the distance she could hear faintly the upraised voices of her brothers, Yahmose and Sobek, disputing as to whether or not the dikes in a certain place needed strengthening. Sobek's voice was highand confidant as always. He had the habit of asserting his views with easy certainty. Yahmose's was low and grumbling in tone; it expressed doubt and anxiety. Yahmose was always in a state of anxiety about something or other. He was the eldest son and during his father's absence on the northern estates, the management of the farm lands was more or less in his hands. Yahmose was slow, prudent and prone to look for difficulties where none existed. He was a heavily built, slow-moving man with none of Sobek's gaiety and confidence.
From her early childhood Renisenb could remember hearing these elder brothers of hers arguing in just those selfsame accents. It gave her suddenly a feeling of security...She was at home again. Yes, she had come home....
Yet as she looked once more across the pale, shining river, her rebellion and pain mounted again. Khay, her young husband was dead...Khay with his laughing face and his strong shoulders. Khay was with Osiris in the Kingdom of the Dead - and she, Renisenb, his dearly beloved wife, was left desolate. Eight years they had had together - she had come to him as little more than a child - and now she had returned widowed with Khay's child, Teti, to her father's house.
Newly widowed Renisenb returns to her father, Imhotep's, household on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes. Her father is a ka-priest, a mortuary priest responsible for the upkeep of the tomb of Meriptah. In ancient Egypt, property was bequeathed to the ka-priest, in return for which he is expected to maintain the tomb of the testator, and to provide offerings at the tomb on certain feast days throughout the year for the reposed of the deceased's soul.
Imhotep has a large family - his eldest son Yahmose who manages the estate when Imhotep is travelling, the second son Sobek who is not given any responsibilities and resents it, and the youngest son Epy who is spoiled rotten and wants to do only what it pleases him to do.
Yahmose's wife Satipy is a bullying shrew, while Sobek's wife Kait dotes on her children and walks over anyone who gets in her way. Esa, Imhotep's mother, knows the faults of her son and her grandchildren, and of Imhotep's devoted housekeeper, Henet, whom no one else likes.
Renisenb has returned, and everything is the same. Yahmose follows his father's orders while Satipy presses him to insist on becoming a partner with his father, Sobek has schemes which never turn out properly, Satipty and Kait argue in the woman's quarters, and Henet whines and cringes and tells tales. Even Hori, her father's man of business, is the same. Renisemb is happy, she will strive to forget her beloved husband, and soon she too will be the same.
But then the elderly Imhotep returns to his home with a concubine, the very young and beautiful Nofret. The household is thrown in disarray, for Nofret knows what she wants...and gets it. Imhotep writes to his family, expressing his intention to disinherit all his children in favor of Nofret. But, as Satipy informs Renisenb, ''A dead concubine is not the same as a live concubine.''
But Nofret's death is only the first in a series which plunges the household of Imhotep into terror. Is it Nofret returning to wreak her vengeance on those who hated her in life?
Osiris
Agatha Christie's first novel was published in 1920, when she was married to Archibald Christie. It featured a Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. During WWI, the Christie's had lived in a village that provided sanctuary for a group of Belgian refugees, and they were her inspiration for her detective.
Agatha and Archie were divorced in 1926. Agatha traveled to the Near East in 1927, and there met young archeologist Max Mallowan (as well as his lead archeaologist, Leonard Woolley). The two were married in 1930, and after that they alternated their time between England and Egypt. Agatha Christie wrote several books featuring a Near East background, but Death Comes As The End was totally unique for her - a murder case that takes place in 2000 BC.
In her Introduction, Christie says:
''...Both places and time are incidental to the story. Any other place at any other time would have served as well, but it so happened that the inspiration of both characters and plot was derived from two or three Egyptian letters of the XIy Dynasty, found during the 1920-1921 season by the Egyptian expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in a rock tomb opposite Luxor,and translated by Professor (then Mr.) Battiscombe Gunn in the Museum's bulletin.''
Christie makes no effort to have her characters speak in a similation of an 'Egyptian way'. Her characters use recognizably English (as in the country, England) phraseology, although they do refer to each other as 'brother, sister, husband, wife, interchangeably, as the Egyptians did. And, indeed, her characters could very easily have been moved to 1944 England, substituting a new 'fiance' for a concubine. But what this makes clear is simply the tragedy of life - passions and desires and people have not changed at all in 2000 years.
Which isn't to say that Christie doesn't bring 2000 BC Egypt to life.
''We are a strange people, we Egyptians. We love life, and so we start preparing very early to plan for death. That is where the wealth of Egypt goes - into pyramids, into tombs, into tomb endowments.''
''What happens when you are dead? Does anyone really know. All these texts - all these things that are written in coffins - some of them are so obscure they seem to mean nothing at all. We know that Osiris was killed and that his body was joined together again, and that he wears the white crown, and because of him we need not die....''
''All Egypt is obessed with death! And do you know why, Renisenb? Because we have eyes in our bodies, but none in our minds. We cannot conceive of a life other than this one - of a life after death. We can visualize only a continuation what we know. We have no real belief in a God.''
''How can you say that, Hori? Why, we have many, many Gods - so many that I could not name them all. Only last night we were saying, all of us, which Gods we preferred. Sobek was all for Sakhmet and Kait prays to Meskhent. Kameni swears by Thoth, as is natural, being a scribe. Satipy is for the falcon-headed horus and also for our own Meresger. Yahmose says that Ptah is to be worshiped because he made all things. I myself love Isis. And Henet is all for our local god Amun. She says that there are prophecies amongsth the priests that one day Amun will be the greatest God in Egypt - so she takes him offerings now while he is a small God. And there is Re, the Sun God, and Osiris, before whom the hearts of the dead are weighed.''
Christie makes reference to Amun, which is foreshadowing history here, for Amun (or Amon) did indeed become one of the most powerful Gods of Egypt.
There is no real detective in this book, there are no detectives upon whom to call - only the Gods. The characters are likeable, the setting intriguing, the deaths many....a definite must read for enthusiasts of Eyptian history and culture, and the period mystery.
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