I want to go back to Egypt. Yes, whatever the literary merit of Arthur Phillips' novel "The Egyptologist,” when push comes to shove what I'm left with is an irrepressible desire to go back to the lands of the Nile. If I could go back circa 1922, when the main events of the novel were based, so much the better. Indeed, my friend Lola and I used to have fantasies of being Porter and Moss and traveling through the sands of Egypt in a jeep cataloguing and adventuring. The promises of the Egyptian desert, which we could taste, even as undergraduates, are difficult to forget. Lola and I are making plans to spend a couple of months exploring Egypt in a few years, when her options vest and my kids are old enough that I can leave them for a while.
As a former wanna-be-Egyptologist I strongly empathized with Ralph Trilipush, the protagonist of "The Egyptologist". That Trilipush is a dilettante, whose dreams of glory far overshadow any scholastic interest, is apparent from the beginning. But this was an age when archaeology was just beginning to differentiate itself from treasure hunting and it’s hard to begrudge him his enthusiasm. His main obsession is on discovering the tomb of the apocryphal king Atum-hadu “Atum is Aroused”, the purported author of the “Admonitions”, a series of short poems which in Trilipush’s translation, at least, have a definite pornographic bent. Trilipush has staked his reputation, as it is, in the existence of the tomb and his faith on his ability to discover it, win fame and fortune and prove all his detractors wrong is indomitable and will pull him through difficulties getting financing and permits and other troubles and to the bitter end. Trilipush’s arrogance makes him a less than likable character, but I couldn’t but be touched by his enormous self-delusion and wonder how many of us operate under similar beliefs.
While Trilipush pushes forward in his quest to discovering Atum-hadu’s tomb, an Australian detective, Harold Ferrell, crosses his path while investigating the disappearance of a former-soldier and Egyptology-lover with whom Trilipush had a close friend in common. Ferrell’s suspicions about Trilipush lead him to put inset himself into his life back in Boston, and ultimately badly affect Trilipush.
Both Trilipush and Ferrell are played for laughs, Trilipush as the arrogant dilettante who takes himself too seriously and Ferrell as a greedy fellow who is not nearly as smart as he seems himself to be. But the characters are very human, and perhaps that’s what makes the book so amusing and such a pleasant read.
In all, I had to say that I enjoyed it very much and couldn’t wait to get back to it whenever I could.