What started off as the worst job
I've ever been asked to do ended up as
something really, really interesting.
'I would give water to the thirsty
I returned the wanderer to the path
and rescued the robbed. Every country against
which I set out I made my attack on it.
And it was driven from its grassland and wells.
I plundered his herds and carried
off its inhabitants and took away
their food.
I killed the people in it with my strong
arm, with my bow, with my campaigns
and with my excellent plans.'
The tale of Sinuhe is perhaps the best-known work
to survive from ancient Egypt.
It's an absolute masterpiece composed by an
anonymous author around 1850 BC.
The poem is an exciting adventure story on one level.
It tells how an official panics
and leaves Egypt, lives most of his life
abroad in the Levant and then finally
comes back to Egypt, thanks to the King's
grace, to die and be buried in a royal pyramid.
It charts a sequence of great
personal crises, but we get a sense of
what it is like to be human
to be worried, to be terrified, to have a sense
that you are lost in the world.
'Whatever god fated this flight
be gracious bring me home.
Surely you will let me see the place
where my heart still stays?
What matters more than my being buried
in the land where I was born?
This is my prayer for help.'
It's wonderful to work with a performer
like Barbara Ewing who can bring a whole
range of skill sets to the poem that
academics usually lack in a very
spectacular manner. And so she can give
voice to the ancient words and I think
allow people to hear the emotion
and the passion.
I think the poem, in a way, it's sort of a portrait of a human voice
and I think that's where it actually
goes beyond the historical context
is where Sinuhe comes across as
recognisably human, all too human,
all too fallible and I think the best way to
get that across to people is to have it
in the voice of a reciter which is what
it was designed for originally.
It was not designed to be an academic
commentary and I think performance is
absolutely essential to that side.
But it was always a male reciter wasn't it?
Male or female, it doesn't matter. It's just got to be
a human voice. The humanity.
Well that was just another thing that I had that I'm
telling a man's story and yet I had to
sort of take all that away
as well and just tell a story.
How do you know that this is a fictional story?
How do you know that the writer the
original writer hasn't taken it from
somebody's life for his own?
It's based on a reality. It's very naturalistic
but it is so cleverly shaped
I find it very hard to believe it is a
genuine historical inscription.
And there are lots of clues in the poem that hint at this
It fictionalises itself.
Sinuhe's name is gloriously appropriate for what
happens to him.
Because?
Because it means the 'son of the sycomore'
and that is this play with the Sycomore goddess throughout the poem.
But the main thing is the ending
because the ending is of a private
official returning to Egypt to be
buried in a royal pyramid
and that is just too happy an ending
Perhaps he wasn't really what he seemed?
He certainly wasn't what he seemed.
The poem isn't what it seems. It cannot. All the way
through the style's too complex
it pretends to be an official biography
but nobody reading it in the 12th Dynasty
would have been fooled.
It's too dark! You could never say these
things in official text.
But it doesn't actually say them
you can only find them if you're looking for them.
Exactly which is what
poetry and fictional poetry does in the period
It is not what the state monuments do.
No, no.
It cannot be real but it
cannot be completely fictional.
It is based on real experiences, real countries,
real situations in court.
It's very close to lived experience.
But I don't believe Sinuhe ever existed.
I had to have a story. I had to have a
story about Sinuhe, about his
relationship with the people in the court
and because in several times in the poem
he has almost... he has a sort of nervous
breakdown. Or so it felt to me.
And I couldn't have done that if I hadn't
– for myself – found some reason for him to
do that.
I think the poem invites that.
It leaves so many gaps. Every reader is
invited to imagine what it is like.
So you are saying, anachronistic...
although I'm not sure that's the word
but whatever the word is when we're putting
our own thing are you saying that is
a wrong thing to do?
No! I think it's a very passionate poem
which invites engagement by the reader
and leaves everything open and I think
that's why it's so subversive it
challenges the idea that life is simple
black-and-white and perfect.
Well to me it was just a great, big
mountain and I thought I'm never ever
going to be able to do this but I read every
single note and I made up my story
and I told it.
'A pyramid of stone was built for me.
It is His Majesty who has caused this to be done.
There is no other wretch for whom the
like was done. I was in the favours of the
King's giving until the arrival of the
day of landing.
So it ends from start to finish as found in writing.'