The Pyramid by Ismail Kadare: book review

A few months after ascending the throne of Egypt, the new Pharaoh, Cheops, declared that he did not want a pyramid erected for him. This news was a catastrophe to his kingdom, for what would the people do if they did not spend the next umpteen years building a mausoleum for their king?

Seeing the distress of his courtiers, Cheops decreed that a pyramid would indeed be built and it would be the highest and most majestic of them all.

This is the story of the Great Pyramid in Giza; the pyramid of Cheops, written in 1998. It chronicles the feat of the great construction. It tells of the series of expected and unexpected deaths – from stone slippages; exhaustion; murders; whippings; and sunstroke. One foreman, Unas, was sacked because he allowed the legs of two sculptors trapped during the laying of a stone to stay where they had been amputated from the weight of the rock as it fell on top of them. Long hooks were used to scrape the crushed legs out from under the stone with great difficulty. However, it had to be done, for there was a risk that if human limbs were left to decompose, they would create a void likely to cause subsidence that, however minute, would be absolutely inadmissible in the majestic architecture of the great pyramid.

If the building of the tomb, to house Cheops after his death, proceeded too fast, those responsible were arrested and tortured for appearing to desire the Pharaoh’s early death. If the pace slowed down, those responsible were tortured for lacking zeal and enthusiasm for the nation’s project.

Albanian author Kadare has a sardonic, witty style with a wicked sense of the absurdity of reality. It is exceedingly readable and enjoyable as history is revealed, intertwined with a twist of tongue-in-cheek humour.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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