ABSTRACT
The third and last historical novel of Najib Mahfuz was written between September 1937 and April 1938. At the opening of the novel, around 1600 B.C., the Hyksos had already been ruling Lower Egypt for over a century, and the Pharaohs of Thebes ruled Upper Egypt and Nubia under the suzerainty of the Hyksos kings. When the royal family flees from Tayba, and Bibi falls in battle with his troops, Ibana leaves her palace and, like most of the Egyptian nobility, mingles with the common people to avoid being noticed by the victorious Hyksos. The hero of this novel is Ahmas who, like all heroes in romance, should be something of a revolutionary, something of a nihilist and, eventually he should expand into a psychological archetype. The victorious Pharaoh, the great liberator of Egypt, shed tears at the sight of his enemy's departure into a future in which he can have no share.
