Episode 109: Death Comes as the End – Agatha Christie – Max Mallowan – Stephen Glanville – Heqanakht

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters, Dr. Nicky Nielsen

Sarah Harrison  00:12

Welcome to Tea, Tonic and Toxin, the only book club and podcast dedicated to exploring mysteries chronologically from Edgar Allan Poe to the present, we’re discussing the best mysteries and thrillers ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s most talented contemporary mystery and thriller writers. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters  00:33

And I’m your host, Carolyn Daughters. We aim to educate, entertain, and reignite interest in exceptional and often overlooked authors who shaped the genre. Check us out at teatonicandtoxin.com and on our socials to find tons of great content and take part in the conversation. We love hearing from listeners, and we’re excited you’re joining us on our journey through the history of mystery.

Carolyn Daughters  00:57

Today’s sponsor is Harrison Heritage. Harrison Heritage is a specialty grower dedicated to preserving and cultivating rare and historic flora and fauna. They have a strong focus on early American and Virginia heirloom cultivated varieties using regenerative pasture-focused and experimental farming practices. Harrison Heritage prioritizes soil health as the foundation for nutrient-rich, resilient ecosystems. Their mission is simple: to safeguard the flavors, genetics, and agricultural traditions of the past while fostering a healthier future, Harrison Heritage, preserving the taste of history. And we’re thrilled to have them as our sponsor. And Sarah, Nate, and the whole Harrison Heritage crew are just getting started, and they would love to have you follow them on Facebook @HarrisonHeritage or on Instagram @Harrison.Heritage.Farm to keep up with what’s new and what’s next.

Sarah Harrison  01:10

Good morning, Carolyn.

Carolyn Daughters  01:12

Good early morning, Sarah.

Sarah Harrison  01:14

It is a morning for us, but for our guest, Dr. Nicky Nielsen, it’s afternoon. He’s going to tell us all about Agatha Christie, Max Mallowan, Stephen Glanville, and Heqanakht.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  01:19

Correct, it is early afternoon.

Sarah Harrison  01:24

We’re excited.

Carolyn Daughters  01:25

We may see it for anybody on any video clip. What might see the sun rising behind me?

Sarah Harrison  01:34

Carolyn’s still out in Colorado. I’m calling from Virginia. And Nicky, where are you calling from?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  01:40

I’m in Liverpool at the moment.

Sarah Harrison  01:46

We are a global podcast.

Carolyn Daughters  01:49

Yes, absolutely.

Sarah Harrison  01:52

Actually, I think Great Britain is our number two country after the United States for listeners. I always think that’s so interesting, because I always think it’s going to be Canada, and it’s not. It’s Great Britain. Well, maybe we need some Canadian guests here and there.

Carolyn Daughters  02:11

I’ll make a note. We need to find a Canadian guest.

Sarah Harrison  02:13

All right. Today, we’re going to discuss Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie, along with her husband, Max Mallowan, and Stephen Glanville. Well, before we get started today, even though we’re just ready to jump into it. We want to make a shout out for our listener of the episode.

Carolyn Daughters  02:27

Our listener of the episode is Loretta Notareschi from Arvada, Colorado. Loretta and I had a conversation maybe a month ago, and there was something about the conversation. She had been listening to the podcast and had some thoughts and shared them, and then at the time I was just appreciative she was listening, but in recent days some of the conversation I had with her got me thinking. So, Sarah, you and I offline have to have a conversation about a couple of the things.

Sarah Harrison  03:04

What is it?

Carolyn Daughters  03:10

I don’t have to go through them now. I can keep them spoilers, even from you, Sarah. All right, no spoilers, but the cool thing is, I have a new idea I’m going to share with Sarah based on this conversation. We will let the listeners know what that thing is in coming weeks. The real point here is, listeners like when you share your insights with us, and you’re telling us how you felt about episodes, or the things that you thought about the conversations. It actually helps us shape the conversations. We actually listen to what you’re saying and may put some of those ideas into action.

Sarah Harrison  04:00

Absolutely, we do not have a social media team. We do not have any intermediaries, really, when you reach out to one of us with an email or the message, or what have you. So, we’re always excited and thrilled to hear from our listeners and what they think about the show, or what they’d like to see on it. So, thanks, Loretta. I’m looking forward to hearing about it.

Carolyn Daughters  04:23

I may tell Sarah, I may not. We don’t know.

Sarah Harrison  04:27

I want you to keep more things from Sarah.

Carolyn Daughters  04:33

So, no spoilers today on the podcast, including for Sarah, but she and I will have a conversation. We’re going to see what we’re going to do.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  04:40

I’m excited.

Carolyn Daughters  04:41

I’m excited about it.

Sarah Harrison  04:43

Big build up, so now I’m excited too. We are going to give spoilers, though, during our conversation today in Agatha Christie’s Death Comes as the End. That’s our book club selection for the month, and we’ll get a bit into Agatha Christie’s background, along with the ways she may have been influenced by Max Mallowan and Stephen Glanville. Let me first tell you about it. First published in 1944 and what is quite possibly the first historical whodunit. The Queen of Mystery transports us back to ancient Egypt, where death gives meaning to life. It’s 2000 BC, and at the foot of a cliff lies the broken, twisted body of Nofret, concubine to a ka-priest, young, beautiful, and venomous. Most agree that it was fate, she deserved to die like a snake. But at her father’s house on the banks of the Nile, the priest’s daughter, Renisenb …

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  05:50

There are different ways of anglicizing ancient Egyptian names, so this one would you can also pronounce as Rinny-Senneb, for instance. It differs with how we Anglicize the Egyptian names.

Sarah Harrison  06:07

How do you say it when you’re reading it in your head?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  06:11

Rene-Senneb.

Sarah Harrison  06:12

Renisenb believes that Nofret’s death is suspicious. Increasingly, she becomes convinced that the source of evil lurks within their household and watches helplessly as the family’s passions explode in murder. Born in Torquay in 1890, Dame Agatha Christie began writing during the First World War and wrote more than 100 novels, plays, and short story collections. Her devilishly complex and daring plots have baffled and delighted mystery fans throughout the world for more than half a century. After her marriage to archeologist Max Mallowan, Agatha Christie spent part of each year in the Middle East, which provided the exotic settings for several of her popular mysteries. She was still writing to great acclaim until her death in 1976, and her books have now sold over a billion with a “B” copies in English and another billion in over 100 foreign countries or languages.

Carolyn Daughters  07:12

Today’s guest is Dr. Nicky Nielsen. Nicky is a Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. Originally from Denmark, he was awarded an AHRC Block Grant to undertake PhD research at the University of Liverpool, investigating subsistence strategies and craft production at the Ramesside fortress site of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  07:49

Which means rest house of the mother of vultures. So it’s quite a theatrical name, but quite long.

Carolyn Daughters  08:00

It’s very, very good, and thank you for jumping in there and saving me. Nicky Nielsen has excavated in Europe, Turkey and Egypt, and he is currently the field director of the University of Liverpool Tell Nabasha Survey Project, which conducts archaeological investigations of the ancient city of Imet located in the north-eastern Nile Delta. Nicky has published several peer review papers, as well as more public-oriented articles, and he’s the author of ‘Pharaoh Seti I’ (2018), ‘From Mummies to Microchips’ (2020, co-authored with Professor Joyce Tyldesley) and ‘Egyptomaniacs: How We Became Obsessed with Ancient Egypt’ (2020). The article that grabbed me and that enabled Sarah and me to reach out to Nicky and ask him to be a guest on our show is Agatha Christie: World’s First Historical Whodunit Was Inspired by 4000-Year-Old Letters.” The moment I read it, I thought to myself, we need to have Nicky on our show. Welcome, Nicky.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  09:14

Thank you, and thank you for the inviting me.

Sarah Harrison  09:19

Carolyn and I have been looking into not necessarily literature-trained guests, but different kinds of fields, historians, other writers, things like that to contribute to some of these novel discussions, and this is one I’m very excited, I’m actually, so we’re gonna have to talk about Egyptomaniacs for sure. We want to hear all about Agatha Christie and Max Mallowan and Stephen Glanville. I’m wearing my cartouche today in honor of the podcast, which my grandmother bought on her Egypt tour, like way back when, when she was there for me.

Carolyn Daughters  09:57

Cool.

Sarah Harrison  09:59

I’m pretty excited. Write it, and we’ll have to get to that, but I want to start with what got you writing this article. Like, how did that come together that you wrote this?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  10:09

I’ve always liked reading Agatha Christie, and watching, especially the ITV adaptations of the Paul stories. I grew up with those, so she’s always been a figure, and I came across Death Comes as the End, and I think already in the first, like, five pages there’s a description of a toy that the main character used to play with as a child, which is a mechanical cat, effectively, you pull a string and it can move its door, and I’d already.. I was an Egyptologist at that point, and when I read that description, I thought, hang on, I’ve seen that, and it is a real toy that was found by a British archeologist called Flinders Petrie, which is now in the British Museum, and I thought, that is, that is incredible, because I’m not sure that was on display at the time, so I looked into the story, the background to the novel. Egyptologist Stephen Glanville was a bit of a consultant on the project. And perhaps in an indirect way Agatha Christie’s husband, archeologist Max Mallowan. Stephen Glanville, who was based in London, would certainly have known about this toy, and I thought it was such a, it’s such an almost irrelevant little detail, but it’s such a lovely piece of color, and the more I read the story, the more I could pick out little, little hints and notes that I think might go unremarked upon, but which were clearly derived from quite a detailed study and knowledge of ancient Egypt, which, of course, cause Agatha Christie had, she had traveled in Egypt as a younger, younger person as well, she obviously, through her marriage to Max Mallowan, she knew about the Near East and archeology. She was interested in it. As an example, I don’t know how many spoilers I can give away, but …

Sarah Harrison  12:12

You can give them. We’re spoiler podcast.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  12:15

Fantastic. One of the characters dies by a poisoned unguent, which is an incredibly neat way of murdering someone, and of course, if you know the famous Queen Cleopatra, Cleopatra the Seventh, everyone knows how she committed suicide by a poison snake, poisoned asp, but that’s actually just one explanation. There are about five stories in the Latin literature about how Cleopatra killed herself, and one of those told by Strabo is that she committed suicide with poisoned congruent, and Agatha Christie was a very well-read person. She would certainly have known about Strabo’s account, so it’s nice that she picked bits out of Egyptian history and fitted them into the overarching historical framework that Death Comes as the End is built on, which are these letters called the Heqanakht letters.

Carolyn Daughters  13:07

Stephen Glanville was a family friend of both Agatha Christie and Max Mallowan. Stephen Glanville was an Egyptologist, and I think he said to her, Why don’t you set a book in ancient Egypt? And that got this whole thing up and running, and I think he supplies her with my understanding is he supplied her with details of the daily household life in Egypt, so to what degree, when, when you read Death Comes as the End, are you, and again, we can’t know maybe every finite detail, but we, we’ve learned a lot, to what degree is she getting this right in Death Comes as the End, to what degree is Stephen Glanville possibly reading her drafts and saying, “Oh, making changes in the margins,” kind of like we would in a contemporary manuscript? To what degree is she experimenting and playing and using her creative faculty, and to what degree is she actually historically spot on?

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Dr. Nicky Nielsen  14:52

Well, I think she’s getting a lot of things right for the 1940s and for the, the understanding. Of ancient Egypt that Egyptology had in the 1940s because obviously this is it’s an evolving field. Our understanding of these things change as we reassess source material, and I think she, so the idea of Death Comes as the End, and the reason she basically wrote it was because her husband, archeologist Max Mallowan, and Stephen Glanville could supply her with a corpus of information about ordinary people, about the family dynamics of a normal Egyptian family, and that’s because of the Heqanakht letters. So they’re a collection of papyri that were found in Thebes in modern-day Luxor in 19, early, early 20th century, and they are basically a collection of letters, which involve a car priest or a funerary priest called Heqanakht, not Imhotep, which is Agatha Christie’s name that she uses. He is writing to his family, to his estate, he has a big farm, and he’s writing to his family, who was somewhere else in Egypt, and in Agatha Christie’s creative retelling, fictionalized retelling of that, they’re based in Thebes, the family is in Thebes, and the head of the family is somewhere else in Egypt on business that fits with what Egyptology understood about the Heqanakht letters at the time, we have since reassessed that actually the family was based somewhere up in Northern Egypt, whereas Heqanakht was in Thebes, in Luxor. It’s so upside down, basically. But what these letters are about is basically the minutiae of running a farm, so Heqanakht, as a car priest, he’s a fairly well-off guy. When I say running a farm, I mean a pretty big one with employees and stuff. He’s a fairly well-off guy, he’s a mortuary priest for this year, so effectively the Prime Minister of Egypt, the second most powerful person in the country, so he’s a well-off guy, and, but he still has to worry about the things that any farmer in Egypt had to worry about, primarily the inundation, because farming in Egypt, it very rarely rains, so farming is based on the annual flooding of the Nile, which is called the inundation, and you have to prepare for it. You have to build dikes and levees and basins and stuff to collect the water, so that when the river floods, it will then draw back after the flooding, and it will leave all this lovely silt and water and stuff that you can then use to grow your crops, but if the inundation is too low, you’re not going to be able to get enough water to the fields, and there’s going to be a famine. If the inundation is too high, it’s going to destroy a lot of the infrastructure that you’ve built, and then you end up in the same situation. Agatha Christie would have known about all this from her husband, archeologist Max Mallowan, and archeologist Stephen Glanville. So, Heqanakht has all these really detailed calculations about how much grain they can get from this plot of land, how much do they have to pay in rent for that, and he constantly has to be aware of that. Things like seed corn, for instance, he’s really preoccupied with that, which is, what percentage of the harvest do we keep back and not eat, because we need something to be able to sow the following year, and if we don’t have enough, then we can’t get enough of a yield, and then we’re basically shooting ourselves in the foot going forward, so it’s very, very detailed, and Heqanakht has had, he’s gotten a bit of a reputation for being a bit of an old curmudgeon, to be honest, because the tone of the letters is he’s a bit of a micromanager, and at times he’s a little harsh, but I personally think it comes from a place that he is genuinely trying to do the best for the people who live on his estate.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  18:53

He’s trying to safeguard against famine and food shortages and stuff, but his tone, at times is a little bit stop complaining about me not giving you enough whining effectively, because he says in one letter, because what, where I am, there’s such bad famine that people are eating each other, so just be happy, as conservative as I am, but there’s also a social dimension, because something is going on in the Heqanakht household, because so the household consists of his mother, some assaulted family members, children, that sort of thing, but not his first wife, she’s clearly deceased, he has, however, remarried, and in one of the letters, he actually says to the household, “You are not treating my new wife properly, and what you, what evil you do to her, it’s like you’re doing it to me. So he’s effectively telling them off for not treating his, his second wife, their stepmother, effectively. Properly, and that dynamic, I think, is what Agatha Christie has really grasped onto. [Agatha Christie, of course, would have been influenced by her time in Egypt and information from her husband, Max Mallowan, and from Stephen Glanville.] She understood what happens when a younger second, she calls her a concubine, it’s quite an outdated expression, we don’t use it anymore, but it was quite common in publications of the time, what, how does that change the family dynamic, because that might change inheritance patterns and stuff like that, and be the cause of aggression, and you know this. We see it in lots of stories, the stereotype of the wicked stepmother. The ancient Egyptians had that too. There’s actually another ancient Egyptian story, a tale from about 1000 BCE, called The Tale of the Doom Prince, where a young man basically says, I had to leave home because my stepmother drove me out. She was so mean to me and trying to turn my father against me because she wanted me disinherited, so her children would get all the inheritance. That dynamic, I think, is what Agatha Christie really latches onto, because it’s so great for a setup for a murder, right? It’s just, it’s such a relatable, in some ways, kind of family dynamic.

Sarah Harrison  21:12

That’s fascinating. Oh, real quick, I wanted to just ask a little bit about Imhotep, clearly inspired from, how do you say the actual name?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  21:24

Heqanakht Papyri. “Heck-a-knock.”

Sarah Harrison  21:24

Heqanakht. Yes, she really makes him a foolish character, a micromanager, someone who’s out there making bad decisions. What would Agatha Christie have known about all this from her husband, archeologist Max Mallowan, and archeologist Stephen Glanville? Are there other letters out there where you can see, this guy was an extreme micromanager, or he was pretty standard for the time in terms of ka-priest farmers?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  21:45

It’s always difficult to say with these things, because generally we have a single letter that mentions ours is written by a single person, even where we have collections of letters, say, four or five letters relating to the same person, it’s always tricky to try to derive a personality from that. I mean, imagine if someone in 4,000 years tried to describe your entire personality from a random selection of five or six emails, you’d say, so it’s always.. it’s always difficult to run, read too much into that. I think Heqanakht this, he comes across as someone who is very conscientious and very serious about it, and perhaps very afraid of famine. Now we know that in the generations prior to these letters, so towards the end of what’s called the first intermediate period, and the early New Kingdom, there had been very serious famines in Egypt, and famine was never that far away. This is the thing, the inundation was fickle. It’s based on climatic changes that take place 1000s of kilometers from Egypt, up in the Ethiopian Highlands. There’s not so much you can do about it, right? If there’s a low, if there’s a low famine, you’re, you’re in trouble, and there’s really nothing you can do about that. So, it must have been this constant specter that would have concerned not just quite well-off people like Henet, but everyone, because there are certain things for farmers in Egypt, that they can’t really negotiate, so taxes, for instance, you will owe a certain amount of sacks of grain in tax, and big people will, with stakes, will turn up to take that from you if you’ve had a bad harvest, and you, and you don’t really have enough to pay that tax, and also eat, then essentially that’s just tough. There isn’t a social network, there isn’t, there isn’t a social security network, or anything,  so it must have been a constant preoccupation, and Heqanakht is juggling other things as well, in the letters he talks about the cloth that’s produced in the house, oil, different kinds of commodities, because Egypt is a monetary society, there’s no coins, there’s no coinage, so all of this stuff is being produced and some of it is being spent on renting land, and he sends out one of his sons to rent the field, but then tells him, make sure the field is fertile, make sure the ground is proper, because if you rented a piece of land that’s a dud that can jeopardize the whole, the whole family. So I think he has perhaps a slightly underserved attention reputation for being a bit of an old curmudgeon, but I, to me, it comes from a place of being quite conscientious, we, but, but even at that time, and I think that’s what Agatha Christie has picked up as well [perhaps in part from Max Mallowan and Stephen Glanville]. Heqanakht was a bit of a micromanager.

Carolyn Daughters  24:53

Another question about Imhotep, Heqanakht. One, a real-life person, one a fictional character in the story, but obviously based on the real-life person. Death is big business in in Egypt, and his role as a ka-priest seems a pretty good position to have. How does one get this position? How was he chosen? Can you talk a little bit about this, these funerary endowments, and how he’s actually earning money? Why are people giving him money?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  25:32

First of all, there is this idea, it’s in every documentary on Egypt, this idea that the Egyptians were obsessed with death. But they were not obsessed with death. They were incredibly obsessed with life, because the Egyptian afterlife, at various times, is essentially a continuation of the real world. Death is almost like a change of state, but in order to succeed in the afterlife, you were dependent on an offering cult, or at least the elite was, so you needed people to remember you, you needed people to come to your tomb, to leave offerings at your offering chapel, to speak offering prayers, that sort of thing, you couldn’t be forgotten, because then you would cease to be even in the afterlife, so even though  you’ve successfully gone to the afterlife, you’re not completely saved, and now in most cases that would be your family, your descendants, and there were religious festivals like the beautiful festival of the Wadi, it’s called where you would go to the tombs of your ancestors, and basically have a great big party in the offering chapel, lots of wine and beer and food, and your ancestors would join in with these banquets spiritually, at least, so mostly you relied on your family, but especially wealthier individuals, like a visa, so a first minister, basically, they might think, well, my family is eventually going to stop coming. [Agatha Christie would have known about all this from her husband, archeologist Max Mallowan, and archeologist Stephen Glanville.] So what they did is they leave wealth, they leave land and resources to car priests, to funerary priests who will continue that cult for them, who will go to their tombs, who will give offerings, who will save funerary prayers, will make sure that they’re remembered effectively. So it is a business now. How Imhotep would have gotten it in reality, and Imhotep slash Heqanakht in reality, probably from his dad, because these roles, Egypt is not an ancient Egypt is not a meritocracy in any way, shape or form. Your role in life in society is determined by the role of your family. Your own skills and abilities are completely irrelevant. So he most likely would have come from a family who held such positions or held positions within that branch or field, effectively, that’s of course another reason why you get lots of interesting family dynamics, because once Imhotep got older, he would do what’s called making a staff of old age, basically, he would gift his position to one of his children on the understanding that that child, that son, would then essentially pay some of his salary to Imhotep to keep him comfortable in his old age, so that inheritance thing, you can always hold that over your children’s society, and it does happen. I mean, there’s, there’s a testament, slightly later, about 600 years later, where a woman basically disinherits a number of her children, staying, so none of my goods will go to child three six and seven, because they’ve been horrible to me. They haven’t taken proper care of me in my old age, so they get nothing. So you could always hold that, because again, there’s no social security network, there’s no state pension, there’s nothing like that. You’re completely right on your family until you die.

Sarah Harrison  29:19

That’s fascinating. I want to ask, maybe it’s too detailed of a question, but my brain’s trying to figure out the logistics here. So I’m the Vizier, is that the correct premise? That’s me. And I’m gonna die. I’m very rich. Am I giving all my wealth to the car priest to make it his job? Am I splitting it? Why would the priest be more likely than my family, like my family could do the job right, but I don’t think I’m also hiring the ka-priest’s family and expecting them to be doing better. What would Agatha Christie have known about all this from her husband, archeologist Max Mallowan, and archeologist Stephen Glanville?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  29:52

There’s an element of status, most of your wealth is going to go to your first born and you would expect them to carry on with it but. Of busy people, as an extra precaution, you for carpies. [Agatha Christie, of course, would have been influenced by her time in Egypt and information from her husband, Max Mallowan, and from Stephen Glanville.] Now, in reality, the way that everything works in in Pharaonic Egypt is through what’s called patronage. Wealthy people like Ipy, the vizier who Heqanakht served, he would have surrounded himself in life with lower-ranked people, people like Heqanakht, let’s call them upper-middle-class, and he would have given them favor, and he would have given them stuff, and in exchange they would have done favors for him and been loyal to him and his family. It’s quite a mafia-like system, and that’s how every, every stage of the Egyptian hierarchy works. You surround yourself with these people, and among those people, you probably pick some to then serve as your car priests from your, your loyal following your retinue, the people who have been running around after you their whole lives looking for favor, basically.

Carolyn Daughters  31:04

You can see how this would be a great basis for a story, and Agatha Christie, genius that she was, saw this history and thought to herself, I could, this, I could make an amazing story out of this, and I think she even said at one point, Death Comes as the End could have been set in any time or place. Do you both feel that? Does it feel like this is Egypt 2000 BC, or do you feel like Death Comes as the End could have happened, this story could have happened anywhere, anytime?

Carolyn Daughters  31:38

I see what she means. I think the dynamics that are present, yes, they could be any time or place. The kind of socio-economic context it works really well in Egypt, though. I will say it works beautifully there, but, but there’s a reason why in fairy tales, there’s a wicked stepmother. It’s because it’s become a cliche because of these kind of socio-economic considerations across many different cultures.

Sarah Harrison  32:14

I wonder. Agatha Christie would have known a lot about ancient Egypt from her experiences in Egypt and from her husband, archeologist Max Mallowan, and archeologist Stephen Glanville. But I think I would say what she’s driving at is humans haven’t changed in all of these millennia, we are still motivated by similar passions, but, like the ancient Egypt setting really makes it a lot more interesting than if you’re just present day in your house or something like that. It gives it such a, I don’t know, maybe more of a timeless context, because it’s back then so many things are different, but humans are still very similar in their behaviors, regardless of setting. I really loved that about Death Comes as the End. How about you, Carolyn? What did you think?

Carolyn Daughters  33:00

I loved how there’s a head of household takes a second wife or concubine has three sons, with, no, this is the third, though, right?

Sarah Harrison  33:12

There’s the first two boys, have one, his first wife, then the favored son, the little one, I thought had the second wife, and then this concubine enters the picture, right?

Carolyn Daughters  33:25

And then the daughter, Nofret. So two sons and Renisenb.

Sarah Harrison  33:43

Say it again.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  33:45

I think you got it right there.

Carolyn Daughters  33:48

Renisenb. Okay, so he’s got two sons, he’s got a daughter, Renisenb. He’s got two wives of the two sons, the daughter’s husband, three sons.

Sarah Harrison  33:59

It’s very complicated family.

Carolyn Daughters  34:04

Then they have another family member who is the poor family member who is the housekeeper, and she’s always whispering little gossipy things and causing, strife and there’s the man of business, Hori. This cast of characters to me does feel, wow, you put these people together and you have all you have to do is light the match everything is very tense in this household. I loved that. I loved how contemporary it feels. I like the setting and the time, and I love the detail that makes me feel the setting and the time, and I also like how contemporary it feels, I think that that made it. A page turner for me, where I felt like I was getting some historical background (perhaps in part from Max Mallowan and Stephen Glanville), and where I also felt like this is traditional, really good Agatha Christie.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  35:14

As you say, quite contemporary, I mean, you could change the name of Imhotep to Lord something and set a country state and have basically the exact same cast of characters with different names, the same dynamics, largely the same play out, it wouldn’t be too difficult.

Sarah Harrison  35:32

I did want to ask a question about the inheritance idea and the differences. We meet Renisenb at the beginning. She’s a new widow. She’s come back to live with her father, and she herself has a daughter. Now, when Imhotep’s first two sons die, and their wives are left widows with children, they don’t go back to their father’s house. They stay there and expect the same inheritance from Imhotep. So, what’s the difference there between why did she go back? Why are they staying and still so preoccupied with Imhotep’s inheritance? And what would Agatha Christie have known about all this from her husband, archeologist Max Mallowan, and archeologist Stephen Glanville?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  36:12

Well, I think it differs a little bit. One of the slightly unusual things in Pharaonic Egypt, by comparison to contemporary civilizations is that women can inherit property, they can hold property, they can also disperse that property as they wish. Now, the way that that works in practical terms is not always, perhaps, yeah, it’s not always as easy as that, because for instance, if her husband, so he dies and his inheritance, his material wealth, she has a claim on that as his wife, but it might be that he was a younger brother, then some of his brothers might have a claim on it as well, and it really depends on the dynamic, and even though women could own property from the documentary evidence that we have, it does seem that widows were still quite a vulnerable social category, as they’ve been in a lot of societies throughout history. It could also simply be that he didn’t have – he was just not that wealthy, didn’t have enough stuff. And the idea in Pharaonic Egypt, the central organizing feature of society is the family, and this is still even though women can own property, this is still a male-dominated patriarchal society in many ways, so in that way, she can’t just stay and live as a single woman by herself, she needs to go to a household that has a male head, whether that’s her uncle or her father, or whoever that is. So, the siblings, the brothers’ wives, they’re still in that household, they’re fine. It’s then, of course, possible that whatever, whoever ends up inheriting Imhotep might then turn around and kick them out, because they’re then the new head of the household, then they can go back to their father or uncles or brothers, whoever, whoever is left, so that it is, it is quite, it’s a precarious situation to be a widow, and I think it’s even a more precarious situation to be Nofret, if she hadn’t been killed, because if Imhotep dies, so she has an older husband, for all intents and purposes, if he dies, say his eldest son inherits everything, that eldest son has absolutely no legal obligation to keep her around, none. So, so then suddenly she’s the one who gets kicked out. So, I think that those machinations, I think Christie is being a little, maybe unkind to her, because those machinations of trying to turn the husband against and trying to bed themselves into the household, I think they’re probably not uncommon, and they come from a place of needing to future to future-proof your own existence.

Sarah Harrison  39:29

Fascinating.

Carolyn Daughters  39:30

I wanted to talk about these female characters a little bit, about how much agency they would have had. You’ve already been talking about this to a large degree, but also in Death Comes as the End, how much agency they had, and does that sync up with the reality? What would Agatha Christie have known about all this from her husband, archeologist Max Mallowan, and archeologist Stephen Glanville? I mean, we have Nofret, the concubine, who is very venomous woman in Death Comes as the End, Asa, who’s the mother figure, who is very wise and seems. Have a lot of insight into what’s going on in the household. We have Renisenb, of course, who is one of the characters I liked the most, and I think we’re meant to like quite well. We have Satipy and Kate, the wives of two of the sons, who each have their own motivations, and then Henet, who is this,  I guess, cousin or family member of the dead wife, and basically just like tending the house and working, so I guess if you’re a lower class family member with not a lot of means, maybe you’re, you have a job in the household, like, can you talk a little bit about this diversity of women in Death Comes as the End, and how that fits in with what Agatha Christie might have learned from her husband, Max Mallowan, and Stephen Glanville. And how it fits in with your understanding of ancient Egypt, and how this household might have worked?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  40:54

I think everyone has a role in the household, right, everyone has a job in the household in order for it to function in reality, so whether that’s spinning cloth or farming, or whatever, that depends on your, I guess, your social category. What I do find both quite tragic, but also quite realistic, I think, is Henet, the character. She’s clearly quite, as you say, a family member who’s seen as being less valuable, effectively, and is subordinate because perhaps she was married to someone who didn’t have a lot of wealth, she had no choice but to go back to what is it, she’s a cousin of the wife, and then, and she’s essentially kept around out of, I guess, a degree of sentiment to, to, but in exchange for things, right? She’s one of those people who would be really quite vulnerable, and I find, as a character, I find her quite tragic, because she is clearly not great, but you always have to wonder, and I think Agatha Christie had a very good, had a very good eye for those sort of things that we’re a product of our experiences, right, and I’m not sure that her experiences would have been very positive. [Agatha Christie’s research and information from Max Mallowan and Stephen Glanville would have helped inform the details in Death Comes in the End.]

Sarah Harrison  42:28

The really tragic part I recall about Henet is that she was rejected by her husband, I believe, for being ugly. What in the world?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  42:42

That’s a horrible situation to be in. And there are all kinds of things again in a society where you, if you build a society around the ideal of establishing a household, the Egyptians even had a term for it, Garak Pear, literally means to establish a house, and it’s what wisdom, Egyptian wisdom texts are full of descriptions about how that is what a young man should seek to do, to seek to leave their father’s house and establish their own household, and that means getting a wife, getting children, lots of children, because child mortality is high, so the more children you have, the better, because they can take care of you in your old age, and then make enough wealth to be able to pay back your parents effectively, especially your mother. There’s quite a few wisdom texts [that Agatha Christie might have known about all this from her husband, archeologist Max Mallowan, and archeologist Stephen Glanville.]. These texts talk about, a young man should always consider returning the favor to his mother effectively, because she was the one that took care of you while you were vulnerable, and while you were incapable, effectively, so when she grows older, you should then take care of her, because the father is likely to die first, right? So the mother is more like, and that’s again a dynamic that we see, that the mother has moved into the household of her son, who will then take care of her, if you, for whatever reason, don’t fit into that social expectation, then you have a problem, whether that’s because your husband rejects you for whatever reason, whether it’s because, for instance, you can’t have children, that’s another, that’s another big problem, there’s lots of Egyptian amulets and wisdom texts and temple rituals and stuff that is about fertility and about asking to become pregnant, because if you’ve married someone, if you’ve married your husband, and you are seen as the one who can’t have children, which is almost always the case, because again in a patriarchal society, the men are never gonna, they’re never gonna say, oh well, maybe I’m the problem ever, that it’s always gonna be the woman’s problem, right? So, and then suddenly you have a big problem, because you have no value in that household, right? And it creates really a pressure cooker of expectation and desperation, I suppose in some ways we even have a few texts that make reference to scenarios like that where two relatively well-off people have gotten married and there’s just no children, and then they, they will go out and they will purchase an enslaved individual who will effectively be sexually assaulted in order to get a child who can then be adopted into the family, because that’s the cheaper option and the more desirable social option rather than divulge, right? We have these quite, quite harsh social expectations. [Agatha Christie’s research and information from Max Mallowan and Stephen Glanville would have helped inform the details in Death Comes in the End.]

Carolyn Daughters  45:52

There’s a scene where slaves in Death Comes as the End are tasting the food to make sure it’s not poisoned. They taste it, and you watch them, and if they drop dead, you’re like, oh, I’m not gonna eat that, that’s poison. What a terrible life.

Sarah Harrison  46:23

Nicky brought up a bunch of things I want to touch on, and we are running close to time here, and I haven’t even asked, I think, a third of my questions. Nicky, we typically do two episodes on these books. Are you available for a second episode right after this one. Awesome, we have so much to talk about here. It’s really including really the book itself, including Nicky’s work, the broader context of what did you call it, Egyptomaniacs.

Carolyn Daughters  46:57

Yes, we’ve had a fabulous discussion about Agatha Christie, Max Mallowan, Stephen Glanville, and the Heqanakht Papyri. Next, we’ll actually talk about Death Comes as the End!

Sarah Harrison  47:10

Thank you so much, Nicky. Thanks for staying for our second episode. Thank you so much!

Carolyn Daughters  47:12

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Carolyn Daughters  51:52

Thanks for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. Until next time, Stay Mysterious.