Episode 110: Death Comes as the End – Agatha Christie and the Historical Fiction Mystery Novel

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.

Sarah Harrison 00:57

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Carolyn Daughters  01:33

I’m so glad we have another episode on this amazing historical fiction mystery novel.

Sarah Harrison  01:38

I know. I am full of still many questions, and I was about to launch into them, and I thought, that’ll push our episode too long. So I want to pick up there when we start with Dr. Nicky Nielsen again, our awesome guest. But first, I think Carolyn, you had a shout out for the episode.

Carolyn Daughters  01:56

I do. Our listener of the episode is my dad, my dad, Jim Daughters lives in McKinney, Texas, and he is not a podcast listener. In fact, I believe there’s one podcast in the entire world that he has ever listened to. I don’t think he knew what a podcast was until I told him I had one, and then it still took several years for him to listen to an episode. But what his entry point was Craig Johnson and the Longmire series. I know, and he’s like, “Wow, this is really interesting and so fun, and I really like that conversation you had with him, and so he’s listened, and has also started watching the Longmeyer series, and just all this stuff has emerged from this entry point into our podcast. So I thought that was cool, and if my dad can listen to this podcast, really, listeners, all your parents can as well.

Sarah Harrison  03:03

All your dads. And I just like to point out, we don’t show any favoritism here at Tea Tonic and Toxin, even to our own parents. They have to actually listen to win one of our fabulous stickers. I know. If you ask me as a family member for a sticker, I’m like, are you listening? They are gold. They are worth. They’re gold. So no, you don’t get that beautiful sticker until you’re listening. Well, thank you, Carolyn’s dad. Glad to have you now in our listenership. Yes. I’m gonna introduce our book again just briefly today. It’s a great historical fiction mystery novel. Agatha Christie’s Death Comes as the End. Everything Agatha Christie writes is typically great that we’ve read, and this one is so unique. It was first published in 1940-four in what is quite possibly the first historical whodunit. The Queen of Mystery transports us back to ancient Egypt, where death gives meaning to life, or vice versa. It’s 2000 B.C. 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, 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. Carolyn, you get to introduce our guest again today.

Carolyn Daughters  04:42

Yes, I’m going to give a couple sentences here. I was I was going to do one, but I’m going to actually do two. Dr. Nicky Nielsen is a senior lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. He has excavated in Europe, Turkey, and Egypt, and he’s currently the field director of the University of Liverpool Tell Nabasha Survey Project, which conducts archeological investigations of the ancient city of Imet, located in the northeastern Nile Delta. Welcome, Nicky.

Sarah Harrison  05:16

Welcome back. So, if you haven’t listened to our first episode, you need to, I don’t know, pause and go back and listen to it because there’s so much foundational stuff that Nicky goes through with us about this historical context, which is fascinating. And I actually wanted to pick up right where we left off. We were discussing some of the women in this historical fiction mystery novel and some of the strategies they were employing, too, especially so. Henet, the dependent family member, the hated cousin that comes in, and then Esa, Imhotep’s mother. So it was really interesting to me, as you were discussing that the whole dependency dynamic, and you have so you have Henet coming in, and her strategy is clearly a strategy is to ingratiate herself with Imhotep. She’s very unsuccessful with the rest of the family, and I’m not sure she’s trying that hard to be so unsuccessful, or it’s possible Esa attributes it to Imhotep’s foolishness, ego, and incompetence, and she says pretty directly that he was her least favorite child, and he’s still like the only one that has survived. The whole thing, like, felt hard and sad to me. On the one hand, does Henet have to have a strategy? Esa notices from the beginning that Henet hates them all. Henet hates the original wife that brought her there, rather than feeling like thankful to be somewhere when her own husband rejected her, and that hatred has just festered into a strategy. I wonder, did she pick the wrong person to ingratiate herself with, or could she have not had a strategy? And how does Esa being stuck with her least favorite child play into it? Is that common? Is that level of favoritism common, or is it even known in ancient Egypt? Or is it simply a storyline in this historical fiction mystery novel?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  07:32

I mean, it’s difficult to know for sure, right? Because these things are most of what we have from ancient Egypt in terms of what you’d call documentary evidence are administrative accounts a few letters, but they tend to be quite business oriented, and even the ones that aren’t, they’re quite stylized. Then they’re quite they’re formulaic. They might not reveal an enormous amount, and often what they reveal are hints, rather than where maybe we can sense that there’s something deeper going on, but not necessarily. The Heqanakht letters are a good example. We know that Heqanakht was upset with his family because they weren’t treating his new wife properly. We don’t know what they’re doing, we don’t know whether how he’s getting this information. We don’t know whether this is all the family? Are they just being a bit cold to her? We don’t really know the details because he himself is quite vague, and Egyptian letters are quite sometimes very frustratingly full of these kinds of slightly vague allusions to something. There is another letter which actually I’m working on at the moment to translate or retranslate, wherein a woman writes to a man. It’s about 500 years later after these, and there’s a strange sentence in there where she says something like, “Oh, and as for that man that you sent to me, who do you think I am? Why would I be interested in it? And it’s but there’s no context, right? There’s no so something’s clearly happened. There’s clearly some story there, but we just we can’t get at it. I think that we’re always going to be on the back foot. And Agatha Christie, I think, has the enormous benefit of being able to make things up, right? That’s the point in this historical fiction mystery novel. It’s a piece of fiction. I do think that it’s probably not an unrealistic social dynamic, and it’s again it’s a social dynamic that feels strangely contemporary. You might be in a situation where the whole world expects you to be grateful, but maybe. You just don’t feel like being grateful because you feel patronized, and that can then cause friction and a toxic relationship. So I think that’s not uncommon, really, and it’s not strange or unfamiliar. Whether that’s something that Christie took from one of the letters, I don’t know, or whether it’s just something that she’s maybe experienced elsewhere, and just put it into that time period where it feels like it works. It does work. It really does work.

Carolyn Daughters  10:33

It feels like there’s a class system in Egyptian society, but also within that inner sanctum of the household, there are different roles that people are filling, and different levels of respect people are showing toward various family members. Whether it’s Asa, Isa, Esa, or Kenneth, the family member who is the poor retainer in the household, widowed, Renisenb.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  11:09

Again, not. I think a lot of families, if you if you poke a little bit, might have someone who’s the family, the black sheep, the one that we maybe don’t talk about. Definitely mess up for whatever reason, they didn’t fill. They didn’t live up to whatever social expectations there were. I don’t think that’s really that uncommon.

Sarah Harrison  11:32

No, that’s totally true, and I do want to touch back for just a second on fascinating article because one of the things that surprised me, you dropped in at the end there about her husband and how do I say Max Mallowan.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  11:58

I’m a native Danish speaker. I’m not a native English speaker, so occasionally I will hideously mispronounce something in English. I call him Mallowan, but I don’t know whether that’s right.

Sarah Harrison  12:10

We could say either, folks. I’m not going to guarantee a pronunciation, but let’s say Max Mallowan was not very pleased with this historical fiction mystery novel and complained to Stephen Glanville about it. About I get the Christie’s reputation, and that was a little bit of surprising drama as well. It didn’t feel to me like what he was complaining about was the actual issue he had. What’s your take on that?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  12:35

I don’t know enough really about their relationship. It does seem, at least to me, it seems sometimes a little one-sided. Christie seems to be deeply enamored with Max Mallowan in times, and he maybe because of the time period, he doesn’t always come across as perhaps that good a partner. But again, whether that’s the time, it comes across maybe more clearly in things like her non-fiction book. Come, tell me how you live, isn’t that what it’s called? The book where she essentially narrates her experiences of traveling on excavations and traveling in the Near East and things like that. So I don’t know why he got it. Maybe it’s simply because there is maybe a little bit of snobbery in academic circles that you shouldn’t you shouldn’t fictionalize these things because it muddies the waters. But it does seem a bit, I’m not sure her reputation. Her reputation was pretty stellar by that point. It would have done much to move that, right?

Sarah Harrison  13:49

How would writing a successful historical fiction mystery novel of such a unique nature damage Agatha Christie? It’s also alluded to that maybe it’s not healthy for the field. But I actually wondered, like, is he mad that she collaborated so heavily with another man?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  14:04

It could be that he just he was just grumpy that out of either jealousy or academic pique that she went to another scholar of more advice.

Carolyn Daughters  14:16

Or maybe it would be the equivalent of his deciding to write a historical fiction mystery novel. Maybe she was infringing on his territory. I don’t know.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  14:25

Maybe, maybe. But because she did, I mean, they did work together, and I mean, she did. When she went on excavations and stuff, it’s not like she just sat around and she contributed to this this archeological field work. So she was already contributing to the field, but maybe he just felt that this was mixing two worlds.

Carolyn Daughters  14:49

I had never even heard of Death Comes as the End, and I have read a lot of Agatha Christie. But we chose this historical fiction mystery novel for our reading list. When you look at lists of. The five or 10 Agatha Christie books every reader should read those sorts of lists. Well, Death Comes as the End rarely falls on it, and yet I would argue it belongs on those lists because she’s doing something really interesting here with this historical setting, and the historical whodunit wasn’t really a thing at the time, and she’s going to basically launch that idea that we can set our books outside of this century, but even very far into the past. And I think that’s so interesting that she did it, which is why we chose it. Sarah and I often talk in these podcasts about how did this book get on the list? Why did we choose this book? I think this historical fiction mystery novel belongs, but outside of the historical setting and the setting in Egypt, I think it’s a really good story and a really good mystery. How did you both feel about the story itself.

Sarah Harrison  16:04

Well, I love this story, and one of the things to me that sets apart a really good book and just an interesting book. Like every, not everyone, but a lot of people can write a page turner. But what I liked about this was the moments where I felt like she would just pause a little bit to consider some more transcendent themes, and that’s what really gets me. When you have a page turner, but you’re also considering a lot more big picture stuff. One of the things that comes to my mind, and maybe Nicky can comment on this as well. Is this the role of writing, and how as more people are educated to write, that’s going to change the culture in a way that not everyone sees as beneficial. And I thought, well, that’s really interesting. This new technology, this culture change, so just the way she would bring it in and pause, I felt like just added levels to what’s always a page turner with Agatha Christie in this historical fiction mystery novel. How about you, Nicky?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  17:16

No, I agree. I mean, the thing about writing is interesting because obviously we know about ancient Egypt, and anyone who knows about ancient Egypt knows about hieroglyphs, right? Because it’s such a dominant part of the culture. But in in reality, the functional literacy rate was probably about 5%. It was an absolute minority of the population who can read and write, and it’s a marker of being a member of the elite. This is what sets you apart because if you can read and write, there’s an element of control. You can gatekeep information effectively, and I think it’s interesting that she picks up on that thing with more people learning how to read and write, I don’t think that’s necessarily because I don’t think that really happened at that time in history necessarily. But what did happen gradually from this point onwards is that the scribal elite began to gradually lose power, political power in in Egypt, and especially when we get to the late Bronze Age, most of the really serious elite in Egypt, including the royal family, were descendants of military leaders. They were, for all intents and purposes, warlords, and they started deriving their power from the army, maybe not from just being able to sit and write a scroll. And the scribal elite were clearly not always very pleased with that. There’s a whole genre of they’re like training texts, texts you would give young scribal students to learn, and they we call them the “Don’t be a soldier” texts. They’re basically they just go on and on about how horrible it is to be a soldier and how you definitely shouldn’t run away and join the army because it’s horrible. You’re going to die and you’re going to get diseases and all these things. And it’s clearly it’s a class who are feeling threatened, and are lashing out. I think that’s an interesting thing as well that there is a depth to Death Comes as the End, and I think it’s one of the things that I enjoy as well. I should say,  I don’t really read fiction set in ancient Egypt or a historical fiction mystery novel because I might get annoyed when things are wrong, or I focus on tiny little details. With this, I think it’s different because again the story feels so current and feels so contemporary, and it’s set in ancient Egypt, and there are some lovely little details which feel like you discover. A friend in the text, but fundamentally, it’s a story that’s pretty universal. I do think, though, one of the reasons why it perhaps is less well known is because, from at least from what I recall, it’s one of a vanishingly small number of Agatha Christie stories that was never adapted for any other movie. So I do wonder. Thankfully, I should say, because if my feelings on fiction set in ancient Egypt aren’t that positive, my view on movies set in ancient Egypt is practically unprintable. But so, so I’m quite grateful that it hasn’t. But I wonder whether that also, it hasn’t had that renaissance of being made into a theater play or a short, no short film or whatever movie, whatever else has happened to the other stories.

Carolyn Daughters  20:52

I had read somewhere that this historical fiction mystery novel had been planned for some filming, maybe some a few years ago, and I could see how difficult this would be, to do.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  21:08

I think the problem is that there’s an expectation, which I mean, speaking of Egyptomania, there is an expectation in the public that whenever a story is set in ancient Egypt, you need lots of gold, and you need curses, and you need these things because that’s always been the case. And so I’m not sure you could tell a story about a family in ancient Egypt with some murders. I’m not sure that would work as a film because I don’t think people would go and watch it to be honest, because it lacks some of the things.

Carolyn Daughters  21:40

They think there’s a curse.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  21:44

But I think perhaps audience girls would want there to be one, and I always I always fear in these scenarios that then some clever script writer is going to rewrite the story and make one up.

Sarah Harrison  21:58

We’ve noticed that I think in a lot of the books we’ve looked at, right, Carolyn? It’s like the longevity often does feel tied to whether it has been made into a movie?

Carolyn Daughters  22:07

Yes, it really. I hadn’t thought about it in those, getting in those clear of how clear those terms are. But if there’s a film of Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich, we’re gonna keep Rear Window alive. Keep that story alive. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett is another example. But some of these writers are also big enough in their own right. Maybe Ethel Lina White is a better example, like The Wheel Spins. But I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before.

Sarah Harrison  22:43

What was your take on the story, Carolyn?

Carolyn Daughters  22:50

I loved the inner dynamics of it, and I loved the idea that the evil is from within, and so the idea of evil within their household. So it’s a cozy mystery. We know one of this small, small-ish. It’s actually not small, but small-ish cast of characters is the murderer. We and the evil comes from within the characters. So envy leads to very destructive behaviors in various characters. Whether it’s trying to share malicious gossip, or whether it’s actually trying to kill someone, or actually killing someone, like the idea that I want to solidify my place in life or my family’s place in life, and I will do anything to protect my family. It feels so modern to me, and I loved that. I loved how I could identify with what was happening with each of the different characters, while also feeling transported to ancient Egypt.

Sarah Harrison  24:08

I thought this historical fiction mystery novel was a terrific story, and I love your explanations. Just really quick a side note, hopping off what you were just saying, Nicky. My husband’s a geologist, and he can hardly watch a movie about any geology events without being like, “Oh no, you can’t. That would never happen.

Sarah Harrison  24:32

But are there any, from your expert perspective, books or movies that you would recommend around Egypt? Are they all garbage?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  24:40

I mean, no, I don’t even think that they’re garbage at all. I think that for one of my favorite movies is The Mummy with Branden Frasier. I love it. But I have to watch it not as an Egyptologist, and I have to watch as entertainment, right? But that’s difficult to maintain for 100,000 word historical fiction mystery novel. Like with a movie that’s flashing and fun. That’s okay. But it’s difficult for me to maintain it for a whole novel. I will say, I did when I was young. I really enjoyed the books by a French author called Christian Jacq, who wrote a series of historical novels set in ancient Egypt. Jacq, I believe, has passed away, but he was an Egyptologist. They are absolutely packed with information. Do you almost get a little bit of a headache from reading them? But those I really did enjoy.

Sarah Harrison  25:39

Nice.

Carolyn Daughters  25:42

One thing that I have been thinking about is, okay, so Nofret is a concubine. She has really destabilized the household. Everybody’s obsessed with her and concerned about her role in this household. And when she dies, she’s laying at the foot of this cliff. A lot of people think, well, she deserved it. It was fate. This nobody killed her, but also it occurred to me that it’s really convenient for a lot of people to just turn a blind eye and say, oh, it was fate. She was a venomous woman trying to disrupt our household. She deserved it because it keeps them from having to look turn the spotlight on themselves. And so it’s the idea. I think is well now stability has returned, but of course stability has not returned. I don’t know what were your thoughts when she first dies, and we see that, and then we realize there’s going to be a whole lot of additional repercussions.

Carolyn Daughters  26:52

I think there is. You’re completely right. I think there is that element of it solves. Everyone has a problem, and her passing away solves all of them on the surface of it. It actually it works out. And of course, in a society like that, what I really enjoy is that there’s not much of an attempt to try to pretend that there’s some police force because there isn’t. In pharaonic Egypt, there is no such thing as a police force. At most, you have a slightly paramilitary organization that guards tombs and stuff like that. There’s no investigation. There’s the justice system is so completely alien from anything we understand today. If this was set today, there would be police because someone had passed away. There would be a criminal investigation if there was any suspicion of foul goings on. The people involved couldn’t just go, “Oh well, that solves the problem, and then head home like so. But it’s interesting that in that time it works because that does work for most of the people in the household.

Sarah Harrison  28:02

I know Nofret is a character that I did feel for in this historical fiction mystery novel. And Renisenb did a nice job of bringing the tragic element in, like as she realized you’re automatically gonna feel like oh boy this young beautiful girl and this like old guy on his third relationship, and that’s probably not her top choice. But then to find out she was actually jilted by a member of his household, who just seems to be to me just a playboy type, or just was flattered that such a beautiful woman would, would be for him. I do think it lends a tragic element, but one of the things she weaves in there is the irredeemability. Like you didn’t have to, you can have a sad life, but you didn’t have to try and disinherit all the children. Right. Same with like, Henet. It sucks that that happened to you. You didn’t have to actually hate the family. That I get that you would, but the fact that it always turns into a dynamic strategy, I can understand it, but it makes it tough.

Sarah Harrison  29:20

I hope there was a different way to approach it.

Carolyn Daughters  29:24

Henet doesn’t have to hate the family, but I, we don’t know enough about like, was she less malicious at some point? Did she enter the household just grateful? We don’t know. Like, the one of the worst things in the world is to just be pitied, and so is the family taking her in because they pity her? Are they taking her in because they feel that they must because she’s a family member? How are they treating her, or was she just always a malicious, gossipy? She’s really like she’s obsequious. Like she pretends to bow down to everybody, and but her words belie her actual intent. So I, I don’t, I don’t know. She was very hard for me to sympathize with, and I think probably for Agatha Christie to sympathize with, and yet the idea that she comes into this household and is basically the servant in the household is also troubling for me.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  30:28

It’s hard. I think, I mean, this historical fiction mystery novel is also it’s a product of its time, right? Death Comes as the End is a book from the 1940s right? So there are certain social mores and rules and stuff that Christie as well writes within, and I think you see that in a lot of the books. There, there is perhaps slightly less sympathy for certain types of characters and certain types of behavior than we might get in a novel that was written yesterday, simply because they are reflecting a time that they’re written in. I do I do find her quite fascinating as a character simply because I find that social dynamic quite interesting because it’s something that we see not just in ancient Egypt but pop up again and again and again. I mean I don’t know the statistics about this but I do find it interesting that, for instance, if we look at witch hunts in the United States or in in in England, a disproportionate amount of the women who were accused were lower social class widows, paupers, people who were seen as a bit of a nuisance in the community for whatever reason for not fulfilling social roles. So I find it interesting that this is something that sadly we see again and again and again. But I do think Agatha Christie addresses it in an interesting way, even if maybe not in the most sympathetic way.

Sarah Harrison  32:02

The different social dynamics throughout history definitely keep coming into my mind in this historical fiction mystery novel. I was reading a biography of Annie Oakley of all people a while back, and one of the things that surprised me. So she was an orphan, and she was adopted, but back then, today if we adopt you, you are our child. You are our new child. Annie Oakley was adopted and took care of the other kids, took care of the real children. She was the family worker. She did the dishes, did the laundry, took care of their actual kids, and was glad to have a place to live.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  32:39

Basically not too different, really, from exactly your because something that should be a generous thing is being done out of self-interest effectively.

Sarah Harrison  32:51

I need a worker and you need a place to live, so let’s do the deal. Similarly, I’m familiar with a lot of the biblical stories, and this story really brought up so many themes of those ancient stories. From Abraham couldn’t have a child with Sarah, and so he takes Sarah’s servant and has a child with her servant, which is meant to be the inheritor.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  33:18

It actually happens, and not just in a historical fiction mystery novel. I think Jacob as well. It happens a couple of other times, but that’s of course because it’s all part of the same, the same milieu, right? A lot of the really older stories. There are even some ancient Egyptian wisdom texts that there are fragments of that have clearly inspired parts of the Old Testament because it’s all part of the same cultural environment. Another good example is the story of David and Goliath. There’s an ancient Egyptian story which is much older, about the time of the Epnat letters, which has a character who’s supposed to be weaker and who’s vulnerable, who defeats a much more powerful individual, and it’s not the same story, but it’s echoes of it that we see.

Sarah Harrison  34:12

There’s the mythological themes and the cultural themes. You mentioned I think Jacob. Jacob’s known for his favoritism on Joseph and the family dynamic that comes from that just unravels them all, and then like the subject of famine, Joseph winds up in Egypt, preventing from dying of famine. So it’s just it’s really fascinating to see to me how it’s not necessarily our culture, but it just ties into a broader context of stories that I think sometimes we struggle to understand. Like, what is this happening?

Carolyn Daughters  34:47

But then they even the stories we’ve just been talking about in the last couple minutes all feel relevant today. They still feel, which is the most amazing thing to me is how. We can hear stories from so long ago, and how they can easily apply it to modern life.

Sarah Harrison  35:08

They’re all still like humans behaving like humans.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  35:12

One of the wonderful things about studying as well, or learning about any ancient culture. I think what I what I love best is those little moments of almost like shared humanity. You don’t always get it because, again, you have all the glamor and the mythology and all this stuff. But just once in a while, you get a human connection there, and you see, oh, that’s really funny because they were so people just like us.

Carolyn Daughters  35:43

Sarah, outside of this historical fiction mystery novel, we have to ask Nicky some questions about his work.

Sarah Harrison  35:48

You read my mind. Well, I want to make sure we have time to ask current work. Yeah, so interesting.

Carolyn Daughters  35:58

Tell us just a little bit about the Tell Nabasha survey project.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  36:03

It used to be run with the University of Liverpool. Now it’s run as a University of Manchester project, and we’re basically excavating this settlement in the northeastern Nile Delta, which was called Immet in ancient times, the main cult center of a snake goddess called Wajet, who was the goddess of Lower Egypt. It was quite an important settlement, like a regional capital, but the archeological site itself has been very damaged, so it’s very fragmentary. And we’re working to excavate part of a town dating to around the time of Alexander the Great, give or take, and a part of a temple area as well. And it’s for this thing about human connection. And we found when we were there last, we excavated a fire pit next to one of the houses set up in the in the shade of one of the house walls, and we found a cooking pot that was still it had been left on the fire when the settlement was abandoned, and when we did what’s called flotation, we basically take all the soil from inside the pot and put it through filters and stuff like that, and we found out that it had contained a tilapia fish stew that was still in those wow, and those moments when you look and you can see, you can almost visualize someone sitting there and stirring a pot with fish stew. There’s something. It’s that connection. It’s quite wonderful when it happens. That’s what we’re working on working on at the moment.

Sarah Harrison  37:41

Cool. So, do you go yourself and like organize the excavation? Are you out there with like a hammer and a little brush, or how does that work?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  37:48

No, it’s very dusty. We don’t really need hammers, just trowels. But we don’t most of the time though. Most of the time, I’m in in working in Manchester and teaching and stuff like that. We try to go when we can, but obviously it’s all dependent on funding and permissions and all kinds of things. We hopefully we can come back in the in the near future and excavate some more.

Sarah Harrison  38:12

Okay, I’m going to ask a really self-interested question right now. I have always wanted to like go be one of those volunteers on like a dig. Do you take them? Do you know who takes them?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  38:25

I do. I do know of some field schools that take volunteers. I don’t unfortunately because the mission is too small. We don’t have the capacity unfortunately. But I do. If you send me an email, I can send you a contact to someone.

Sarah Harrison  38:39

All right, I am sending you an email for a contact because that’s like one of my life bucket items. It is a two dig.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  38:47

What I will say, it’s always a good idea to start somewhere other than Egypt, like to volunteer on like an archeological excavation near to you to get a sense for it because it is like suddenly being like in the middle of nowhere. It’s a bit of a dropped in the deep end.

Sarah Harrison  39:05

Makes sense.

Carolyn Daughters  39:07

Sarah, that’s a bucket list item for me as well.

Sarah Harrison  39:10

All right, so we need to just both go, and we can do an episode.

Carolyn Daughters  39:16

I was an anthropology major until I switched to English literature, and I would love more information on this as well.

Sarah Harrison  39:29

Thank you. You’ll be hearing from us.

Carolyn Daughters  39:31

Nicky, can you talk a little bit about Egyptomaniacs? I think I said that correct. How we became obsessed with ancient Egypt. So, how did we become obsessed? (So obsessed that Agatha Christie even wrote a historical fiction mystery novel set in ancient Egypt.)

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  39:43

It’s getting on for a bit because I published it in 2020 I think it came out or 2021. But basically, I was fascinated by the idea of how we became obsessed with ancient Egypt. It was originally supposed to be called Pyramiddiates. Until my publishers actually intervened after having a focus group, and apparently there several members of the public said they thought the book called them stupid by narrow that title. So I was forced to change the title, but basically, I wanted to look at how Egypt was actually explored and how that exploration was communicated, because we see echoes of Egypt in so many places where we don’t necessarily think of something like the Washington Monument. Why is the monument? Why is there a great big obelisk, which is an Egyptian thing in Washington D.C. What was the thought process behind that, so I think that I was really interested in that idea of where do the stereotypes come from because everyone has preconceived ideas about ancient Egypt and Cleopatra I think is a really interesting example because historically we know that she was an incredibly accomplished stateswoman. She spoke six or seven languages, was very highly educated, and despite failing in the end, did manage to keep Egypt together despite having taken over at a time when her father had basically bankrupted the country and messed everything up because he was not a particularly good states person, and but then the Romans really dislike her, so all the descriptions of her are super negative and focuses on her being a temptress and immoral and all these things that the Romans lob at her, and then those accounts are then what Renaissance artists and scholars read. So when you then get Renaissance and Baroque art of Cleopatra, it’s just this unfiltered negative Roman stuff that made it into that, and then later times base it on that, and later, and modern times, then base it on that, and that’s how these myths get started.

Sarah Harrison  42:09

Is it possible to come back with your work and people looking at the original artifacts to shift that perspective that has developed?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  42:19

I hope so. I hope so. I mean, I think there are moves to try to push back against some of the misinterpretations that it. I must say, in many cases, were perpetrated by Egyptologists themselves. Because that was the understanding at the time, so I think we try to, I certainly try to tell a balanced, evidence-based account, and then, and then take it from there. But there, as you can probably tell from things like the Heqanakht letters, there’s always going to be a degree of interpretation that you can’t ever get away from that.

Carolyn Daughters  43:01

And also that like a woman depicted as either a Madonna or a Lady Macbeth. It’s like sometimes there is not a lot of room in between for there’s less of a fixed identity to assign to somebody, and it’s even more tricky. We see that in this historical fiction mystery novel that Agatha Christie wrote.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  43:17

I think with ancient Egypt because in generally for both women and men, personality does not survive in the in the record because the Egyptian texts that we have, even about very famous Egyptians like Ramesses the Great and big kings, it’s all royal monumental propaganda. It’s not trying to tell an accurate historical account. That’s not the purpose of it. So, whatever these people were, how they thought and felt, and we can’t really ever know that. That information is just gone, and there’s no way of recreating it.

Carolyn Daughters  43:54

What remains is the narrative that at one point was documented and now has become a more fixed entity.

Carolyn Daughters  44:05

We have to go back and we have to look at these accounts and say how objective are these really? What are they trying to do?

Sarah Harrison  44:15

Now, as an Egyptologist, though, I want to hear a little bit about what drew you to that specific field, and are you yourself a recovering Egyptomaniac or something else?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  44:27

I think we all are. My theory is that basically all children around age 10 will take one of two paths. They’ll either be fascinated with ancient Egypt or with dinosaurs. And some of us and some of us never grow out of that, and we’re the ones who become Egyptologists and paleontologists. I think we can get somewhere in our brain a switch is not switched off again. I think I’ve never I don’t think I’ve ever met an Egyptologist who wasn’t fascinated by Egypt as a child. It’s interesting. If I talk to older colleagues, many of them in in Britain will, for instance, say that their interest in Egypt began as children when they saw the Tutankhamen exhibition at the British Museum in the 70s. There is usually some moment, something that says, “Oh, okay, this is really interesting. Let’s look at that.

Carolyn Daughters  45:22

That was my first exposure, not that exhibit or any understanding of who King Tut was. It was Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live doing the King Tut dance. I was a small child, and I watched this, and I was like, “And he’s all dressed up. He’s got a loincloth on and a crown or something. I’d have to look at it again, but that was that was my introduction. It is very good.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  45:52

And is it a saxophone player who comes out of a sarcophagus or something? Very good.

Sarah Harrison  46:01

That’s awesome.

Carolyn Daughters  46:01

That’s amazing. Yes. And then just a quick question about Mummies to Microchips. Tell us what’s going on there.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  46:13

That’s a book I wrote with a colleague, Professor Joyce Tilsley, a few years ago, and it’s basically because a lot of the history of Egyptology teaching at the University of Manchester is online. The university has been an innovator in online teaching and distance learning teaching in Egyptology since the early 2000s, and the book is effectively about that method and how that was developed. So it’s more of a, shall we say, a textbook or a slightly dry monography type book than anything particularly, particularly riveting, as it were.

Sarah Harrison  46:54

That’s awesome. We’re getting close on time, but I wanted to squeeze in one more question. In preparing for this episode, I had read that the ending we have is not Agatha Christie’s original intended ending for this historical fiction mystery novel. She was talked out of her original ending for Death Comes as the End. You guys know anything about that? I didn’t get to dive into that, but that her collaborator had talked her out of the ending she wanted to do. I didn’t know if you heard anything.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  47:24

No.

Sarah Harrison  47:25

All right, I’m gonna have to dig deeper. It’s like the wrong thing to land on right before an episode. Well, I myself, I didn’t, I didn’t feel 100% comfortable with the ending of this historical fiction mystery novel and how it played out. Did you guys predict who the murderer was in Death Comes as the End?

Carolyn Daughters  47:46

No. Well, kind of. No.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  47:50

It felt a little neat, to be honest. I could believe that originally there was supposed to be another twist.

Carolyn Daughters  48:02

There were enough red herrings that I went all around quite a bit.

Sarah Harrison  48:10

She’s a master of making you think. Well, anybody could do it, and so then I start thinking about not who did it, who do I think did it, but like just book strategies. Like, who has the least against them, and that’s probably who did it. And if I convince myself.

Carolyn Daughters  48:30

Agatha Christie was a big proponent of fair play. So then I started asking questions: Was this historical fiction mystery novel a fair play novel? Could a reader very definitively by the end know who did it, or would it be a gut feel? And I’d have to reread Death Comes as the End to know for sure. I think, as I often do with the fair play books, is to see where the hints and signals are in this historical fiction mystery novel. But so I’m not sure where I’ve landed there with the fair play in Death Comes as the End.

Sarah Harrison  49:02

Nicky, are you primarily an Agatha Christie fan? Do you read lots of mystery, or where’s your fictional preference? I read some mystery.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  49:10

But I don’t read an enormous amount, to be honest. I at the moment I’m mainly reading nonfiction, to be honest. But I do, I’m a massive fan of Umberto Eco.

Carolyn Daughters  49:26

The Name of the Rose.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  49:29

That’s a mystery as well, of course. Absolutely. Though I’m currently re-reading Baudolino, his take on medieval fantasy effectively.

Sarah Harrison  49:44

Well, awesome, Nicky. You’ve been a wonderful guest. Carolyn, did you have any last minute questions to interject in there?

Carolyn Daughters  49:54

Nicky, now we want to read everything you’ve written, which is awesome. Is there any other book that you want to point us to now that you that you know we loved this historical fiction mystery novel? We loved Death Comes as the End. Is there some nonfiction book that, if we’re interested as readers as listeners, we might next pursue?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  50:24

I mean, it’s difficult because I think if there’s something about ancient Egypt and these social dynamics and stuff, I think there’s a book called Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization by a guy called Barry J. Kemp. That is a fantastic overview of how Egyptian society worked, and also looks at things like households. How are they comprised? Who is head of the household? How does a household evolve over time? Those sorts of things. That’s actually really good. It’s quite a useful companion almost to the house because it contextualizes along.

Carolyn Daughters  51:02

Sarah, we have to read that to prepare for our Egyptian adventure.

Sarah Harrison  51:07

But first we have to do a warm-up adventure, and then maybe they’ll let us on an Egypt team.

Carolyn Daughters  51:12

Yep. And Nicky, how can people reach you if they’re interested in hearing about you and your work?

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  51:22

I’m not much one for one much for social media, but they can absolutely just Google my name, which should take them to the University of Manchester SARP page, and there’s an email there. So that’s fairly straightforward.

Carolyn Daughters  51:35

Okay, we will link to that page.

Sarah Harrison  51:38

Well, now you’re going to get flooded with requests to go on digs, but ignore all of them. Except for me and Carolyn.

Dr. Nicky Nielsen  51:44

I’m afraid I don’t control that.

Carolyn Daughters  51:50

Sarah, now that we’ve finished this wonderful historical fiction mystery novel, do you want to introduce our next book?

Sarah Harrison  51:54

Speaking of books that make you think anybody could have done it, next up we’re reading Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh. This clever mystery, published in 1945, is set on a remote New Zealand sheep farm. Flossie Rubrick, a highly opinionated and influential member of the New Zealand Parliament, was last seen heading off to a wool shed on her farm. Three weeks later, she turns up dead, packed in a bale of wool. What happened on the night of her disappearance? Inspector Roderick Alleyn is in New Zealand on counterespionage duty, and he is happy to lend a hand. Ngaio Marsh was considered one of the queens of crime, and Died in the Wool is among her best. So, if you didn’t know, Agatha Christie was too. We’ll be joined by our friend ZJ Czupor. ZJ’s new murder mystery, Dead Men Don’t Drink, is published at ZoltanJames.Substack.com. He is also author of The Big Weird Haikus in Times of Pandemic and Chaos. ZJ is a return guest. He’s the president of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Association, and he’s a lot of fun. So is the book. I’m in the middle of it now, and I think really anybody probably could have done it. So join us for that one, also.

Carolyn Daughters  53:15

And this is our fourth of four queens of crime. So Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, and finally now we’re getting to Ngaio Marsh. Most of her books are set in England, but this one is set in her native New Zealand.

Sarah Harrison  53:34

It’s really great so far. Nicky, you’ve been amazing. Thank you. I want to actually do more Egyptian mysteries now, so we can have you. I know.

Carolyn Daughters  53:45

Thank you for the invitation. This has been fun.

Carolyn Daughters  53:48

Thanks so much for listening to our two-part discussion of the historical fiction mystery novel Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie. Please help other mystery lovers find our show with a like, subscribe, share, or rating. It’s totally free, and it means the world to us.

Sarah Harrison  54:02

If the spirit of mystery so moves you, we have a few ways you can financially support our labor of love. Click the link in the show notes to support this podcast. Buy your books through our Amazon store, or join our Patreon, where subscribers have access to additional episodes that include bonus content and discussions of the movies inspired by some of the greatest mysteries ever written.

Carolyn Daughters  47:12

Thanks so much for listening to this episode on Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie. Please help other mystery lovers find our show by subscribing or with a like, a share, or a rating. It’s totally free, and it means the world to us.

If the spirit of mystery so moves you, we have a few ways you can financially support our labor of love. Click the link in the show notes to support this podcast. Buy your books through our Amazon store or join our Patreon, where subscribers have access to additional episodes that include bonus content and discussions of the movies inspired by some of the greatest mysteries ever written.

Carolyn Daughters  51:52

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