The Pharaohs of Egypt

About

Graphic Fiction by Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot
Translated from the French by Edward Gauvin

This graphic story takes place in the first part of the twentieth century, at a pyramid in Egypt. You'll meet Bedouin tour guides and their British clients—but who are the real "pharaohs"?

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Copyright by Florent Ruppert and Jéróme Mulot. First published as Les Pharoans d'Egypte. By arrangement with L'Association. Translation copyright 2007 by Edward Gauvin. All rights reserved.

Originally appeared in English in Words Without Borders' February 2007 issue: (Worth) Ten Thousand Words: A World of Graphics.
Bios
for The Pharaohs of Egypt
https://wwb-campus.org/literature/the-pharaohs-of-egypt
Florent Ruppert

Florent Ruppert was born in Troyes in 1979. His publications include the fanzines Le Journal de l'Aventure (2002), Le Journal de l'Aventure diese 2 (2003), and Del Aventure (2004); and the books (all published by L’Association) Safari Monseigneur (2005), La Poubelle de la Place Vendôme (2006), and Panier de Singe (2006), for which he and Jérôme Mulot won the Best Newcomer Award at the 2007 Angoul'me International Comics Festival. His latest book, Barrel of Monkeys, again in collaboration with Jérôme Mulot, was published in 2013.

Jérôme Mulot

Florent Ruppert (Troyes, 1979) and Jérôme Mulot (Dijon, 1981) have published the fanzines Le Journal de l'Aventure (2002), Le Journal de l'Aventure diese 2 (2003), and Del Aventure (2004), and the books Safari Monseigneur (L'Association, 2005), La Poubelle de la Place Vendôme (L'Association, 2006), and Panier de Singe (L'Association, 2006), for which they won the Best Newcomer Award at the 2007 Angoul'me International Comics Festival.

Edward Gauvin (translator)

Two-time winner of the John Dryden Translation prize, Edward Gauvin has received fellowships and residencies from PEN America, the NEA, the Fulbright program, the Lannan Foundation, the French Embassy, and Ledig House. His translations include Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s selected stories, A Life on Paper (Small Beer, 2010), winner of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award, and Jean Ferry's Conductor and Other Tales (Wakefield, 2013), a French-American Foundation Translation Prize finalist. Other translations have appeared in the New York Times, Subtropics, Tin House, Conjunctions, and The Southern Review. The translator of more than 150 graphic novels, he is the contributing editor for Francophone comics at Words without Borders, and a regular columnist on the Francophone fantastic for Weird Fiction Review.
Context

Links available online only

Meet the Creators
Read an interview with the "two-headed cartoon beast," Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot, published in metabunker.

Meet Translator Edward Gauvin
Read Gauvin's interview with The Comics Journal, in which he explains how he got his start as a translator: “Year Abroad. Dumb luck. Decent Taste."

Being Bedouin
Read a young Bedouin tour guide's thoughts on Bedouin history and culture, published on the independent news site Egyptian Streets.
Then, listen to Bedouin songs from the Smithsonian's music collection.

The Pharaohs as Inspiration
Look at a modern mural that invokes the pharaohs to commemorate people who died during a soccer match—and read about the artist who made it.

Background on Egypt
Mural, Egypt 2013, photographed by stttijn. License: CC by 2.0.
To learn more about Egypt's history, read the BBC's timeline of key events from 7000 BCE to 2018.
Playlist
Links available online only

More from the Creators
Read Barrel of Monkeys, also by Ruppert and Mulot.

More from Translator Edward Gauvin
Read Gauvin's other work for Words Without Borders, of which he is a contributing editor. We especially recommend his translation of the comic "Crocodiles are Everywhere" and his essay on his own work being translated.
Or visit Gauvin's YouTube playlist of videos related to his work, including a reading of his translation of the story of a man who "sort of flies," below.

Being a Tourist
Read about a modern encounter between Western tourists and Bedouin guides, from the perspective of the tourist.

5 More Pharaohs: Then and Now
1. Find out which ancient pharaoh you most resemble in this National Geographic quiz
2. Read the poem “The Sphinx Speaks," by Francis Saltus Saltus
3. Then, read Wordsworth’s poem about the retreat of the armies of Napoleon, whom some compared to a pharaoh: "By Moscow Self-Devoted to a Blaze"
4. Take a look at Tobias Wolff's In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War, a Vietnam War memoir
5. Listen to Dre Murray's song "Pharaoh," about the materialism of “modern day Pharaohs,” and read the lyrics.
More Literary "Savages"
You'll find the word being used, with conscious and unconscious irony, in such poems as:
- Carl Sandburg's poem "Chicago"
- Hamlin Garland's "Do You Fear the Wind?"
- The poem "The West Indies" by British abolitionist James Montgomery.
"A Human Being or An Old Shoe?": More Stories of People Getting Labeled
The tourists in this story call their tour guides "savages." Read another story from Egypt, in which a grandmother is only ever referred to as "The Guest."
Read selections from Taxi, Khaled Al Khamissi's nonfiction collection of stories of Cairo's cab drivers—their experiences are, in some ways, similar to those of the tour guides in "The Pharaohs of Egypt." One of the cab drivers asks, “What do you think, sir, am I a human being or an old shoe?"
Teaching Ideas
- Background Resource
- Note for teachers of secondary students:
- 1. Pharaohs and Savages
- 2. The Body Leaves Home, the Mind Stays Put
- 3. Fantasy and Reality
To access these Teaching Ideas, please register or login to WWB-Campus.

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