He was a god who cherished even the lowly-born. He was a god who believed all men were created equal, even servants, and slaves, and people with black skin. According to mr Waltari himself, the novel had to be written because Sinuhe sat on his desk and pleaded him to write his life story (! ) Mr Waltari describes the writing process in a great little book called "Neljä päivänlaskua" which far as I know has been translated to english with title " A Nail Merchant at Nightfall" If anybody out there has seen a copy, I'd be delighted to hear your wiews.About 1300 years before the birth of Christ, in what was then the greatest civilization in history, the new Pharaoh, Akhnaton, decreed that all gods were false, except for one, Aton. It is posible, thought, that the english abridged translation omitted this passing reference. In fact, at the early part of Mr Waltari's novel Sinuhe himself refers to the ancient legend, having been made fun of his name by his childhood friends, so I very much doubt the assumption of the novel being based on the original tale. BTW, somebody claimed that the book was based on the ancient egyptian legend of Sinuhe. Sinuhe remains a great monument to the human, with his failures as well as his greatness. Anyway, any story can be interpreted as a hidden parallel. swastikas) as their war totems, not to mention the siege of Gaza as parallel to what happened in Leningrad in 1941-44. In fact my personal wiew is that a lot of the novel can be seen as an allegory of europe between the world wars, as the Aton religion can be seen as a parallel to communism, while the Hittites use sun signs (i.e. He also published a play on Ekhnaton just before the WWII Mr Waltari studied theology and philosophy, so the religious contents of the novel and the similarities with the Ecclesiates in the Bible are by no means coincidential. However, it is just a novel nevertheless. He did a lot of research on the egyptian customs and other background, in fact so much that the novel was used as reading material in the Cairo university according to a finnish legend. Unfortunately, I can not say for sure, but the generally accepted consensus wiew in Finland is that Mr Waltari invented the character of Sinuhe and his life. An answer to the enquiry regarding the authenticity of the Sinuhe character.
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