The Pyramid: A Novel

The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote of two great legs of stones, standing stranded and in ruin in the lonely desert sands: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" When most of us bother to think about the pyramids of Egypt at all, we see them through tourist's eyes, or perhaps as Ozymandian exemplars of human vanity or imperial excess. With his short, parable-like novel THE PYRAMID, Ismail Kadare presents those great Egyptian monuments in entirely new lights, sometimes bitingly sardonic, other times morbidly humorous or harrowing in the fear they inspired and the violence they engendered.The great pharaoh Cheops announces one day to his ministers that he has decided not to follow in his father's footsteps, not to build a pyramid. Panicked at this abandonment of tradition, the Pharaoh's ministers convene among themselves, then present their case, a triumph of political and economic irony that speaks to modern governments (totalitarian and otherwise) as well. To wit, that the pyramids were conceived as a solution to the vexing problem of societal success and wealth. As Egyptians became more prosperous, they became more independent, with freer minds that were more resistant to the Pharaoh's authority. Hence, the pyramids were intended to weigh down the populace, drain away its wealth and vitality with a public works project that would render the people more submissive and manageable. Cheops relents before this impeccable logic, and thus begins the design of Egypt's most magnificent pyramid.At first, all is planning, and rumors run rampant. Finally, construction begins, and each numbered stone that arrives from Egypt's various quarries is recorded as to its source, its difficulty of transport and final positioning, and the number of workers killed or maimed in its handling. Rumors of subversive plots arise at regular intervals, each resulting in purges, horrible tortures, and more deaths. Superstition runs rampant as well, so that certain stones are identified as bloodied or cursed well after their placement in the structure. Cheops complicates the project still further during an imperial inspection by announcing that he wishes to be buried above ground, in the middle of the pyramid rather than below ground as already long since planned. Along the way, delegations from other nations visit the site. Some, like the laughably backwards Greeks, view the structure with awe, while others like the Sumerians study it for its political ramifications and render their analyses in reports so lengthy two horse-drawn carts are necessary to transport the numerous cuneiform tablets required for such voluminous writings.As Cheops's great pyramid nears its completion, the pharaoh grows increasingly anxious, feeling his tomb's inexorable pull calling him to occupy his eternal resting place. Even before the Pharaoh's demise, his son Didoufri is already planning his own Sphinx-shaped monument, going so far as to cut his hair in the same manner as the Sphinx's mane. Time passes, of course, and the tombs become first the target of robbers who dare defile the mummies, then objects of graffiti and other forms of desecration, and eventually aged and graying monuments devoid of their original sheen and capstone finish. It is at this point that Kadare makes an ambitious leap, linking the totalitarian horrors of the original pyramids to later parallel horrors, such as the building of multiple pyramids constructed from human skulls by one Timur the Lame (an actual historical figure, a bloody despot of Turkish-Mongol origin known in the West as Tamerlane). One cannot help but leap to more connections, such as Stalin, the Nazi concentration camps with their piles of human remains, and the insanity of Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields. Even the book's early arguments about the political economy and manipulation of the populace from building Cheops's pyramid suggest modern counterparts - the Vietnam War (and defense spending generally) as economic stimulus, the current "war on terrorism" and the Iraq fiasco as manipulations of fear, and (in the opposite direction) the Chinese Communist Party's contradictory embrace of private enterprise capitalism as a means of civic appeasement in order to maintain its dictatorial power.With THE PYRAMID, as with THE SUCCESSOR and THE THREE-ARCHED BRIDGE, Kadare proves himself a master of the short novel form, a dark side counterpart to Italo Calvino but with a focus on the fear, violence, and ultimate irrationality of totalitarianism. This is an engrossing story rendered in biting, easily flowing prose whose matter-of-factness amplifies the horrors of the events it describes. Reading THE PYRAMID will forever change the way you contemplate those monuments to one individual's power that ultimately only demonstrate the smallness and powerlessness of humans in the face of history.

This book can best be described as a political parable. There is no political personality that anchors the novel; such as Claudius in Robert Grave's Claudius the God or such as Lincoln in Gore Vidal's Lincoln. The influence of personality is totally minimized in this parable of power. In the end, it is bureaucracy, symbolized by the Pyramid, that is the main character.There is little of the dark humor found in George Orwell's political parable, Animal Farm. There is little of the wisdom behind the insanity found in Albert Camus' political play Caligula.Instead, we are offered a story of how a bureacracy is developed and begins to roll, even beyond the control of its supposed masters, the ruling class. In the end we see the Pharaoh Cheops become a prisoner of this gigantic project, as much as are the poor peasants, stone masons,laborers, and architects.Of course many reviewers make the connection between Stalin and the totalitarian communist government of Albania. However, I could not help but see the Star Wars Defense Shield, started by our own Pharoah, Ronald Reagan, as being our very own modern expensive never-ending money-pit bureaucratic burden.All classes of the culture find a role supporting the vast pyramid bureaucracy, with the higher classes gaining the most while the lower classes die like flies in the construction of the monstrosity. Kadare's ability to show the focus on each individual stone by the architects and workers was superb, for most people, the immediate project requires full attention and the big picture is rarely comprehended. Instead, we can focus on each block, which we name and characterize.I also thought the supposed undermining plots and sabotage were superb in that Kadare showed the plots to be all too real to the Egyptian's sensibility and belief system and yet far-fetched to our modern ear.The strengths of this novel include the lack of dependence on mad personalties to explain the massive manner in which this bureacratic project rolled forward. It was not a project begun by insane men. It was a project initiated by the ruling class to maintain power and give supposed meaning to the actions and labor of the lower classes. It was initiated rationally, not irrationally. The bureacracy was administered rationally even as it pulled the entire society into its web.In the end, we must all beware the tyrant, but we must also beware the state.