The Stories from Ancient Egypt gathers ten of Georg Ebers's historical novels into a single panorama of Pharaonic, Ptolemaic, and early Christian worlds. Combining romance, political intrigue, religious conflict, and archaeological reconstruction, these narratives translate nineteenth-century Egyptology into vivid fiction. Ebers's style is richly descriptive, earnest, and antiquarian, shaped by the historical novel after Scott yet distinguished by its documentary ambition and fascination w...

Germany, 1500: a roadside inn called the Blue Pike, a company of travellers snowed in together — a knight, a monk, a player, a Jewish physician — and one night of talk in which the coming century is argued out. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; here he leaves Egypt for the eve of the Reformation, and the inn is a cross-section of a world about to break.

Nuremberg in 1281: a smith's forge, a knight, a girl of the patrician class, and an Emperor — Rudolph of Hapsburg — holding a diet in a city where the guilds and the old families are not speaking. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; the free imperial city here is reconstructed from charters, and the forge is not a metaphor.

Alexandria under the first Ptolemies: a sculptor takes a girl of Tennis as his model for Arachne, the mortal who challenged a goddess at the loom and was punished for winning. Ebers was an Egyptologist who wrote fiction to pay for excavations; this late novel is about art and hubris, and the weaving, the guilds and the harbour are all reconstructed from what he had personally dug up.

Regensburg, 1546: a burgher's daughter with a great voice sings before the Emperor Charles V, and the son she bears him will grow up to be Don John of Austria and win Lepanto — but the novel stays with her, and with what the Empire does to a woman it has finished using. Ebers was an Egyptologist who found the medical papyrus that bears his name; he wrote historical fiction to fund the digging, and the sixteenth century here is documented to the ledger.

A physician in an old German town has a remedy that may or may not be what he claims, and a household stakes everything on it. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name — one of the oldest medical texts in existence — and dug in Egypt for years; the interest here is that a man who had read the world's first prescriptions was writing about faith in medicine.

A German town in the sixteenth century, a Jewish physician's daughter, a Christian boy, and one word — spoken, not meant — that decides both their lives. Ebers was an Egyptologist who found the medical papyrus that bears his name and wrote fiction to fund the digging; this novel steps out of Egypt into Reformation Germany, and the machinery of religious hatred in a small town is documented with a scholar's exactness.

Two sisters serve as recluses in the temple of Serapis at Memphis, pouring libations for the dead, and the elder is noticed by the King — which is the worst thing that can happen to her. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; the Ptolemaic temple in this 1880 novel is reconstructed from papyri he had read himself, including the real petitions of real recluses.

The Exodus told through an Egyptian officer of Hebrew birth — Hosea, who will be called Joshua — caught between the army he has served and the people he is asked to lead out. Ebers found the medical papyrus that bears his name and dug in Egypt for years; he wrote this in 1889 with the archaeology of the Delta at his fingertips, and the plagues are described as a man of that court would have understood them.

Egypt under Amasis, 525 BC, on the eve of the Persian conquest: a Greek merchant's daughter is sent as a bride to the court, and the intrigue that follows brings Cambyses's army down the Nile. Ebers was a working Egyptologist — he found the medical papyrus that still carries his name — and wrote his novels to teach the period; every ceremony and title in it is sourced.

Leiden, 1574: the Spanish are outside the walls, the city is starving, and the burgomaster's wife holds the household — and half the town's nerve — together while her husband refuses to surrender. Ebers was a German Egyptologist who found the medical papyrus that still bears his name, one of the oldest medical texts in existence; he wrote historical novels to pay for the digging, and the scholarship shows.

The stories in the collection are set in a variety of time periods and locations, but they are all united by Ebers's mastery of historical fiction and his deep knowledge of ancient Egypt. Some of the stories are set in ancient Egypt itself, while others are set in medieval Europe or the modern world.Ebers's short stories are known for their rich characters, their exciting plots, and their vivid descriptions of historical settings. Many of the stories are also thought-provoking and explore ...