HISTORICAL PERSONALITY AND IT’S ARTISTIC EMBODIMENT IN NAGIB MAHFOUZ’S NOVEL “THE WISDOM OF CHEOPS”

Abstract

The article discusses the artistic embodiment of the image of the pharaoh Cheops (Khufu) in the historical novel of the Nobel Prize laureate, Egyptian writer Nagib Mahfouz “The Wisdom of Cheops”. The novel belongs to the “Pharaoh Series”, which includes three more works of the writer. The main attention in the article is paid to the correlation of historically reliable facts and their artistic interpretation. The image of Cheops carries a special ideological and artistic burden associated with the socio-historical concept of the novel. The moral and ethical side of the personality of the pharaoh is evaluated. In the novel, the fight against evil becomes an act of man’s free will, his victory over himself and his own delusions. Faith in man, in his spiritual and spiritual readiness to change himself and the world around him is the humanistic dominant of the writer’s work. Towards the end of the journey, all the characters of the story come changed, passed through the internal search for freedom, himself, their purpose and the fate of his destiny.