No two ways about it: Dayr al-Barsha finds favour in fiction

Abstract

The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult centres on a woman who sees her life flash before her eyes during a plane crash—except it is not her real life, but the life she missed out on when she decided not to pursue an Egyptological career, "the road not taken". The idea of diverging life paths becomes intertwined with The Book of Two Ways, an actual ancient Egyptian composition that occurs on Middle Kingdom coffins from Dayr al-Barsha. This leads the protagonist to the site of Dayr al-Barsha and the ongoing fieldwork there. Contrary to how Egyptology is generally pitched in literature—at highprofile sites during the "age of the great discoveries"—this novel focuses on a modern-day excavation at a site not well known to the public. Coached by Yale Egyptologists who contribute both Egyptological facts and fabricated fiction (e.g. fictional hieratic inscriptions), Picoult paints a picture of Egyptology that feels genuine to the layperson, but that to the specialist is riddled with fantasy. This essay, written by someone who has excavated at Dayr al-Barsha for many years, evaluates how this work of fiction centred on a real-world scientific project gives new meaning to the term ‘science-fiction’.