2023-08-30 05:42:00
“What a wonderful cruise, isn’t it, Snowy?” The first page of Cigars of the Pharaoh reveals an unexpected Tintin. At the start of his very first adventure, country of the Soviets, he took the train to Moscow for the needs of a report in “Soviet Russia”. In Tintin in the Congo then in Tintin in Americahe was leaving for Africa and for Chicago in order, there again, to exercise his profession as a reporter.
But this time, no report in sight. Tintin is on vacation. And he is determined to take advantage of the charms of a long pleasure trip which will take him to Shanghai, via Port-Saïd, in Egypt, then by Aden, Bombay, Colombo, Singapore and Hong Kong. Milou, this eternal complainer, is the only one to complain about “this boat that moves like a turtle and where nothing ever happens”. However, he should know that with his master, something always happens. It will only take two mustachioed policemen, who accuse Tintin of drug possession, and a distracted scientist who invites him to visit the tomb of the pharaoh Kih-Oskh, located not far from the pyramids of Gizeh, for the hero to reconnect with the adventure and postpone his vacation to a later date.
From Port Said to Cairo
The land of Ramses and Cleopatra, a source of wonder and fantasies for Westerners since the 19th century, is the setting chosen by Hergé to launch this fourth volume of the Tintin saga. After Europe, Africa and America, he explores a new geographical area, the Orient, confirming his reputation as a tireless globetrotter, with inexhaustible curiosity. His stay in Port-Saïd, then around Cairo, only stretches over a few pages, but these will be enough to make a lasting impression on the young readership, fascinated by the bewitching atmosphere of the pharaoh’s tomb.
In We Tintin (ed. Moulinsart, 2004), a collection of texts devoted to the influence of the world of Hergé on writers, the novelist Gilbert Sinoué, born in Cairo, remembers reading Cigars of the Pharaoh durant son adolescence :
Port-Saïd never made me dream, no more than the pharaonic frescoes, no more than the pyramids. The gaze is no longer moved, or very little, by the landscapes that are part of everyday life. But you had to disembark, friend Hergé, between the Valley of the Kings and sarcophagi, for reality to suddenly metamorphose into a dream and for the dream to give birth to the dream. […] In conclusion, you made me dream of Egypt, which I no longer saw.
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A curse from the Pharaoh?
In the early 1930s, Egypt was fashionable. Ten years earlier, in November 1922, the British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered, in the Valley of the Kings, the tomb of Tutankhamun and its fascinating treasures, which he took several years to inventory. In 1923, the year of the creation of the French Society of Egyptology, Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, passionate about ancient Egypt, visited the tomb of Tutankhamun in the company of Jean Capart, a Belgian Egyptologist. It was this same Capart who inspired Hergé to create the character of Hippolyte Bergamotte in The 7 crystal ballsand to Edgar P. Jacobs that of Doctor Grossgrabenstein in The Mystery of the Great Pyramid.
In memory of this historic trip, he gave birth to the Queen Elizabeth Egyptological Association, intended to promote studies devoted to Egypt. As for the legend of a curse from the Pharaoh, who would have avenged himself posthumously following the violation of his tomb and which would have caused the death of several members of the expedition and their relatives, starting with that of its sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, it will contribute for a long time to maintain the interest of the crowds for this country and for the figure of Tutankhamun, an interest mixed with fascination and superstition.
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funny hieroglyphs
Before drawing the wall frescoes of the tomb of Kih-Oskh, Hergé documented himself. In the color version of the album, the representation of an Egyptian on his chariot, drawn by a horse, is faithful to that which appears in the temple of Abu Simbel, which Ramses II had dug. Similarly, the criss-crossed strips that cover the bodies of the mummified characters are perfectly realistic. When Tintin, in the grip of nightmares caused by a narcotic, dreams of the Dupondts, the position of the two policemen is directly inspired by that of the characters appearing on the file of the throne of Tutankhamun.
On the other hand, some hieroglyphs are pure fantasy. Hergé had fun drawing a telephone, a pipe, modern punctuation marks, or even… a car. And the position of the sarcophagi, which are arranged upright, does not correspond to historical reality. Hergé takes up the curse of Tutankhamun: the said sarcophagi contain the bodies of those who would have desecrated the tomb of Kih-Oskh: “The unfortunate ones, they paid dearly for their discovery!” exclaims Tintin. From the black and white version, the author gave free rein to his sense of humor: one of them is called Lord Carnaval, a transparent allusion to Lord Carnarvon, while another is called.. IE Roghliff (“hieroglyph”).
“I got confused in my riddles.”
The soap opera Cigars of the Pharaoh is published twice a week in Le Petit Vingtième, the weekly supplement of the daily Le Vingtième Siècle, under the title Tintin in the East, from December 8, 1932 to February 8, 1934. In the issue preceding the publication of the first episode, a map, drawn by Hergé in a stylized and humorous manner, announces the journey of his hero. It represents some of the characters, animals and architectures specific to each region that he will cross.
In order to arouse the curiosity of its readers and keep them in suspense throughout the story, the weekly offers them an investigation, entitled “The Tintin Mystery”. She encourages them to come up with answers to the many questions posed by Hergé’s story. Because he chose to involve them in a soap opera rich in twists and turns, at the risk of losing himself in the thread of his plot and his inconsistencies, as he will tell a few decades later in Tintin and Methe book of his interviews with Numa Sadoul (1975):
I wanted to engage in mystery, detective stories, suspense, and I got so entangled in my puzzles that I almost never got out! It was also at this time that Le Petit Vingtième began publishing a game-investigation, alongside my stories: readers had to discover solutions to the enigmas posed by Tintin. And if it brought me ideas, it also allowed me to disconcert the reader.
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Time bug
In 1955, Hergé and his Studios published a new version of the Cigars of the Pharaoh. It is the last of the pre-war albums to undergo a remodel. Unlike the next episode, The Blue Lotus, which has hardly been reworked apart from its colorization, this one is largely modified. Black and white, which highlighted Hergé’s line, gives way to color. The pagination is divided by two, in order to conform to the calibration (62 boards) of the other albums (with the exception of Tintin in the land of the Soviets).
The story is entirely redrawn, losing in freshness of line what it gains in rigor. The characters that Tintin meets in India are reworked. The texts are reviewed, too. They are rewritten, shortened and benefit from the new, more readable typography of the other albums. And the frame of the speech bubbles is harmonized. In the first pages of the story, Hergé adds the pyramids of Gizeh to the background, in order to accentuate the local color and reinforce the “Egyptological” credibility of his story. The cover is modified, as it had already been in a previous edition. Hergé has fun mummifying his friend Edgar P. Jacobs, under the name of EP Jacobini.
Perhaps we should see in this boxing – literally and figuratively – the consequence of the small anger between the two men, due to the fact that Jacobs had not appreciated that Hergé corrected, without informing him. , a drawing he had made for the weekly magazine Tintin. And the penultimate sarcophagus, on the left of the cover, contains the mummy of a certain Grossgrab, a nod to Doctor Grossgrabenstein. Several scenes are also deleted, such as the one that sees Snowy putting out a wick of explosive by satisfying a natural need, a trick that Hergé will use again in The Mysterious Star.
The sinister Allan Thompson, whom he stages for the first time in The Crab with the Golden Claws, becomes captain of the smugglers’ ship. Only downside: on the occasion of one of the reissues of this version in color, Hergé will introduce a temporal anomaly that is surprising to say the least. In the black and white edition, when Sheikh Patrash Pasha discovers that his prisoner is none other than Tintin, whose exploits he admires, he shows him the cover of Tintin in America. Later, he will present the album to her. Objective moon. However, not only Tintin did not go to the Moon at the time of his trip to Egypt, but he has not even yet met Captain Haddock or Professor Tournesol… Finally, the little piece of buttocks that protrudes of Tintin’s towel when he takes a shower during his stay in India, will disappear in the color version under the boxer shorts worn by the hero.
Discover the full article in issue 17 of Tintin, c’est l’aventure, available on newsstands (€17.99) and by subscription from August 30, 2023.
Number 17 of Tintin, c’est l’aventure can be found on newsstands or online from August 30. GEO
On the same topic :
⋙ Patrice Leconte: “In each plate of Tintin, madness awaits”
⋙ Yann Arthus-Bertrand: “Tintin made me travel by proxy”
⋙ Tintin and the Picaros: the operetta dictators and merry guerrillas of Hergé
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