Cigars of the Pharaoh

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Cigars of the Pharaoh (Les Cigares du pharaon)
Cover of the English edition
Publisher Casterman Date 1934 Series The Adventures of Tintin (Les aventures de Tintin) Creative team Writer(s) Hergé Artist(s) Hergé Original publication Published in Le Petit Vingtième Date(s) of publication December 8, 1932 - February 8, 1934 Language French ISBN ISBN 2-203-00103-8 Translation Publisher Methuen Date 1971 ISBN ISBN 1-4052-0615-2 Translator(s) Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner Chronology Preceded by Tintin in America, 1932 Followed by The Blue Lotus, 1936

Cigars of the Pharaoh (Les Cigares du pharaon) is one of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums, written and illustrated by Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero.

This story, the fourth of the series, appeared between December 1932 and August 1934 in Le Petit Vingtième (the children's supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle). It was published in form of album (in black and white) in 1934. It was redrawn in color in 1955.

Like the other early adventures, this story is a sequence of short, unconnected episodes; but for the first time Hergé introduces a common thread: the mysterious cigars. This story brings together many key topics of pulp literature: a curse from the dead, a secret society, a mysterious chief of a ring of opium dealers.

The plot of the story was clearly influenced by the 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamon by archeologist Howard Carter. It was originally published under the name Tintin au Orient (literally "Tintin in Asia").

Contents 1 Storyline 2 Notes 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Storyline

Tintin is on a cruise ship when he meets Dr Sarcophagus, an Egyptologist, who tries unsuccessfully to keep a paper from going overboard. The absent-minded Sarcophagus then realizes that the paper is not the Kih-Oskh papyrus he thought it was, but merely a travel agency prospectus. Tintin also meets Roberto Rastapopoulos, a wealthy businessman.

Here Tintin first meets the Thompson twins, who have found cocaine in Tintin's compartment that had been planted there. Throughout the book, they unsuccessfully pursue Tintin, with often comic results.

Sarcophagus, meanwhile, disembarks at Port Said, Egypt in order to journey to Kih-Oskh's tomb and explore it. Tintin decides to come along, craftily escaping his imprisonment by the Thompsons and getting off the ship.

In the tomb, Tintin and Sarcophagus are startled several times by doors closing behind them. They come to a room where rows of Egyptologists are entombed. At the end of the row are three empty sarcophagi with notices to indicate that they are intended for Tintin, Snowy, and Sarcophagus. A drugged vapor fills the room, and they fall asleep. Next thing they know, they are in the sarcophagi, which are thrown overboard and float in the sea. Tintin manages to tie Snowy's coffin to his, but Sarcophagus's drifts away.

Tintin and Snowy are rescued from a gigantic wave by a small boat. On it they meet one Senhor Oliviera de Figueira, a Portuguese salesman, who runs a shop in the middle of the desert. He somehow manages to persuade Tintin to buy all manner of utterly useless items. Tintin walks away overloaded with stuff, including a top hat, ski poles, a doghouse on wheels, and a lead for Snowy, accompanied by the thought "Just as well I didn't fall for his patter; you can end up with all sorts of useless stuff if you're not careful".

Tintin then sets out across the desert, and accidentally runs into Sheik Patrash Pasha, whose anger immediately turns to happy surprise when he learns that his captive is Tintin, whose exploits he has read of for years. He is the only character to have read a Tintin book in the series. He also shows Tintin one of the books he has read: in the first B/W version, Tintin in the Congo, in the second, Tintin in America, but oddly in the third, Destination Moon, an adventure that for Tintin would not happen for many years.

Resuming his journey Tintin sees a woman being beaten by two men and rushes to her aid. The woman turns out to be an actor in a movie that Rastapopoulos is making; he rushes up angry. After Tintin apologizes profusely, they talk for a while, and Rastapopoulos confesses that he has been following Tintin's adventures for some time.

When Tintin returns to the boat, he discovers that it has been smuggling guns. There is a lengthy comic sequence involving the Thompson twins who accuse him of being the smuggler.

In Arabia, Tintin again meets Thomson & Thompson. Later they hit a local Arab on the head, mistaking him for Tintin. When Tintin reaches a local city he finds a procession of armed Arabs. "One of our sheiks was bashed on the head by two men from the Djelababi tribe," explains one of them. "And that means war!" Tintin is enlisted in their army under the name Ali-Bhai.

While cleaning the colonel's office, he finds a cigar label with Kih-Oskh's sign - a circle with a wavy line through it and two dots on it, rather like a yin-yang symbol. He is charged with spying and executed by firing squad. Fortunately, he does not actually die, and is dug up later by Thomson & Thompson, who were determined to capture him alive.

Tintin flees the city in a military airplane pursued by others. To save himself he takes a dive and lands in India.

In India, he is taken by elephant to a local community of Westerners. Later, he talks with one of them, Zloty the poet, who explains the local opium trade and oppression of farmers when the fakir, outside on his rope, blows a dart at him. Zloty goes mad. The dart was poisoned with Rajaijah juice, which drives one mad.

Tintin also finds Sarcophagus, who is also mad and thinks he is Ramses II. He takes Sarcophagus and Zloty to the asylum with a letter from the doctor, but someone in the secret society has substituted the letter and Tintin ends up imprisoned. He escapes by jumping on an inmate and over the wall. Later Snowy is almost sacrificed by angry Indians chasing him for frightening the holy cow. The little dog is saved by Thomson & Thompson, acting as the Nataraja. They then use Snowy to track down his master, whom they are still determined to put in jail.

Tintin suspects that the Maharaja of Gaipajama, whom he has met in the jungle, is to be the next victim of the drug cartel. So a dummy is put in the Maharaja's bed. That night the dummy is hit by a dart fired by the fakir.

Tintin follows the fakir to the cartel's hideout. The members within dress up in outfits that make them look rather like the Ku Klux Klan, as Tintin comments. He manages to capture the gang which includes the fakir, the Arab colonel, and several others he met in the course of the adventure. He is later joined by Snowy, Thomson & Thompson, who now know that he was framed by the cartel.

Chasing the chief of the secret society, he recovers the Maharaja's son, kidnapped by the chief. But the chief falls off a cliff and (presumably) dies. It is strongly hinted that this is Rastapopulus, which is confirmed in The Blue Lotus. The cigars themselves were used to smuggle opium--"a simple trick, but it fooled the police of half the world."

The follow-up to Cigars of the Pharaoh was The Blue Lotus in 1936.

[edit] Notes

• In this story Tintin first meets the Thompson twins. This is one of three adventures in which they spend much of their time pursuing Tintin for crimes he did not commit. The way they rescue Tintin from execution and Snowy from sacrifice shows a level of efficiency and cunning that they never display in later adventures. When they dress up as Arab women in veils it is the only time they wear effective disguises, fooling even Tintin.

• Colour drawings from the 1932 black-and-white version include:

1. Tintin and Snowy in the coffins.
2. The Arab desert.
3. Tintin, Snowy and Prof. Sarcophagus on the elephant in India.
4. Snowy about to be killed for attacking the cow.

• In the English version, when parting from Rastapopoulos on the cruise ship, Tintin remarks that this is not the first time that they have met! This may be a reference to a scene in the previous book Tintin in America. Someone looking a lot like Rastapopoulos can be seen sitting next to Tintin at the banquet from which the hero is then kidnapped. Next to him is a young blond-haired woman: in the 1932 black-and-white edition of the book this woman is referred to as the actress Mary Pickford, an appropriate companion for a movie mogul. Another theory is that this is an overly literal translation from the French original, and that the original expression means something more like "He's not just any old passer-by." ^[1]

• In the English version, Snowy makes a comment that he'd prefer Marlinspike Hall to the cruise, despite the fact that the Captain doesn't get the estate for several adventures yet. This is because many of the adventures of Tintin and Haddock had been published in the UK between 1952 and 1968 before Cigars was published in 1971. (When releasing foreign translated books, publishers seldom bother with the chronological order). See order of publication of Tintin in the UK.

• For many years, the fifth block on the first page of the album contained an incorrect map - showing Asia rather than southern Europe, as the storyline indicated. The English version of the album contained the French spellings for the locations, including "Asie" for the continent and "Singapour" for the city-state. The latest printings have been translated.

• Initial printings of the current edition featured an error on page 52, Snowy was present at the bottom of block 9.

• When Tintin and Snowy are cast adrift in sarcophagi in the Red Sea, they are picked up by a passing sailing ship captained by a man who turns out to be an arms smuggler. The captain was based on the adventurer Henry de Monfreid who was also into such activities.^[2]

• A few of the weapons on the captain's ship include an MP 40 and a Walther P38. The grenade Snowy drops to avoid one of the police officers looks like a Mk2 grenade.

• On page 38, Tintin makes a remark about a dagger, which is described to be a Kukri. However, it's clearly a Katar. How Tintin and another character later on holds the weapon by the sides instead of the handle shown beneath the blade is also inaccurate (and probably impossible due to the width).

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Cigars of the Pharaoh at Tintinologist.org

The Adventures of Tintin
Creation of Tintin · Books, films, and media · Ideology of Tintin
Characters:	Supporting · Minor · Complete list
Miscellany:	Hergé · Marlinspike · Captain Haddock's exclamations