Hekanakht papyri

The Hekanakht papyri or letters (also spelled Heqanakht--Hekanakht is the spelling Agatha Christie would have seen) are a group of letters written on papyri written around 2000 B.C. in Ancient Egypt. These were found in a tomb near Luxor by the arcaheologist H. E. Winlock between 1921-1922. In these letters, a ka-priest Hekanakht writes about various domestic matters including his financial arrangements and the dynamics of his family. The letters provide a rare insight into the everyday life of a low upper-class Egyptian of that era. In the Author's Note at the beginning of Death Comes as the End, she states that the characters and plot of the novel were largely inspired by the contents of these letters.

The papyri have been researched and written about in detail and the text of the letters (translated into English) is available online. What is of greater relevance here, however, is what Agatha Christie would have seen or read about these letters. In her Author's Note, she mentions that the letters were translated by Battiscombe Gunn and published in an article in the bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The article she is referring to is Excavations at Thebes by H. E. Winlock published in the Dec 1922 edition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. The article is now in the public domain and is available online.

Winlock does not reproduce the entirety of the letters but he summarises them in detail and quotes from translations prepared by Battiscombe Gunn. In Winlock's summaries of the letters one can see many of characters or names which match or parallel those in Christie's novel. One can also identify many of the themes in the plot.