Consensus Press has published a fine press edition of The Tale of Sinuhe: A Poem of Ancient Egypt (2025).
The Press was founded in 2022 as a collaborative experiment in independent publishing, guided by both community input and fine press expertise. Members are invited to propose, vote on, and finance books, and The Tale of Sinuhe was chosen as the first publication, diversifying the normal choice of works in fine press publishing. The poem was proposed by the bibliographer and author Richard Hardesty of Montana who approached Oxford University Press to use Professor of Egyptology Richard Bruce Parkinson‘s translation from his Oxford World Classics anthology of Middle Kingdom poetry (1997).
As Professor Parkinson was working on a commentary of the poem, he provided a revised and updated translation, incorporating latest thinking on the text, as well as a short introduction, and he was consulted about the design and typesetting. The volume was elegantly designed and set in Golden Cockerel type by Mark Askam of Chestnut Editions and printed by Max Hoyt Koch on handmade paper from Velké Losiny in Czechia, made especially for the edition. Binding was done by Alanna Simenson of Mad Hatter Bookbinding Company, with a gilt-stamped hieroglyphic title, reading ‘Sinuhe’. The book was produced in a limited edition of 80 copies, one of which is now in the College library.
