Abstract
Jamāl al-Ghīānī's short novel Mutūn al-ahrām contains a number of small ‘texts’ about several expeditions to explore the secret of the Egyptian pyramid. Making use of Antonio Damasio's theory of human consciousness and theories of the fantastic in literature and art, al-Ghīānī's novel is here analysed as a description of a mystical experience: because of its form and size the pyramid, as an architectural and spatial phenomenon, represents a rupture of the spatial structure which is the framework of man's concept of himself and his environment. The pyramid seems to be in contact with the supernatural realm, so that whoever ventures into it risks losing his sense of reality and identity. This experience can be seen as a kind of anti-birth in which the self is dissolved in an unknown dimension.
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