Cigars of the Pharaoh

Cigars of the Pharaoh (Les Cigares du Pharaon)
Cover of the English edition
Date	1934 (black and white) 1955 (colour)
Series	The Adventures of Tintin
Publisher	Casterman
Creative team
Creator	Hergé
Original publication
Published in	Le Petit Vingtième
Date of publication	8 December 1932 – 8 February 1934
Language	French
Translation
Publisher	Methuen
Date	1971
Translator	Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper Michael Turner
Chronology
Preceded by	Tintin in America (1932)
Followed by	The Blue Lotus (1936)

Cigars of the Pharaoh (French: Les Cigares du Pharaon) is the fourth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from December 1932 to February 1934 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1934. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are travelling in Egypt when they discover a pharaoh's tomb filled with dead Egyptologists and boxes of cigars. Pursuing the mystery of these cigars, they travel across Arabia and India, and reveal the secrets of an international drug smuggling enterprise.

Following the publication of Tintin in America, Hergé had been keen to produce a mystery story, and had been inspired by the tabloid speculation surrounding an alleged Curse of the Pharaohs following the 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. Cigars of the Pharaoh proved a commercial success in Belgium, and Hergé followed it with The Blue Lotus, a story which continues many of the plot elements that began in Cigars. The series itself became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. In 1955, Cigars of the Pharaoh was re-drawn and coloured in Hergé's distinctive ligne-claire style by the cartoonist and his Studios Hergé team; during this process a number of minor plot elements were changed. The comic was adapted for a 1991 episode of the Ellipse/Nelvana animated series The Adventures of Tintin. Critical reception of the story has been positive, with analysis being focused on its innovative narrative and stylistic choices, as well as its introduction of three recurring characters, the detectives Thomson and Thompson and villain Rastapopoulos.