An exhbit called "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" is touring the States. It's been organized by the National Geographic with the cooperation from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. The current exhibition will display more than 130 artifacts from the tomb of Tutankhamun. Since beginning its tour, the exhibit, which was first seen in Dallas, has exhibited in Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago and Philadelphia. If the exhibit is anything like past exhibits of Tutankhamun artifacts, it should be a rewarding experience well worth seeing.
The exhibit will come to the de Young Museum in Goden Gate Park, San Francisco from June 27, 2009 to March 28, 2010
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Hanky Panky In The Valley Of The Kings
The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, and the removal of nearly 5,000 works of art, shall always be regarded as the most sensational archaeological discovery of all time. But what is not commonly known is the full story of the characters who discovered the tomb.
The real story begins with Howard Carter, the undereducated small town boy from Kensington, and George Herbert, the fifth earl of Carnarvon, a rich ne'er-do-well, who at best was a dilettante in everything and knowledgeable in nothing. Carnarvon, the rich drifter, desperate to make something of himself in his middle years, needed Carter. Carter, brilliant, poor and in awe of the landed gentry, needed Carnarvon's money. It turned out to be an incredible match, and the most turbulent relationship in the history of archaeology.
To set the stage we must try to imagine the impact the Tut tomb discovery had on the world press, the city of Luxor, and the nearby Valley of the Kings. The rich and famous, attracted by headline news around the world, flocked in from Europe and America. Rich American college kids with their jazz-age slang mingled with wealthy young Englishmen enjoying their grand tour, desperately trying to understand what their American cousin meant by "dolled up" and "swell fella." European royalty, reporters museum reps, hucksters and con men, rubbed elbows night and day in noisy bars, the great lobby and verandahs of Luxor's most popular hotel, The Winter Palace. All of this, so close, and yet so far from Luxor's ancient narrow winding streets, wooden-latticed houses, minareted mosques, with their echoing call to prayer; and the stark-twisted beauty of the Valley of the Kings.
Well, as you might have guessed, I'm giving you the setting of my next novel, THE YELLOW CANARY, which is in fact the sometimes shocking, but true story of Howard Carter's discovery of Tut's tomb. The narrative is often more exciting than the tomb discovery, for this is a novel about real people. You will meet Carnarvon's beautiful daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert. She was the first person on the excavation team to wiggle her body into tut's tomb, and the first woman to wiggle her way into Carter's heart. What actually happened at the tomb, the private arrangements, the incompetance of graft-ridden government bureaucracies, and an out of control international press, is the purpose of my tale to unfold.
The real story begins with Howard Carter, the undereducated small town boy from Kensington, and George Herbert, the fifth earl of Carnarvon, a rich ne'er-do-well, who at best was a dilettante in everything and knowledgeable in nothing. Carnarvon, the rich drifter, desperate to make something of himself in his middle years, needed Carter. Carter, brilliant, poor and in awe of the landed gentry, needed Carnarvon's money. It turned out to be an incredible match, and the most turbulent relationship in the history of archaeology.
To set the stage we must try to imagine the impact the Tut tomb discovery had on the world press, the city of Luxor, and the nearby Valley of the Kings. The rich and famous, attracted by headline news around the world, flocked in from Europe and America. Rich American college kids with their jazz-age slang mingled with wealthy young Englishmen enjoying their grand tour, desperately trying to understand what their American cousin meant by "dolled up" and "swell fella." European royalty, reporters museum reps, hucksters and con men, rubbed elbows night and day in noisy bars, the great lobby and verandahs of Luxor's most popular hotel, The Winter Palace. All of this, so close, and yet so far from Luxor's ancient narrow winding streets, wooden-latticed houses, minareted mosques, with their echoing call to prayer; and the stark-twisted beauty of the Valley of the Kings.
Well, as you might have guessed, I'm giving you the setting of my next novel, THE YELLOW CANARY, which is in fact the sometimes shocking, but true story of Howard Carter's discovery of Tut's tomb. The narrative is often more exciting than the tomb discovery, for this is a novel about real people. You will meet Carnarvon's beautiful daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert. She was the first person on the excavation team to wiggle her body into tut's tomb, and the first woman to wiggle her way into Carter's heart. What actually happened at the tomb, the private arrangements, the incompetance of graft-ridden government bureaucracies, and an out of control international press, is the purpose of my tale to unfold.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
The Problem of Marital Incest And Lying Our Way Through History
Incest of any kind is regarded with such universal distaste that few writers can handle the matter with any degree of comfort, and very often go to great pains to avoid the subject altogether. Such is the case with novelists who set their tales in ancient Egypt. Desperate for a way out, they seize upon a minority point of view offered by a minority of Egyptologists bent on cleansing history of a practice abhorent to our sensibilities. It serves no purpose to identify modern authors who prefer to circumvent truth for some imagined gain, except to say that they seemed to have gotten their marching orders from the Grand Lama of Ancient Egyptian fiction, Mika Waltari. His 1949, "New York Times" bestseller "The Egyptian," assiduously avoids the isssue of incest, perhaps in an effort to cast Akhenaten's theology as an ancient interpretation of Judeo-Christian ethics and morality.
In my two historical novels to date, "Come Kill The Pharaoh," and my current novel, to be released in May by Kunati Books--"The Woman Who Would Be Pharaoh," I have made no effort to dodge the issue of incest as it pertains to Pharaoh Akhenaten and his six daughters. There is clear evidence that when Akhenaten's elder daughters, Meritaten, Mekataten and Ankhesnepaaten, reached nubility, he sired children by them. Mekataten died in childbirth when she was no more than 12 or 13.
Before we rush to clothe Pharaoh with the labels we give to modern day deviants, it needs to be understood that Akhenaten was worshipped as the prophet of the sole god, the Aten, and sometimes referred to as "the beautiful child of the Aten," and even as an incarnation of the sole god. To preserve and perpetuate the solar purity of his issue, no mere mortal incapable of breathing the "divine afflatus" could be his consort. Accordingly, the priests of the Aten called upon their pharaoh to take his daughters in marriage. No matter how offensive to our modern day tastes and the law, novelists cannot escape their duty to inform on the historical record in the formulation of plot.
In my two historical novels to date, "Come Kill The Pharaoh," and my current novel, to be released in May by Kunati Books--"The Woman Who Would Be Pharaoh," I have made no effort to dodge the issue of incest as it pertains to Pharaoh Akhenaten and his six daughters. There is clear evidence that when Akhenaten's elder daughters, Meritaten, Mekataten and Ankhesnepaaten, reached nubility, he sired children by them. Mekataten died in childbirth when she was no more than 12 or 13.
Before we rush to clothe Pharaoh with the labels we give to modern day deviants, it needs to be understood that Akhenaten was worshipped as the prophet of the sole god, the Aten, and sometimes referred to as "the beautiful child of the Aten," and even as an incarnation of the sole god. To preserve and perpetuate the solar purity of his issue, no mere mortal incapable of breathing the "divine afflatus" could be his consort. Accordingly, the priests of the Aten called upon their pharaoh to take his daughters in marriage. No matter how offensive to our modern day tastes and the law, novelists cannot escape their duty to inform on the historical record in the formulation of plot.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Decipherment of the Ancient World: The Unlocked Treasures
I am frequently asked how it is that Queen Ankhesenamun's intimate and emotionally charged letters to the Hittite ruler, Suppiluliumas, have been understood and preserved for so many years given the limited shelf life of papyri writings?
First, we need to know that despite the absence of modern communication, leaders of the ancient world carried on lively exchanges of correspondence. This was especially true in the governance of international afairs between Egypt, its vassal states, and the major powers of the Middle East, Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni and several countries in Westren Anatolia.
A reasonalby coherent picture of ancient language became possible in 1897, with the discovery of the so-called Amarna tablets--359 pillow-shaped clay tablets, impressed with cuneiform signs in Akkadian and Babylonian, the language of diplomacy and the franca lingua of Western Asia.
The story goes that the tablets were found by a peasant lady while rummaging around the ancient ruins of Armana, in the area of the Records Office. When the local villagers found out about the discovery, they rushed to the site hoping to find artifacts they could sell to dealers. The tablets were roughly handled--edges broken off, and in some cases the tablets were deliberately broken in pieces in hopes of selling them piecemeal for a greater profit. The letters, which seem to cover the reigns of Amunhotep 111 and the heretic king, Akhenaten, were preserved for our time owing to the habit of disposing of the translated tablets into a rather large hole in the House of Correspondence or Records Office by cuneiform clerks. Since no copies of the outgoing correspondence was saved, there is no way of knowing how Pharaoh responded to the corresspondence.
The tablets exchanged between the Egyptians and the Hittites were revealing in other ways. For starters, it soon became clear that the Hittites had been a dominant Near Eastern power throughout much of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty. The Hittites were protective of incoming documents and preserved them in their archives at the Hittite capitol of Hattusas.
But more important to my novel, THE WOMAN WHO WOULD BE PHARAOH, and consequently our vision of Queen Ankhesenamun as a real person, was the preservation of her letter to the Hittite king--two candid letters from a distraught and beleagured woman appealing to a distant king in order to save her crown and her life, and at the same time avoid marriage to her own grandfather. He voice sounds down through the corridors of time, a poignant plea for help--a plea that could have easily been lost in time.
The widow of Tutankhamun is afraid my gracious Lord. She fears for her very life. In these fearful times I turn to you with humility and beseach you to come to my aid. Send me a son that I may cleave to in marriage.
First, we need to know that despite the absence of modern communication, leaders of the ancient world carried on lively exchanges of correspondence. This was especially true in the governance of international afairs between Egypt, its vassal states, and the major powers of the Middle East, Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni and several countries in Westren Anatolia.
A reasonalby coherent picture of ancient language became possible in 1897, with the discovery of the so-called Amarna tablets--359 pillow-shaped clay tablets, impressed with cuneiform signs in Akkadian and Babylonian, the language of diplomacy and the franca lingua of Western Asia.
The story goes that the tablets were found by a peasant lady while rummaging around the ancient ruins of Armana, in the area of the Records Office. When the local villagers found out about the discovery, they rushed to the site hoping to find artifacts they could sell to dealers. The tablets were roughly handled--edges broken off, and in some cases the tablets were deliberately broken in pieces in hopes of selling them piecemeal for a greater profit. The letters, which seem to cover the reigns of Amunhotep 111 and the heretic king, Akhenaten, were preserved for our time owing to the habit of disposing of the translated tablets into a rather large hole in the House of Correspondence or Records Office by cuneiform clerks. Since no copies of the outgoing correspondence was saved, there is no way of knowing how Pharaoh responded to the corresspondence.
The tablets exchanged between the Egyptians and the Hittites were revealing in other ways. For starters, it soon became clear that the Hittites had been a dominant Near Eastern power throughout much of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty. The Hittites were protective of incoming documents and preserved them in their archives at the Hittite capitol of Hattusas.
But more important to my novel, THE WOMAN WHO WOULD BE PHARAOH, and consequently our vision of Queen Ankhesenamun as a real person, was the preservation of her letter to the Hittite king--two candid letters from a distraught and beleagured woman appealing to a distant king in order to save her crown and her life, and at the same time avoid marriage to her own grandfather. He voice sounds down through the corridors of time, a poignant plea for help--a plea that could have easily been lost in time.
The widow of Tutankhamun is afraid my gracious Lord. She fears for her very life. In these fearful times I turn to you with humility and beseach you to come to my aid. Send me a son that I may cleave to in marriage.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)