The Myths and Deities of Ancient Egypt by Rachel Louise Driscoll

The Ancient Egyptians worshipped a pantheon of well over 1,400 gods and goddesses – possibly as many as 2,000.  Each deity was believed to have its area of power in life or in death, and would often be in human-form, or a therianthrope (a human with an animal head).  Sometimes, these mythical figures were supposed to be able to change between the form of a human and that of an animal, which is seen in the case of Isis and Nephthys morphing into kites.  Occasionally, there might be no human features at all, such as the dead-devouring deity Ammit, who was said to claim the head of a crocodile, the hindquarters of a hippopotamus, and the forequarters of a lion. 

Priests would serve at temple sites to perform rituals which they believed appeased these gods and goddesses, and certain areas in Egypt often formed particular cult followings of favourite deities.  Interestingly, these deities also had connections with those of Ancient Greece, something which is known as syncretism.  In his work Moralia, instead of using the Egyptian name Set or Seth, Plutarch speaks of the goddess Nephthys marrying ‘Typhon’ – who, according to the Hesiod, was the son of Gaia and Tartarus – and he also claims that Nephthys was also known as Aphrodite.  This was common as the Greek Empire expanded, religions blending and borrowing from each other.

Over time, different myths have evolved regarding these figures.  Some are less known, others more common, and many have multiple versions.  Perhaps the most famous myth is that of Osiris, the god who was murdered, but it begins before the infamous events of his death, and these stories are perhaps lesser known.

It was supposed that Nut, goddess of the sky, was in love with Seb or Geb, god of the earth.  She conceived quadruplets by him, but Ra, the falcon-headed god of the sun, knew that one of the deities in her womb would surpass even his powers, and he forbade her to give birth on any day of the 360-day year.  Thoth, the ibis-headed god of wisdom who also loved Nut, gambled with Khonsu, the moon god who was often depicted as a youth with a sidelock of hair.  Thoth won the game of Senet – an ancient board game said to be similar to backgammon – and with his winnings of some of the moon’s light, he fashioned 5 extra days, which both extended the calendar year and also enabled Nut to give birth.  First came green-skinned Osiris.  Then Set was said to pierce her side when he came out, choosing not to be born the usual way but proving his violent tendencies already in those first moments.  He had the head of an animal which is still unidentified.  Next came Isis and then, finally, Nephthys.

The siblings grew and Isis and Osiris formed a natural pair, as they had in the womb, and thus were married.  Nephthys married Set, but had no children by him.  One day, Osiris and Nephthys slept together.  The circumstances are hazy, some claiming that Nephthys seduced him, others than Osiris mistook her for Isis as the sisters looked so alike, but she conceived and gave birth to Anubis, the jackal-headed god, whom she hid in a cave.  After this, Set sought a way to kill Osiris, perhaps because he had heard of the affair, or because he was jealous of his brother’s power.

Set constructed a box and said that the god who could fit inside could have it.  Osiris fell for his trick, and was nailed within where he suffocated.  Isis went in search of his body and eventually found it, but Set realised this and cut his brother into fourteen pieces which he scattered across Egypt.

Isis and Nephthys worked together to reclaim those pieces.  One was swallowed by a fish, but Isis formed a replacement with clay, and the sisters joined their brother’s body back together so that he would be whole to enter the afterlife.  At this stage, Isis conceived a son by Osiris posthumously, and he would go on to be the falcon-headed god, Horus.  Meanwhile, Anubis mummified Osiris, and this was supposed to be the first case of mummification, setting a precedent for the dead in Ancient Egypt.

Nephthys went with Osiris to the afterlife where he now became the ruler, and here she found her place as a guide through the underworld.  Because of this and the part the sisters played in Osiris’ restoration, she and Isis are linked with funerary rites, and women would often dress as the sister goddesses at funerals, quoting The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys.

For more on the myths and deities of Egypt, I would highly recommend checking out translations of Ancient Egyptian texts, and Plutarch’s Moralia.  There are so many books on Egyptian mythology, and the Egypt Exploration Society also provides information and courses which explore these subjects more.

In the well-known myth of Osiris, Nephthys is probably the least remembered character, despite playing such a pivotal role.  Because of this, I wanted to explore her more in my debut novel which is entitled Nephthys in the UK, The House of Two Sisters in the US, Les Sœurs Du Nil in France, and La Custode Delle Anime in Italy.  My novel tells the myth of Nephthys alongside a 19^th century Gothic tale of Egyptomania and archaeology.  You can find it here. 

The Grand Egyptian Museum and Other Adventures in Egypt ~ by Lesley Downer

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.’

Ramses II at Luxor -
Ozymandias, King of Kings

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818

The Grand Egyptian Museum opened to huge fanfare on November 1st 2025. So when I planned a visit to Egypt in January, the first thing I did was book a ticket.

The museum is a long way from the centre of Cairo, on the edge of the Sahara, near the Pyramids and the Sphinx. It’s mammoth, designed to echo the pyramids, with sloping triangular walls and hieroglyphic decorations. Just getting from the gate to the entrance of the building is a long walk.

Once inside, the sheer size is breathtaking. The building soars above you. It’s the largest collection in the world of archaeological treasures devoted to a single civilisation.

Ramses dominates the atrium
of the Grand Egyptian Museum

Ramses II
The ground floor is dominated by an 11 metre (36 feet) tall statue of Ramses II (1303 - 1213 BCE), which is 3200 years old. The greatest and most powerful of all the pharaohs, Ramses fought wars, expanded his kingdom and commissioned colossal awe-inspiring statues of himself right across Egypt, including four vast statues at Abu Simbel - though even he might not have imagined that people would still pay homage to him three millennia later or that he would be immortalised by Percy Bysshe Shelley under the Greek form of his name, Ozymandias.

Having paid my respects to Ramses, I set off to explore the museum. Broad steps lead up to the exhibition halls on the third floor, on which sit or stand monumental, exquisitely-carved statues. The mammoth images of pharaohs and gods dwarf us mere humans who climb up. From the top you can see the pyramids shimmering in the desert.

Sneferu - battered but
amazingly ancient

There are twenty galleries on the third floor, arranged by era. They trace the history of ancient Egypt beginning with hunter gatherers and the earliest dynasties, around the 27th century BCE, right through to the advent of Greek and Roman influences in the early centuries CE.

One of the earliest artefacts is a battered but marvellous statue of Sneferu (2700 - 2200 BCE), which dates from 2600 BCE. A pioneer of pyramid building, he commissioned four pyramids including the Bent pyramid, whose bulging walls make it look a bit like a yurt.

Gallery after gallery is filled with amazing sculptures of gods and pharaohs, priests and scribes, many adorned with hieroglyphs. There are perfectly crafted models of boats and houses along with models of servants that would have been placed in tombs so that the dead could continue to enjoy the pleasures of this world, and which create a feeling for what the life of those ancient times was like. There’s also an absorbing section recreating the interior of some of the key tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor.

On the way down one can take in the Tutankhamen Galleries and the Khufu Boat Galleries.

Shimmering in the desert - 
Pyramids and sphinx

It’s wonderful that these artefacts, this precious heritage of mankind, have been gathered together and carefully conserved and preserved. Most are perfect, intact and largely undamaged. It’s amazing that despite grave robbers and looters and British and French armies carting stuff away by the shipload there’s still so much right here in Egypt. It’s reason to celebrate and a good reason to visit Egypt. The Egyptian authorities are trying to reclaim treasures from Britain and France - such as the Rosetta Stone.

The museum is a marvellous showcase for these astonishing creations - the size of them, the beauty. It’s also a taster. After all, this was a living culture. These are objects that living people admired or worshipped or stood in awe before. And here in Egypt we can see artefacts like these in the actual temples in which they were intended to be seen, where they belong.

Pyramids and Sphinx
So you step out of the cool architect-designed museum into the blazing sun and the mad chaos of the Egyptian streets and take an Uber (the best method) through the honking surging Giza traffic to the pyramids.

I first visited in 1997. In those days you just went. Now you need a ticket. There’s a shuttle bus to take you from one to the next, and a lot of people.

 

The temple at Luxor

But no matter how many crowds there are, nothing can detract from their majesty and mystery, the sheer age and solidity and symmetry and size of them and the vastness of the desert that stretches behind. The Great Pyramid is 4600 years old. It’s of a physical scale that defies human comprehension and a time scale beyond imagination.

The Sphinx is if anything even more alluring and mysterious. It was probably commissioned by Khufu between 2590 and 2566 BCE, around the same time as the Great Pyramid, and the face is his. There is a stele between the paws, placed there by Pharaoh Tuthmose IV 1200 years later, in 1401 BCE. On it he records his dream, in which the sphinx asked him to clear away the sand that half concealed it after all those centuries and promised that if he did, he would become pharaoh. The gap of time between the sphinx and Thutmose is longer than between us and 1066.

The Temple at Luxor: Apotheosis of Ramses II
To set these ancient images more in their context you need to take a felucca down the Nile to the small palm-fringed town of Luxor. The temple at Luxor is breath-takingly beautiful. It was founded and laid out by Amenophis III (1417 - 1379 BCE) on the edge of the Nile. It’s a perfect, quite compact structure, with courts lined with towering pillars inscribed with hieroglyphs.

The Nile at Luxor

The temple reached its pinnacle of perfection under the great conqueror Ramses II - Ozymandias himself - a hundred years after Thutmose. The statue of Ramses II here is colossal yet delicate at the same time, and epic in scale. It conveys awesome power and divinity.

Of course all that power - and all that divinity - has long since vanished, leaving behind only magnificent monuments for us lesser mortals to contemplate:

‘Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

PS You can also see Ramses at Battersea Power Station! What would he have thought of that!

Photo of colossal statue of Ramses at Grand Egyptian Museum by Richard Mortel, originally posted on Flickr at https://flickr.com/photos/43714545@N06/54298959040 via Wikimedia Commons.

Portrait of Sneferu at Cairo Museum by Richard Mortel, originally posted on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/prof_richard/54297653082/ via Wikimedia Commons. 

The other photos are mine. 

Lesley Downer is a lover of ancient times and foreign places. She had two books out in 2024: The Shortest History of Japan (Old Street Publications) - 16,500 years of Japanese history in 50,000 words, full of stories and colourful characters - and her first ‘real’ book, On the Narrow Road to the Deep North, reissued by Eland under her new pen name to acknowledge her Chinese roots - Lesley Chan Downer. Since then she has been enjoying seeing places that are not Japan. Back to Japan soon! 

For more see www.lesleydowner.com

Egyptomania by Rachel Louise Driscoll

 

When we think of the rise of Egyptology, I think our minds often turn to the Art Deco Egyptian Revival of the early 20^th century with Carter and Carnarvon’s hunt for King Tutankhamun’s tomb.  In truth, however, Egyptomania – the fascination for all things Ancient Egypt – actually goes back further than that to the 19^th century and beyond.  This was a time when the Rosetta Stone arrived at the British Museum, the hieroglyphs were deciphered in a race between Britain and France, Amelia Edwards published her travelogue about her journey through Egypt and Nubia entitled A Thousand Miles up the Nile, and characters like “Mummy” Pettigrew hosted their infamous ‘mummy unwrapping parties’.

Thomas Pettigrew, known by the sobriquet “Mummy” Pettigrew, was a 19^th century surgeon and antiquarian.  A founding member of the British Archaeological Association, he had a particular interest in mummies.  In fact, upon the association’s first meeting in 1844, he apparently unwrapped a mummy in front of his rapt audience.  At such events, Pettigrew was known to not only unroll the layers of cerement from the preserved corpse, but to also perform an autopsy.  His knowledge of Egyptian mummies was so vast that in 1834 he wrote a book called A History of Egyptian Mummies.  This work explored the ancient funerary rites of the Ancient Egyptians, including how sacred animals were worshipped and embalmed. 

Animals such as cats, dogs, ibises, crocodiles, and birds of prey were amongst the varieties of species that the Egyptians would embalm, usually through a connection to a deity.  For instance, Bast or Bastet had the head of a cat, and so cats were seen to be linked to the goddess.  Ibises were sacred and Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing, was often depicted with the head of an ibis.  Many of the Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses had heads of animals, or were said to be able to change their form into animals – like Isis and Nephthys, the sister goddesses who could shapeshift into kites.  Mummified animals would often be buried at the sites that held particular worship for the deity that was associated with that animal, such as the many cats buried at Bubastis, the centre of Bast’s cult.

The term Egyptomania, from the Greek ‘Egypto’ for Egypt and ‘mania’ for madness, came into existence around the end of the 18^th and start of the 19^th century, and this was really when we see the increased interest in this ancient land and its rich history.  Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign helped Egyptomania take flight, inspiring the hunger for antiquities.  There was such a cry for mummies and relics when travellers came to Egypt, that supply could not meet demand, and mummy snatchers and forgers became commonplace.  New laws arose to halt illegal digs and export, but the black market of antiquities continued as more travellers sought to own their piece of history, and the mummy unwrapping parties continued.

Despite this, there were many who came to Egypt with permits for legal digs, amongst them the Scottish archaeologist Alexander Rhind, and Margaret Benson, the first woman to be granted a permit by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.  In cases such as these, when the excavations were carried out in accordance with local law and with historical insight, provenance was not lost and knowledge increased.

I’m not sure that Egyptomania has waned so very much over the years.  Even today in the 21^st century, Egypt is consistently ranked as a top tourist holiday destination, the Egyptian exhibits are often the busiest in museums, and we still feel a thrill of excitement over the mysterious hieroglyphs on obelisks and papyri.  The age of Egyptomania is far from over, although I’m glad to say we no longer host mummy unwrapping parties or have powdered mummy in our paints like the Pre-Raphaelites did. 

If you’d like to read more about the 19^th century fascination for Ancient Egypt, then I highly recommend Amelia Edwards’ book A Thousand Miles up the Nile.  For fictional writings from the era, you might like Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy’s Curse by Louisa May Alcott (quite a different read from her more famous Little Women series) and Some Words with a Mummy by Edgar Allan Poe.  And to investigate these themes further, especially those of mummy unwrapping parties and the preservation of Egyptian history, you might enjoy my debut novel Nephthys which explores the 19^th century fascination for Ancient Egypt in a gothic tale of adventure, mythology, and mystery.  Nephthys is available in hardback, with the paperback out with Vintage in February 2026, and you can purchase your copy here.  If you’re in the US, it is published by Penguin Random House under the title The House of Two Sisters, and is available here.

Instagram: @rachel.louise.driscoll

Mary and Jesus as refugees by Janie Hampton

'Rest on the Flight into Egypt' by Bonifazio de Pitati (1487– 1553) 

Once Christmas Day is over, we tend to forget about the small family in a stable in Bethlehem, and what they did next. I’ve been wondering about Mary, and how she coped as a new young mother, in a strange town, with no home or family. We only know what the gospels of Luke and Matthew chose to write about the birth and first weeks of Jesus' life. Matthew tells us that Mary was a virgin, but Joseph her ‘espoused’ learned that she was pregnant, and not by him. An angel told him not to worry, because ‘that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.’ So he agreed to marry her, and Jesus was born in Bethlehem. That’s all he has to say about the Nativity.

The Flight into Egypt by Battista Dossi and Dosso Dossi, c.1530, with two donkeys!

Luke gives much more detail. Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem for a Roman taxation census. While in Bethlehem, Mary ‘brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room in the inn.’ Shepherds and wise men came to worship him, and when Jesus was eight days old he was circumcised according to Jewish law. Meanwhile Mary stayed indoors for 40 days until ‘the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished.’ Then they went to Jerusalem on their way north, where they offered a sacrifice of two turtledoves. After that Jesus ‘grew and waxed strong in spirit’ back at home in Nazareth.
Both accounts were written over 60 years after the events, and by men, so there is no mention of the things women might be interested in. How long was the labour? Did it start while they were travelling the 80 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem? The journey would have taken them at least four days on foot. As a carpenter, Joseph could well have owned a donkey for carrying his tools and timber. Christmas cards often depict Mary on a donkey out of sympathy for her predicament as a full-term primigravida, though she might have walked all the way.
As Joseph came originally from Bethlehem, he probably had relatives living there. Joseph’s mother, sister or an aunt may have accompanied Mary through her labour, cut the umbilical cord and disposed of the placenta. Jesus was then ‘laid in a manger’ - a net or wooden box containing hay for cattle – a prickly place for a baby! A manger (from the French word ‘to eat’) can be attached to a wall, a practical way of keeping a new-born baby safe from dogs and draughts while Mary was sleeping.
Bethlehem is at a high altitude and it could have been very cold, so Mary would have kept her new baby close to her body most of the time. We don’t know if they stayed in the stable for the 40 days Mary had to wait for her purification, a time of post-partum bleeding, or lochia. Hopefully, Joseph’s female relatives provided Mary with the necessary cloths which she then washed, and hung up to dry?
Matthew next tells of wise men from the East who visited the new baby, and warned his parents to return home by a different route, as King Herod wanted to kill the baby. Sometime after they returned to Nazareth, Joseph was warned in a dream to take the child to safety in Egypt. They left immediately by night, becoming refugees.
Matthew’s account does not say when they had to flee to Egypt, but King Herod had ordered all boys under two years old to be slaughtered – indicating Jesus must have been about 20 months.

As the many depictions have imagined the holy refugees,
Jesus was probably still being breastfed.

They probably took the Via Maris – a well-trodden trade route along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, that ran from Damascus to Memphis in Egypt. The journey from Nazareth to Abu Serghis, on the far side of the River Nile where tradition has it they settled, is about 500 miles. Google Map estimates this takes 150 hours to walk. So if the family kept up a pace of 8 hours a day, that would have taken them three weeks without breaks. Jesus would have been carried much of the way, breastfed every few hours; and Mary may well have had a menstrual period en route. Imagine her discomfort while walking or sitting on a donkey, with just cloth rags. There are many mediaeval and renaissance paintings of Mary breastfeeding Jesus. She is shown with a bounteous supply of milk and fullsome breasts, and Jesus is a well-fed chubby boy.

Giotto Bondone was one of many major artists who depicted the Flight from Egypt.

‘The Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ became a common depiction in the life of Christ after the 14th century. As interest in landscape painting increased, the subject became even more popular and the figures were often shown in European scenery.  The paintings are lovely but the conditions would have been much harsher in AD 2, with the risk of bandits as well as desert conditions of starvation, heat and cold. Until recently few historians have thought about how women dealt with menstruation in ordinary life, let alone as refugees, or women in the Bible. What was it really like? To recapture this experience, we can look at female refugees fleeing from war now. The testimony of the two women in this film, made in a refugee camp in Malawi two months ago, gives us an insight. Alphonsine and Pendeza are both Christians, but almost certainly unaware that their unintended journeys across Africa were similar to Mary’s 2000 years ago. I hope that they, like she was, are able to return to their homes one day soon.

'From Rags to Cups - Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi. ' 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR9S3GU_6pM&feature=youtu.be 

Illustrated Bibles of my childhood, as depicted by Scott Orr circa 1930. 

All quotes are from the King James Bible, published in English in 1611.

www.janiehampton.co.uk

History Repeats: Rome and Egypt, by Manda (MC) Scott

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I spent yesterday evening at Rossiter books with the wonderful Andrew Taylor: one of the best historical writers alive today (do read ‘The Scent of Death, his latest book that explores New York, the bastion of loyalty to the English Crown during the war of Independenc). 

We started off the evening by looking at how we’d both made the shift from crime writing to historical writing but the conversation slipped sideways, as these things always do, into the fact that history seems doomed to repeat itself: in our own personal lives, in public life, in the great span of empires and civilisations, we seem doomed to wander in great, repeating cycles.

Or perhaps it’s just that, as writers, we are doomed to see the patterns in things, and then to imagine that they are repeating: this may also be true. Certainly, having spent a year immersed in AD69, the Year of the Four Emperors in Rome – which lasted 18 months and in which there were, strictly speaking, 5 men who called themselves Emperor, even if one of them never made it to Rome – I can’t help but see startling parallels with what’s happening just now in Egypt.

Morsi's ousters celebrate in Tahrir Square

So, whether it’s authorial paranoia, or a genuine recycling of inevitable history, it’s worth another look at the past and the present.

The differences shroud the similarities and the most obvious of these is that Egypt is hardly a superpower in the way that Rome was: and Hosni Mubarak was not a hereditary ruler who clawed his way to power over the murdered bodies of his relatives.  He was, however, a man who ruled largely by force, and by intimidating the opposition, even if he did not, as far as we know, go as far as Nero went in ensuring that the opposition remained cowed.

Nero, taken by Bibi: Saint-Pol, Wikimedia Commons

Nero – who did rule the single superpower of his age -  overspent to such an extent that the treasury was in danger of bankruptcy.  His answer was not austerity –he cared too much about what the common people thought of him - but rather to present the Senators, (who were the super-rich of their age) with the option to kill themselves and leave their entire estates to the Imperial treasury , or stay alive, in which case he’d let his executioners wax creative on their families and they would die last after they’d seen each of those they loved die ghastly deaths.   A great many good men fell on their swords, and those left behind were too cowed to do much about it – until he killed Corbulo, and put down the Pisoan conspiracy and the legions decided it was time to lead a revolt.

The situation in Egypt is less clear cut but there is no doubt that Mubarak used the powers of police and army to suppress dissent and particularly to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood and what’s striking is that in each case, the army (the legions in Rome) brought down the ruler and then took a relative step back to allow a new Emperor/President to take over.

Mubarak, Former President

In Rome, Galba was the first of the four men to reach Rome and name himself Emperor.  He had been a legionary commander but then in those days, legionary commanders were Senators and every Senator had to have spent some time commanding a legion: It’s one of the reasons that some legions made outstanding mistakes (the XIIth) while some were led by men of military inspiration (Vespasian and all the legions he led, including the by then ‘unlucky’ XIIth).  By the time he took the Imperial throne, he was Governor of Spain, which was a political position.

And here the similarities start.  Everyone thought Galba would make a good Emperor until he actually started the job, at which point, it took a remarkably short time for everyone except Galba and his closest associates to realise he was worse than Nero had been: not an ‘actor’ or a musician, not given to spending money on wild artistic ideas, not prone to roaming the streets after dark assaulting girls and boys he fancied… but nonetheless, he was a martinet of the worse proportions, and nobody wanted him in the post.

It was the legions who replaced him and, as in Egypt, they were split.  The Praetorian Guard in Rome killed Galba and installed Otho, while the legions in Germany gave their oath to Vitellius.  These two men were second and third of the four, respectively and the civil war thus begun would have been far, far worse had not Otho done the decent thing and fallen on his dagger to prevent men from throwing away their lives in his name.  One month after Vitellius arrived victorious in Rome, the legions of the east, of Judaea, Syria and Alexandria (which was then the capital of Egypt) took a look at their comrades in the west and, deciding they could have a bit of the cherry too, declared for Vespasian.

Vespasian, image byShakko wikimedia commons

The point, it seems to me, is that the legions, once they had realized they could make or break the Emperor, carried on until they got one they could all agree on.  Vespasian was one of the greatest emperors Rome ever had, largely because he didn’t really want the job, but, having been offered it, was a good enough organizer, a good enough military strategist – and a good enough Emperor once he returned to Rome – to be allowed to stay in post.

And so in Egypt, the generals installed Mubarak, one of their own and his reign was lengthy, but still, the army sided with the people when the riots became overwhelming. The army stepped back and let the Muslim Brotherhood install one of their own as leader, but they were not slow to get rid of Mohamed Morsi when his incompetence and corruption became evident. 

That’s two down.  And here is where I think history is repeating itself.  The gap between Emperors reduced exponentially in ancient Rome: Galba to Otho was 9 months.  Otho to VItellius was 3 months.  Vitellius to Vespasian was one month (tho’ it took longer for Vespasian’s forces actually to take Rome).

If Egypt follows the pattern, we may see another President relatively soon, but the gap, I think, between his taking power and losing it, may be measured in weeks and months, not years, should he prove (as is likely) not to be up to the job.

What Egypt needs is a Vespasian: a pragmatist, a generally sane, thoughtful, humane and above all, competent, individual.  Like Rome, there is no chance that a woman could take the top job, but in default of that, we have to hope that there’s someone with the courage to put his head above the parapet, and the foresight to lead the nation into peace: Rome’s civil war touched almost all parts of the Empire.  Egypt’s, should it spiral out beyond the borders, may well trigger another global meltdown. And as Einstein so presciently said: “We do not know with what weapons the third World War will be fought, but the fourth will be fought with sticks and stones.”  

1000 Miles Up the Nile - Joan Lennon

A Thousand Miles up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwards

first published 1876

Okay, this is the plan.  Don't get distracted.  Just nip in, grab a little local colour, and get out fast.  You know how the research can get out of hand - you really want to be writing this new book - it's all very well, Miss Edwards doing and seeing things you'd love to see, or have seen, since so many of them are gone now, but that's not the point ...

Nip, grab, scarper.  Right?  

Right.

I started to read the description of her first morning in Egypt:

"It was dark last night, and I had no idea that my room overlooked an enchanted garden, far-reaching and solitary, peopled with stately giants beneath whose tufted crowns hung rich clusters of maroon and amber dates.  It was a still, warm morning.  Grave grey and black crows flew heavily from tree to tree, or perched, cawing meditatively, upon the topmost branches.  Yonder, between the pillared stems, rose the minaret of a very distant mosque; and here where the garden was bounded by a high wall and a windowless house, I saw a veiled lady walking on a terraced roof in the midst of a cloud of pigeons."

Damn.  Hooked.

The bazaar in Cairo - "a noisy, changing, restless, particoloured tide, half European, half Oriental, on foot, on horseback, and in carriages.  Here are Syrian dragomans in baggy trousers and braided jackets; barefooted Egyptian fellaheen in ragged blue shirts and felt skullcaps; Greeks in absurdly stiff white tunics, like walking penwipers; Persians with high, mitre-like caps of dark woven stuff; swarthy Bedouins in flowing garments, creamy-white with chocolate stripes a foot wide, and head-shawl of the same bound about the brow with a fillet of twisted camel's hair; Englishmen in palm-leaf hats and knickerbockers, dangling their long legs across almost invisible donkeys ..."

But it's not all long descriptions - sometimes just a sentence reaches out and takes your hand.

"Everyone takes Herodotus up the Nile."

"The lights twinkled and flitted, like wandering sparks of stars."

"Every breath is laden with the fine grit of the desert."

I will get on with writing.  Very soon.  Any minute now.  But first, just a few more pages ...

Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards (1831-1892)

Seductive writer.  Be warned.

Joan's website.

Joan's blog.

Maps R Us by Caroline (& Richard) Lawrence

Map of the Washoe (Nevada, USA)

Reading a couple of recent History Girls blogs about maps – one by Teresa Flavin and one by Katherine Langrish – I got very excited. I LOVE maps! Who doesn’t?

Maps tell us where we are… and when. But they don’t just set the scene, sometimes they are crucial to the plot. A map can serve as a talisman or a plan. They can tell us how to reach the World of Adventure or where to dig for Buried Treasure. A map at the front of a book shows a certain commitment to accuracy. (Even in Fantasy novels, where the world is invented.) Recently a map even gave me the idea for a character. 

My motivation in writing historical fiction is to travel back in time. What better way to step into the past than via a map?

On my first date with my husband-to-be Richard, an English graphic designer and historian, we knew we were ‘meant to be together’ because we were both reading and loving Patrick O’Brian’s sea-stories. There are no maps in the Aubrey-Maturin books, so I suggested that Richard write a Companion, and he did. He ended up drawing about a dozen for The Illustrated Companion to Nelson’s Navy.

Map of Ostia by Richard Russell Lawrence

For my Roman Mysteries series, I spent many happy hours wandering the ruins of Rome's ancient seaport and poring through the guide books. Then Richard and I put our heads together and came up with our own version of a map of Ostia Antica in the first century AD. I put Flavia’s house in an unexcavated part of the site and filled in blank places with my imagination. 

Richard and I then worked on a map of first century Rome, (being careful NOT to put in the Aurelian Wall of two centuries later.) Nobody knows what Pliny’s Laurentum Villa looked like but architects over the years have had a go. So did we, for the fifth book in my Roman Mysteries series, The Dolphins of Laurentum. Richard also made me a map of the Bay of Naples, the two ports of Corinth in Greece, Ephesus in Turkey, the Acropolis in Athens, Domitian's villa on Lake Albano near Rome. Just to name a few.

Upside Down Egypt

I think my favourite collaborative map with Richard is our Upside Down Egypt map (right) for The Scribes from Alexandria. I’ve never seen anything like this done anywhere else. It shows how the Romans perceived Egypt. A map oriented like this explains why the delta is so called. Upside down, it really looks like the capital letter Delta: △. And it explains why you didn’t sail down the Nile from the Delta, you sailed UP it. 

Moving on to the Wild West, Richard and I had a somewhat easier job of making maps. My new period of research is only 150 years ago, rather than 2000, and there are many great resources.

Our map of the Washoe in 1862 (top of this blog) was easy. Richard just consolidated a couple of existing maps and then traced them with a dip pen, making sure to add a few realistic smudges. However, for our map of Virginia City, he put in several months work. I had a very specific vision of what I wanted it to look like. Richard would bring me a map, I would mark it up and hand it back. Sometimes he felt like a dog playing ‘fetch’ and would patiently bring the latest version in his mouth and drop it on my desk. The result of more than fifty drafts is below. 

Virginia City in 1862 by Richard Russell Lawrence

At the moment Richard and I have been researching Carson City, Nevada. It was founded in 1858 when four friends tramped over the Sierra Nevada, the mountain range dividing California and Nevada. Curry, Musser, Proctor and Green chose a random plot of flat land in the high desert, surveyed it and divided it into a hundred plots. They named the streets after themselves (you can do that when you found a city) and they ambitiously called the hamlet "Carson City" after the famous explorer Kit Carson. They chose wisely. A year later silver was discovered a few miles north on Mount Davidson. Carson City city grew and grew, and today it is the capital of Nevada. 

Blue Supper District in 1863

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can now zoom in on high resolution maps in various archives and libraries and get a really good look. One of my favourite maps is Bancroft’s Map of the Washoe of 1862, the year my Western books are set. 

On another more crowded and less accurate map by DeGroot (above right) I spotted a district called Blue Supper near Carson City. This curiously-named region is not marked on any of the other maps I have seen. I've tried to find out more about it but failed, so I decided to make something up. Towns as well as streets in the West were often named after real people. So why not Blue Supper? In my third Western Mystery, Blue Supper is not just a place but a flea-infested hermit in a rabbit-skin robe who rescues my hero from quicksand and a blizzard.

Ormsby County Building in the 1860s

Recently I came across a wonderfully detailed map of the part of Carson City where The Case of the Pistol-packing Widow will be set, with a plan of the now-vanished County Building. Built by Old Abe Curry, one of the four founders of Carson City, this sturdy sandstone structure was used for the Second Territorial Legislature in November and December of 1862. Thanks to this superb map, I can locate the outhouse, the stairs and the alley behind the building. I can also match the map to a crystal clear period photo (above) to confirm that the saloon was the Magnolia Saloon, the barbershop had the classic candy-cane striping and the sidewalk was sandstone not boards. 

Zooming in on other areas of this fabulous map, I can see stables, saloons, banks, the carriage house next to the stables, a Chinese wash house, a cracker bakery, several gunsmiths, a fire engine house, a smoke house and even an old skating rink, not the first thing you think of in a Western town. The key to the map (right) shows that buildings were made of stone, brick, wood and 'specials' like tin or cloth. It tells us how many shutters on the windows, whether a roof is slate or tin. You can even see where cisterns lay for the use of the fire companies. 

Maps are a wonderful way of getting to grips with the geography of your period and helping your reader understand it, too. 

Caroline & Richard in Nevada

And it's always useful to have a graphic designer around the house. 

Thank you, Richard, my husband of nearly twenty years!

Caroline Lawrence's second P.K. Pinkerton Mystery, The Case of the Good-looking Corpse, for Western-loving kids aged 8 - 80, is out this week. The maps and chapter header drawings are visible in the Kindle format. .