Ghostly procession to the Egyptian tomb - an echo of Nefertiti's?

An author's visual think-piece

ULTIMATE IMMERSION in ancient Egypt's mystery and dangers... 'Virtual Eternity Egypt'

A dangerous game, fiction that hits the ground running

Immerse yourself in a hi-tech underworld of the mysterious past on AMAZON KINDLE

Eight very different people are chosen to road test ‘VIRTUAL ETERNITY’, an ancient Egyptian virtual reality simulator housed in a complex on the estate of tech billionaire Brandon Viking, a lifelong lover of Egypt’s past.

Each wears a tag – Sage, Robber, Scribe, Prophetess, Gamer, Soldier, Priest, and Neophyte. They must race through the twelve hours and zones of the ancient Egyptian underworld night to reach the end of the journey before dawn, but only if they can survive hideous dangers along the way.

Then, shockingly, a journeyer is killed... really killed, it seems.

They are in a race against time and a struggle against the guardians and monsters of the underworld as well as against each other.

Enthralling adventure novella that hits the ground running.

‘VIRTUAL ETERNITY EGYPT' – A journey through ancient Egypt’s underworld - shocking reality, or deadly Virtual Reality?

Will Nefertiti's sleep be broken?

Ancient history's sleeping beauty

What if Nicholas Reeves is right and we find that hidden doorway and break through to an age of astonishing religious and artistic heresy?

If Akhenaten was the first individual in history, then the luminous Nefertiti was its first superstar queen, occupying a space in our imagination that no Hatshepsut or Cleopatra could fill.

In a matter of weeks, days, hours, we might wake this enigmatic sleeping beauty and spill a hoard of golden riches, and, we hope, historical knowledge, into the public consciousness. 

Her face with those beautiful airborne eyebrows will launch a thousand books and documentaries.

And if Nicholas is wrong, Nefertiti will go on sleeping among her buried secrets.

And we will have enjoyed this dream of her. 

Her Virtual Field Trip had turned into catastrophe and as the only Egyptologist, Sage felt responsible for their safety

A group led by a female Egyptologist dares a cyber nightmare

‘VIRTUAL ETERNITY EGYPT’ – A journey through ancient Egypt’s underworld - shocking reality, or deadly Virtual Reality?

Eight very different people are chosen to road test ‘VIRTUAL ETERNITY’, an ancient Egyptian virtual reality simulator housed in a complex on the estate of tech billionaire Brandon Viking, a lifelong lover of Egypt’s past.

Then, shockingly, a journeyer dies... really dies, it seems.

They are in a race against time and a struggle against the guardians and monsters of the underworld as well as against each other.

Enthralling action adventure fiction that hits the ground running.

Keep an eye on a mysteriously obsessed wife in Egypt? How hard could that be?

AMAZON KINDLE

EGYPT. STILL THE WORLD'S GREATEST OPEN AIR MUSEUM

ADVENTURE AND MYSTERY. IT DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER.

If you enjoy eerie Egypt... some fiction titles to investigate

Just a few of the titles on AMAZON KINDLE

The Osiris Seed Mummy. Fear that grows

AMAZON KINDLE

 

 

 

Fear, murder and mythology in an enthralling novella.

A mysterious grain mummy is discovered buried in the desert outside a remote Egyptian oasis.

Its finder, Gaia, a young historical climatologist, dreams of saving the planet.

But what has she released into the world? Death strikes and fear grows as a violent sandstorm traps the archaeology team and throws a heavy responsibility on her admirer, young American archaeologist Bradley, second in charge of the project.

Could this be the revenge of the resurrection god against climate change and the destruction of our green planet?

WATCHED BY THE POPE, two investigators examine the Vatican's Egyptian obelisk...

Egyptian obelisk, St Peter’s Square, The Vatican

(Excerpt from The Obelisk Prophecy - our investigators, Egyptologist/Museum curator Jennefer and Antiquities policeman, Jon, examine the Vatican obelisk) 

Flocks of believers, and the questioning, descended like pigeons on St Peter’s Square.

Many visitors were fearful, Jennefer noted, casting anxious eyes at the clouds of dust up above.

This was the Vatican, yet it put her in mind of Vesuvian Pompeii, the sky laden with disaster.

Jennefer caught up with her investigative partner who was busy circling the Vatican’s four thousand year old Egyptian obelisk that stood mounted on bronze lions and rose eighty-three feet into the dusty sky.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“I’m trying to tell the time.”

Jon followed a curve of pale travertine blocks set in the cobblestones like the hub of a wheel that fanned out in radiating lines.

“You have a watch, don’t you?” she said.

“We’re standing on one. This square is actually a vast sundial, the obelisk acting as the giant gnomon casting a shadow.” He stopped. “Even with this dust, I can tell it’s almost midday. Or perhaps midnight.”
“Midnight?”

“For the world, that is. Ironic that an ancient Egyptian obelisk is counting down the days to the end of civilization.”

She’d forgotten about the square’s role as a sundial, concentrating on the obelisk’s ancient past rather than on its present utility. It belonged to an unknown pharaoh from around the fifth dynasty, she recalled, and had travelled a great deal before its arrival here.

“I’ll tell you something else that’s ironic,” Jon said. “This circle around the shaft of the obelisk is a symbolic vagina. Those in the know are amused that there’s an act of copulation going on right in the heart of celibate city.” He pointed to the Pope’s balcony. “The Pope looks beatifically over it every time he addresses the throng from up there.”

She frowned.

They were trying to crack a code to stop a world calamity and he was cracking jokes.

But it was more than that. She felt uneasy to think that they were both standing on a marker of time inexorably measuring the hours, reminding her of the urgency of their investigation.

A count down to the end of civilization, he’d said.

The dust-laden sky made it look like the end.

The red dust haze turned St Peter’s Basilica, its cupola, and the embracing arms of Tuscan colonnades around the square into historical sepia that added to the place’s powerful sense of mystery.

“This obelisk is peculiar in being uninscribed,” she said, “which sadly doesn’t reveal many secrets to us.”

“Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place.”

“Meaning?”

He pointed up at a metal globe perched beneath a cross on top of the obelisk.

“What about the secret up there? That hollow globe. Great hiding spot. Legend tells that originally the globe held Julius Caesar’s ashes. But when they moved the obelisk here from an earlier site in Rome, they opened it and found the missing phallus of Osiris instead... no, just kidding. Only dust inside. And no mummy dust, either. Just plain old dust, like the stuff blowing in the sky.”

“Not very helpful, Jon. We’re looking for answers. What can we learn here?”

They learnt something sooner than expected - that their close inspection of the monument had been observed all the while by two burly shadows in black that now appeared unexpectedly at a few minutes past midday on the sundial.

“We wish to hear an answer too,” the one man spoke in an accent that sounded midway between Italian and… German? “You will come with us, please.”

Jennefer blinked in surprise at the two new arrivals. Fair men in black suits.

Swiss, maybe. Swiss guards in plain clothes?

Had their inspection of the obelisk brought them out of the shadowy heart of the Vatican palace?

“Have we broken some cardinal rule?” Jon said, pretending flippant unconcern at the intrusion.

“The Holy Father is hoping that you have learnt something from this monument that will help the world.”

That’s when it seemed to Jennefer that the sun stopped in the sky, just as the sun-god Ra’s boat sometimes paused in the heavens in Egyptian mythology.

Even the crowds of people in St Peter’s Square seemed to freeze, growing as still as the obelisk.

The Holy Father.

“His Holiness is waiting to see you.”

“Jesus,” Jon said.

“Not exactly. Merely Our Lord’s representative on earth,” one of the men said with a glimmer of a smile.

An audience with the Pope?

What next..?

Discover The Obelisk Prophecy on Amazon Kindle

HUNTING HATHOR A Mythic Novella, New edition

New edition arriving on Amazon Kindle

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A Mythic Novella.

Author’s note: This story first appeared as a tale within a novel in the archaeological adventure thriller ‘The Smiting Texts’, but is released here in a separate edition for lovers of mythology and ancient romance.

“This tale of an ancient hunter's fate to recapture the goddess of devastation in order to save Egypt is particularly beautiful. Wonderfully clever and original.” THE TRUTH ABOUT BOOKS

Hathor-Sekhmet was the goddess with two faces, one, Hathor, the Sweet One, goddess of sexual love, joy, music and intoxication, the other, Hathor-Sekhmet, the terrible lioness of annihilation, sent by Ra to destroy humankind for their rebelliousness.

In her marauding stage they called her The Confused One in the Night.

Were there times when Hathor slipped from one state to another? One phase, goddess of love, shining in her beauty, and the next a wild and dreadful lioness of destruction? What would it have been like to come across Hathor, the young woman, and not know that she hid another side?

'THE EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY MURDERS' - "Love this genre" Goodreads.

New edition. Mystery, murder, a twist of the unknown

A mummy named Isis is taken to a hospital for a non-invasive imaging scan… so begins a mystery and a string of deaths.

An ancient cycle unfolds in modern day London - and a search for eternal love.

Can Jennefer, a young trainee museum curator and Jon, a police antiquities unit detective, stop the killings in time before a terrible culmination of events? 

Now a series. Why not read the set - download THE OBELISK PROPHECY at the same time. 

ON AMAZON KINDLE 

Did Cleopatra escape death? THE CLEOPATRA DEATH CONSPIRACY

Archaeology thriller - Amazon Kindle

Disturbing revelation, mythology and ancient evil in a fiction adventure.
A group of mysteriously chosen investigators is brought together and driven blindfolded in Land Cruisers to a lost site in Egypt…
An historical fantasy writer, a young female Egyptologist, a cold-case detective, a documentary film-maker, an historical scholar…
Then the darkness turns deadly.
The sanctuary of an immortal queen.
Mortal dangers for those who penetrate its secrets.

"The Ibis Apocalypse" - cover relaunch

A danger arises...

 

Egypt’s forbidden power…
The fate of the world written in stone.  

AMAZON Kindle and paperback

They ran for survival in a deadly cyber Egypt. What is "VIRTUAL ETERNITY"?

New edition arriving on Amazon Kindle now

Action adventure in an Egypt mystery thriller with a sci-fi flavour.

Space lander Philae, mothership Rosetta, now a Star Wars Tut Mask!

Is ancient Egypt out of this world? (As seen on the web)

 

Not too long ago, Ancient Egypt landed on a comet.

In the form of the lander Philae, sent from mother ship Rosetta.

Philae and Rosetta were just two more examples, and names, in a long comet’s tail of associations between outer space and ancient Egypt.*

Think of the asteroid Apophis (the great Egyptian serpent god of outer darkness) that threw a scare into us when it was feared it might strike earth.

Think of the canonical use of sarcophagus-like sleep capsules used by distant travellers in science fiction movies, with 'Interstellar' being the latest example.

Like astronauts, mummies are bound up in elaborate white suits with masks for their journey through eternity.

Consider the Great Pyramid as the largest ever gantry for a space shot to put the pharaoh's soul into space and orbit among the imperishable circumpolar stars.

In fact you might say that ancient Egypt devised the first ‘space ship’ – a pharaoh’s barque that travelled through the heavens like the sun in a journey of millions of years.

*(In one of my fictional adventure mysteries, 'The Ra Virus' I build on this tradition where a meteorite bearing a deadly pathogen is suspected to be the cause of an 'Eleventh Plague of Egypt')

Global danger arises... one controversial Egyptologist investigates.

An Anson Hunter archaeological thriller - Amazon Kindle

Thoth as a dog-faced baboon, 'Mighty in his Wonderworking Formulae'

A fine statue of Thoth, British Museum

'Most forbidden and powerful of all is a scroll called the Book of Thoth, a work of frightening thaumaturgy said to have been composed by the Lord of Divine Words himself, the god symbolised by an ibis, or by a cynocephalus baboon, ‘Mighty in his Wonderworking Formulae’.'

Female ancient Egyptian eyes like the outlines of fish...

Monks took up residence in many of ancient Egypt's tombs. From the novel The Smiting Texts on AMAZON KINDLE

What if words from Egypt's ancient past could kill… and nobody listened to an archaeologist's warning

!st in the series - Amazon Kindle

What if words from Egypt's ancient past could kill… and nobody listened to a renegade archaeologist's warning....

Could the power of ancient evil ‘smite’ across time?

Meet the archaeologist adventurer Anson Hunter in the first in an archaeology thriller series, followed by The Hathor Holocaust, The Ibis Apocalypse, The Anubis Intervention, Egypt Eyes, The Forbidden Glyphs and The God Dig.

Anson's special knowledge as an alternative Egyptologist and theorist may be the key to stopping a catastrophe.

Fantasy Egypt for younger readers 'The Princess Who Lost Her Scroll of the Dead'

For 8 - 12-year old readers

Books of the Dead were magical scrolls that acted as passports to the other world. They were essential to the ancient Egyptians, a guide that allowed them to pass safely through the challenges of the gates and guardians of the underworld.
What happens when a young girl discovers she has been tricked by a greedy scribe, her costly scoll swapped for a blank one so the original can be sold again?
Now young Nefera must face the terrors of the underworld alone, clutching a worthless scroll.
Then a boy tomb robber Ipy and his pet monkey join her.
Can they help her find her way to the Fields of the Blessed?
What is the secret they are keeping from her?
They must hurry and reach the Judgement Hall before dawn or be lost forever...

AMAZON KINDLE (for younger readers written as Roy Pond) 

And...

What did the museum curator's daughter do... and see?

"EGYPT TRAP" Crime with a twist of Egypt mystery

Keep an eye on a mysteriously obsessed young wife visiting the archaeology sites of Egypt? How hard could that be?
A damaged ex-detective is hired to shadow a girl with painted eyes on a trip to Egypt…
Is she leading him step by step into a murder conspiracy and the mystery of a lost ancient Egyptian queen?

Dan Loader reluctantly accepts the job. A damaged, former-detective from a police Art and Antiques unit, he is already traumatised by an ordeal at the hands of antiquity traffickers. Yet he desperately needs something to help him hold his life together and following the girl looks like a soft surveillance task, more so as he becomes increasingly drawn to her.
Rich, independent Kate Barnsdale is a beautiful, haunting young woman surrounded by an unmistakeable aura of ancient Egypt. Her obsession with a lost, mythic Queen from Egypt’s 6th Dynasty seems to be taking over her life.
When she insists on travelling to Egypt alone to follow her mysterious urgings, her husband hires Dan to shadow her secretly and watch over her.
But is Dan being drawn step by step into a murder conspiracy that involves the secret of a mythic queen from Egypt’s ancient past?
Crime and suspense with the mystery twist of ancient Egypt.
 
New edition release (formerly The Egypt Eye case) 

AMAZON KINDLE

What is The Obelisk Prophecy? Coded threat to the world?

NEW. AMAZON KINDLE

'X-FILES meets THE MUMMY' in this new series.
Detectives and Egyptologists are in sister professions. Now the unusual team of Jennefer, an Egyptologist museum curator, and Jon, an arts and antiquities policeman, is back together in ‘The Obelisk Prophecy”.
The exciting fiction sequel to ‘The Egyptian Mythology Murders’.
Egyptian obelisks are potent symbols that pierce the skies around the world. London, New York, The Vatican…
But now one obelisk represents the clue to a world-threatening mystery.
Working against secret enemies the team must race to find and penetrate the riddle of the one obelisk on earth that holds the key to salvation.

"THE FORBIDDEN GLYPHS" - a cache of writings of unthinkable power

Archaeology adventure thriller - Amazon Kindle

Egypt’s Lost Library of secrets and technology.
Trigger for a dangerous new age.
Imagine a cache of writings of unthinkable power.
Renegade Egyptologist Anson Hunter does. In fact he has a controversial theory that somewhere in Egypt lies the lost library of Thoth, guarded by his consort the goddess Seshat.
In legend, this library contained all the forbidden knowledge of ancient Egypt, both human and divine, including secrets of lost technology that built the pyramids.
Anson’s theory throws him into conflict with international seekers who have dangerous agendas for the world.
To save a loved one, Anson Hunter must seek the forbidden glyphs in an ingenious lost sanctuary guarded by traps set by the calculating goddess Seshat.

The Anson Hunter series ON AMAZON KINDLE

In her marauding stage they called her 'The Confused One in the Night'. Sekhmet-Hathor

Sekhmet-Hathor, Destroyer of Humankind

What is this little 'angel' from ancient Egypt?

Actually a Ba figure

This sweet little Ba (Soul bird) in the British Museum makes me think of the lost soul of the young princess in my children's story: "The Princess Who Lost Her Scroll of the Dead" (Amazon Kindle)

Here's another Ba

And a whole flock

Coded danger in "THE OBELISK PROPHECY" NEW archaeology thriller

Unravel the mystery on Amazon Kindle

The most extraordinary cat scene in the ancient world - Egyptian tomb chapel of Nebamun

A ginger marauder tackles 3 birds at once as Nebamun goes fowling in the papyrus marsh. B.M.

Rare ancient Egyptian full-frontals - faces, that is.

Tomb chapel of Nebamun, The British Museum

An artistic lyric poem in paint - this wondrous ancient Egyptian tomb scene is made all the more remarkable by its break with the art canon.

A HAUNTING WALK through the Tomb Chapel of Nebamun at The British Museum

A bevy of beauties

Quintessential ancient Egypt at The British Museum

Archaeology of an Egypt adventure thriller fiction writer

My deeply-embedded interest in ancient Egypt is as mysterious to me as ancient Egypt itself.

Where did the inexplicable pull begin?

Ancient Egypt did not interest my parents or any other member of my family. 

As I dig down through the layers to my childhood, I recall a few touchstones:-

Seeing 'The Egyptian' movie

Reading 'Sinuhe, The Egyptian' – fiction

Reading Rider Haggard’s novel 'She' with its Egyptian elements.

I started penning Egyptian stories at around fourteen and attempted my first novel at sixteen.

I  even made youthful attempts at painting ancient Egypt.

I have haunted the museums of the world and made long and searching visits to Egypt.

And I have written, written and written about Egypt in novels and blogs.

So far I have penned an entire fiction series about a renegade alternative Egyptologist by the name of Anson Hunter who explores unseen dangers from the ancient past – The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust, The Ibis Apocalypse, The Ra Boat Judgement, Egypt Eyes, The Forbidden Glyphs and The God Dig (Amazon Kindle).

And now I have even embarked on a new, paranormal series "The Egyptian Mythology Murders' , 'The Obelisk Prophecy' amd The Egyptian Exhibition Killings.

As well as adult novels, I have written over a dozen novels for younger readers (as Roy Pond).

What it is that attracts others to Egypt, that compels people to queue up in their thousands to stand in the golden aura of Tutankhamun’s treasures?

It's more than the lure of gold.  

Ancient Egypt is compelling, and in a book by Michael Rice and Sally MacDonald, called 'Consuming Egypt', a research study on consumer attitudes to ancient Egypt gives many fascinating insights.

Most intriguing for me, as I have long suspected, they don't think of ancient Egypt as a place or a time, but more of a bubble in time, a self-contained concept that is endlessly satisfying to them.  

In this bubble float pyramids, Cleopatra, Tutankhamun and of course golden treasures.

Consumers, particularly younger ones, believe that tombs were built with tomb traps inside purely as some kind of 'dare' to intruders to try to find the pharaoh's hidden treasure. Rather like a computer game. 

And yet… my obsession with Egypt is still a mystery that shows little sign of abating.

I can never look up at a night sky without imagining pharaoh’s Barque of Millions of Years sailing among the stars.

My favourite Egyptian piece. (I even take it on the road.)

Mystery fiction from the home of ancient mystery, Egypt

First in the series of paranormal mystery thrillers

A female mummy is blasted with radiation in a hospital imaging scan... could it trigger ancient evil like a terrible blast from the past?

An ancient cycle unfolds in modern day London - and a search for eternal love.

'THE EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY MURDERS' - Amazon Kindle.

Now followed by 'THE OBELISK PROPHECY'