Monday, December 11, 2017

THE FORBIDDEN GLYPHS - ancient Egypt's forbidden wisdom and secrets

British Museum


 
In the tradition of mystery adventure thrillers   'The Smiting Texts' and 'The Ibis Apocalypse'  ... 'The FORBIDDEN GLYPHS'...
Egypt’s Lost Library of secrets and technology. Trigger for a dangerous new age.
Imagine a cache of glyphs 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.

For unseen dangers and forbidden texts, see
AMAZON 



Friday, December 8, 2017

A ‘RA VIRUS’, SUN KINGS AND AMARNA’S FALL TO AN EMPIRE OF SAND







‘Text Messages From Eternity’ tells the story of viral expert Lucas Burrows trapped in the ancient past in an age of a mysterious virus.

Was there a Ra-virus? An Aten Scourge?
Lucas, a physician and World Health Organisation expert on pandemics, must find its source and the antidote in time to save the ancient past and the future.
Especially when his lover, the lustrous Italian-born Egyptologist Giulietta, is exposed to the deadly contagion. Can he warn her in time and save her and can they ever hope to be reunited?

“Roy Lester Pond
joins my favourite Egypt authors like Christian Jacq.”

“A furious pace keeps the reader engrossed.”- Goodreads

AMAZON KINDLE


A child obsessed with ancient Egypt. A young mother who discovers adventure...

AMAZON KINDLE

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Forbidden Gold and Egypt adventure fiction




Ancient Egypt and choking hoards of forbidden gold are inextricably linked in popular imagination. (Scene from the Brendan Fraser mummy movie.)




(except from THE SMITING TEXTS) 
It was a hall that represented the chest cavity of the god. It was also a treasure chest of staggering proportions.

“Dear God of our Fathers!” the Coptic monk Daniel said in a gasp.

“Out of the magic of its gold, heaven was born,” Anson said.

They were looking at the amassed hoard of the Neteru.

“Truly this is the Mother of all Treasures,” the veiled woman whispered.

It struck his eyes with the impact of an eruption.

It was as if a mountain of gold had exploded and disgorged rivers of golden magma into the hall.

Gold choked the place like a glittering slag heap, spewed from chests in chains and necklaces, crusted in heaps of gorgets, amulets, cups, urns and crowns, pooled in dishes and plates, twisted and writhed in a tangle of statues thrown together like corpses. The excrescence solidified in thrones and tables and chairs and erupted in great shrines jammed together like a golden shantytown. Gold winked, flashed, lusted and glowered sullenly in darker corners. A fleet of golden boats lay in a tangle of masts and oars like the aftermath of a naval battle among the gods. More boats lay foundered among jeweled caskets.

In the Book of Revelation, God sat with the firmament beneath Him, and the brilliance of gemstones sparkling in His presence. Heaven was blinding in its beauty! There was no heaven after death. Instead, the traditions of a material heaven, handed down by untold generations, were true. This was it and his father had found it, stealing the hopes of all mankind.

A feeling came over Anson that he was about to vomit.

A sorrow washed over him with the force of a wave and when the shock receded, an undercurrent ripped him back to long ago.

My father left me as a child to chase after this glory. A man-made heaven...



Friday, December 1, 2017

... and for young Egypt adventure fiction readers

SEE AMAZON KINDLE UNDER ROY POND

2 NOVELS IN A DIFFERENT MYSTERIOUS SETTING... 'The Hero Virus' and 'The Poisoned Well'

Amazon Kindle


(In a departure from my ancient Egypt fiction... the mysterious island continent of Australia...)


THE HERO VIRUS (Amazon Kindle and paperback)



Fear spreads like a disease, but what if heroism swept the population like a contagious virus that eliminated caution, the basic survival switch in the amygdala of the brain?
The contagion began with the arrival of meteorites that flashed down around the globe, spreading clouds of dust and a mysterious agent.

Those infected rise up and challenge the law and the system. They run suicide gauntlets across busy highways, stand high on ledges and tops of buildings, front enemies they once feared, spark reprisals, conflict and bloodshed in the streets - and raise the threat of reckless wars between nations.

One man – a rarity – is unaffected. He is a frightened man, an anxiety sufferer and returned Afghanistan war hero recovering from serious post traumatic stress syndrome. He decides to flee crazy civilization in an RV motorhome, along with his wife and children, and journey across the rugged wilderness of Australia to find a safe haven - a sanctuary, where people shelter in dug out dwellings beneath the ground. He keeps a secret Treatment Journal and photos of how he is traveling with his condition.

Can a frightened former hero save his loved ones in a world where the brave end up dead? And will the world find an answer to the ‘hero virus’ from space?




THE POISONED WELL (Amazon Kindle)


Beneath the most parched continent on earth, Australia, lies a great freshwater ocean bigger than South Africa or Iran.

But it becomes a poisoned well for one family when a high-powered and ruthless overseas company plans to build a nuclear waste dump on their property and tempts them with an offer of money they desperately need.

Can a rebellious daughter and her mysterious new allies prevent a disaster?

And what is the deep secret from long ago that poisoned the family well?



Tuesday, November 28, 2017

James Bond, Ian Fleming, Nefertiti, the villain’s lair inside Egypt's Abu Simbel temple...






I can’t read any of those modern iterations of James Bond written by stand-ins.

I’ve tried.

Nothing against some highly regarded authors.

It’s not even that that I resent the creative licence to kill they take.

The films take far greater licence and I mostly enjoy those.

It’s just that of course when I’m reading James Bond I want Fleming.

I make a few nods to Fleming in my Egyptology novels.

Did you know that beneath the man-made mountain of Abu Simbel is a hollow dome?

It’s like a James Bond villain’s lair in there.
It impressed me so much that I used it a scene of my novel The Smiting Texts about a renegade, alternative Egyptologist Anson Hunter



Abu Simbel villain’s lair..

The hidden dome under construction

The statues of Rameses gave no clues as they gazed out complacently over the shimmering lake.

“How is your fact-finding tour going, gentlemen?” Anson said to the Americans, who were squinting in the sunshine.

A group of intelligence community folk was not the most appreciative audience for a journey through ancient history. They looked hot and out of their element. “Maybe you’d prefer a change of scene,” he said. “Come with me. I’ll show you something that is pure spy movie territory.”

Anson had a word with the SCA woman who arranged for them to enter an anonymous doorway at the side of the giant statues of Rameses that was closed to the public. They entered a narrow tube-like passageway. It led them, footsteps ringing, into the heart of an artificially created mountain, a vast dome of reinforced concrete, built to house the entire structure of the temple.

It was like walking onto the set of a sixties James Bond movie – the wide-screen spectacle of a villain's lair hidden inside an island volcano, under a gigantic concrete roof and ringed by skeletal gantries and walkways
The young Egyptian SCA woman explained.

“The dome above this Great Temple is the largest man-made concrete dome in the world, with a circumference of sixty metres and a height of twenty-two metres. An artificially created mountain supports the temple complex and is covered with rock, soil and sand, to form the mountain, which holds these massive temples.”

They stood on a high walkway and gaped around the echoing space of the dome.

“Cool,” Ears said, impressed. “Where’s Doctor Evil?”

The Americans squinted up at the curving concrete vault as if expecting to see a sliding roof that could grind open under hydraulics to release a missile from a silo below. Here was the spectre of a threat that they could believe in.

From the walkway they could also gaze down on the interior of the temple. From their position they could see how the temple had been reassembled like a monster Lego kit. Humming air-conditioning plants explained the relative coolness of the temple interior.

Even Bloem looked impressed.

Several maintenance people were at work in the building, he noticed.

It happened in a blur, yet Anson saw it in slow motion.

Bloem moved aside to the edge of the walkway to let two Egyptian men go past. They looked like workmen, dressed in grimy blue galabeas. As Bloem leaned out at the rail, they bent. One grabbed his leg and the other grabbed him under the arm and they hefted him like a big sack over the rail, fully intending him to land head first on the concrete below. Bloem gave a yell that batted around the dome and made a wild grab with one hand as he went over. He hooked on the rail and it put a brake on his fall. His body slammed against the outside of the walkway and set it ringing....
Footnote.  I understand that way back before its rescue, when Abu Simbel was likely to drown beneath the rising waters of Lake Aswan, Fleming toyed with the idea of James Bond swimming frogman style out of a single giant eye-ball of the sunken colossus.
I would like to have seen that. 

Nefertiti James Bond girl...


Neues Museum, Museum Island, Berlin

“WHAT THE GERMAN people have, they keep,” Adolf Hitler famously responded when Egyptian authorities suggested that the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti in Berlin ought to be returned to Cairo.

Anson was standing among other admiring visitors in front of the bust of the iconic queen in a long gallery at the north cupola of the Neues Museum, when he recalled the Fuehrer’s response. The suggestions from the Egyptian authorities had risen to the level of rancorous clamour in recent years, yet there were still no signs that Nefertiti was going back to Egypt anytime soon. The queen’s image was everywhere, on postcards, in books and on publicity posters. Nefertiti had the pulling power of a superstar.

Was it James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming who’d remarked that the ancient queen of Egypt could make an entrance today in a designer gown and give the beautiful people a run for their money?

I never thought I’d agree with Hitler on any subject, Anson reflected, shaking his head in wonder at her beauty. The timeless elegance, lovely neck and airborne eyebrows produced a powerful effect on the beholder. If I had Nefertiti I wouldn’t part with her either...
(Excerpt from The Ibis Apocalypse)


Saturday, November 4, 2017

EGYPTSCAPE... “RUN... against a deadly gauntlet of the gods...”

"Hits the ground running" - Amazon Kindle
Eight very different people are chosen to road test ‘EGYPTSCAPE’, an ancient Egyptian virtual reality simulator housed in a complex on the estate of tech billionaire Brandon Drake, a lifelong lover of Egypt’s past.



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



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.





Friday, November 3, 2017

Like Tutankhamun, WHAT WOULD YOU TAKE WITH YOU to the next life?

A Well-Stocked Tomb.

We know the ancient Egyptians had a firm conviction that you could take it all with you when you died, provided your worldly goods were placed in your tomb with you. Food, wine, furniture, games, weapons, treasures... 
They believed that the afterlife would be a continuation of life on the Nile, only better, but with the same sorts of challenges.
Now imagine if we died and woke up in the next world to learn that they were right - only the ancient Egyptians owned any stuff. 
The rest of us arrive empty-handed. 
Mind you, not many ancient Egyptians retained their worldly goods for long with the systematic depredation of tomb robbers and of archaeology.
Picture it.
It's the Field of Reeds and a man is running plish, plash, plish  in the shallows of the riverbank in the dawn mist.
We are born alone, we die alone and we arise again alone and he is alone now, peering through the mist for another sign of life after death.
Reeds whip against his legs and body. Do scaly crocodiles lurk in here? Surely not. These are the fields of Aaru, not the menacing underworld that he has just passed through. That guardian-haunted journey of gateways, passages and passwords of the night still cling to him like a nightmare does to the newly awakened and he puts on a spurt to distance himself further from it.
Yet he longs for a weapon to defend himself.
Something. A rock. Even a stick in case he has to fight off an unknown terror.
His instinct for protection tells him to be afraid, yet he wonders what he should ever have to fear in this place. Then he recalls that here in this realm of the Field of Reeds men walk among the gods and demigods.
He hears a cracking voice that seems to bend the reeds like a breeze with its force.
“Who enters the reeds? And what riches and offerings do you bring with you?”
‘Riches?’ he thinks.
He is a poor man, a tomb guard, and he went to his grave with only a basket of food, his spear and a jar of beer, which he left behind when he ran out of the open tomb mouth to emerge into the dawn of another world.
Almost too late, he sees a figure standing in the mist like a statue. It is a giant, grim-faced being wearing a skull gap and a tightly fitting gown.
A neter, or god. Or perhaps a demi-god.
The air thins and chills and he smells a curious odour like burning gum. The perfume of divinity. The entity wears a thin curled beard and holds the symbol of a god in his hand. An axe like a flag on a long pole.
The running man drops to his belly and lies still in shallow water, plunged into shock and cold, amid a crowd of bending reeds, their acid-green pungency filling his nostrils.
“Bring wealth and you will be served,” the cracking voice said. “Bring no wealth and you must serve. You can run as they all do to escape eternal servitude, but you will be hunted down.”
What does this mean? That to those who have will be given and to those who have not, what little they have shall be taken from them?
Not paradise, but eternal servitude!
This does not seem like a fitting reward for one who has been justified by Osiris in the Hall of Judgement.
Is having a soul free of guilt not enough to earn rest and eternal bliss? Does he have to buy paradise?
“So you choose to hide and run?” the unseen god thundered. “Then the demigods will come after you. Men and women with serpent heads. Lioness women. Jackal men. And you have nothing to protect yourself with because you are one who has brought nothing... ”
‘I still have my spear back there in the tomb,’ he thinks. ‘Shall I return for it?’
No. He’s come too far now.
Better to crawl in a wide circle around the being and keep going.
There must be other tombs, other new arrivals that have brought things too. A spear. Bow and arrows. A sword.
And gold - that might be useful in this place.
Other tombs.
He is shocked by his own thoughts. Is he going steal grave goods from a tomb?
He remembers the words that he recited to Osiris in the Negative Confession:
I have wronged none…
I have not stolen.
I have done no evil.
He has sworn these things before the Judge of the Dead in order to enter the Field of Reeds and now he is planning to commit the very sins he denied.
Is it his fate to become a tomb robber in heaven...?”






Monday, October 30, 2017

Would a director today dare cast 'Nofret' in a movie about ancient Egypt?

Nofret, Old Kingdom 2400 BC, Egyptian Museum, Cairo.


If they cast fair Nofret today in an ancient Egypt-based movie would there be calls for a boycott?





Saturday, October 28, 2017

“Curating THE EGYPTIAN MUSEUM OF THE MIND. What treasures would you keep there?”




We are all curators

We constantly curate the treasures of our minds, endlessly labeling and arranging the display.



(Relegating to the many basements below the stuff that does not warrant seeing the light of day.)



What do I have on display in my ever-changing museum of Egypt?



Not always the gold that dazzles like Tutankhamun’s treasures.

Some I visit most often... 
















AUTHOR/'CURATOR'S' NOTE: In my treasure house of the mind, I have also curated a number of mysterious texts - such as "The Smiting Texts" archaeological adventure fiction series and a whole library of Egypt-based fiction (a collection on view at Amazon in Kindle and paperback. I invite you to take a walk through!)

Friday, October 27, 2017

Early German archaeology in Egypt (that found Nefertiti) unleashes "The Ibis Apocalypse"



Neues Museum display - Berlin
‘Come to Berlin,’ the German informant wrote.

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow. Meet me at Berlin Neues Museum in gallery of Nefertiti… My grandfather was a member of the German’s Thule Society and there is a German goup who watch me. They are the Neuen Morgendämmerung (New Dawn) with occult interest in Egypt and a website: Sanctuary of Ra.’

Was this New Dawn a German offshoot of the Order of the Golden Dawn, Anson wondered, an occult Nazi group that had links with the Thule society, shadowy progenitors of Hitler’s Nazi party and a group that had striven to secure talismans in the past, such as The Spear of Destiny? The web was full of links with Neo-Nazi organisations, the occult and ancient Egypt, in particular with Egypt’s western mystical tradition. Were they after the Stela too?

Drop everything and race off to Berlin? Was he serious?

He was.

Anson came to a decision. He liked to be flexible.
(From The Ibis Apocalypse - Amazon Kindle and paperback) 




Monday, October 23, 2017

Ancient Egypt - LETTER TO THE DEAD

-->


 (Dear Ankhiry),

Why are you punishing me when I treated you so well in life? an aggrieved husband writes to his wife.



The husband continues...
 
What evil thing have I done to you, that I should land in the wretched state I am..?




The Egyptians wrote pathetic 'Letters to the Dead', usually on the sides of offering bowls or in this case, on a strip of papyrus attached to a wooden statue of the dead wife. (Leiden Museum.)

They were not love letters. 

They implored the dead to cease their curses or to come to their aid and provide guidance with the intractable problems of living.



What have I done to you? I made you my wife when I was a young man. I was with you when I held all kinds of offices. I stayed with you, I did not send you away…



Often the letters grew threatening...



I will lodge a complaint against you with the Ennead in the West, and one shall judge between you and me on account of this letter…



In the spirit of this fascinating ancient Egyptian practice, I feel I should write a Letter to the Dead of Egypt too.


Or at least a thank-you note.

-->
Without the dead of Egypt and their peculiar belief in an afterlife that allowed the dead to ‘take it with them’, the treasures of their civilization preserved in their tombs would never have come down to us.
I am grateful that they believed and that they lived in an age where humankind and gods, the living and the dead, and the forces of good and evil, existed side by side in two parts that held the universe together

As an author of ancient Egyptian-based fiction I can't thank them enough.




Friday, October 20, 2017

Are your feelings for ancient Egypt a type of ‘intense missing or longing’?


I explore and express this longing through a number of my novels and characters (in particular through my alternative archaeological hero Anson Hunter in The Smiting Text series) and more explicitly in “Pieces of Egypt’, the story of a young mother whose child appears to ‘remember’ fragments about ancient Egypt (Amazon Kindle).

Thursday, October 19, 2017

EGYPT GENRE-BREAKING Fiction

Escape from the usual - Roy Lester Pond on Amazon Kindle (and selected paperback)