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

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 (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.

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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)