Sunday, May 21, 2017

Ancient Egypt's Hathor, ‘Mistress of Turquoise’ in distant deserts



Hathor features in The Smiting Texts, Hathor's Holocaust and Hunting Hathor (Amazon Kindle)


From time immemorial Egyptians had penetrated the desert in search of her sacred stone, turquoise, particularly in the Sinai where mining expeditions built a distant shrine at Serabit el-Khadim, dedicated to the patron goddess of miners and quarrymen. 

The turquoise droplets must have seemed like a mockery of moisture to the ancient criminals and captives of war who dug the nodules out of fissures of sandstone in the desert. These same men prayed for the protection of Hathor, ‘Mistress of Turquoise’, ‘She who shows her loveliness when the rock is split’.
Would the goddess have cared that they gave their sweat and lives to mine her precious stones, so that rich ladies in Egypt, her devotees, could grace their necks with sumptuous broad collars of turquoise, their arms with turquoise bracelets, their fingers with rings inlaid with turquoise? Did the captives, dazed with thirst and heat, ever raise their eyes from their work in the mining camps to the turquoise sky and rock-strewn horizon and imagine that perhaps they glimpsed Hathor overlooking them from the dazzle? Did they picture her as an ardent young woman under a sycamore tree, or in the form of a lioness of the desert, Sekhmet-Hathor? 

‘She who shows her loveliness when the rock is split’



ROY LESTER POND. At Amazon.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

My post-apocalyptic blog novel THE HERO VIRUS

For me an escape from ancient Egypt fiction into another ancient landscape, Australia - Amazon Kindle and paperback
‘Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad...’
Madly brave.

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.
The ‘Hero Virus.’

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?


***** 5-star Goodreads 
The Hero Virus

"What an interesting story. Reading their blogs and each viewpoint was unique. I felt like I was with them on their journey.

5 stars for being so different from other apocalypse books."


Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Monday, May 15, 2017

Se-she-shet, onomatopoiec name of Hathor and her sistrum rattle

Hunting Hathor - Amazon Kindle (also appears as a story within the archaeological thriller 'The Smiting Texts')
A mythic adventure. "Wonderfully clever and original."
Can one bowman hunt down and stop the Egyptian goddess Hathor-Sekhmet, sent by Ra to destroy humankind? Was it the most impossible mission in all of creation?
This story first appeared in the archaeological adventure thriller The Smiting Texts, (as a tale within the novel) but is published here separately for lovers of adventure, mythology and ancient romance.


***** 5 star, Amazon Kindle
"Great reading..."

Saturday, May 13, 2017

Long distance Egypt fiction writing...


From 'Tomb Travellers' my very first ancient Egyptian novel, an award-winning story for young readers - to a library of adult fiction... it's been a long writing journey. 

One that has spanned the archaeology sites of Egypt, the ancient Egyptian underworld and now outer space in 'VISITORS The Egypt Enigma.'

Can there be any Egypt left?







Tuesday, May 9, 2017

After 'STARGATE' comes "Ancient VISITORS". Book Poster

The enigma begins on AMAZON KINDLE and Paperback



‘VISITORS...’

In the field of ancient civilizations, it meant one thing to young Egyptologist Rebecca Landers.

A controversial theory about the enigma of Egypt and its advanced technological achievements.

Then came the surprising evidence... and a threat to the world.

Suddenly she and her team were called on to span two worlds on a dangerous archaeological quest like no other.

Only they had the power to save history and the future.

Other Egypt-inspired futuristic and fantasy fiction
titles:



Sunday, May 7, 2017

New Kindle fiction.... Was there an answer to The Egypt Enigma? "VISITORS"





In the field of ancient civilizations, 'Visitors' meant one thing to young Egyptologist Rebecca Landers.
A controversial theory about the enigma of Egypt and its advanced technological achievements.
Then came the surprising evidence... and a threat to the world.
Suddenly she and her team were called on to span two worlds on a dangerous archaeological quest like no other.
Only they had the power to save history and the future.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

New. ’VISITORS. The Egypt Enigma' Was there an answer to the enigma of ancient Egypt's advanced achievements?



‘VISITORS...’

In the field of ancient civilizations, it meant one thing to young Egyptologist Rebecca Landers.

A controversial theory about the enigma of Egypt and its advanced technological achievements.

Then came the surprising evidence... and a threat to the world.

Suddenly she and her team were called on to span two worlds on a dangerous archaeological quest like no other.

Only they had the power to save history and the future.

Friday, May 5, 2017

The most chilling ancient Egyptian smiting texts/curses in my fiction

Inscriptional violence - smashing pots, striking spells

Here are some of the most unsettling ancient Egyptian smiting texts I’ve come across while researching my series of ancient Egyptian investigative thrillers.

By 'smiting texts' I include execrations by the state as well as curses of the private kind, such as those threatening rather unpleasant repercussions for tomb intruders:

 ‘No sons shall succeed you and a donkey shall violate your wife.’

‘He shall die from hunger and thirst’

'As for anybody who shall enter this tomb in his impurity: I shall wring his neck as a bird'

‘Then the crocodile, hippopotamus, and lion will eat him’

‘He shall be cooked together with the condemned’

Some texts are frighteningly vague:

‘Then the god will be against you.”

In the first novel in my Anson Hunter series of adventure thrillers, I give the reader the flavour of threat formulae – this example is typical of inscriptional violence used by the state as an instrument of esoteric warfare:
'I overthrow all enemies from all their seats in every place where they are… every land, every ruler, every servant, every woman, every man, every child, every animal… all will be destroyed forever. They will not exist, nor will their bodies. They will not exist, nor will their souls. They will not exist, nor will their flesh. They will not exist, nor will their bones… they will not exist and the place where they are will not exist.'
(The ultimate, catch-all curse and pretty chilling - see Berlin and Brussels Texts)
Come to think of it, the God of Moses hurled down some  execrations himself, with devastating effects: 
… 'I shall make the land of Egypt desolate, and the country shall be destitute of that whereof it was full … I shall smite all them that dwell therein ... then shall they know that I am the LORD.'
As my renegade hero Anson remarks during an address to a US Homeland think tank:
“You think remote killing is no longer attempted today? It is, and it’s being used by dissidents in the Middle East. Smiting and execration might seem unthinkable in our desacralized Western society, so let’s move forward to the twenty-first century. Take a look. It’s a Palestinian text, discovered in the Dead Sea in 2002, by an Israeli Professor and it directed virulent thoughts against the leaders of Israel. Here’s a translation…
“Oh God almighty, I beg you God to destroy Ariel Sharon, son of Devorah, son of Eve… Destroy all his supporters, loyal aides and confidants, and all those who love him and whom he loves among the human beings and among devils and demons.”
“It came in a small, cloth-wrapped bundle, surrounded with lead, an interesting choice of metal since the ancient Egyptians also used lead for hostile symbolic and magical purposes, because of its heaviness and malleability. A modern day execration? Did this long-distance attack strike Sharon down? His doctors probably had a more prosaic explanation, like a stroke with massive bleeding in the brain, but it shows you what many still believe. And if you think that’s all a bit vague and low-tech, here’s something for the technocrats:
"Oh God, destroy all their security and policing apparatus, the computers, the electronic and listening equipment…”
There must have been a few technocrats in the room. It got a visible stir.
“The ancient Egyptians, who could engineer stone pyramids to optical precision, millennia before the real flowering of their empire, were not perversely stupid in one department of their lives, nor were they peculiarly occult. They were an intensely practical society. You don’t keep doing something for four thousand years if it doesn’t work. They believed that ritual execration and smiting – creative visualisation with potent maledictions thrown in – worked, and it protected their nation for thousands of years. A better investment perhaps than any Star Wars anti-missile system?”

A monk, Abuna Daniel tells in The Smiting Texts:

“Regrettably, yes, there exist Coptic magical texts inspired by the Old Religion, written on papyrus, parchment and pottery. What do you seek? An Isis love spell? Or do you seek a spell to make a woman pregnant? Or perhaps you hope to lift the curse of a mother against her son’s female companion... and at the same time give the old woman an ulcerous tumour? How about a spell written on a blade-shaped parchment that can separate a man and a woman?”


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