MESSAGE from an archaeology team member stranded in ancient Egypt

Field Report. Plague in the Reign Amenhotep III

The dry, sterile heat of the Egyptian desert preserves everything, so why not a hard drive?

Maybe at some time in the distant future, this laptop, ironically charged by solar power (the sun God Ra!), will be found by archaeologists and the record of a population disaster, and my nightmare intervention and investigation, will be revealed.

Who knows the future? (Well, I do, to some degree.)

If you are reading these notes, Giulietta, then they will be the longest and most elaborately hidden notes I have ever left hidden for you to find.

It’s only been a day since we were last together, yet this gap of separation from you by a chasm of centuries makes me giddy with loneliness. I love you and ache for you beyond my capacity to tell.

It’s almost unbearable to think that I cannot simply call you, or send you a text, or hide another little message for you to discover later.

(Well, I have an idea about that. A long shot, but then I have always thought that the longer my hidden notes take to ‘go off’ the better and this one may take over three thousand years.)

But on with the report.

The word epidemiology means ‘the study of what lies on the people’ and I am presently studying, yet failing to comprehend, the terrible outbreak that has visited the population here.

What novel pathogen are we dealing with? Virus? Bacteria? Where did it start? How is it transmitted? Clearly it is highly contagious.

It presents like porphyria, with acute photosensitivity, yet porphyria does not ravage populations, being genetically transmitted and occurring in no more that 1 in 50,000 people.

Is the virus or bacteria magnifying the production of some compound with exposure to the sun, causing severe illness, psychosis and ultimate fatality?

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad, the saying goes and a worrying symptom of the outbreak is mental instability.

How do the people account for the outbreak?

They see it as a judgement by the gods - specifically the sun god Ra - punishing Egypt for its capitulating to no less than the Habiru god of the desert - Yahweh.

Exodus really happened… Moses, the plagues and the whole cosmic drama unfolded right here and these people lived through it.

And now, on the tail of these cataclysmic events, they are smitten by an eleventh plague, perhaps the most deadly of all…

Excerpt from the novel TEXT MESSAGES FROM ETERNITY (Amazon Kindle)

The past is not dead - settled dust. Least of all ancient Egypt's

The unpredictability of the past

You cannot know what the past will do.

For me, as a writer of ancient Egypt-based fiction, the past is not dead and gone, not settled dust. It’s always changing, doing things.

The past will change in our view of it, it will change our view of now, and it will change our view of tomorrow.

It can and will surprise us.

The past is a dynamic always working on us, pushing forward like a wave. While the future by comparison is the blank space ahead of the wave, theoretical potentiality, inert and, in a sense, dead.

The past has a way of doing things that nobody can guess. We make a mistake to bury it.

What does the past do for you?

For fiction that "brings ancient Egypt compellingly to life"    
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Impossible? A modern warning scratched UNDER ancient layer of an Egyptian tomb

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Trapped in Egypt's past, he sent her warnings through the archaeological layers of time

Is missing archaeology team member Lucas Burrows trapped in Egypt’s ancient past during an age of terror – and sending warning messages to today through the archaeological layers of time?
‘WARNING! ANCIENT GLOBAL THREAT…’ an impossible graffito message appears in a newly found Egyptian tomb, along with a modern biohazard symbol.
Who sent it?
What mysterious plague has hit the population of Egypt in the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his young co-regent, the sun-struck Akhenaten? Why is it seen as a judgement by the angry sun god Ra?
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? 

(Formerly The Ra Virus. Text messages from eternity)

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

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

"LOOK INTO these Egyptian Archaeology Thrillers and Mysteries"

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An Egyptian archaeologist with a bow shoots an arrow into adventure "THE SARCOPHAGUS"

Egypt action adventure fiction "THE SARCOPHAGUS" (AMAZON KINDLE)

(Excerpt)

"They are coming," Neith said in a low voice. "Two of them, very fast."


The group had just passed a big outcrop of rock and faced a bare stretch of plain. Ryder stopped and peered into the gloom. The dark silhouettes of twin-horsed chariots were running an oblique line towards them, throwing up ribbons of dust. Ryder was struck at once by their speed. Demon charioteers, she had said. They were certainly traveling at demonic speed.

But then the Egyptian chariot was a lightning fast and deadly weapon. Egyptian innovation had taken the cumbersome Aryan invention and made them skeletal, lighter and infinitely more nimble and they ran between two horses at breathtaking speed so that they became high-speed launching platforms for the missiles of their occupants - arrows and spears.

Ryder handed his shoulder bag of food and water to Janet and slipped his composite bow off his shoulder.

He took two broadhead alloy arrows and kept one arrow in readiness in his hand, while nocking the other to the bowstring.

He drew the arrow to the anchor point at his chin. 

Ryder felt that unique convergence of senses that the marksman knows. The world reduced to his target. Their place on the horizon and the line his arrow would take, bisected like crosshairs. He felt the space that lay between them, swept the emptiness like radar and then searched for the solidity of the target. His senses computed distance, windage, the speed of his assailants.

He had chosen the charioteer on the left, the one with the jackal head. He felt all these factors converge down and down to the point of an arrow.

He released.

They were around three hundred yards away and couldn't imagine themselves to be under threat yet. Egyptian bows had a range of around two hundred yards at best. The arrow blurred across the gap...

Underneath London... "THE EGYPTIAN CROCODILE CURSE"

“You mean our British Museum exhibition has inspired a serial killer?” she said.

“I told you the poster was unsettling.”

“And you of course have a theory.”

“I do. Whose mummy is at the centre of this exhibition?”

Why was he asking?

“The Middle Kingdom Queen Sobekneferu, a queen who came to rule as a pharaoh. The discovery of her tomb near the oasis city near Crocodilopolis recently made world headlines and this is a special touring exhibition to boost Egyptian tourism.”

“Yes, but she’s famous for something else.”

“Okay. She extended the lost labyrinth of her father Amenemhat III in the Faiyum Oasis area. She also had a unique affiliation with the crocodile god Sobek. In fact her name, Sobekneferu, means ‘Beauty of Sobek’.”

“Correct. And what was it about the crocodile god Sobek?”

“Jon, you have the coaching air of a professor. I’m the Egyptologist, you’re the gifted amateur,” she said to the stolen-antiquities detective.

“Go with me on this.”

“Sobek, the crocodile god, was a zoomorphic god depicted with a human body and a crocodile’s head. Like the violent Nile crocodile, he was the ferocious protector of the pharaoh.”

“Exactly. Now someone, or something, is killing people around the British Museum where the Crocodile Queen Exhibition is about to open.”

“Hang on, this happened around here? I’ve heard nothing about it.”
“No, it’s been kept quiet. The killings happened beneath the museum. In the sewers nearby, in fact. There’s been an electrician killed, a fibre optic cable worker, a sewer maintenance worker. That we know of. And a growing list of people have gone missing.”

“Attacked by a crocodile?”

He swayed in uncertainty.

“Well, let’s just say the remains showed the marks of a crocodile’s teeth. Skulls crushed in by powerful jaws. Protective hard hats crushed like eggshells.”
“But how could a crocodile get down into the sewer?”

“Ah, but is it a crocodile?” he said.

“What else? A serial killer with a croc’s head? Maybe I should have a go at the impossible for a change,” she said. “Let’s see. The killer is actually the ancient Egyptian god Sobek, half man, half crocodile and he’s been dormant all these years. Maybe some amateur archaeologist brought him here from Egypt when the sewers were first built and then decided to get rid of him. But now the mummy of Queen Sobekneferu pops up in London, so the crocodile god has suddenly come awake and he’s mad as hell and creating havoc. Doing his job of protecting the female pharaoh...”

Jon gulped his coffee.

“Where do you get this stuff from, Jennefer?”

She kicked him under the table.

“The unadorned facts, please...”

Excerpt from "THE EGYPTIAN CROCODILE CURSE (Amazon Kindle and paperback)

Exciting Egypt - Kindle fiction offerings (and paperback)

See the Roy Lester Pond range of Egypt-based adventure thrillers - offering "great reading" at Amazon Kindle

STILL HIDDEN. The Secret Egypt Below

Hidden mysteries beneath the sands

I think about it every time I visit Egypt to research my novels.

Underneath Egypt is ancient Egypt.

It sounds like a statement of the obvious, but for me it’s a heady reminder of the hidden. 

What mysteries lie beneath, buried by thousands of years of drift sand and detritus? 
Especially since antiquities authorities estimate that 70 percent of Egypt's treasures still remain to be discovered.

It makes me imagine that the soles of my shoes are ground-penetrating electrodes. (Or wish they were.)

This is what inspires me to explore with the tools of fact (research) and the imagination.

Is there still a Great Lost Labyrinth to be found? (As dramatised in my novel “The Smiting Texts”.)

Is there a ‘holocaust sun’ of Sekhmet-Hathor lying hidden, ready to trigger disaster? (‘Hathor's Holocaust’.)

Is there a forbidden stone Book of Thoth, a Destiny Stela, hidden in a sanctuary beneath the sands as revealed in ‘The Ibis Apocalypse’?

And of course, under ancient Egypt, there is yet another layer, the underworld of Egypt, a mythological element that tantalizes me and lies beneath the surface of my ancient Egypt adventure thrillers.

CLICK here for Egypt adventure fiction that digs below the surface

The lethal librarian in "THE FORBIDDEN GLYPHS" ancient Egypt conspiracy thriller

Yes, a library can be a dangerous place.

Egypt’s Lost Library of secrets and technology. Trigger for a dangerous new age.
 
Imagine a cache of writings of unthinkable power...
 
Alternative Egyptologist Anson Hunter does more than just imagine it. 

He tracks down the 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 - Keeper of the Library of Thoth

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“I remember Egypt,” the boy said gravely. “Long, long ago...”

Fiction based on inexplicable recollection of facts

A boy remembers a life in the ancient past, a young mother discovers adventure…

“I remember Egypt,” the boy said gravely. “Long, long ago.”

Her little boy Cooper was gorgeous, she thought, but his imagined past life could be a bit hard to take. Especially at 8.30 in the morning, when she was busy having a this-life crisis, running late for work and her eight-year old was about to miss his school bus.

Then young single-mother Catherine meets a past life researcher and also a mysterious Egyptologist Simon Priestly and she and Cooper are off to Egypt on an extraordinary quest to follow a young boy’s dreams… or are they actual memories of the ancient past?

What will they find and what will Catherine find as she warms to the impressive British Egyptologist as they uncover a shattering secret from Egypt’s past?

Disturbing and intriguing adventure fiction with a twist of the unknown.

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Chance, the greatest archaeologist, leaves Indiana Jones for dead

Chance, or co-incidence, is of course something a writer of fiction may never employ in devising the machinery of a plot. Too convenient, too easy, readers think.

Yet chance is the flywheel of life.

Did you know, for example, that chance is the world’s greatest archaeologist?
More successful than Indiana Jones, or Howard Carter, who revealed to the world the contents of the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun. More successful even than Anson Hunter, the renegade, independent Egyptologist in my series of adventure thrillers. 
Chance has always been at work – in Napoleon's troops stumbling upon the Rosetta Stone, the key to the decipherment of hieroglyphs.

In a water boy in the Valley of the Kings, unknowingly setting down a water jar and revealing the first stone step that led to the lost tomb of Tutankhamun.
In a donkey's hoof that broke through the desert floor to reveal the hollow of a hidden tomb below.

Or in a metal leg of a camera tripod that revealed a cache of statues buried beneath the temple courtyard of Luxor.

Chance is the secret cog that turns the universe, a shadow law behind all laws, the great invariable variable.

Even God may be thought of in terms of chance.

Consider.

If nobody created God and he was always just there, then he’s the greatest example of chance that you can possibly imagine. What are the odds...?

And chance doesn't stop there.

We do not choose, but are chosen, we are told.

How is that for chance?

Salvation, eternal life - matters of chance?

 

 

Anson Hunter, a conflicted archaeologist who warns about Egypt’s forbidden powers, yet seeks them out.

Conspiracies and hidden dangers

The Anson Hunter series of novels:-

 The Smiting Texts

Hathor's Holocaust 

The Ibis Apocalypse

The Night of Anubis

Egypt Eyes

The Forbidden Glyphs
The God Dig 
The Girl and the God Dog (novella)