The Lost Labyrinth of Egypt

     In Khamsin, The Devil Wind of The Nile (Book 1 – Legends of the Winged Scarab), I already briefly mention the legend of a vast palace complex along the Nile.

     At that time, I had no idea this long-buried mysterious structure would become one of the main attractions and wonders for my modern-day archaeologists. I became fascinated with this mystery.

     You can follow my take on this ancient two-storied engineering marvel in Books 4 and 5 of my Legends of the Winged Scarab series.

     In The Crystal Curse, the bad buys try to exploit the existence of mysterious crystals growing inside.

     In The Nile Conspiracy, the Labyrinth threatens to become a death trap.

     

   

     In my research, I could not find out much about The Labyrinth – its existence and exploration, for obscure reasons, having long been denied by the Egyptian Government. However, it was mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus and in other ancient writings – therefore, chances were it had to exist.

   In recent years, the excavation and findings of the Mataha Expedition Hawara 2008 – Labyrinthof  Egypt – was still being suppressed.

     As of late, some experts with ground-penetrating radar have been allowed onto the site near Hawara. They indeed confirmed that “there is something big down there.”

(The diagram of the Egyptian labyrinth produced by 17^th-century German scholar, Athanasius Kircher)

     In an excellent article, April Holloway, Co-Owner, Editor and Writer of Ancient-Origins, brings us more about this buried complex.

www.ancient-origins.net/lost-labyrinth-ancient-egypt-part-1

The Nile – Its Fertile Past and Its Imperiled Future

I was pleased and honored when I was asked to be a guest author and write an article for http://www.ancient-origins.net due to my historical fiction novel, Khamsin, the Devil Wind of The Nile.

Well, everything my research about pre-pharaonic times was in my head had obviously been already written by someone else, mostly noted archaeologists and other renown Egyptologists. What could I possibly add?

Then it hit me: Something about The Nile. The topic is especially close to me (as it must be to millions of those living along this great river), as Book 5 of my Legends of the Winged Scarab series - The Nile Conspiracy - deals with the great concern over water distribution to Egypt and the Sudan from the Blue Nile springing from the Ethiopian Highlands.

( From their extensive files, AO had added some great imagery

such as this one to my article.)

 Hapi, shown as an iconographic pair of 

genii symbolically tying together 

upper and lower Egypt. 

(CC BY-SA 3.0)

You can read the article itself here.

I also urge you to take a look at the other informative material published by Ancient Origins.

Festival of Drunkenness

 In today’s newsletter from an interesting site called Ancient Origins  (- Check it out on the web -) one of the articles is titled, 

“Provocative Yet Sacred: The Ancient Egyptian Festival of Drunkenness.”

http://www.ancient-origins.net/ festival of drunkenness

Those Ancient Egyptians knew how to live.

Note the Scarab -

My "Legends of the Winged Scarab" fit right in with this story.

(Public Domain)

I Feel Vindicated

Excerpted from Ancient Origins http://www.ancient-origins.net/

“… Memphis once carried the name Ineb-hedj, meaning ‘White Walls’…”

 

  Artist's depiction of the white walls of the Great Temple of Ptah at Memphis. (Public domain)

Way back, in the early 90s, when I started my research for KHAMSIN (without the help of Google-search), I had a devil of a time to find the earliest name for Memphis. Even a museum curator (or his assistant) replied to my query with a disappointingly obtuse answer.

At last, glancing through some old accounts of Manetho, I think (it coulnd’t have been Flinders Petrie or Howard Carter because they wrote about Memphis as Menefer, etc.), I settled on Ineb-hedj, City of White Walls (and have often since wondered if I was wrong in doing so).

Then, I subscribed an the excellent blog entitled Ancient Origins. It has all sorts of astounding facts about our history. But today, it featured an article that made me grin all over my face: Russian Archaeologists Unearth Legendary White Walls of Memphis.

You can read it in its entirety here: http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/russian-archaeologists-unearth-legendary-white-walls-memphis-002927

Writing about Ancient Egypt is tricky if you want to adhere to the original names without confounding the lay reader. After all, a historical fiction novel should be entertaining; but if one learns something in the process that is based on fact (provided it is well researched), the better, I say.

I think I’ll sleep well tonight knowing I got at least one thing right.