Diana,
First of all, thank you for spending your valuable time with us today. But more so, for telling us about the books in your fascinating Memphis Cycle. As you know, Ancient Egypt is of great interest to many in general (as it is to me in particular).
Your covers are what attracted me to your writing first. Do you design them yourself?
Why thank you.
Yes, I do design them myself. It
is a great source of grief and frustration that I can’t draw or paint because I
have the perfect ideas for covers and I simply can’t make them. So… I fall back on graphic design.
How did you wind up focusing on
Ancient Egypt
I studied ancient and medieval
history in college, and discovered that the Egyptians were not the weird,
death-obsessed folk I had thought them.
Around that time I stumbled across Barbara Mertz’ great book Red
Land, Black Land. Her humorous,
commonsense approach was delicious, and it put the seal on my affinity with the
Land of the Nile.
Did you ever worry that “the
experts” might contradict your research
Everything we think we know is
based on someone’s interpretation of an event.
Just cast an eye over the theories about John F. Kennedy’s
assassination. It all depends on how you
interpret things.
With Egypt specifically, that part
of the world has been so marched over and fought over and despoiled (Cairo used
Memphis and Heliopolis – Iunu - as its
quarries) it is nearly anyone’s guess what happened. If you can ‘defend your thesis’, then by all
means carry on. But in the interest of
honesty and truth, say where you have passed from the facts as we know
them into the realm of imagination.
Sometimes projections turn out to
be accurate. I never published anything
about Hatshepsut. I did write some
stories in which she and Thutmose got along, he governed the north under her,
and succeeded to sole rule after her death.
The destruction of her monuments was done by someone other than
him. I was interested to see that later
research tended to show this to be true.
One person had written a long
story about Hatshepsut that ended, I suspect, in her being murdered by her
nephew, Thutmose the Great. The
discovery of her body put paid to that theory, and the poor author completely
rewrote her story. Well… I would have settled for a disclaimer and a
direction to good history books.
Did you ever write furious away
and then find that the latest research superseded whatever you told in your
story?
Most of the discoveries have
confirmed what I already thought (thinking here of Hatshepsut, Akhenaten and
Tutankhamun).
The Crown Prince in Kadesh
and Pharaoh’s Son, Amunhorkhepechef ('Hori'), disappears from the public
record around year 25 of Ramesses’ reign, to be succeeded by his half-brother
Ramses, who was Crown Prince for 25 years.
Pharaoh’s Son takes place in year 22, which gives Hori three
years to live.. My story line had been
developed already when I ran across that bit of information, so I chose to move
forward. My Afterword addresses any
issues with history as we know it at the moment.
Did you settle for the Greek names
of many Egyptian towns and gods, according to
Herodotus? Or did you stick to
what we perceive as true Egyptian names—which can have endless interpretations?
The problem with the ‘true’
Egyptian names are that we don’t know what they are. As I said in the Afterword to The City of Refuge, we do not know
how the words were pronounced because like Hebrew, Egyptian writing did not
have vowels. Thutmose III’s name is
spelled ‘Dwty-Nt’. Ah… Dooty-Nit? Dawty-Nut?
Djehooty-Not? We have a letter
from the Hittites that phonetically spelled Ramesses’ and Nefertari’s names as
‘Riamasassa’ and ‘Naptera’.
I tend to do what is more
comfortable. I chose ‘Memphis’ because
it has very powerful associations. The
fall of Memphis; the Memphite Theology…
Men-Nefer (WAS it spelled that way?) is more accurate, but it is not
more recognizable. To I chose to use the
names that were most familiar – Ramesses, Memphis, with an edge to giving
historical names when possible. The temple
of Amun in Waset (which I call Thebes because of its associations) is called
‘Opet’. It is an unfamiliar name, but
‘Karnak’ is completely inaccurate.
Time is always of the essence. How
do you manage it?
I don’t. There is never enough
time.
I happen to know that you have a
few more up your sleeve or – better – in your head. Can you give us a glimpse?
What is in the works? Kadesh set in year 4 of Ramesses II’s
reign, is well on the way to being finished.
It should be finished around mid 2014.
It centers on the Kadesh campaign, and deals with the desire many of us
have to somehow match or exceed the doings of others, whether a parent, a
sibling, a character in history. I have
some sample chapters up on my website, and some familiar people make an appearance.
Moving toward the end of the
period I am writing about, I have Lord of the Two Lands, which tells the
story of the last Ramesses – Ramesses XI.
This is shaping up to be a trilogy, but it involves drawing conclusions
from fragmented history. It follows some
of my own deductions regarding the end of the Ramesside dynasty – kings died
one after another, a king being succeeded by his son, then by his brother, then
another brother… And so on. Was there an
endemic disease like malaria? Who was Ramesses
XI? (The son of Ramesses VI, actually;
but what of the rest of his ancestry?
His throne name included ‘Khaemwaset’ – the name of one of Ramesses the
Great’s most famous sons, who was crown prince for five years, and who had sons
and grandsons that were High Priests of Ptah in Memphis and Viziers of the
north. Hm… Interesting…)
That won’t be out for a couple years.
There’s also a fable about a giant
crocodile that I am finishing up for NaNoWriMo… That will be a short piece.
And most recently I had a mental
picture of an act of random violence. A
man comes into a marketplace, set up around the gates of the Temple of
Ptah. He lifts his bow and begins to
shoot arrows, moving into the temple through the hallways, through the
increasingly dark corridors. Two other
archers intersect him, one an older man, another of an age to be his son. They pursue the attacker to an outer
courtyard where he is killed. Who was
he? Why is the High Priest so
upset? What lies behind this act of
violence? I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. It’ll be a while, though.
When might your fans expect
another to be published?
Mid 2014 is my (hopeful) date for t
Kadesh, my fingers, my editors and my (very kind) beta-readers willing!
* * *
Thank you, Diana. That was so fascinating. And, as usual, you gave us excellent
insight into your muse. I am inspired.
Inge, as always, it is a delight
to ‘chat’ with you. Long life to your
Ka!
Be sure to check out Diana Wilder’s books on Amazon.com:
The City of Refuge:
Mourningtide:
Pharaoh's Son:
A Killing Among the Dead:
