Tag Archives: Cleopatra

Ancient Egypt is so OLD !

There are some mind-bending facts about ancient Egypt which challenge our concepts about time.  They help to demonstrate just what an incredibly long passage of time the Egyptian civilisation can claim.

UnknownFirst, Cleopatra lived closer in time to the building of Pizza Hut than the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Cleopatra ruled as the last Pharaoh at around 30BC, before Egypt fell to the Roman Empire.  The Great Pyramid was already approximately 2,500 years old, having been built for the pharaoh Khufu in the Old Kingdom of dynastic Egypt in circa 2560 BC.

UnknownThe first Pizza Hut opened in 1958, approximately 500 years closer in time to Cleopatra than Khufu’s pyramid.

I can’t help but wonder if Cleopatra’s knowledge and understanding of the reign of her Old Kingdom predecessor was much as ours is of her: coloured by myth and legend, and the passage of thousands of years.

Broadly contemporary with Cleopatra was the first century Romano-Jewish scholar and writer Josephus. As far as we know his work contains the only reference to the earlier Egyptian historian and priest, Manetho, who wrote his fabled Aegyptiaca some 300 years before Cleopatra ascended to the throne.  It gave a history and chronology of the pharaohs.  Whether it shed any more light on the historical facts of the dynasties that pre-dated Cleopatra’s Ptolomaic ancestry than Shakespeare did on Cleopatra’s own story is a matter for debate.

tm9The other fascinating fact is that the first pyramids were built while the woolly mammoth still roamed the earth.  A small population of mammoths survived until circa 1650 BC, by which time Egypt’s empire was well established, and the pyramids were already about a thousand years old.

It’s mind-bending stuff : how the Egyptian civilisation spans what we might consider almost prehistory, right up to the Roman Empire whose influence can still be felt in Britain today.

Perhaps this explains why ancient Egypt is such a rich source of inspiration for writers of fiction such as myself.  With a history spanning something like three thousand years, with so many famous names, and with so much gold, how can we help but be fascinated by its mystery and romance?  And with the inevitable gaps in our historical knowledge after such an immense passage of time, how tempting it is to try to fill in the blanks.

That’s what my fictional series following Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt aims to do.  In each story, I take an ancient mystery and weave a story around it, letting my imagination put the flesh on the bones of what we know from archaeology and historical research.

Fiona Deal, Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, fiction books all available on Amazon. To join Merry on her adventures please click on each picture for the link.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Carter's Conundrums

Cover of  Carter’s Conundrums. Book 1 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Tutankhamun’s Triumph.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Tutankhamun’s Triumph. Book 2 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Hatshepsut’s Hideaway.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Hatshepsut’s Hideaway. Book 3 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Farouk’s Fancies.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Farouk’s Fancies. Book 4 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Akhenaten’s Alibi.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Akhenaten’s Alibi. Book 5 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Seti’s Secret.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Seti’s Secret. Book 6 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Belzoni’s Bequest.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Belzoni’s Bequest. Book 7 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Nefertari’s Narrative.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Nefertari’s Narrative. Book 8 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

An image of the cover of the Fiona Deal book, Ramses’ Riches.

The cover of the Fiona Deal book, Ramses’ Riches. Book 9 in the series, Meredith Pink’s adventures in Egypt.

The incredible length of Egypt’s civilisation

The link below will take you to an article showing 23 “mind-blowing facts that will destroy your understanding of time”.  The author requests shares, so I’m doing just that.

Two of the facts relate to ancient Egypt and help to demonstrate just what an incredibly long passage of time the Egyptian civilisation can claim.

UnknownFirst, Cleopatra lived closer in time to the building of Pizza Hut than the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Cleopatra ruled as the last Pharaoh at around 30BC, before Egypt fell to the Roman Empire.  The Great Pyramid was already approximately 2,500 years old, having been built for the pharaoh Khufu in the Old Kingdom of dynastic Egypt in circa 2560 BC.

UnknownThe first Pizza Hut opened in 1958, approximately 500 years closer in time to Cleopatra than Khufu’s pyramid.

I can’t help but wonder if Cleopatra’s knowledge and understanding of the reign of her Old Kingdom predecessor was much as ours is of her: coloured by myth and legend, and the passage of thousands of years.

Broadly contemporary with Cleopatra was the first century Romano-Jewish scholar and writer Josephus. As far as we know his work contains the only reference to the earlier Egyptian historian and priest, Manetho, who wrote his fabled Aegyptiaca some 300 years before Cleopatra ascended to the throne.  It gave a history and chronology of the pharaohs.  Whether it shed any more light on the historical facts of the dynasties that pre-dated Cleopatra’s Ptolomaic ancestry than Shakespeare did on Cleopatra’s own story is a matter for debate.

tm9The other fascinating fact is that the first pyramids were built while the woolly mammoth still roamed the earth.  A small population of mammoths survived until circa 1650 BC, by which time Egypt’s empire was well established, and the pyramids were already about a thousand years old.

I’s bind-bending stuff : how the Egyptian civilisation spans what we might consider almost prehistory, right up to the Roman Empire whose influence can still be felt in Britain today.

Perhaps this explains why ancient Egypt is such a rich source of inspiration for writers of fiction such as myself.  With a history spanning something like three thousand years, with so many famous names, and with so much gold, how can we help but be fascinated by its mystery and romance?  And with the inevitable gaps in our historical knowledge after such an immense passage of time, how tempting it is to try to fill in the blanks.

That’s what my fictional series following Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt aims to do.  In each story, I take an ancient mystery and weave a story around it, letting my imagination put the flesh on the bones of what we know from archaeology and historical research.

Here is the source article, which got me thinking about Egypt’s incredibly long history : http://higherperspective.com/2015/02/understanding-time.html?utm_source=cleo&ts_pid=2

Fiona Deal – author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt, available in paperback or to download from Amazon and all major ebook retailers.

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Dendera Zodiac

The Dendera Zodiac was on the ceiling of the G...

The Dendera Zodiac was on the ceiling of the Greco-Roman temple of Hathor at Dendera (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ok, so here’s the question that’s been playing on my mind today.  Is it a good thing or not that the original Dendera zodiac was chipped from the wall of the temple at some point during the nineteenth century by the early explorers of Egypt and now resides in Le Louvre in Paris?  Would it not be better for it to have remained in situ in the wonderful Ptolemaic temple where it was first carved?

I visited Dendera Temple yesterday.  It’s an hour’s drive north along the desert road from Luxor; or it’s possible to take a boat trip if you want to make a whole day of it.

IMG_4452The temple sits on the West Bank of the Nile, opposite the modern town of Qena. It’s quite simply stunning.  A beautifully preserved temple, full of the chirping of hundreds of sparrows.  The tops of the columns in the Hypostyle Hall are unusual for having the Hathor-headed capital – still with original colours.   It’s right up there with some of the other hugely impressive temples of ancient Egypt.

IMG_4454This temple was built towards the end of the Ptolemaic period, some two thousand years ago.  There’s a huge carving on the back wall of Cleopatra with Caesar and their son Caesarian who was sadly never to assume his place at Pharaoh once the Roman Empire fully took charge after the joint suicide of Cleopatra and Mark Antony.

IMG_4451 A clean-up job has begun inside the temple.  The roof is blackened from the centuries when the temple almost disappeared beneath the sands of time; and the old Bedoiuns used to camp out inside the temple walls, and build fires to keep warm and for their cooking pots.  The smoke from these fires has blackened the roof with centuries’ worth of soot.  The careful cleaning job is revealing a remarkable ceiling, beautifully painted and with its original colours still largely intact.  This picture looks like it’s half in the shadow and half in the light.  Actually, it shows half the ceiling – cleaned – and the other half still blackened with dirt.

But back to the question that’s been bugging me.  The trouble is, I can argue it both ways.  The museums of the world – notably the British Museum in London, Metropolitan in New York, Le Louvre in Paris and the Turin Museum in Italy – are filled with treasures taken from Egypt in those early days of exploration before the Egyptian Antiquities Service put a stop to it in the early twentieth century.

My heart tells me that Egypt’s treasures should have remained in Egypt.  I would love to visit the temples and see them filled with their statues and original wall carvings.  I can’t help but feel Egypt has been robbed of some of its fabulous heritage.  But it’s also a simple fact that some people will never get the opportunity to travel to Egypt – and to see the fabulous statuary and artefacts in the museums of the world is better than never seeing them at all.  And perhaps this is what inspires many people to come to Egypt in the first place.  So it’s a circular argument in the end.

But standing in Dendera temple yesterday, and looking at the huge metre-square replica of the zodiac on the roof of the dark little chapel where the original once resided; I couldn’t help but question the ethics of those original explorers who chipped this remarkable carving off the wall and shipped it to Europe.

Fiona Deal – Author of Meredith Pink’s Adventures in Egypt.  Three modern adventure stories set in Egypt, with ancient mysteries to solve…