For as long as I can remember I've always liked history. As far as I'm concerned, everything in the past looks really interesting. The buildings were beautiful (castles and pyramids), there were beautiful clothes (flowing gowns and suits of armour) and there were really interesting people around (pharaohs and princesses). It wasn't long before I started setting my stories in the past. As well as the Ramose series set in ancient Egypt, I've also written a novel about a medieval French knight and one set in the Victorian town of Ballarat during the gold rush. I also wrote a book set in modern times but about a boy finding an old shipwreck.
Historical Fiction
The term "historical fiction" looks like a bit of a contradiction at first glance. How can something be historical (ie real facts) and fictional (ie made up) at the same time? A historical fiction novel is set at some time in the past. It sets up the actual conditions of the time, such as how people lived, what they ate and what they believed in. The characters might be based on real people or they might be imaginary.
The difference between a history textbook and a historical novel is that the novel doesn't list facts, it tells a story in a historical setting. The story follows the life of a particular person or group of people rather than following historical events. I think people like to read historical novels because they can relate to the way the characters are feeling. They can imagine what it would have been like to live at that particular time in history.
Researching
I love researching. I like poking around in libraries, finding old books that nobody's opened for years. In fact the hardest thing for me is to stop researching and actually start writing.
I think I'm really lucky to be alive at this time. There is so much information available and most of the time it's free. Anyone can join a library and read about anything they're interested in. Nowadays, a lot of people also have access to the Internet, if not at home, then at school or at the library. The great thing about libraries is they keep on growing. They get in all the new books on a subject, but they keep the older ones as well.
I do a lot of my research in the State Library of Victoria. They have millions of books but most of them aren't out on the shelves like at your local library. They have them stored away somewhere and you have to fill in a request form for the book you want and someone goes and gets it for you. I also like the libraries at the University of Melbourne. They have millions of books too. I'm not a student of the university, so I can't borrow the books, but anyone can go in and read the books in the library. From time to time universities talk about only allowing students into their libraries, but at the moment they're open to everyone. I hope it stays that way.
To give you an idea of how I go about researching a book, I'll tell you a bit about how I came up with the idea for the Ramose series.
My first idea was "I'd like to write a book set in Ancient Egypt." I didn't know any more about ancient Egypt than anybody else. I've never been to Egypt, so I started exploring it through books.
I didn't know where to start though. There were 3000 years of ancient Egyptian history. When exactly was I going to set my book? In the earlier part of the history (called the Old Kingdom) when the pyramids were built? In the later period called the New Kingdom when Tutankhamun lived and the tombs in the Valley of the Kings were built? Or somewhere in between?
I wanted to set the story during the reign of a real Pharaoh not a pretend one. So I started reading, trying to find something interesting that happened that sounded like the beginning of a good story.
Ramose was a real person. Or at least I think he was. I only found mention of him in one book. He was a prince, but no one knew anything about him. He died when he was just a child, so he never became Pharaoh himself. I asked myself the question. What if there was more to this? What if the young prince didn't really die, but something else happened to stop him from becoming Pharaoh? That was the beginning of my story.
I got the basic idea for the Ramose series from reading two history books. One book was about pharaohs and their families. The other was about ordinary hardworking people who worked in the tombmakers' village near the Valley of the Kings. I didn't have to read whole history books. I just dipped into them and read any bits and pieces that seemed interesting.
So once I had the basic story worked out, did I start writing it straight away? No. I kept reading. I had to find out exactly what it was like to live in ancient Egypt. To write my stories I had to know what they had for breakfast, if they wore underwear, what they did for fun. I read lots of books and looked at lots of websites. Whatever I thought might be useful in my story, I wrote down.
Most books on history have a list of other books that the author has read at the back. So every time I read a book, I ended up with a list of more books to read. It took about six months before I felt that I knew enough about ancient Egypt to be able to see the world through Ramose's eyes.
Is it Historically Correct?
There weren't many things I couldn't find out about ancient Egypt, but there were a few. Those things I made up. Historians do that all the time. History is a lot of facts and figures that have survived from the past. Historians interpret this in their own way. One historian might have quite different ideas about what particular facts mean. Even if there is an account of a historical event (like a battle for instance) that was written at the time by an eyewitness, we can't be sure that it is completely accurate. The writer might have wanted to make it sound like his people didn't lose as badly as they really did.
With history from such a long time ago as the history of ancient Egypt, there are lots of gaps. Sometimes there are no paintings, carvings or writings that have survived about a particular person or event. What historians do then is they make a best guess. They might know what happened at a similar event in a different place or a different time, so they guess what would have happened at the unrecorded place and time. Sometimes archaeologists will find the remains of a new building, or a new tomb or statue will be unearthed and it will change historians' ideas about things completely. That's the exciting thing about history. Just because it happened in the past doesn't mean we know everything. There are always new things waiting to be discovered. So, could the things that happen to Ramose in the stories really have happened? I don't really know, but I've done my research, I've thought of a story and I've put the two together. I'll leave it to you to decide whether I've done a good job or not.
My Ancient Egypt Bibliography
I learned everything I know about ancient Egypt from the wealth of books written on the subject. Thanks to the years of hard work of archaeologists and historians almost everything I wanted to know was in a book somewhere. These aren't books for kids' so they weren't listed at the back of the Ramose books in a bibliography. I would like to acknowledge, here on my website, the books which gave me information and inspiration. Without these books I wouldn't have been able to write the Ramose series.
General
- Casson, Lionel, The Pharaohs, Stonehenge, Chicago, c.1981.
- Clayton, Peter, Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson, New York, 1994.
- Erman, Adolf, trns. A S Griffith, A Handbook of Egyptian Religion, Longwood Press, Boston, 1977.
- Erman, Adolf, trns. H M Tirard, Life in Ancient Egypt, Dover Publications, New York, 1971.
- Frankfort, Henri, Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation, Harper & Row, New York, 1961.
- Janssen and Janssen, Growing Up in Ancient Egypt, Rubicon Press, London, c.1990.
- Malek, Jaromir, In the Shadow of the Pyramids: Egypt During the Old Kingdom, Orbis, London, c.1986.
- Manley, Bill, Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt, Penguin, London, 1996.
- Romano, James F, Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, c.1990.
- Romant, Bernard, Life in Egypt in Ancient Times, Minerva, ?Geneva, c.1978.
- Shaw, Ian & Nicholson, Paul, The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, British Museum Press, London, 1997.
- Shultz, Regine & Seidel, Matthias (eds), Egypt: The World of the Pharaohs, Konemann, Koln, c.1998.
- White, Jon Manchip, Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt, Batsford, London, 1963.
For Ramose: Prince in Exile
- David, A Rosalie, The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt, Routledge and K Paul, London and New York, 1986.
- James, T G H, Pharaoh's People: Scenes from Life in Imperial Egypt, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1984.
- Reeves, C N, The Complete Valley of the Kings: Tombs and Treasures of Egypt's Greatest Pharaohs, Thames & Hudson, New York, c. 1996.
- Robins, Gay, Women in Ancient Egypt, British Museum Press, London, 1993.
- Romer, John, Ancient Lives: The Story of the Pharaohs' Tombmakers, Weiderfeld & Nicolson, London, c.1984.
- Tyldesley, Joyce, Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh, Viking, 1996.
- Watterson, Barbara, Women in Ancient Egypt, Alan Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 1991.
For Ramose and the Tombrobbers
- Brunton, Guy, Lahun I: The Treasure, British School of Archaeology in Egypt, London, 1920.
- Frankfort, Henri, Kingship and The Gods, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,1948.
- Lehner, Mark, The Complete Pyramids, Thames & Hudson, London, 1997.
- Lichtheim, Miriam, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1973.
- Parkinson, R B, Voices from Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Middle Kingdom Writings, British Museum, London, c.1991.
- Petrie, Brunton & Murray, Lahun II: The Pyramid, British School of Archaeology in Egypt, London, 1923.
For Ramose: Sting of the Scorpion
- Asher, Michael, The Last of the Bedu: In Search of the Myth, Viking, London, 1996
- Doughty, Charles M, Arabia Deserta, Bloomsbury, London, 1989.
- Hobbs, Joseph J, Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1989.
For Ramose: Wrath of Ra
- Adams, William Y, Nubia: Corridor to Egypt, Allen Lane, London, 1977.
- Breasted, James Henry, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1905.
- Clagett, Marshall, Ancient Egyptian Science: A Source Book, Vol. 1, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1989.
- Emery, W B, Egypt in Nubia, Hutchinson, London, 1965.
- Taylor, John H, Egypt and Nubia, British Museum Press, London, 1991.
- Trigger, Bruce G, Nubia Under the Pharaohs, Thames & Hudson, London, 1976.
- Watterson, Barbara, The Gods of Ancient Egypt, Guild Publishing, London, 1984.
Also many thanks to the following Egyptologists who were kind enough to take the time to respond to my emails and help me with the details that I couldn't find in books:
- Dr Paul Nicholson, Cardiff University
- Mark T Rigby
- Dr Donald P Ryan, Pacific Lutheran University
Links
There are many, many websites about ancient Egypt. Here are just a few that I found useful.
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