The Heretic Queen (56 page)

Like Nefertiti, it is unknown whether Nefertari ever produced twins, but I used this plot element to forge a link between Nefertari and the infamous Heretic Queen. Historically, it is unknown exactly how Nefertari was related to Nefertiti. In order for Nefertari to have been the daughter of Mutnodjmet, Horemheb's time as Pharaoh would had to have been much shorter than the improbable fifty-nine years that he claimed. After destroying Nefertiti's city of Amarna and usurping Ay's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, Horemheb erased Nefertiti and her family from the walls of Egypt, then added their years of rule onto his own. The Egyptian historian Manetho records Horemheb's real reign as being only a few short years. If this was the case, then Nefertari could indeed have been the daughter of Mutnodjmet. But all of this is simply conjecture.

What is known for certain about Nefertari, however, is that she and Ramesses were a love match. Buildings and poetry remain today as testaments to this, and in one of Ramesses's more famous poems he calls Nefertari "the one for whom the sun shines." His poetry to her can be found from Luxor to Abu Simbel. On a letter to Queen Puduhepa of the Hittites, Nefertari's name appears at the bottom, and it is clear that she played a distinctive role in Egypt's foreign affairs. She bore Ramesses at least six children, yet none of them lived long enough to become Pharaoh after him. In fact, it was Iset's son Merenptah who succeeded Ramesses on the throne. But even though the novel depicts Iset as a disloyal princess, as with so much else, it is impossible to know who she really was in life. Liberties were taken in ascribing Pharaoh Seti's death to poison, given that he died from unknown causes at around forty years of age. And while many of the Eighteenth Dynasty's mummies have never been positively identified, including the mummies of Pharaoh Ay and Queen Ankhesenamun, I chose to ascribe their sudden disappearance from the records to fire.

Readers familiar with ancient Egypt will also notice that some of the historical names have been changed. For example, Luxor and Thebes are both modern appellations, but are far more recognizable than their ancient names of
Ipet resyt
and
Waset.
And for reasons of simplicity, I chose to use Iset rather than Isetnofret, as well as Amunher instead of the long and much more unwieldy Amunhirkhepeshef. Of course, the most obvious change of all is from Moses to Ahmoses. Readers looking for the biblical Moses within this story will be disappointed. Outside of the Old Testament, there is no archaeological evidence that supports Ahmoses's existence in Egypt. What is known for certain is that a group of people called the Habiru existed in Egypt at that time, although whether they were related to the Hebrews of the Bible has never been proven. With such scant historical evidence, and given that I was attempting to portray events as they might have been, I chose to create the character of Ahmoses. I mention in the novel the myth of Sargon, in which a high priestess places her forbidden child in a basket, then leaves him on the river to be discovered by a water bearer to the king. This myth predates the biblical Moses by a thousand years, just as Hammurabi's Code, a set of laws supposedly given to the Babylonian king by the sun god Shamash on the top of a mountain, predates Moses by half a millennium. I wanted these myths to be a part of the novel because the Egyptians would have been familiar with them, just as the Babylonians would have been familiar with Egypt's most important legends.

Yet for every historical gap I had to bridge, there were many facts that I included that might otherwise seem fictional. For instance, Ramesses really did fight the Sherden pirates, and the Trojan War is thought to have taken place during Egypt's Nineteenth Dynasty. During the famous Battle of Kadesh, spies were captured who gave information about the waiting Hittite army, and the subsequent death of Emperor Muwatallis really did result in his son's flight to Ramesses's court in search of aid. If the world of the ancient Egyptians seems shockingly contemporary in some ways, that's because they used a variety of things most of us would consider quite modern: cradles, beds, linens, perfume, face cream, and stools that folded to save space. And although the invention that Penre discovers in Meryra's tomb seems unlikely, it is the first recorded instance of a shaduf anywhere in Egypt.

As for Queen Nefertari herself, she enjoyed at least twenty-five years of rule at Ramesses's side. In Abu Simbel, Ramesses built her a mortuary temple next to his, and twice a year the rising sun illuminates the statues just as it does in the novel. When Nefertari died, she was buried in QV66 in the Valley of the Queens, and her tomb is the largest and most spectacular of any ever found in the necropolis. On a wall of her burial chamber, Ramesses summed up his love for her as such: "My love is unique and none can rival her . . . Just by passing, she has stolen away my heart."

GLOSSARY

Aaru:
After death, it was believed that a person's soul entered into the underworld (Duat), where their heart was weighed against Ma'at's feather of truth. If the heart weighed the same as the feather, the soul was allowed to pass into Aaru, eternal reed fields located somewhere in the eastern sky.

Abi:
An affectionate term for father.

Adze:
A tool composed of a long wooden handle and blade. A miniature version of the adze was used in the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony, which was supposed to give mummified Pharaohs back their five senses.

Akhu:
A person's ancestors; an immortal soul.

Alabaster:
A hard, white marblelike mineral mined in Alabastron, a village in Egypt.

Ammit:
The god of karmic retribution who was often depicted with the body of a lion and the head of a crocodile. During passage through the Afterlife, if a person's heart weighed more than Ma'at's feather of truth, Ammit would eat their soul and condemn them to oblivion.

Amun:
King of the gods and the creator of all things.

Ankh:
A symbol of life, resembling a looped cross.

Anubis:
The guardian of the dead, who weighed deceased hearts on the scales of justice to determine whether they should continue their journey. He was often depicted as having the head of a jackal, since jackals were seen to lurk near the Valley of the Kings, where the dead resided.

Apep:
An evil demon in the form of a snake.

Aten:
A sun disc worshipped during the reign of Akhenaten.

Bastet (or Bast):
The goddess of the sun and moon. She was also a war goddess, depicted as a lion or a cat.

Bes:
The dwarf-god of fertility and childbirth.

Canopic jars:
Four burial jars in which a person's most important organs (liver, lungs, stomach, intestines) were kept for the Afterlife. Each jar was carved with one of the heads of Horus's four sons.

Cartouche:
A circular symbol with a horizontal bar at the bottom in which a royal name was written.

Crook and flail:
Pharaoh held these implements as a symbol of royalty, and to remind the people of his role as shepherd (crook) and provider (flail, used for threshing grain).

Cuneiform:
A pictographic language inscribed on clay tablets. First used by the Sumerians, it was later adopted by the Hittites.

Deben:
Rings of gold, silver, or copper that had fixed weights and were used as units of currency.

Des:
An ancient Egyptian measure of volume that is roughly equivalent to 1 pint or 0.5 liters.

Deshret
crown:
A red crown symbolizing Lower Egypt. The tall, white crown that symbolized Upper Egypt was the
hedjet.

Duat:
The Underworld where the sun god Ra travels every night in order to do battle with the snake Apep. Ra's victory and subsequent return to the skies each morning brings about the return of daylight.

Faience:
A glazed blue or green ceramic used in small beads or amulets.

Feast of Wag:
On the eighteenth day of Thoth, it was believed that a person's ancestors returned in spirit form to their mortuary temples on earth. This day was used to honor one's ancestors by bringing them food and incense.

Habiru:
A little-known tribe living in the Fertile Crescent, whose existence was recorded by Egyptians, Hittites, and Sumerians.

Hammurabi's Code:
One of the earliest known examples of written laws, dating back to 1750 BC. They were written in cuneiform on a stele that depicted the Babylonian sun god Shamash. The stele was discovered in 1901 and can now be viewed in the Louvre Museum. Hammurabi, a Babylonian king, believed that the gods had chosen him to deliver these laws to his people.

Hathor:
The goddess of joy, motherhood, and love. She was often depicted as a cow.

Horus:
The falcon-headed god of the sun and sky.

Ibis:
A wading bird with a long, curved bill.

Isis:
The goddess of beauty and magic, she was also revered as a wife and mother.

Ka:
A person's spirit or soul, which was created at the time of one's birth.

Khepresh
crown:
A blue ceremonial crown of war.

Khnum:
A god who was often depicted as a ram-headed man sitting at a potter's wheel. It was believed that Khnum would take his clay creations and place them in a mother's womb, thereby creating life.

Kohl:
A mascara and eye shadow made from mixing soot and oil.

Ma'at:
The goddess of justice and truth, Ma'at was often depicted as a woman with wings (or a woman wearing a crown with one feather). During the Afterlife, a person's heart would be weighed against one of her feathers to determine whether they were worthy of passing into the Blessed Land. The word
Ma'at
came to stand for the principles of justice, order, and propriety that every Egyptian was responsible for upholding.

Mawat:
Mother.

Menat:
A necklace associated with the goddess Hathor. The
menat
consisted of a beaded string to which a small pectoral was attached. This pectoral was worn on the chest, while a decorative counterweight dangled on the wearer's back.

Min:
The god of fertility and harvest thought to be responsible for the flooding of the Nile. Depicted as a man holding an erect phallus in one hand and a flail in the other, his black skin was supposed to reflect the dark sediment common during the Nile's inundation.

Miw:
Cat.

Montu:
The hawk-headed god of war.

Mortuary temple:
A temple that was often separate from the tomb of the deceased and built to commemorate a person's life.

Mut:
The goddess of motherhood and female partner of Amun. She was often depicted with the head of a cat.

Naos:
An ancient Greek term used by Egyptologists when referring to a type of shrine containing the image of a god or goddess.

Ne'arin:
A tribe whose existence was recorded by the Egyptians and who were given credit for helping Ramesses during the Battle of Kadesh.

Nemes
crown:
A royal crown made of a headcloth that was striped blue and gold. It is the crown depicted on Tutankhamun's sarcophagus.

Opet Festival:
The largest festival in Thebes. During this celebration, a statue of Amun was carried by boat from the Temple of Amun in Karnak to the Temple of Amun in Luxor.