Iset's song in the garden of the House of Women is a mishmash of two real works of ancient Egyptian poetry: “Your Love Has Penetrated All Within Me” and “I Am a Wild Goose.” A surprising amount of literature from ancient Egypt has been found, including several touching love poems or ballads. The Egyptians were passionate and expressive people; I encourage curious readers to seek out translations of their various stories and songs.
For all my transgressions against the truth of history, I hope the reader will forgive me, as I hope Hatshepsut, Senenmut, and the rest of her entourage forgive, looking down from their golden barque.
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HISTORICAL NOTE: SOVEREIGN OF STARS
I write this note with more than a little trepidation.
For both The Sekhmet Bed and The Crook and Flail, I’ve received lovely feedback from readers praising my accurate working of real history into these fictional portrayals of the Thutmoside Dynasty. Well, as I worked on Sovereign of Stars, let us just say that “my heart turned this way and that” nearly as much as good old Hatshepsut’s. I’m afraid I played much faster and looser with history in this book than I am used to doing, and I feel I must make amends for it here by setting the record straight.
I confess to freely reorganizing events in Hatshepsut’s reign to suit the particulars of my story. The golden-crowned obelisks were not commissioned until the fifteenth year of Hatshepsut’s kingship, and finished in the sixteenth. This is clearly indicated on the obelisks themselves, so I plead no contest to messing with reality here. I moved the event forward in Hatshepsut’s reign to about the seventh year, simply because it was just the thing I needed to shape the characters’ development, to set them up for the denouement of the novel. As Hatshepsut’s approximately twenty-two years on the Horus Throne were characterized by a wealth of monuments, temples, and restoration projects on a scale unseen in the reigns of most other Pharaohs before and after, I figured she was likely to have built something interesting and grand in her seventh year. It just wasn’t anything fancy enough to replace the less impressive pylon gates of her half-brother Thutmose II.
(If you are wondering, by the way, whether it gives an author of historical fiction a certain thrill to rejigger actual events from world history in order to suit her own creation, well, I plead no contest on that count, too.)
I also changed the date and circumstances of the expedition to Punt, moving it forward in time by about four years. It actually occurred around her tenth year on the throne, and while it was considered a momentous enough achievement to become one of the featured stories depicted on the walls of Djeser-Djeseru, Hatshepsut almost certainly did not visit Punt herself. She sent her representatives, Nehesi, Ineni, and Senenmut. However, I wanted my fictional Hatshepsut to experience Punt for herself, and particularly to meet the strange and mysterious Queen Ati, and so I contrived an excuse to send her there. I think the real Hatshepsut would have wished to go, to see the fabled God’s Land for herself. Why not?
The exact location of Punt remains a total mystery, but that it was a real place, visited now and then by the ancient Egyptians for purposes of trade, is not in dispute. In fact, the expedition scene in Hatshepsut’s temple is one of the key pieces of evidence for Punt’s factuality. The carvings of the exotic fish in the water below her expedition’s boats are so specific and so accurate that scientists have been able to identify them down to the species name – and have used this information to place Punt somewhere along the Red Sea, or at least accessible via the Red Sea. That is about all that’s known of its location, though, and less is known of its culture. Most of what we do know – the type of housing, the fashions, the trade goods – comes again from Hatshepsut’s temple.
And let us discuss for a moment poor Neferure. It’s here I feel I have the most special pleading to do, waving my artistic license frantically in the air.
Hatshepsut’s daughter – her only child, depending on which Egyptologist you ask – is another mystery of the 18th Dynasty. Not much is known about her roles or her fate. She appeared very prominently in inscriptions and art throughout Hatshepsut’s reign, up until approximately year 17. At that point, she disappeared entirely from the record. It was never clear whether she was married to Thutmose III or not, and there is much speculation amongst professional and armchair Egyptologists whether she was Hatshepsut’s heir, and whether Hatshepsut intended the throne to pass from herself down a new line of female Pharaohs. We will never know the truth of it. The only clear certainty about Neferure’s place in the historical record is that she served as God’s Wife of Amun, that, like all God’s Wives, she played a prominent role in religious ceremony, and that she disappeared when she was still very young – presumably dying in her late teens, though even that is uncertain, as her tomb has never been found, nor has any inscription that seems to reference either her death or her continued life amongst Hatshepsut’s or Thutmose III’s court. She simply vanishes without further mention, though later in Thutmose III’s reign some monuments show where Neferure’s name has been carved over with the name of one of his confirmed wives, Satiah.
It has been popular in Egyptian fiction to portray Hatshepsut as the usurper of Thutmose III’s rightful throne, and Thutmose III as a wronged man biding his time until he could rescue his kingdom from the clutches of his wicked stepmother. It’s a dramatic tale, but has been known not to be the truth for a long time. Hatshepsut and Thutmose III ruled jointly for about twenty-two years, until Hatshepsut’s death from natural causes. The pair evidently worked well together and were mutually content to share power. Otherwise, one would have killed the other early on and had done with it. Rather than going with the popular depiction of Hatsheput as usurper and Thutmose as vengeful victim, I did my best to tell a story that was nearer to historical fact – in this respect, if in no other. I think the reality of the two Pharaohs’ peaceful co-rule provides a much richer opportunity for drama and poignancy than the familiar myth of the quintessential wicked stepmother.
I hope you agree.
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HISTORICAL NOTE: THE BULL OF MIN
Please, gentle readers! Set down your pitchforks and torches! I swear I meant no harm; I only wanted to entertain you.
All right, I admit I got somewhat creative with history this time around, even more creative than I dared to be with the previous books in this series. In fact, I will confess that I’ve felt a persistent pang of worry over that whole Satiah/Neferure thing ever since I first came up with the idea back in 2008, when I started putting together The She-King inside my head. I knew I’d be taking a gamble with readers’ patience; all I could do was hope I could make the story engaging enough that my readers would be willing to venture with me into the realm of truly wild speculation.
In my defense, it’s not an entirely absurd plot device. Thutmose III was probably married to Neferure at one point. After Neferure vanished from history, she was replaced with a Great Royal Wife by the name of Satiah. On one monument, Satiah appears with startling prominence – much greater prominence than any queen was ever given in ancient Egypt, before or since – although it’s not entirely clear whether the original version of the monument always depicted Satiah, or whether it was first meant to represent Neferure, and Satiah co-opted the monument later. Either way, my trick of making Neferure and Satiah interchangeable is supported by history, albeit in a very roundabout and tenuous way.
Thutmose III did have a son named Amenemhat, and some Egyptologists believe that Satiah was his mother, while others speculate that Amenemhat came from the union of Thutmose III and Neferure. You can see where my inspiration for the Satiah/Neferure tangle came from.
My other affronts to history, in this book at least, are minor by comparison.
I moved the Battle of Megiddo (still a famous enough example of strategy, I hear, that it’s taught in modern military schools) forward in time by about two years. It was actually staged about two years after Hatshepsut�
�s death, but because it was such a dramatic and bloody battle, I wanted to use it as an expression of Thutmose’s grief and rage over Hatshepsut’s demise and his own perceived part in her downfall. For my purposes, the battle had to come immediately after the lady Pharaoh went to the big barque in the sky.
And finally, Hatshepsut’s reign actually lasted twenty-two years (I have her ruling for about twenty-one.) It’s a remarkably complicated trick, to make real history align with the pacing of an entertaining story. For the purposes of fiction, I figured twenty-one years was pretty darn close to good enough.
I promise more fidelity to actual history in my next novel. Honest.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L. M. Ironside (Libbie Hawker) is the author of five books, with many more on the way. Her historical novels have enjoyed more than two years of steady presence on Top 100 lists in the largest bookstore in the world, and she has become a leading voice in independent historical fiction, where she strives to recreate the drama and humanity of the past with literary style and authentic atmosphere.
She is terrified of elephants, loves the American west, and hates sushi. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two very naughty cats. Find more information about her books at LibbieHawker.com.
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The Sekhmet Bed, The Crook and Flail,
Sovereign of Stars, The Bull of Min
L. M. Ironside
Third Ebook Editions
Copyright © 2011, 2013, 2014 – Libbie M. Grant
All rights reserved.
LibbieHawker.com
Cover design: Running Rabbit Press
Running Rabbit Press
Seattle, WA
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The She-King: The Complete Saga Page 99