The Singer from Memphis

by Gary Corby

  There was an Egyptian writer named Manetho, who lived a couple of hundred years after the time of this story, who referred to Memphis by a completely different name: Hut-ka-Ptah, meaning Place of the Ka of Ptah, in reference to the major temple of Ptah. The Greeks in their typical fashion mangled Hut-ka-Ptah into Ai-gy-Ptos. Which became Aigyptos. Which then became . . . you guessed it: Egypt.

  It’s important to note that not a single word of Arabic yet existed in Egypt. Despite which, I’ve used names such as Saqqara for the place where the pyramids are to be found. It gives you the best chance to follow the action.

  The good news for both me and Nico is that Greek is already spreading across Egypt. As the power of Athens grew, the Greek language became the lingua franca of the Mediterranean. This continued for centuries! A lot of people don’t realize that even at the height of the Roman Empire, the language of culture and refinement was Greek. Latin was what the plebs spoke.

  Thus in northern cities of Egypt, such as Naukratis, Nico can get by on Greek. In other parts, he can expect the intellectual elite to speak his language, though not normal people. It helps that Nico and Diotima learned Persian in their previous adventure The Ionia Sanction. When you’re an agent for Athens, speaking Persian is a job skill. In Persian-dominated Memphis they have no problems. In the countryside they have Maxyates and then Djanet to translate where necessary.

  It’s no coincidence that Djanet is not only the last heir of the Pharaohs, but also an agent. She owes her existence, or at least her name, to my literary agent Janet Reid. Janet is a most awesome agent. If someone made her Pharaoh, I’m sure she’d be just as good at that job.

  [Note from Janet: Pharaoh! As long as I don’t have to ride a camel, I’m in!]

  •

  The oasis of Siwa is very real. Nico is accurate in his description of the distance and the difficulty of getting there. If anything, he underrates the extreme danger.

  Cambyses the King of Persia really did send an army of 50,000 men to reduce the temple. The army died to the last man attempting to cross the desert. Their remains are still out there, waiting for some archaeologist to find them.

  The Qattara Depression through which our heroes travel is all too real. It was the location of many battles between Rommel’s Afrika Korp and the British during World War II. Indeed, both the British and the Germans used the Siwa Oasis for a headquarters as their fight famously swung one way then the other.

  The oracle was dedicated to the Libyan god Ammon. This god is normally associated with the extremely important Egyptian god Amun. Note the very similar spelling. Like most people, Nico makes that connection and never differentiates. In Nico’s day, Siwa was actually called Ammonium. I wasn’t keen to use that name in the book, but I find it interesting how almost every Egyptian place name has changed greatly over time, whereas even the most ancient of Greek names have been stable for millennia.

  The oracle at Siwa was known to the Greeks from a very early age. Even King Croesus is known to have sent emissaries there. The Greeks considered the Siwa oracle to be on a par with the oracle at Delphi, which by their standard is very high praise indeed.

  The oracle really did work by judging the random movements of priests as they staggered under the weight of a huge boat. While this may look mildly crazy, keep in mind that Delphi—the most famous oracle in the world—worked by having a woman utter incoherent words that were interpreted by a priest. In Rome, they predicted the future based on the movements of eagles in the sky, and almost everywhere there were diviners who supplied all your prophecy needs by inspecting the livers of dead animals.

  Siwa was visited by Alexander the Great. That visit figures prominently in every biography of Alexander’s life, and for good reason.

  Egypt fell to Alexander without a single battle. That goes to show how weak was Persia’s control over the province, for which Alexander could have thanked the work of Inaros in the previous century. The Egyptians were happy to be rid of Persian rule.

  Alexander then took it into his head to make the same arduous journey that Nico and Diotima do, across the Qattara Depression. Quite why he wanted to do so is unclear. Alexander’s best biographer—Arrian—suggests it was because the Greek heroes Perseus and Herakles in their own times visited Siwa. Anything a demigod could do, Alexander had to do too. Whatever the reason, the visit changed Alexander’s life.

  It was at Siwa that Alexander was hailed as the son of Amon-Zeus, thus making him a demigod and worthy of divine honors. Indeed, in the last years of his short life, Alexander insisted that the Persians and Greeks address him as a demigod.

  Other accounts say that Alexander never disclosed what the oracle said to him, but that he reserved what he had learned to tell his mother. That’s probably more realistic. But then, if a famous oracle told you that your real father was the king of the gods, you too might want to have a quiet chat with your mother, to find out what she’d been up to.

  •

  So Nico and Diotima have survived this adventure and are on their way back home. Alas, their good work has served only to stave off defeat for a few more years, when a new Persian attack will arrive to crush the rebellion.

  The return of Persian power in Egypt will mean a new threat to Athens from the south. That will trigger Pericles to take a fateful step, one that will change the world forever. It will be the birth of the Athenian Empire, and Nico and Diotima will be there to see it happen, in Death on Delos.

  GLOSSARY

  Agora: The marketplace. Every city and town in Greece has an agora. To this day, the Greek word for marketplace is agora. Nico says agora to mean an Egyptian marketplace because he doesn’t know any better.

  Ammonium: What the Greeks and Romans called Siwa.

  Amphora/Amphorae: The standard container of the ancient world. They can’t stand upright because they have a pointy bottom. But the shape is actually very practical. They stack well, and when lying on their side it’s easy to reach for the contents.

  Bast: The cat goddess, also known as Bastet. In Memphis she was considered the consort of Ptah. I couldn’t resist also making her the patron goddess of fat cats.

  Egypt: The official name for the country in Nico’s day was The Black Land. The name Egypt won’t exist for another two hundred years.

  Also sometimes called The Two Lands, in reference to Upper and Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt is in the south. Lower Egypt is the north. This is a trap for new players!

  Eyes and Ears of the King: The FBI of the Persian Empire. They uncovered corrupt officials, saw to internal security, and gathered intelligence. The Eyes and Ears reported directly to the Great King. In a crisis, they could speak in the name of the king.

  Field of Reeds: The FBI of the Persian Empire. They uncovered corrupt officials, saw to internal security, and gathered intelligence. The Eyes and Ears reported directly to the Great King. In a crisis, they could speak in the name of the king.

  Field of Trees: The Egyptian afterlife. Not to be confused with the Land of Reeds, which was southern Egypt.

  Gastraphetes: A crossbow. Literally gastraphetes means “stomach bow.” The first crossbows had a concave rest at the stock, that was placed against the stomach. That was to control the kickback, which apparently was considerable.

  The gastraphetes was the first crossbow in the western world. A similar weapon was invented independently and certainly earlier in China.

  Great King: The king of Persia is always called the Great King. That’s because Persia has turned many of its neighbors into client states, and those states are ruled by ‘mere’ kings and queens.

  Imhotep: A genius of mind-boggling ability. Inventor and chief architect of the first pyramid, and prime minister (Tjaty) of Egypt under the Pharaoh Djoser.

  Imhotep’s final resting place is a genuine Lost Tomb. I have to hope it stays lost, at least until this book is published.

  Lower E
gypt: The Land of Papyrus. It’s the northern end of Egypt.

  Memphis: Men-Nefer in the ancient Egyptian tongue. Memphis is what the Greeks called it. Memphis began life as a custom-built city, like Washington DC and Canberra, designed by the first Pharaoh to be his capital.

  Nauarch: Admiral. I’m mildly amazed this word didn’t make it into English, because so many of our nautical terms come from Greek. Such as, for example, nautical.

  Naukratis: A city on the Nile Delta, founded in the 7th century BC. The city was created specifically to allow free trade between the Greeks and the Egyptians. The modern technical term for such a place is entrepôt.

  The buried remains of Naukratis were discovered by the great Egyptologist Flinders Petrie.

  Ptah: God of artisans and builders. He is the patron god of Memphis.

  Pyramid: It’s Greek, and means wheat cake. Which tells us exactly what a classical Greek wheat cake looked like.

  The ancient Egyptian for tomb was mer. Though they were as likely to say House of Eternity, which is per nheh.

  Saqqara: The name is Arabic. Nobody in Nico’s time called the location of the pyramids Saqqara, they probably called them part of Memphis, which would be confusing to a modern reader.

  Satrap: Governor of a province in the Persian Empire. Satraps are powerful men.

  Siwa: An oasis in the desert and the most famous oracle in all of Africa. The ancient name was Ammonium, meaning the place of Amun.

  Trierarch: Kordax is the trierarch—the commander—of Dolphin. The more modern term, taken from the British Navy, would be master and commander.

  Trireme: The standard navy ship of the Greek world. Triremes are long, low, sleek, incredibly fast machines with a battering ram at the front. Triremes are the first ships in the world designed to sink other ships. In modern terms they would be classed as destroyers. Athens had overwhelmingly the largest fleet around, with three hundred triremes. Two hundred of these were sent to aid Egypt during the rebellion, under the excellent command of an admiral named Charitimides.

  Upper Egypt: The Land of Reeds. It’s the southern end of Egypt.

  Acknowledgments

  In every book I begin by thanking my wife Helen and my daughters Catriona and Megan. That’s because without their support, there would be no books. I fear that having a mystery author for a father may have given my children a slightly twisted view of life.

  An enormous thank you goes to my agent Djanet Janet Reid. I hope she will forgive me for what I’ve done to her character. It might be some consolation that she ended up a princess.

  Juliet Grames is my Patient Editor, whose advice is beyond value. Let me tell you how wise she is. When I wrote The Marathon Conspiracy, it was Juliet who insisted I write the scene in which Aeschylus describes the famous battle. Almost every reader who’s talked to me about that book has said it’s their favorite scene, and I never planned it!

  Soho Press is the ideal of all that a publisher should be, and the staff who inhabit its slightly crowded spaces are a wonderful bunch.

  Lastly I want to thank the guy who thought it might be a good idea to record his inquiries, that the great deeds of men would be remembered forever. So thank you, Herodotus, for putting stylus to papyrus. I couldn’t have done it without you.