As always, I am extremely grateful to Todd Whitelaw, Professor of Aegean Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, for providing me with pointers on various aspects of Bronze Age life. I also want to thank Paul Antonio for giving me some fascinating insights into how to write hieroglyphs during my day at the British Museum. And I want to thank my wonderful agent Peter Cox for his indefatigable commitment and support, and my hugely talented editor at Puffin Books, Ben Horslen, for his lively and imaginative response to the story of Hylas and Pirra.
MICHELLE PAVER, 2015
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Q&A With Michelle Paver
What’s it like being Echo?
Like all peregrine falcons, Echo has astonishing eyesight. She can spot a beetle on the ground when she’s hovering high in the sky. And she can follow three moving objects at the same time, which helps when she’s chasing a flock of pigeons and has to decide which one to attack. It’s thought that she can see colours better than us, which is why when she looks at a crow, she sees it as bright green, purple and blue, as well as black. She can also sleep with one eye open, and turn her head right round, which is handy for spotting prey (or the dreaded ants!).
Her ears are better than ours at low frequencies, and she’s better at detecting where a sound is coming from; and at picking one particular sound from a tangle of noises, which helps her find Pirra’s voice in a crowd. Her ears can also detect atmospheric pressure, which means she knows how high she’s flying, and when a storm’s coming.
Her nostrils are on her beak, and she can smell quite well; although if she gets a cold, her nose runs. Her hard, arrow-like tongue can taste fairly well, which is why she spits out that stripy kingfisher in the Great Green (and pied kingfishers really do taste horrible, although I haven’t tried them myself!).
Echo has a sense of touch, but not much in her feathers; her beak and feet are more sensitive, which is why Pirra gently strokes her toes. And her perception of time is different from ours: events we perceive as being incredibly fast appear much slower to her. That’s why she sees damselflies ‘lumbering past’, when to us, they dart about in a blur.
Above all, Echo is fast. She’s the fastest creature on the planet. She can fly horizontally at twice the speed a racehorse can gallop (that’s about 110km or 70 miles per hour), and when she plunges in one of her great vertical dives, she reaches speeds of about 300km per hour (190 miles per hour). To fly so fast, she needs to hunt lots of prey. That’s why she keeps getting distracted by all those birds in the Great Green!
In the story, both men like Kerasher and girls like Meritamen and Pirra wear eye make-up. In what other ways did Ancient Egyptians make themselves beautiful?
Cleanliness was very important: they washed several times a day, chewed herbs or sacred salt (natron) to sweeten their breath, and used deodorant made of carob and incense.
Eye make-up was widespread, and it also cut down the glare: both black kohl and green wadju, made from a ground-up green stone called malachite.
Nails might be painted with henna (a red dye made from seed pods), and also the palms and soles of the feet. And lips might be glossed with fat mixed with red ochre or henna.
People also used perfumes: mostly oil or fat scented with cinnamon, myrrh, lotus, frankincense, jasmine and other flowers or herbs, including mint and coriander.
The men shaved, so that they never had beards, and both sexes might shave their legs and armpits, or remove the hair with wax.
Some people kept their own hair and hennaed and plaited it, using setting lotion made of beeswax and tree resin. There’s also an interesting recipe for hair ointment made of red ochre, myrtle, hippopotamus fat and gazelle dung. (I’m not sure if that’s to remedy a scratchy scalp, make your hair shine, or both.) Another lotion to make the hair grow thicker involved boiling the bone of a dog, date kernels and donkey hoof in fat.
And if you wanted to get your own back on someone, you boiled lotus leaves in oil, then smeared them on your enemy’s head, to make their hair fall out!
Many people shaved their scalps and wore wigs and/or hair extensions. The most expensive, like Kerasher’s, were of real human hair. The cheapest, like Itineb’s were made of palm fibre, and must have been pretty scratchy.
And as people got older, they tried to appear younger, in different ways:
To darken grey hair, they rubbed on ground-up gazelle horn and juniper berries.
To cure baldness, one recipe tells you to mix the fats of lion, hippopotamus, cat, snake, ibex and crocodile, then smear it on the head. Another recommends hedgehog bristles. (Presumably, you could grind those up and add them to the first recipe, for a sure-fire cure!)
What does the future hold for Hylas and Pirra in Book 5?
In Warrior Bronze, Hylas and Pirra – along with Echo and Havoc – find their way back to Akea, where Hylas’ story began. But his homeland is caught in the clutches of the Crows, and Hylas himself is living on borrowed time, as his visions are getting stronger and more terrifying by the day.
Warrior Bronze is the final book in the Gods and Warriors series. Find out how Pirra copes in Hylas’ harsh mountainous homeland, and whether Hylas ever discovers what happened to his long-lost sister Issi …
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First published 2015
Text copyright © Michelle Paver, 2015
Map, logo and illustrations copyright © Puffin Books, 2015
Map and illustrations by Fred Van Deelen
Logo design by James Fraser
Front cover illustation by Alejandro Colucci Gods and Warriors logo designed by James Fraser title type based on logo design by James Fraser
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-141-79044-8
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