Winners of the Watford Live! Richard Harrington Trophy

On the 1st June  there was a special event at Watford Writers where the winners of the 2015 Watford Live! Richard Harrington Trophy were announced.

The theme was 'Fairytales' and the top ten short stories chosen by the independent judges were read to a bumper number of attendees before the winners were announced.  The creativity and original twists on the theme of 'Fairytales' was amazing, ranging from traditional stories to modern, even dark tales of the little folk.

Out local MP Richard Harrington attended the event for a short while, but was unfortunately unable to stay for the announcements or present the trophy.

The First Place went to Carolyn Storey for 'The Seeker' an charming story about a little boy who goes looking for fairies and is convinced he saw one.

Carolyn Storey - talented writer and winner of the 2015 Richard Harrington Trophy

Second Place was 'The Alley' by Louise Broadbent and the Third Place was shared by John Ward 'The Return of the Tooth Fairies' and Paul White 'A Cereal Offender'.

Louise Broadbent - Second Place Winner

All of the top three stories will be displayed in Watford over the coming summers months, along with those that came in the top ten, so look out for a great short story coming to you very soon!

Now you may be asking how did my entry do in the writing competition?  Well, gentle reader, I scraped in 10th by the skin of my teeth.  So please find below my competition entry 'The Storyteller', which I hope you will enjoy reading as much as I had fun writing it.

The Storyteller

He slipped unobserved through a side gate in the blistering heat of the desert noon.  But within a few short minutes the news was sweeping through the city like flames licking through dry straw.

‘He has come,’ they cried on the market stalls, in the workshops of the artisans, the hovels of the poor and the cool marble halls of the palace.

By the time the sun began to sink behind the distant mountains, they had gathered in the main square to wait for him.

The warm dusk air was fragrant with the delicious aroma of food being cooked on the many fires that had been lit.  Babies were soothed, children were hushed as the huge crowd continued to wait in patient silence.

The first stars were beginning to prick the night with cold, diamond light when a diminutive figure wrapped in a snowy, crisp robe and leaning on an intricately carved cane padded through the squatting crowd and sat on the cushion which had been placed there for him.

The crowd sighed their relief as he carefully composed himself and arranged the folds of his robe around him.

He was here at last.  Many had thought he was a myth; like one of his tales.  Not a real man but a story; such as the ones he had once weaved at the feet of the mighty Sikunder as he led his conquering armies through the mountains of the north.

It seemed hours before the Storyteller began to speak, but as soon as the words started flowing from his mouth they were caught. His voice rose and fell, snaking through the crowd like a fine silk scarf brushing their cheeks and lightly ruffling their hair.

The crowd listened silently; spellbound by what they were hearing. They laughed, they cried.  They felt the pain and were swept by feelings of love.  The Storyteller led them into the tale with the skill of a master chess player, each word carefully chosen and enunciated until it became their story, their life, and their emotions.

‘As the Prince rode into the courtyard, he looked up to the top of the tower where he could see his beloved sitting before her mirror.  Her hand was reaching for the golden comb dipped in poison that her step-mother had given her.’

The Storyteller paused to look at the spellbound faces of the crowd.

‘He called her name, but she did not hear him.  She lifted the comb and pulled it through her glossy, ebony tresses.  She was so beautiful, so perfect, in that moment before her mirror, but seconds later she collapsed on the couch and his love was dead.  The only comfort the Prince had was the promise she would be placed in the heavens as a star, so her beauty could shine on the world below for eternity.’

The listeners cheered their appreciation, but when they looked again the Storyteller’s cushion was empty.

He was gone and nobody saw him go.  

Flash fiction – or How I Got with the Programme!

I suppose you could say I came to writing via a circuitous route.  I started the first Aten Sequence book a few months before I went travelling in 2007 around Australia, with all good intentions of having it finished by the time I returned. Well that never happened – too many beaches, kangaroos, outback trails, excellent restaurants and fun to be had!

On my return I discovered an American website called Hubpages and started writing articles and earning money online, so fiction writing was firmly on the back burner.  After several years, I turned back to my original project and the first two Aten Sequence books were completed and self-published

But like all things, if you are passionate about what you do, you want to learn, you want to improve, and want your writing to be the best it can be. So how to do it?  Of course, one of the best ways is to keep on writing, so I started writing short stories as well as starting on the third Aten book.  I also started reading everything I could on composing stories, structuring novels, marketing and how to get book reviews.

But the thing that always puzzled me was the amount of people who wrote flash fiction. Why?  What was the point of it?  Flash fiction, if you have never come across the term before, is a very short, complete story of under 500 words or so.  There is even micro fiction, which is generally accepted as a story of 300 words or less.  But if you have novels to write, why spend your precious time crafting these stories?

I finally learned the benefit of flash fiction and how I could use it to improve my writing skills when I joined a writers group.  Again this was something I had thought about for around three years before I plucked up the courage to attend one of the Monday night meetings, where regular flash fiction competitions are held. These stories have to be 300 words excluding the title and the theme is chosen by the group.

So how did starting to write flash fiction help to improve my writing?

·                   It made me start to consider every word I used and weigh up how important it was to the story.  Writing full length novels makes it very easy to fall into the trap of using too many words and indulging in long, rambling sentences.

·         If using adjectives and adverbs is the cardinal sin of writing, then flash fiction helps you eliminate them and forces you to find ways of conveying your meaning without using too many descriptive words.  If you have only got 300 to use, you want to make sure each one counts.

·         It helps bring clarity.  You have a story to tell, ideas to get across, points of view you want to share.  You have to get rid of all the waffling, rambling and going around the long way.  For a complete story you still need a beginning, middle and end, so you need to strip out all the unessential elements and get on with it.

·         This stripping out also means ditching characters, too much scene setting, and any dialogue that does not add to the plot.  The ‘KISS’ principle reigns supreme; to tell your story in so few words you have to keep it as simple as possible.

·         You need to wrap the story up with a decisive last line. It is too easy with so few words to leave a story hanging and not give your readers an ending that satisfies them.

·         Flash fiction poses a new challenge every time.  You are given a theme, a word count and you have to produce a piece of writing in set time period. Challenges can be scary but they push us out of our fur-lined writing ruts and test us to think differently about what we are doing and write on topics we would usually avoid at all costs.

.·        Writing flash fiction gives you the opportunity to have a long, hard look at the bad writing habits you have gotten into. What words do you habitually overuse? Do you have certain phrases or expressions that creep into every piece you write, whether they are appropriate or not?  In these very short stories, there is no place for your writing ‘comfort blankets’. They have to be discarded to crisp up your story and let it be told within the word limit.

I am no great expert in writing flash fiction and am relative newbie in producing these very short stories.  But I am already beginning to see the benefits and am starting to bring what I have learned to my longer projects.

So, if like me, you are sceptical about how writing flash fiction can help you develop as an author, why not give it a go?  There are competitions and sites online where you test out your skill or you can join a local writers group, where you will receive useful feedback and critiques.

Here is an example of flash fiction.  It is a story I wrote on the theme of 'beyond the gate' for the Watford Writers Group, which I am very proud to say won the third prize.  I hope you enjoy it.

The Darkest Hour

The shadows lengthened as the moon slipped behind the mountain.

Maren knew it was time to wake the American.  The wounded flyer would only get one chance and, if he didn’t get it right, they could both be dead by the time the sun rose.

He reached out and shook the sleeping man’s shoulder, shoving his other hand over his mouth to stop him calling out.

‘Time to go,’ he whispered. ‘The moon’s just set, so it’s as dark as it’s going to get. You need to keep low and make as little noise as possible.  I haven’t seen or heard one of their patrols in a couple of hours, but it doesn’t mean they’re not out there waiting for us to make a move.

Maren took the top off his water bottle and thrust it at the American, who took a few thirsty mouthfuls.

The young flyer gave the old Basque guide a grateful look as he handed back the bottle.

‘Won’t you come too?  Someone tipped the Nazis off, those patrols were waiting for us? It’s too dangerous to stay.’

Maren shook his head.

‘My family is here.  If I don’t go back I’m putting them all under suspicion.  Besides, Todor is only expecting one package.’

‘How can I thank you for what you’ve done for me?  You’ve risked so much?’

‘By not getting caught.  The Spanish border is over there by that stand of pine trees.  Get beyond the gate and you should be safe.’

At that moment a light flashed three times in the trees, the signal Maren had been waiting for.

‘You must go now,’ he said pushing the American out of the barn door, watching as he stumbled into the dying night to be swallowed by the darkness.

Flash Fiction - A Jolly Good Catch

This is a short story I wrote for a flash fiction competition at Watford Writers.    It was my first evening at the writing group and my first entry.  I was very proud my story was voted into second place.

A Jolly Good Catch

We’d always thought of Edmunds as a good catcher and usually we applauded him for it.

It was a good thing until that night.  A good chap to have fielding on the rutted, makeshift pitches we used for battalion cricket matches.  He could catch any ball that came at him, however fast. He’d always manage to wrap his fingers around it and throw it back in one rapid, seamless movement.

That night was bitterly cold.  There was an iron frost and the sky was full with the cold sparkle of stars.  The half moon threw shadows over No Man’s Land, turning shell holes into pits of stygian hell. Moonlight glinted off the rifles and bayonets of the dead, strewn like random, broken puppets across the frozen mud.

We huddled on the fire step waiting for a German raid. The frigid air carried every sound we made, so each cough, foot stamp and curse must have carried to the German lines.

All we could hear was crackling frost, distant shelling and a machine gun chattering down the line.  Every time a Very light briefly lit up the dark night we expected to see the raiding party creeping towards our wire.

We were so lost in our waiting that at first we paid little heed to the dark object that flew with a faint hissing noise over the parapet.

Edmunds, acting on his famous reflex, stuck out a hand and caught it.

‘Jolly good catch,’ cried one of the men as another Very light lit up the sky.

Edmunds looked down and seemed confused by what he’d caught.

‘Throw the bloody thing back over the wire.’ I screamed before scrambling to get as far away from him as possible.

But Edmunds didn’t move.  His usual faultless follow-through was gone.

The thing went off.  Ears ringing, I turned to see Edmunds explode into a human fire ball.  I saw his lips move, but could hear nothing over the roar of the flames.  His catch had probably saved us, but the price he paid was a hideous death by fire.

 

The Aten – Unravelling the Mystery of the Ancient Egyptian God

In the Aten Sequence Books, our not-so-noble hero Aten has persuaded the gullible Prince Amenophis that there is a new god in Egypt called Aten, who can only be worshipped through him.  The foolish prince is then persuaded to embark on a mission to clear all obstacles, including his own elder brother, out of his way of his becoming the next Pharaoh so he can impose his new religion on the Egyptians and thus allowing Aten access to the gold he needs stored in the vaults under the Temple of Karnak. But in Ancient Egypt who or what was the Aten and how was it worshipped?

Akhenaten worshipping the sun disc

The Aten was the god the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh Akhenaten singled out from the vast pantheon of Egyptian gods and goddesses to worship.  For the first time in Egypt’s long history, there was only one official deity; only one god who could be worshipped, a god who could only be approached through the Pharaoh himself. In the ‘Great Hymn to the Aten’, which many scholars believe Akhenaten wrote himself, the king extols his god as the creator of life, the source of all nourishment and abundance for every person, animal, and plant on the planet.

So why did he choose this particular god? The Aten came to prominence during the long reign of his father, the Pharaoh Amenophis III, so it was a religious concept which was already developing not something the young prince snatched out of thin air.  The Aten would have been discussed and worshipped as he was growing up and his father’s royal palace at Malkata was referred to in ancient times as ‘the Palace of the Dazzling Aten’.

During this reign the deity is often show with the body of a man with a falcon’s head. However, references to the Aten or sun disk did start appearing much earlier in Egyptian history than the 18^th dynasty.  As far back as the Middle Kingdom, there is a reference to this radiant deity in the famous ‘Story of Sinuhe’.  The Aten was depicted as a yellow or golden sun disk and sometimes the full moon was referred to as the ‘silver Aten’. The deity’s full name was ‘Ra-Horakhty who rejoices in the horizon, in his Name as the Light which is in the sun disc’.

When he first ascended the throne Akhenaten was known by his given name Pharaoh Amenophis IV, but as he gradually embraced his new beliefs he changed his names, shut down the temples of the old priests and started building a new capital city entirely dedicated to his new religion on the Nile at what is now known as Amarna. He declared he would move to his new city, named Akhetaten, or ‘Horizon of the Aten’, with his wife and daughters and once there would never leave his city again.  To mark the boundaries of this new capital he had huge boundary stelae carved into the cliffs.

As Akhenaten was building his new capital Akhetaten, he had the name of his god carved onto these boundary stelae marking the city limits.  Sometimes it was shortened to Ra-Horus-Aten or just the Aten. From this time forward, the deity was no longer depicted in human form, but always as the sun disc emanating rays of light culminating in little hands that offered life, health and prosperity to Akhenaten and his family.  This was not a god for the people, but a deity which showered its abundance and light on Pharaoh, who then became a conduit of this divine energy to his country and people.  So in a way, it was Akhenaten himself who was now to be worshipped and seen as a god.

This was nothing particularly new in Egyptian thinking, as the Pharaoh had always been regarded as a physical manifestation of the divine, the direct link between the people and their gods.  But before there were many, many gods and goddesses in Egypt that an ordinary person could choose to honour and most houses had their own little shrines and statues of their favourite deity.  With the arrival of the Aten all this was stripped away and carvings, statues and references to the traditional gods were torn down or erased.

This new era also completely changed worship in the temples.  Not only were the old gods gone, but the temples themselves were very different.  In a traditional Egyptian temple, there would have been outer courtyards open to the sun thronging with people, but as you moved closer and closer into the heart of the complex it would get darker and darker with fewer people having access.  Finally the shrine of the god would be reached.  A dark chamber of secrets, magic and ceremonies probably only visited by the High Priest, a few of his senior clergy and the Pharaoh and his queen.

The new Aten temples were vast courts totally open to the life-giving rays of the sun.  There were rows and rows of offering tables heaped with all kinds of costly foods, drink and cups filled with smoking incense.  In the so-called Long Temple at Amarna the Egyptologists found the remains of 920 mudbrick offerings tables in a grid to the south of the temple wall and have estimated there was as many as another 150 in the central stone-built sanctuary that was, in the new way, left open to the skies.  It would be nice to think that all this abundance of food, a sure sign of Pharaoh’s wealth and power, would have been distributed among the people after the religious ceremonies were over, but there is no evidence for this.  It is not even known if the offering food was cooked on site or taken away to be prepared for feasting at the palace or a more humble family’s dinner.  Or was it just left for the god, rotting away under the merciless heat of the Egyptian sun?

Another unusual feature of these new temples was that there was no cult statue of the deity, which had to be washed and dressed in fresh clothes every day.  Because the interlinking courtyards and the inner sanctuary were all open to the sky, the sun disc was worshiped directly, by tracking its daily progress from where it rose in the east and set in the west.  There were priests in the Aten temples, but Akhenaten himself presided over some of the worship; acting as a High Priest and leading the other worshippers in reciting or singing ‘The Great Hymn to Aten’ and other prayers. 

The royal ladies of Amarna played an unusually prominent part in this worship, and Akhenaten’s queen Nefertiti was usually shown the same size as her husband, accompanying him with their six daughters in all his activities.  One of the great honours that could be bestowed on these royal women was having a small, open cult shrine, known as a ‘sunshade’ or ‘kiosk’ dedicated to them.  One of the features of the Amarna period was a turning away from the stylised art and formal depictions of gods and people towards a more natural style of art showing beautiful scenes of trees, pools, animals and all the bounty nature had to offer.  These ‘sunshades’ were often set in beautiful, sunlit surroundings where there was pools containing fish and colourful plants and flowers.  They created an oasis of tranquillity, somewhere for the women to come where it was quiet and peaceful, a place for contemplation and prayer.  

But even here human conflict crept in.  In one of the larger known sites for the ‘sunshades’ called the Maru-Aten, the names and titles of one Amarna royal lady was erased and recarved with the names and titles of Akhenaten’s oldest daughter Princess Meritaten.  It used to be thought that it had been her mother Nefertiti’s name which had been removed, but now many Egyptologists believe that it was the name of one of Akhenaten’s other queens, Kiya, which had been struck from history.

For all its glittering brilliance, the cult of the sun disc and Akhenaten’s new capital city were to last for less than twenty years.  This self-imposed exile and concentration on religion rather than affairs of state had weakened the Egyptian empire. There is also some evidence that a plague which was sweeping through the Middle East at that time, reached the Egyptian court killing some of the female members of the royal family.  When Akhenaten died there were a few shadowy years were who his successor was is disputed, some scholars thinking it was a young king called Smenkhare and others that Queen Nefertiti seized the throne and ruled on her own. 

But a few years later, when the young boy king Tutankhamen came to the throne, the capital was moved back to Thebes, the temples and old gods were reinstated and the names of Akhenaten and his god were erased.  Unfortunately Tutankhamen was destined to die young and the glittering 18^th dynasty came to an end with the reign of Horemheb, who saw to it that any last traces of this religious experiment were destroyed forever.  Akhetaten had been hastily constructed of mudbrick and any stone which had been used was stripped and used elsewhere, so it swiftly fell into disrepair and crumbled.  The tombs which had been carved in the hillsides were left empty and no more offerings were made in the temples.

Akhenaten image David Holt , Jean-Pierre Dalbera Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 Generic

Sources:

Amarna Project - http://amarnaproject.com/pages/amarna_the_place/central_city/index.shtml

The Aten - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aten

Ancient Egypt Online - http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/amarnareligion.html

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Book Reviews

Gentle Reader, I have a confession I wish to make – I have not done it.  Yes, I freely admit I have not done it.  I am Cynthia Marsh, author of this parish and I have not done it!  I have not been sending my books out to review sites and have been very lax in my marketing.  There I’ve said it!  Been honest and stopped hiding behind the too busy, must take my plant to the vet or I got stuck in an airport in Azerbaijan with no internet access excuses.

Now the more practical and level-headed of you out there are probably puzzled right now.  Thinking ‘how does she think she’s going to sell any books if she doesn’t put herself about a bit and do some marketing?’  Well of course you are all right, ‘write it and they will come’ doesn’t quite cut the mustard in today’s cut and thrust world of short attention spans and millions of other things to read.

Hall of the Golden Crocodiles - The Aten Sequence 2 

So what stops authors blowing their own trumpets, sending their books into the world and marketing the hell out of them?  After extensive and long-drawn-out analysis (time I could have more profitably spent in writing a few more blog posts or annoying a few more book reviewers) I would have to say it is fear.  Scalp-numbing, blood-freezing, visceral fear!  You have spent months, if not years, working on your novel, short stories or poetry and now you are expected to send it out there to a bunch of strangers who have the power to dismiss it entirely with a few, well-chosen words.  Or even worse, ignore it entirely.

The only situation I can liken it to is when mother’s anxiously prepare their kids for their first day at school or play group.  They dress them up smartly, make sure they have enough felt pens and crayons to compete in the pencil case wars, pack up their lunch and deliver them to the school door.  And for perhaps the first time in their child’s short life they will have no control at all over what is now going to happen in their child’s life.  Will they be liked?  Will the teacher understand they don’t like carrots?  Will people know that he only pokes his tongue out at people because he’s scared?

Well that’s a bit like how you feel when you are ready to launch a new book onto the unsuspecting public.  There aren’t enough back-page blurbs and plot synopses in the world to really allow you to convey what this piece of fiction means to you, the endless hours you spent agonising over every little word and punctuation mark and what your protagonist really meant on page 72, fifth line down. And the worst thing to swallow is that you know that nobody really cares.

Because readers are buying a finished product, a book that can entertain, take them away from reality for a few hours, inform or make them think, and the author’s journey in producing that product is just an interesting little titbit for the author bio on Amazon.

Cynthia Marsh - author of The Aten Sequence Books

So what we authors really need is a much thicker skin, something many creative people lack.  There are many writers out there, of course, who are doing really well and making lots of money, because they have overcome their fears, or never doubted the quality and saleability of their work in the first place.  They may not even necessarily be the best writers in the world today, but they have the guts and drive to get out there and market their books, so they fully deserve all the success that comes their way.

I did read somewhere recently that most procrastinators are actually perfectionists and that is why they are so bad at starting new tasks.  I think a lot of authors, me included, are like this.  We can fuss, revise and edit for years but at some stage we will have to admit there is no such thing as the perfect book and get on with it.  And when we do that, it frees us up to write the next book and then the next one and our writing improves because we are doing more of it.

And because no book is perfect, we authors just have to get used to the reality of bad reviews.  As an author you simply can’t please everyone.  Someone out the, and probably quite a few someones, will not like your book.  They will not like the cover, they will not like the genre, they will not like the characters, the plot or the dialogue.  And this is Ok as they have a perfect right to not like your book, even if it took twenty four years and several nervous break downs to write.

If you get a bad review, all you can do as an author is accept the fact somebody did not like your book and take on board any constructive criticism they made.  After all, you want your writing to improve right?  Instead of viewing it as an attack on your precious oeuvre, thank the reviewer and take it as a chance to get a different perspective and an opportunity to learn and develop your writing skills.  Of course, writing a bad review is not the same thing as a reader attacking you personally as an author.  These types of reviews are best ignored and are not even worth the energy of a reply.  Unfortunately, the world of the internet is full of trolls trying to get a rise out of people, so take heed of the signs and do not feed the trolls.

But even though I have said I have not done my marketing, I have to confess to doing a little.  This led to a delightful book reviewer called Kathy Ree reviewing ‘Hall of theGolden Crocodiles – The Aten Sequence 2’ on her blog ‘Kitty Muse and Me’ and also posting the review on Amazon in the States.  This is where the ecstasy of book reviews comes in.  When you see those five little stars and realise someone else has loved your book.  Someone, moreover, who was not your mother, best friend or the guy down the road you promised a beer to if he read them all and posted reviews.  So I can’t thank Kathy enough for giving me my first independent book review in the US and a good one at that!

Yes book reviews can be agony, but they can also be ecstasy and, like it or not, you are not going to sell many books until you get them.  Readers these days want to know other people have read the book, they are reluctant to be the first.   Surprisingly, bad reviews do not do as much harm as you may think, as a large percentage of  reviews for ’50 Shades of Grey’ were not that flattering, but they still encouraged others to buy it.

If you are one of the rare outliers who will read books that catch your fancy that are still unknown, do the author a favour and write that review for them.  A few short sentences is all it takes and the writer will love you forever!

Are There Any More Undiscovered Royal Tombs in The Valley of the Kings?

Aten wants gold, more gold and more gold.  And then he has to work out how to make the fuel he desperately needs so he can get back to conquering the Universe with his Uncle Lucie.  While he tries to work out how to get into the massive treasure vaults beneath Karnak Temple, he sets up a little tomb robbing ring.  Aten’s goal is to find intact royals tombs brimming with gold treasure.  Finding an intact royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings is also the dream of many Egyptologists today.  But was the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamen the last big discovery that the Valley of the Kings will yield or are there more amazing finds just waiting to be unearthed?

The discovery of the tomb of a minor pharaoh from the end of the 18^th dynasty in 1922 by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon rocked the world.  Never before had an almost intact pharaoh’s tomb been found in the Valley of the Kings, and this discovery gave us not only fabulous treasures but a great deal of valuable information on the end of the Amarna period. But is the boy king’s tomb the last great discovery to be made in the Royal Necropolis or are there more undisturbed tombs hidden in the cliffs and valley floor waiting to be found?

Excavation in the Valley of the Kings - November 2008

That there are many tombs yet to be unearthed in Egypt has been amply demonstrated over the last few weeks.  In Abydos, the sacred heart of Ancient Egypt, a huge quartzite sarcophagus discovered a year ago has been identified as belonging to an obscure pharaoh of the 13^th dynasty called Sobekhotep I,  leading to the discovery close by of the tomb of a previously unknown king.  Hieroglyphs painted on the tomb walls gave his name as Senebkay.  And just around the corner from the Valley of the Kings at el-Khokha, a beautifully painted tomb of a courtier from the Ramesside Period is being excavated.  The tomb belonged to the Chief Brewer of the Temple of Mut called Khonsu-em-heb and the exquisitely painted frescos show him and his wife Mutemheb feasting and making offerings to the gods. So could there possibly be more royal tombs waiting to be found in the Valley of the Kings?

The first burial in the arid, remote valley was a departure from tradition.  In earlier dynasties, pharaoh’s tombs had been built in plain sight as a sign of their power and prestige.  From the earliest mastaba tombs to the pyramids, these tombs were as large and lavish as the pharaoh’s treasury and length of his reign allowed.  Even as late as the 17^th dynasty, pharaohs were buried in small pyramids at Dra’ Abu el-Naga, a necropolis in the Theban hills. So why did a high court official called Ineni dig a rock cut tomb for his royal master, boasting ‘alone, no one seeing and no one hearing’?  Possibly because it was becoming obvious that most of these ostentatious, very visible tombs were being entered by tomb robbers, who stole the precious funerary treasure and ripped the pharaoh’s mummies apart looking for amulets and jewellery.

Valley of the Kings

But although it might have been possible to conceal the location of one royal tomb, as successive pharaoh’s carried on digging their tombs in the same valley, the site of the royal necropolis became well known and a workmen’s village was built at Deir-el Medina to house the men who dug and decorated these fabulous sepulchres.  To date sixty four tombs have been found in the Royal Valley, belonging to queens, royal children and favoured courtiers as well as the mighty pharaohs themselves.  So who is missing?  Which pharaoh’s tombs have not yet been found?  The two main contenders are Thutmosis II from the early 18^th dynasty and Ramesses VIII from the 20^th dynasty.  The mummy of Ramesses XI has also not been found and though a tomb was dug for him in the Valley of the Kings, there is no evidence he was actually buried in it. Most of the tombs of the queens from the 18^th dynasty have also not yet been located and there may also be smaller tombs of princes, princesses and royal officials still awaiting their turn to be discovered.

In 2007 Dr Zahi Hawass appointed an Egyptian team of archaeologists headed by Afifi Rohiem to start excavating in parts of the Royal Valley where he believed there might be a new tomb.  At the same time the Glen Dash Foundation for Archaeological Research undertook thorough ground-penetrating radar investigations of the cliffs and valley floor.  The Egyptologists worked between 2007 and 2010, starting with the area around the tomb of Merenptah.  Their excavations rediscovered some ancient graffiti first recorded by Jaroslav Czerny and the remains of some workmen’s huts, which have been carefully recorded.  Tantalisingly, one of the ancient graffito was written by an official called Userhat who said that he had created a burial for his father close by.

The Egyptian found two cuttings in the rock that could be tomb entrances, one where the rubble has been disturbed, suggesting that whatever is there has already been disturbed, and one where it had not. Could this be the entrance to an intact tomb?  These two new tomb entrances became known as KV64 and KV65.  The KV64 entrance was found close to Merenptah’s tomb and is Ramesside in appearance.  It was thought this could possibly be the entrance to the tomb of Pharaoh Ramesses VIII. The other tomb entrance was cut and in the style of the 18^th dynasty and Dr Hawass stated in a lecture that he thought this could be the tomb of an individual from the Amarna period and that some debris has been excavated that had the name of a previously unknown queen on it.

However, for some reason no further investigations of these tomb entrances were undertaken, possibly they were halted by the civil unrest that started during 2011. In January 2012 a team from the University of Basel in Switzerland stumbled across a new tomb in the valley completely by chance.  When they opened it they found it contained the undisturbed coffin and beautifully wrapped mummy of a temple singer called Nehmes Bastet dating from the 22^nd dynasty. The tomb, now officially designated as KV64, was not originally built for her but had been usurped from an earlier period. The inscriptions show that Nehmes Bastet was the daughter of the High Priest of Amun, so are there more burials from this family and period still awaiting discovery in the Valley?

So there is a strong chance there are still some major finds to be made in the Valley of the Kings. KV63 is now thought to have been more of a storage chamber for burials of the Amarna period, rather than a royal tomb.  Most of the burials of the royal ladies of this period have not yet been located and finding the tomb of one of the major figures, such as the iconic beauty Queen Nefertiti, would be very exciting and help to clarify what really happened during this shadowy part of Ancient Egyptian history.  The mystery tomb KV55 could be the tomb of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten or his ephemeral successor Smenkhare, so is either of these king’s tombs still concealed in the cliffs somewhere?

Western Branch of the Valley of the Kings

We also still do not know the complete family tree of the pharaoh’s or of their court officials, so there could be tombs to be discovered that belonged to queens, royal children, ladies of the harem or nobles we have never before encountered in Egyptian history.  Also all the tombs visited by tourists are in the eastern branch of the Valley of the Kings.  There is a western branch that contains the tombs of Amenophis III and Ay that is rarely visited and has not yet been thoroughly surveyed or excavated. But although a tomb stuffed full of golden treasure would captivate the media and the public the world over, any find, however small, adds to our knowledge of our ancient past and fills in another piece of the puzzle.

Sources: Wikipaedia, BBC News

The Life of a Schoolboy in Ancient Egypt

In The Aten Sequence Books the main character Aten sends Luke and Neferptah to be educated with Prince Dhutmose and other noble boys in an educational institution called the ‘Kap’, situated in the royal place.  But what was life really like for a schoolboy in Ancient Egypt?  What were they expected to learn and how were their lessons taught?

What was it like to be a schoolboy in Ancient Egypt? Formal education was mainly reserved for the upper classes and boys from wealthy families would begin their schooling around the age of four.  They would be trained in all the skills they would need to follow in their father’s footsteps.   A boy’s future occupation was decided by his family and they usually entered the same profession as their father.  Many important positions at Pharaoh’s court and in the major temples were handed down from father to son for many generations. The Ancient Egyptians were also a very practical people, so children were taught only the subjects and skills that would be relevant in their later career.

Child Working in Garden - Tomb of Menna

Literacy was mainly confined to the ruling classes such as courtiers, state administrators, senior members of the priesthood, and important army officers.  The artisans at the workmen’s village at Deir el-Medina who worked on the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the mortuary temples of the west bank could also read and write and, most unusually for the ancient world, there is evidence that some of their wives and daughters were also literate.  These workmen needed literacy skills as they had to accurately carve or paint texts onto tomb and temple walls from papyri or ostraca. Any Egyptian who was literate was known as a ‘scribe’ and the ability to read and write was so highly valued that many important courtiers and officials had statues carved that depicted them as scribes with a roll of papyrus stretched out across the knees.

School started early in the morning and would generally take place at the teacher’s house.  Boys were required to bring their own lunch and would pack bread and beer to keep them refreshed until the lessons ended at noon.  Teachers were very strict and the lessons would be made up of copying from old hieroglyphic texts and memorising passages from stories and texts.  Papyrus was very expensive, so students would practise their writing on fragments of limestone called ostraca or pieces of broken pottery.  If the teacher thought a pupil was being lazy, was caught sleeping in class or had been disruptive, then the punishment could be harsh as they would be beaten across the back with a stick.  Arithmetic was also taught but, although texts were recited out loud in order to learn them, all mathematical calculations were done silently and not spoken aloud.

The lessons were very difficult as the students would have to learn both the hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts.  Hieroglyphics were the formal version of the script and were used in tombs, on temple walls and on the possessions of royalty and important noblemen. Hieratic was developed around the same time as the hieroglyphic script and was a simplified version that was used for more mundane purposes such as keeping accounts, making records and private correspondence. There were many different hieroglyphic signs to learn, over 700, all of which were consonants.  There were no vowels, and the grammar was also difficult. 

When writing in English we write from left to right across the page, but Egyptian schoolboys could right from top to bottom or across the page.  If writing across the page, the text could be started from either the left or right. The way they would know which way to read the text was to look at which way the animal, bird or people signs were facing; if they were facing right, the text was to read from right to left.  Writing was regarded as sacred by the Ancient Egyptians as they believed it had been given to them by the gods, so texts had to be perfect, with no mistakes and neatly presented. The schoolboys would use brushes made from reeds to do their work, which they would dip into either black or red ink.  The ink, along with the reed pens, was stored in a pallet that was generally made from wood, although more elaborate ones were crafted in ivory or gilded.  Black ink was made from soot and water and other colours were made from mixing water with ground up minerals.

Physical education and military training did not really come to the fore until the time of the New Kingdom when the army came to more prominence and senior army officers began to wield great power in the ever growing empire.  Young royal princes and scions of the nobility were brought up and educated in an institution called the ‘kap’ or the Royal Nursery.  The ‘kap’ was part of the royal palace and having been a ‘child of the kap’ conferred a great deal of prestige in later life and was often mentioned on the owner’s statues and tomb inscriptions.  Foreign princes and nobility were also sent to the Royal Nursery, or brought as hostages, to be educated alongside the future pharaoh. This may have been done to forge strong personal bonds between the crown prince and the young men who would go on to rule the satellite states of the Egyptian empire or to ensure the continuing good behaviour of their fathers.  Not all who gained the coveted title of ‘Child of the Nursery’ were from the highest levels of society; some young boys came from relatively humble beginnings, such as the draughtsman Nebseny, although their career prospects were bound to have been boosted from their early proximity to the highest in the land.

Hieratic Text Copied by Schoolboy

These privileged young men would have been trained in archery, hunting, chariot driving, swimming and fighting with sticks.  Pharaohs had always been portrayed as accomplished warriors and athletes, but by the time of the New Kingdom the heir to the throne was shown and described engaging in amazing feats of arms and athleticism. Most of these images probably portrayed rituals rather than real life events, but the Egyptians doubtless looked up to their kings as physically powerful and fearless fighters.

Parents also taught their children the stories of the gods, religious rituals, ethics and morals.  There were texts called Books of Instruction or Wisdom Literature, which stressed desirable precepts such as veracity, treating people fairly, being obedient, leading an ordered life and taking responsibility.  The Ancient Egyptians tried to live by the principles of Maat, personified as a goddess, which created prosperity and balance in the country. These principles were harmony, cooperation, justice, truth and decorum.  Punishment for not following these ideals was believed to come after death, when your heart was weighed on a scale against a feather of Maat.  You would only be allowed to move on to a joyful, prosperous afterlife if your heart balanced the scale.  However, if during your life you had murdered, lied or cheated your heart would be too heavy, so it would then be flung to a demon called Ammut to devour and your life would be ended forever.

Palette of a Scribe

Children from poorer families started working and being useful from an early age.   So you can see images on tomb walls of children helping with the harvest, herding animals, fishing and many other tasks.  They would have been trained by a close family member such as their father or uncle, and would have been expected to contribute economically to the household from very early on.  Girls were not educated as formally as their brothers, although there is evidence that royal princesses were taught to read and write.  However, they would be taught by their mothers how to do all the daily household tasks and maybe also how to sing, dance and play instruments.  These skills were especially useful for the girls who went to be a singer or a dancer in one of the many temples.

So the life of an Ancient Egyptian schoolboy was regimented and they were expected to be diligent, respectful and follow the path laid out for them by their family.  Much more was expected of them at an early age than would be today, but life expectancy was typically only between thirty and forty. Children had to grow up faster and work hard to make their mark in a world that could be tough and unpredictable.



Hieratic text image Wafulz on Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

Child Working in Garden - Tomb of Menna image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

Palette of a Scribe image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain