Hani must secretly obtain a Hittite bridegroom for Queen Meryet-amen, but Ay and the faction behind Prince Tut-ankh-aten are opposed--to the point of violence. Does the death of an artisan have anything to do with Ay’s determination to see his grandson on the throne? Then, another death brings Egypt to the brink of war… Hani’s diplomatic skills will be pushed to the limit in this final book in The Lord Hani Mysteries.
The idea of doing an Egyptian series came to me in pieces. I had already published a number of books that were part of another loosely-related series set in the Hittite Empire in the thirteenth century BCE (Empire at Twilight). The books were generally very serious psychodramas that took on issues like the trauma suffered by refugees, slavery, and broken hearts. They got good critical reception, but it was hard to sell them—a combination, I think of the unpleasant subjects and unknown historical settings. The Hittites don’t have a very big fan club!
I decided that a series of mysteries would be something people would enjoy—I certainly liked historical mysteries. There’s a feel-good element to them, in that everything comes out all right at the end—enigmas solved, criminals punished, justice triumphant. That seemed doubly important, given that we were all now locked down by COVID. I had taught for years a course on Ancient Egypt, and it was extremely popular. People stood in line to enroll! So the Egyptophiles were out there. Why not set a series of mysteries somewhere in ancient Egypt?
One of the most fascinating periods of Egyptian history is the reign of Akhenaten and his successors. For one thing, it isn’t hard to imagine the upheaval his social and religious “reforms” must have precipitated. Popular literature often paints him as a benevolent visionary, “the first monotheist.” But I don’t know any Egyptologists who like or admire him! Whether he was a sincere fanatic or a cynical politician, his changes trashed the economy and threw hundreds of thousands into unemployment, and he even persecuted people for their faith—the very first example of religious intolerance in Egyptian history. Pushback was so strong and so complete that he was erased from the record by his successors. Here was a societal trauma that begged to become the setting for a novel!
But a second factor recommended this period as well. Namely, we know very little about the details of what happened. Therefore, there’s plenty of room for the fiction writer to shape her story. I have taken liberties as a novelist I wouldn’t have taken as a historiographer, but never contradicted a fact that we know for sure.
There was another advantage of this period, and that is that I had a real protagonist already, complete with several historical adventures—Lord Hani, a diplomat we meet through the pages of the Amarna Letters. This is a collection of diplomatic correspondences found in Akhenaten’s capital, abandoned and destroyed by his successors. It describes the foreign relations of Egypt under the reign of Akhenaten and his father, especially with their vassals in Syria-Palestine. The name of Hani occurs frequently over a long period as the man entrusted with important delegations. He shows up again in a Hittite account of a mission to obtain a bridegroom for an Egyptian queen. So there was the basic shape of a whole series!
The next step was to turn this outline of Hani’s deeds into a real human being, with a face, a personality, a family life, a past. What sort of man would have been trusted by generations of kings of varying political stripes to represent them abroad? A quote from Akhenaten himself put me on the trail. In one of his letters, he says, “Everybody’s happy when Hani comes.” So, the real Hani was a good guy, a man whose presence made people happy. He began to take shape in my mind pretty quickly after that.
A detective, even an amateur, needs a sidekick so he can throw ideas at the wall. The idea of Maya, his secretary and son-in-law—and a dwarf—comes from a charming New Kingdom statuette of a dwarf scribe seated with his full-size wife and children, as proud and good-looking as any young man and obviously prosperous. Thanks to his small size, he could get into places a big person couldn’t and open up new avenues of investigations. And his professional and personal success dramatized the surprising openness of Egyptian society toward those who were different.
Little by little, Hani’s loved ones took shape. The fictional character was married into a priestly family, which would set his stand in moral opposition to Akhenaten’s changes. He had a paraplegic daughter, which showed the strong family values of the society and the respect for the handicapped. His father was a recurring character, since reverence for elders distinguished the culture. And his youngest, Neferet, was a strong female who embraced a learned profession. You couldn’t find an ancient society that gave women more rights or admitted them to more roles of power—if only exceptionally—than Egypt. So Hani’s was a family that could only have been Egyptian.
The political backdrop was ready, the cast of characters and their personal dramas—all I needed to add were some murders, and there were The Lord Hani Mysteries!
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Thank you for hosting N. L. Holmes today, with such an interesting post. xx
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