HISTORICAL NOTE

  RAMESSES II is one of the most well-known and widely written-about kings of ancient Egypt. A copy of his Treaty of Kadesh, written in cuneiform and discovered in the village of Hattusas, hangs in the United Nations building in New York as the world’s earliest example of an international peace treaty. It is also believed that Ramesses is the Pharaoh responsible for some of the most visited sites in Egypt: Nefertari’s tomb, the Ramesseum, much of Pi-Ramesses, Luxor, the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, and the stunning mortuary temples in Nubia (or modern-day Abu Simbel). Because he outlasted most of his children and lived into his nineties, entire generations grew up and died never having known a different Pharaoh. To them, Ramesses must have seemed like the eternal king. When his mummy was recovered in 1881, Egyptologists were able to determine that he had once stood five feet seven inches tall, had flaming red hair, and a prominent nose that his sons would also inherit. Yet many holes exist in the available knowledge of Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty, and while I tried to adhere to known family trees, events, and personalities, I bridged those many gaps in history in the most creative way I knew how, which makes this book, first and foremost, a work of fiction. I regret that not every important person from Ramesses’s life could make an appearance in this novel, but the characters of Seti, Tuya, Rahotep, Paser, and many others are all based on historical personages, and to them I have tried to remain faithful.

Historically, Ramesses is remembered as a great warrior and prolific builder, although his most famous battle—the Battle of Kadesh—ended not in victory, but in a truce. Yet in images from his temple in Abu Simbel, he can be seen racing into this war on his chariot, his horse’s reins tied around him as he lays waste to the Hittites in what he depicted as a glorious triumph. Ramesses was a master at public relations, and on his frequently updated Walls of Proclamation he would depict his latest conquest, whether or not it was technically a success. Nefertari is thought to have accompanied him to this famous battle, and at sixteen years old she was made Chief Wife over Iset.

Like Nefertiti, it is unknown whether Nefertari ever produced twins, but I used this plot element to forge a link between Nefertari and the infamous Heretic Queen. Historically, it is unknown exactly how Nefertari was related to Nefertiti. In order for Nefertari to have been the daughter of Mutnodjmet, Horemheb’s time as Pharaoh would had to have been much shorter than the improbable fifty-nine years that he claimed. After destroying Nefertiti’s city of Amarna and usurping Ay’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, Horemheb erased Nefertiti and her family from the walls of Egypt, then added their years of rule onto his own. The Egyptian historian Manetho records Horemheb’s real reign as being only a few short years. If this was the case, then Nefertari could indeed have been the daughter of Mutnodjmet. But all of this is simply conjecture.

What is known for certain about Nefertari, however, is that she and Ramesses were a love match. Buildings and poetry remain today as testaments to this, and in one of Ramesses’s more famous poems he calls Nefertari “the one for whom the sun shines.” His poetry to her can be found from Luxor to Abu Simbel. On a letter to Queen Puduhepa of the Hittites, Nefertari’s name appears at the bottom, and it is clear that she played a distinctive role in Egypt’s foreign affairs. She bore Ramesses at least six children, yet none of them lived long enough to become Pharaoh after him. In fact, it was Iset’s son Merenptah who succeeded Ramesses on the throne. But even though the novel depicts Iset as a disloyal princess, as with so much else, it is impossible to know who she really was in life. Liberties were taken in ascribing Pharaoh Seti’s death to poison, given that he died from unknown causes at around forty years of age. And while many of the Eighteenth Dynasty’s mummies have never been positively identified, including the mummies of Pharaoh Ay and Queen Ankhesenamun, I chose to ascribe their sudden disappearance from the records to fire.

Readers familiar with ancient Egypt will also notice that some of the historical names have been changed. For example, Luxor and Thebes are both modern appellations, but are far more recognizable than their ancient names of Ipet resyt and Waset. And for reasons of simplicity, I chose to use Iset rather than Isetnofret, as well as Amunher instead of the long and much more unwieldy Amunhirkhepeshef. Of course, the most obvious change of all is from Moses to Ahmoses. Readers looking for the biblical Moses within this story will be disappointed. Outside of the Old Testament, there is no archaeological evidence that supports Ahmoses’s existence in Egypt. What is known for certain is that a group of people called the Habiru existed in Egypt at that time, although whether they were related to the Hebrews of the Bible has never been proven. With such scant historical evidence, and given that I was attempting to portray events as they might have been, I chose to create the character of Ahmoses. I mention in the novel the myth of Sargon, in which a high priestess places her forbidden child in a basket, then leaves him on the river to be discovered by a water bearer to the king. This myth predates the biblical Moses by a thousand years, just as Hammurabi’s Code, a set of laws supposedly given to the Babylonian king by the sun god Shamash on the top of a mountain, predates Moses by half a millennium. I wanted these myths to be a part of the novel because the Egyptians would have been familiar with them, just as the Babylonians would have been familiar with Egypt’s most important legends.

Yet for every historical gap I had to bridge, there were many facts that I included that might otherwise seem fictional. For instance, Ramesses really did fight the Sherden pirates, and the Trojan War is thought to have taken place during Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty. During the famous Battle of Kadesh, spies were captured who gave information about the waiting Hittite army, and the subsequent death of Emperor Muwatallis really did result in his son’s flight to Ramesses’s court in search of aid. If the world of the ancient Egyptians seems shockingly contemporary in some ways, that’s because they used a variety of things most of us would consider quite modern: cradles, beds, linens, perfume, face cream, and stools that folded to save space. And although the invention that Penre discovers in Meryra’s tomb seems unlikely, it is the first recorded instance of a shaduf anywhere in Egypt.

As for Queen Nefertari herself, she enjoyed at least twenty-five years of rule at Ramesses’s side. In Abu Simbel, Ramesses built her a mortuary temple next to his, and twice a year the rising sun illuminates the statues just as it does in the novel. When Nefertari died, she was buried in QV66 in the Valley of the Queens, and her tomb is the largest and most spectacular of any ever found in the necropolis. On a wall of her burial chamber, Ramesses summed up his love for her as such: “My love is unique and none can rival her . . . Just by passing, she has stolen away my heart.”