For a writer, assembling the precise details regarding the magical medicines of a Hittite healing priestess can be a challenge. There’s an abundance of mentions in ancient texts, but too often we don’t know what the words actually refer to. Here’s a clever detective story of how scholars identified one of these “lost” plants used in medico-magical rites.
My current fiction project, the 4th book in the Tesha series, has taken me to Hattusa, the Hittite Empire’s capital. The archaeology presents a complicated picture. This city, lost to human memory, began its gradual rediscovery in 1906. A lecture by Andreas Schachner, director of the German Archaeological Institute’s excavations at Hattusa since 2006, gives enjoyable insight into this vast archaeological dig.
One of the most unexpected details of life among the Hittites and Sumerians that I learned early on was that people drank beer through straws. Recently, I was able to fill out how communal beer drinking with straws really worked in the ancient Middle East. Learn to party like a Sumerian or Hittite.
Archaeological news about ancient games always catches my eye. Games of strategy and puzzles play a significant role in my historical fantasy novels where I created one named Sphinx and Griffin. In Oman, archaeologists found a stone game board dating roughly to 2500-2000 BCE.
Griffins are my favorite mythical beast. So, a 4th century BCE Scythian archaeological find of silver griffins perched around divinities caught my attention.
When I read Oedipus Rex in high school, my teacher stated that exposure of infants was standard Greek practice. Turns out, she and generations of historians were misinformed. There’s a clear and convincing case for the ancient Greek nurture of disabled infants. Which doesn’t surprise me at all.
Who’s up for a Coptic magical papyrus to banish a fever? Here’s my pandemic-appropriate exploration into a later magical tradition with surprising similarities to the Bronze Age Hittites I usually write about.
I wish you good health, peace, and happiness this winter season in the company of those you love. With the birth of a grandbaby, my husband and I have so much to celebrate and lots to look forward to in the new year. I hope you’re also finding joys, small or large. Here’s a bit of entertaining history appropriate for holiday parties, evidence of some very early celebrations with beer.
I love when archaeologists bring to light a new glimpse of the “real” world that inspires my fiction. In my novels, Hattu faces off against a Pharaoh inspired by Ramses II. Now the tomb of Ramses’ treasurer is the latest high profile discovery at the necropolis of Saqqara.
How did a Bronze Age person pay for something and later, who invented coinage? It’s all quite interesting. Money matters. In an age when we use tangible coins less often, it’s intriguing to find out how it all began.
