2019 & Writing.

If I were one of my characters, I’d say that 2018 was a monster from the depths of hell, but I am not, so I’ll just call it a terrible year and lock it up in my diaries.

Now about 2019…

A story is out there milling in the slush-pile of a publisher, another is lounging here in my desk-drawer, a couple are waiting to be yanked out of the dark recesses of my mind so that they find their true form. But being a writer-artist (or an artist-writer, depending on who rules the roost at the time of speaking,) makes the tussle even greater. When a story peeps out, the artist brandishes her brush and shoo-es it back in; and when the writer finally gets down to writing it, the artist seduces the writer with her colorful palette and the promises of an incredible visual treat.

Feminism in History: Enheduanna – The First Woman Poet.

Four thousand years ago, when the Akkadians (one of the ancient Mesopotamian races) invaded Sumeria (the southern part of Mesopotamia, also known the Fertile Crescent or  the cradle of civilization,) they realized that if they didn’t meld their religion with the existing Sumerian religion, they would never win the hearts of the local populace. The Akkad king Sargon the Great placed the burden of this difficult task upon the shoulders of his daughter Enhedduana, by making her the high priestess of Nanna, the Moon god, and bestowing upon her the coveted title of En or the priest.

My imagination shows me a young Enhedduana entrusted with the responsibility of combining the Sumerian gods with the Akkadian gods in a subliminal way. I see her researching, holding conferences, determining the key religious symbols of the new (Sumerian religion) and synthesizing them with the Akkadian ones. I see her as an organizer, manager, visualizer, writer, and poet.

And I see many cynical faces around her. These faces belong to people who wanted her to fail, and who, away from the prying eyes, come together to plan her fall. For over the last four thousand years, things haven’t changed all that much.

Recently, in a program that I conducted for some senior managers of an organization, a woman participant told me that a woman has to work three times more than a man to prove that she is equal to a man. I couldn’t disagree with her.

I see Enhedduana as a similar woman manager, who despite her privileged position as the eldest princess of the conquering people, would have to work doubly hard than a man, to prove that her father’s confidence in her capability wasn’t misplaced.

I see her reflecting upon her strengths and realizing that the matters of belief can only be worked through the hearts of the people, and only by evoking their feelings would she be able to bring about a lasting change in their religious beliefs. Her father Sargon knew that for the task of bringing the Sumerians onboard, his daughter was the right person for she had the empathy of an artist and the gumption of a princess.

In addition to discharging her other duties as the priestess, Enhedduana can historically claim to be the first poetess ever. She wrote forty-two poems, and three hymns to be sung in the praise of goddess Inanna, the powerful Sumerian goddess of love, sensuality, fertility, and war.

Image shows Goddess Inanna. Image Source: By Ramblings of the Claury [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

The Price of Nofret’s Nose – A Murder Mystery set in Ancient Egypt.

I’m glad to announce that “The Price of Nofret’s Nose” can now be pre-ordered on Amazon 🙂

Please click the following link to book your copy.

The Price of Nofret’s Nose: Honor & Murder in Ancient Egypt

Apparently everything is well in the Amaat Household.

The elder brother Idut is favored by Pharaoh and has been appointed administrator of the Net-uri quarry in the Bekhen valley. His wife Nofret is a lovely young woman who stays home with his blind mother, and his bright young brother Lumeri has now joined him at the quarry.

But when Idut falls to his death at the quarry, cracks begin to surface. Lumeri knows that his brother’s fall wasn’t an accident. In his quest to find justice for his brother, Lumeri discovers a truth that devastates him; and yet nothing can prepare him for the unexpected face of evil that awaits him at home.

In this tale of love & loyalty, greed & lust, and life & death, walk the streets of Qift and Memphis and stay in a noble’s house, where the price of a nose would be paid with lives, and the only thing standing between good and evil would be the loyalty of a slave.

A thrilling murder-mystery, “The Price of Nofret’s Nose,” is set in the New Kingdom, and it opens an intriguing window into the lives of the Ancient Egyptian nobility. As you turn its pages and lose yourself into it, it makes you recoil in horror, smile with hope, blush in anticipation, and sigh with satisfaction.

Thanks.

I wish all my friends in the virtual world and my dear visitors, a great year ahead 🙂

Physical Labor is Like Water…

it flows down – down to the weakest and the most disadvantaged section of the society.  The edifices of the past that make us gasp with awe, extracted the labor from the susceptible either through force, or through collective psychological manipulation.

Think of a mammoth building project, that a king wishes to complete in his life time. It could be the city of Akhetaten at Amarna or the Tajmahal in India, and imagine how it might have come into existence. We say now, that Akhenaten built the city at Amarna, and that Shahjahan built the Tajmahal – but the statement is erroneous. The men we attribute the building of these huge monuments were merely the financiers – in cash and in kind (and in Ancient Egypt, it was mostly in kind – beer, bread, linen, grains and so on.)

These monuments were built by the poor – the peasant class. In Ancient Egypt, the men were rounded up for their essential service to Pharaoh’s building projects – this happened before the floods, for at that time, there was nothing else the poor could do. In medieval India, there were huge colonies of craftsmen who lived in low huts and worked around the year on the Emperor’s projects.