Friday, March 15, 2024

Trilogy. THE EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY MURDERS: 3 titles in one edition Kindle Edition by ROY LESTER POND (Author) F 4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 4 ratings

Ancient Egypt mythology breaks into modern day mystery
Ancient Egypt resurrected... 3 Egyptian mythology-driven mystery thrillers set in the modern day, but with a twist of the ancient unknown.
A unique investigative team of Jennefer, a museum curator, and Jon a London antiquities detective - two very different people who work in 'kindred professions'... - THE EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY MURDERS A mummy named Isis is taken to a hospital for a non-invasive imaging scan… so begins a mystery and a string of deaths. An ancient cycle unfolds in modern day London - and a search for eternal love. Can Jennefer, a young trainee museum curator and Jon, a police antiquities unit detective, stop the killings in time before a terrible culmination of events? - THE EGYPTIAN OBELISK PROPHECY One Egyptian obelisk is the key to saving civilization - THE EGYPTIAN CROCODILE QUEEN An Egypt exhibition, a series of mythological murders ONB AMAZON

Thursday, March 14, 2024

The inspiration behind The Smiting Texts.... Creating an independent investigating Egyptologist who respects the ''ancient sacred".... and dangers from the ancient past.

The 5-star rated Anson Hunter series of adventure mystery novels are available on Amazon

The cursed soul of the 'mad' heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. Could the curse be true?

It is surprising how many people, including tourists and tribesmen, report seeing the ghost roaming the stark Farafra desert. Evidently they did not try to approach and talk to the king, or they’d have been doomed to join the king and wander the desert for eternity, or so the legend tells. It’s reported that the king’s soul, or ka, denied the nourishment of tomb offerings, is forever ravenous and scratches in waste heaps for scraps of food. Visitors in his ghostly realm hear his wails in the howling winds and flying sands that carve out these tombstones of chalk.
Early English Egyptologist and one-time Chief Inspector of Antiquities on the West Bank, Arthur Weigall and his wife Hortense found themselves affected by the curse on Akhenaten when they attempted to stage a play.
Arthur Weigall wrote the play with words and music, a piece of private theatre designed to enact the lifting of the eternal curse from the head of the hated Akhenaten. Weigall, his wife, and a couple of friends staged the piece amidst an amphitheatre of frowning cliffs in the Valley of the Queens in Egypt. In their plot, the ghost of Akhenaten would appear in the Valley on just three days in every year. All hell broke loose during the performance on a platform of rock, including the onset of freak winds, rain, lightning flashes and sudden illness among the participants, resulting in the forced cancellation of the play. Had they provoked the rage of elemental forces? It must have been quite a serious curse the priests placed on Akhenaten.
Far worse than any mediaeval curse by bell, book and candle. A mighty execration. Though Akhenaten did much to bring it on himself. He neglected Egypt’s demands for tribute from foreign governments, bankrupting the royal treasury. He shrank the empire, closed the temples, and cast down all the old gods of Egypt, replacing them with his sole god, the Aten sun disk, which always struck me as a curious pre-echo. The monotheistic god of Moses also struck down the gods of Egypt. “Against the gods of Egypt I shall execute judgement,” he thundered in Exodus. But the tide turned against Akhenaten and his sole god Aten. The king died and his beloved sun-disc religion fell with him and so did his magnificent new city of Amarna. Just a few decades after its construction it returned to the sands and the desert foxes. The inhabitants returned to the old capital of Thebes and to the worship of their old gods, in particular Amun-Re. The population of Amarna abandoned the city, temples, and palace with such urgency that archaeologists found the bones of the king’s pet dogs in their kennels left behind to die of starvation. And now the overthrown priests of Amun-Re cursed the dead Akhenaten’s soul, damning him to wander alone in the desert for all eternity, never to know an afterlife or the peace of oblivion. Why would the priests curse Akhenaten to roam in the Farafra Desert? Why not doom him to haunt the ruined plains of his city of Amarna instead?”
You only need to look around at this wilderness of Farafra. Perfect purgatory. A scabrous desert landscape with freakish formations erupting in the sands of a vast desert depression. Chalk forms, tormented and twisted. A wilderness haunted by white outcrops like blighted souls. No pleasant associations here for the ghost of Akhenaten to stroke his memories. A far cry from his painted palaces with tiled floors decorated with fish and marsh fowl, ornamental lily ponds and memories of times spent lazing in the company of his beautiful wife Nefertiti in the benevolent rays of the Aten sun.

Saturday, March 9, 2024

For renegade Egyptologist Anson Hunter, it seemed that Egypt's gods had risen against the world of archaeology in "The Night of Anubis"...

Did God hate the gods and magic of ancient Egypt? “I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt”. Exodus 12:12-13. Some might find them distasteful as Goethe did when he wrote: ‘Now I must take my pleasure by the Nile/ in extolling dog-headed gods; Oh, if my halls were only rid/ of Isis and Osiris! We can praise them as the poet Mann did when he felt : ‘The might of these lands that were/ Once permeated by gods’. But we can’t ignore them. And the Egyptians clearly believed in them and even listened to their voices.
For renegade Egyptologist Anson Hunter, it seemed that ancient Egypt's gods had risen against the world of archaeology in "The Night of Anubis"....

(Roy Lester Pond) "untangles new mysteries of ancient Egypt..." Reviewer. The Anson Hunter mystery adventure novels.

“(The hero, archaeologist) Anson Hunter untangles new mysteries about the ancient Egyptian civilization’s affirmation of survival after death by the power of symbolism and magic over matter, a virtual afterlife built by a collective unconscious, sustained by religion and tangible in the form of pyramids, temples and tombs. His elucidations are esoteric bombs that undermine the foundations of today’s world major religions.”
Egypt Then and Now “Reads from the start like a P.I. or spy novel.”
“I didn’t think fiction about ancient Egypt’s archaeology like this could be written today.” Readers' comments.

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Fiction adventure series that ventures into the shadow side of ancient Egypt - and into dark modern day conspiracies

"MUMMIES, MUMMIES, MUMMIES" A fun, fantasy Egypt adventure perfect for young readers. By Roy Pond (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

Now launching...
MUMMIES, MUMMIES, MUMMIES! When Harley, the Egypt-mad young schoolboy, discovers a forbidden Ancient Egyptian ‘scroll of power’ hidden on the internet, he plans to reveal it as a display for his class Egypt Day celebrations. With a fatal double-click of the computer mouse, Harley accidentally lets loose the plagues of Egypt on his school, the same plagues that Moses brought down on pharaoh - a river of blood, invasions of frogs and locusts and the threat of worse to come... . It’s a magical fantasy about a boy called Harley and a group of his school friends who, through the agency of a mysterious Internet site, find themselves trapped in the Animal Mummy Kingdom of Egypt. It combines children’s love of animal creatures and mummies, with magic, mystery and humour. (The author piloted this idea (as 'Harley's really scary Egypt Project') on the Internet some years ago, placing the first few chapters free on his author’s website and received strong interest, from children and school teachers across the US.) Note: Author Roy Lester Pond writes young-ancient-Egypt fiction as ROY POND

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

"THE PRINCESS Who LOST Her SCROLL of The Dead" by Roy Pond, Amazon Kindle edition... and other highly rated young ancient Egypt adventure fiction by Roy Pond

"One terrific story..." -- N. Ignatowicz, Editor-at-Large, Children's Books, New York. "Great Egyptian imagery"- Goodreads reader --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Two Egypt Adventure Fantasy Titles in One. With educational ancient Egyptian images. 1. The Princess Who Lost Her Scroll of The Dead. Her magical guide to the scary maze of gateways and passwords has been swapped for a blank scroll by a greedy royal scribe... How can Nefera find her way through the dangerous gateways and guardians of the Egyptian underworld without her magical spells - her passport to the world beyond? And who is the boy tomb robber Ipy, sharing her journey? Is he alive, or dead? Can he help save her? 2. MUSEUM GHOSTS What happens when the museum keeper's daughter secretly takes an Egyptian doll named Tiye from its glass case? Karoy and his companions - a squad of Egyptian wooden soldiers created to protect a tomb owner - arise to rescue Tiye from the dangerous outside world...
Author Roy Lester Pond writes young-ancient-Egypt fiction as ROY POND
New edition launching
MUMMIES, MUMMIES, MUMMIES! A fun, fantasy Egypt adventure perfect for young readers. When Harley, the Egypt-mad young schoolboy, discovers a forbidden Ancient Egyptian ‘scroll of power’ hidden on the internet, he plans to reveal it as a display for his class Egypt Day celebrations. With a fatal double-click of the computer mouse, Harley accidentally lets loose the plagues of Egypt on his school, the same plagues that Moses brought down on pharaoh - a river of blood, invasions of frogs and locusts and the threat of worse to come... . It’s a magical fantasy about a boy called Harley and a group of his school friends who, through the agency of a mysterious Internet site, find themselves trapped in the Animal Mummy Kingdom of Egypt. It combines children’s love of animal creatures and mummies, with magic, mystery and humour. (The author piloted this idea (as 'Harley's really scary Egypt Project') on the Internet some years ago, placing the first few chapters free on his author’s website and received strong interest, from children and school teachers across the US.)

Remember your first inexplicable tug to Egypt's distant past? What age were you?

When did it begin? As I dig down through the layers of my life to my childhood, like an archaeologist digging through stratigraphic deposits, I discover that the desire to explore ancient Egypt’s mystery appeared to arrive fully formed like the civilization of Egypt itself. Suddenly, at a tender age, I knew that I wanted to find out everything there was to know about this ancient and alluring civilization. An impossible ambition of course, with millennia of Egypt’s secrets still remaining hidden beneath the sands.
What is the powerful magnet of ancient Egypt for today’s world? A popular Egyptologist and book writer once quipped: “It’s all about the gold.” She made a strong point about the popularity of Egyptian exhibitions, and I agree. On a certain level, all that shining bullion certainly is a lure for anyone. And yet... it’s also about a bit more than the gold, as I am sure the Egyptologist would admit. What really compels us, on a deeper, less conscious level, to draw physically close to Tutankhamun’s golden treasures at an exhibition - or to the Great Pyramid at Giza, for that matter? What compels us to journey to be in their presence? It’s more than the preposterous display of ancient power and riches, although that’s a large part of it. It’s a desire for proximity to this magnificent ancient past. Proximity between us now, and Egypt then. These artefacts overwhelm our senses, and yet they also engage us with a deeply personal issue - the ‘first great mystery’ - death. A thrall comes over our senses when we, in our modern age, stand in the presence of the Egyptians’ magnificent obsession with eternity and their monumental rejection of death. I think that is perhaps why I prefer to concentrate on writing my series of modern, archaeological thrillers that explore this frisson of modern characters brushing against the ancient past, rather than setting my fiction purely in the past. We want to feel ourselves in that ancient presence. I am aware of Egypt’s gifts. The ancient Greeks and Romans acknowledged them too. Egypt gave us the first nation state, the twenty-four hours of the day, the 365 days of the year, the first great buildings in stone, architecture, astronomy, medicine, paper, writing, even the invention of fictional dramatic stories recorded in writing… Then there is religion. Take away Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat, Moses and The Ten Commandments, The Exodus, the life-saving flight of baby Jesus with the holy family to Egypt, as well as every biblical reference to Egypt, and the Bible becomes a novella. Ancient Egypt also gave us the ultimate symbolic landscape for dreaming. A sense of eternity made captive in art and stone. And yet I am not unaware of the dark side of ancient Egypt. Workers may not have been 'slaves' in name and they may have been fed by the state and their injuries patched up by medicos, but coercion was at the core of Egyptian monumentality. New research in The Journal of Egyptian Architecture challenges the romantic view of ancient Egypt. ('The Dark Side of a Model Community: The ‘Ghetto’ of el-Lahun'.) It is a trend today to suggest that the pyramid builders were willing workers, perhaps as a reaction against the whip and taskmaster scenes of early biblical epic movies like The Ten Commandments. Yet the most casual glance at Egypt's monumental architecture tells us that ancient Egypt was no picnic for workers - whether they were prisoners, or Egyptians forced into state labour under the draconian corvee conscription system. Running away was a capital crime. Shirk and you could have your nose and ears cut off. I refer to this dark, coercive side of ancient Egypt in The Smiting Texts where a character tells my alternative Egyptologist hero Anson Hunter: "Dynastic Ancient Egypt was not a land of allure, as you like to imagine; it was the most draconian civilization the world has ever known. Why can you not see it? The truth is there in the museum cases of the world, captured in the Egyptian paintings and carvings in wood or stone or on plaster of ordinary folk, the servant girl, the baker, the boatman, the seated scribe. The expression in their eyes, wide in their whites, is fear. They lived and died in terror. But if God punished this civilization as it was told in the Book of Exodus, why do you think you would have loved it? ‘Look at the carved Egyptian eye of Isis on the wall of a temple. Look at this eye of this goddess. You think it is a symbol of mystery, the single, feminine Egyptian eye in profile. Quintessential. But this black orb is not a symbol of allure; it is more like a dead planet in a pitiless universe. The oasis civilization of pharaonic Egypt was a hell where the sun beat down like a swordsmith’s hammer and reeds conspired in whispers at the edge of a river of tears. The land was hemmed in by deserts like the sides of a coffin and by a police, judicial, fiscal, priestly and bureaucratic system that arrested freedom like an image in diorite, the hardest of stone, which the carvers in the workshops shaped not with ease, as it seemed from their sublime achievements, but with the sacrifice of lifetimes. There is a reason why a people still celebrates their hasty exodus from this place with unleavened bread and bitter herbs 2000 years on. The Nazis of the twentieth century killed the Jews; the Ancient Egyptians ground their souls to stone dust…" Consider the construction of the Great Pyramid - horror heaped upon stone horror... As fictional Egyptologist Anson Hunter describes a visit: “On a good day, the Great Pyramid is a morbid wonder... today, it’s suffocating. Both inside and out. I don’t need to be toiling up the claustrophobic lengths of its corridors and galleries, with walls that seem to be sweating under the crushing weight of stone above, to feel it. Just standing in front of the myriad layers of blocks - horror heaped upon stone horror - hazing upwards to the heavens, is enough. The scale of its disregard for human misery is breathtaking in itself. Nothing had ever been found inside the Great Pyramid - The Last Great Wonder of the ancient world - except for a couple of fragments. And yet Sir Isaac Newton believed that the Great Pyramid held the key to the Apocalypse. What is the magic of Egypt? Is it magic itself? “The Talmud states: ‘Ten measures of Magic (keshafim) were given to the world; Egypt received nine while the rest of the world received one.”. What are we to make of the magic that permeates this enigmatic civilization?

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

MURDER IN NUBIA . A Novel. The Egyptologist Detective - Murder Mystery Series Book 2, Kindle Edition by ROY LESTER POND (Author) 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars

The Egyptologist Detective - Murder Mystery Series See all formats and editions MURDER IN NUBIA The Egyptologist Detective An intriguing new voyage of discovery into murder mystery. The Archaeologist Detective is back. Daniel Cane is called on to play the role of cruise Egyptologist and investigator in a baffling mystery. Mysterious murders and a shocking, secret discovery lead Daniel to an ending nobody could expect. This time the setting is a luxurious cruise across the inland ‘Nubian Sea’ across the Sahara Desert, from Abu Simbel in Nubia to Aswan in Egypt, culminating in a world congress on the mysterious Island Temple of Philae. Who is killing the great archaeologists of the world? And why? In the mysterious footsteps of ‘Murder on the Nile Mystery Cruise’.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

The Golden Coffin Case Murders. A nest of ancient Egyptian coffins and baffling intrigue

Egyptologist Detective series. A set of golden Egyptian coffins scattered to the winds. A series of connected murders. Like the set of ancient Egyptian golden, nested coffins at the centre of this enthralling murder mystery puzzle. The NEST case is the most tantalizing the Egyptologist detective Daniel has ever faced. Three rare coffins disassembled in the past and scattered to the winds. Then a series of rich, illegal artefact collectors are murdered around the world. Somebody desperately wants to put the nest together again, but why? A NEST OF INTRIGUE AND MURDERS. Mystery within mystery, danger within danger...
Daniel Cane, the Egyptologist Detective series <

Do You Have an Ache for Time Travel and Egypt's Ancient Past? Some 5-star time travel.

THE GHOST OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. A Novel. There is a certain statue in the Sculpture Gallery of the British Museum of the son of Rameses The Great, Egypt’s most illustrious pharaoh. The statue has an eerie attraction even today. In the 1900s a London group known as The Society of Inner Light regularly conferred with the exhibit in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery, convinced that it was a medium for metaphysical activity and emanated unseen forces. She was an American historical writer visiting the British Museum's Egyptian Sculpture Gallery to research a new book. He was a legendary and enigmatic prince from ancient Egypt who desperately needed to undo a terrible mistake. Was the strange young man’s sudden materialization before Madeline just ‘cosplay’, or the result of an attraction between two souls across time? Would they share a mysterious quest on a journey through Egypt, and much more?
The SARCOPHAGUS: A Novel. A coded tomb machine revives an age of Egypt adventure Adventure, mystery, across the boundaries of time. An archaeologist with a bow shoots an arrow into adventure...In the modern age, Ryder an archaeologist in Egypt discovers a mysterious empty sarcophagus in a tomb. Then his Egyptologist partner Janet goes missing.He vows to go after her, even if it means journeying across the boundaries of reason and existence. Ahead of Ryder and his dog lies a pre-dynastic realm of myth: the mysterious Mistress of the Bow and Ruler of Arrows, the evil Lord Set, legions of animal-headed creatures, the venerable bird-man, the child Horus. And key to it all is the quest for the magical amulets of power. A life-and-death struggle is on at the edge of time. And the universe watches - and waits.
THE RA VIRUS Text messages from eternity: Egypt Time Travel Novel Nefertiti, Akhenaten, the revenge of RA... 'a fast and furious pace’ Time-travel adventure. “Roy Lester Pond joins my favourite Egypt authors like Christian Jacq.” “A furious pace keeps the reader engrossed.”- Goodreads WARNING! ANCIENT GLOBAL THREAT… Who is sending 'text messages from eternity' to the team of archaeologists? The impossible scrawled message turns up in a newly found Egyptian tomb, along with a modern bio-hazard symbol. Who sent it? Is missing archaeology team member Lucas Burrows trapped in the ancient past during an age of terror? What mysterious disaster has hit the population of Egypt in the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his young co-regent Akhenaten? Why is it seen as a judgement by the angry sun god Ra? Lucas, a physician and World Health Organisation expert on pandemics, must find its source and the antidote in time to save the ancient past and the future. Especially when his lover, the lustrous Italian-born Egyptologist Giulietta, is exposed to the deadly contagion. An enthralling and thought-provoking novel.
EGYPT JUMP: A Novel. A time travel rescue mission.(Kindle) EGYPT JUMP TIME JUMP ERA: 3 A.D. MISSION: Save the Jesus child, a refugee in Egypt, journeying with escaped family. THREAT: modern day Time-Terrorists and ancient assassins of Judean King Herod... Time-travel terrorists… drones… attackers with assault weapons racing through the Nile’s papyrus reeds… their target a boy king. At stake, the future of civilization. Standing in their way, two young time jumpers, Salome and Callen of the Anti Time-Terrorist Strike Force. They must stop a catastrophe that could affect billions of lives and the belief systems of the world. Sci-fi, ancient history and time-travel novella with a startling twist and revelation.

Friday, March 1, 2024

Should fiction writers write novels with a metaphorical movie director sitting at their elbow?

I am often told, “you should make film of your novel.” I take that as a compliment rather than an imperative. Yes, I do think visually. It comes from years as a creative director in the 'Madmen' world of international advertising agencies. I am even known to do a mock-up a novel scene as a mini movie storyboard of a novel. It helps to keep a project concrete and real over the long period of writing. But no, I am more interested in the internalized and therefore unfilmable narrative of my character's thoughts and feelings, such as those of the rogue and conflicted British Egyptologist in my Anson Hunter series. If I had to pick the most filmable of my titles, I’d probably nominate THE IBIS APOCALYPSE. Book or movie, which should come first?
(examples of visual thinking, using scrap art)