Next stop:  I submitted it to one of Amazon’s publishing imprints.  Fingers still crossed.

The controversy over Tiye pertains mainly to where she came from — Nubia, Syria, somewhere else — and whether she was of royal blood.  Postings on the Internet, as most people know, are not always reliable, but a Google search on “Tiye parents” will give an idea of the various conflicting views.

I can’t claim to be an Egyptologist, but I’ve taken classes in ancient Egyptian history at UCLA and have read dozens of books and articles about the late 18^th Dynasty.  The bulk of scholarly opinion seems to be that Tiye was the daughter of two Nubian commoners, Yuya and Thuya, both of whom were Amun priests.

Does it matter?  For purposes of this story, yes.  First, because I like to get my basic “facts” right, to the extent I can.  Second, because I attribute to Tiye a philosophy that I think more likely to have come from a commoner than from a member of royalty.  And third, because the heroine in Papyrus is a black African woman, and the story develops along a spiritual bond she feels with the black African queen.  This last reason my sound like “I made Tiye black because I need her to be black.”  But the truth is, I made her black because the preponderance of evidence says she was black — it so happens that is allowed me to come up with the spiritual bond as a thoroughgoing thread.

Fact and Fiction

Having said that I like to get my facts right, I should also say that I have taken some liberties.  For instance, I portray Tiye as the architect of the religion of Aten, something generally attributed to one of her sons, Akhenaten.  I actually think there is good cause for ascribing the philosophy to Tiye, and my reasoning is voiced by Rika, the heroine of Papyrus.  I consider this a reasonable “stretch” of the facts.

On the other hand, the idea that Tiye chose to be buried in her homeland, rather than in Egypt, is total fabrication.  Yes, I know that the mummy referred to as the “Elder Lady” is supposed to be Tiye, but as Rika says, the Elder Lady was not so old (and chemical analyses showing kinship with Yuya and Thuya could be explained if the Elder Lady were one of Tiye’s daughters, again as mentioned by Rika).  So it’s conceivable, perhaps barely conceivable, that Tiye’s mummy has not been found — because it isn’t in Egypt.

Even more in the realm of total fabrication is the idea that Tiye believed in physical rebirth through burial in a bath of restorative oils.  This, I think, just makes for a good story.

Other Depictions of Tiye

Tiye, same statue as above - Agyptisches Museum, Berlin (photographer unknown)

Tiye - Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC (photographer unknown)

Tiye - Egyptian Museum, Cairo (photographer unknown)

In the mid-80s, I was working in London, in an office behind Selfridges, and I often spent part of a lunch hour in that store.  Like most big department stores, the first thing you saw upon entering the main doors was an array of perfume stalls.  The variety pricked my interest, and I began talking with the stall attendants and collecting samples.  At the same time, it so happened there was a bookstore across the street from my office that specialized in literature on perfumes.  I bought a four-volume boxed set of reference books by H&R (Harmann and Reimer, an international perfume company).  The classification systems in these volumes made good sense to my scientific mind, and the ideas about what kinds of fragrances appealed to what sorts of people were intriguing.  For instance, it turns out my wife and I both prefer Oriental Notes (which possibly has contributed to our lifelong compatibility).

Over the next ten years or so, I read other books, collected articles, and more-or-less casually accumulated information for the possibility that I might eventually write a story centered on perfumes.

Flash forward to 2007.  My wife is working several weeks a year at a museum in Paris, and for part of the time, I tag along.  On this occasion, I notice there’s a Fragonard perfume museum near the Opera.  I’m chatting with one of the employees, and she tells me about ISIPCA and the Osmothèque.  ISIPCA is the world’s top perfume school, and the Osmothèque is billed as the “living museum of perfumes.”  They’re located on the same premises in Versailles.  Next day, I hop on a train and go out there.

Long story short, I lucked into to spending a whole afternoon with Jean Kerléo, founder and president of the Osmothèque, and a young Italian man, Marcello Aspria, who has an excellent website on perfumes.  At one point, I asked Kerléo if creation of an aphrodisiac was still a goal of perfumers, and he said, “Yes.”

That was my inspiration.  I started writing and soon accumulated a lot of questions to which I couldn’t find answers.  So next year, ahead of my wife’s annual Paris sojourn, I requested another interview with Kerléo, which he graciously granted.  Not only did he answer my questions, but he also treated me to one of the rare tours he gives into the basement vault where the Osmothèque stores its unique collection of fragrances.

Twice educated by Monsieur Kerléo (who spent thirty years as the Master Perfumer for Jean Patou), I scrapped some of my earlier ideas and dived into writing a story that would both honor his profession and provide a wild ride for anyone interested in aphrodisiacs.

ISIPCA: one of the two chateaux, with laboratory wing behind (by John Oehler)

Marcello Aspria and Jean Kerleo at ISIPCA (by John Oehler)

Jean Kerleo in the vault of the Osmotheque (by John Oehler)

Tepui is the Pemón Indian word for mountain and is now generally applied to the flat-topped, sheer-sided mountains of southern Venezuela.  Tepuis are erosional remnants of a landscape hundreds of millions of years old.  Because of their near-vertical sides, tepuis are difficult to scale, and their tops are as inaccessible and ecologically isolated as small islands in the Pacific.  Many of the species that live atop tepuis exist nowhere else.

This raised two possibilities in my mind.  What if there were a plant up there that had flourished in ancient times but was now thought to be extinct?  A living fossil.  And what if there were a remnant population of people whose civilization was thought to have been wiped out by Spanish conquistadors?

The living fossil idea gave me my hero, a botanist.  The conquistador idea gave me all sorts of possibilities for the kinds of indigenous people who might have successfully escaped the Spanish Conquest.  Add in the fact that early explorers in South America were searching for gold, diamonds, and exotic spices, and you have the beginnings of a story.

For an excellent article on tepuis, see National Geographic magazine, v. 175, n. 5, May 1989.

A Note about The Lost World

I’m a big fan of Sherlock Holmes (and a former member of the Baker Street Irregulars), but I had never read Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel, The Lost World, until I was about halfway through writing Tepui.  You can imagine my surprise at the similarities — not in detail, but in the broad concept of exploring a tepui and finding plants, animals, and people thought previously to be extinct.  There are, however, major differences between Doyle’s Victorian-era ideas and the ideas I express in Tepui.  Mine, I think, are much more plausible — and a lot more fun.

A View from the Air

While in Canaima, my wife and I rented a single-engine Cessna to fly us south into the Gran Sabana, where we would land and explore Kavac Cave (more on Kavac in another post).  The flight took us over part of tepui country, which I filmed from the co-pilot’s seat.  Unfortunately the quality of that video, shot on Super-8, is less than stellar — a lot less.  YouTube has a number of better videos, some shot over the same route we took.  But one of the best depictions I’ve seen is in the Disney-Pixar movie, Up.  The link below is to a clip from that film.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The original idea for Papyrus came to me one afternoon in 1983 when I was wandering through some of the less-glamorous exhibits in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum and spotted a potential way for thieves to break in.

On an upper floor of the museum, there is a series of alcoves, each of which (to the best of my recollection) is fronted by a sarcophagus and has pedestal-mounted statues lining the other three sides.  In one of these alcoves, I noticed a grate covering an opening in the exterior wall — an opening that I assumed provided ventilation by connecting directly to the outside of the building.  The grate is secured by four screws and is partially concealed behind one of the pedestals.  My idea was that a thief could remove the screws and use the ventilation duct to sneak into and out of the museum.

I was told the museum had no burglar alarm system.  Guards provided security, and I witnessed more than one of them sleeping on duty.  So a thief would have needed no technological savvy, only stealth.

The story, as I initially conceived it, centered on the theft.  Since then, Papyrus has become much richer than a mere crime novel, and the theft now occupies only a chapter and a half.

My original pencil sketch from that afternoon in 1983 is shown below.

Theft sketch (by John Oehler)

A Final Note

Recent visitors to the museum may notice that the Narmer Palette occupies a much more prominent position than where I put it in Papyrus.  It’s such an important artifact that it deserves to be prominently displayed.  But Papyrus takes place in 1983, and the Narmer Palette at that time was where I have it in the story.

David Allen

In November, 2010, I gave a podcast interview about writing — the craft in general, how I do it, some of my stories.  You can listen to the podcast at:  http://answer20q.com/2010/11/writers-20q-podcast-13-john-oehler/

Now the background, an example of serendipity.

My wife and I were vacationing in Spain and spent the first few days with friends who live two hours north of Barcelona.  One of our friends wanted to buy some geologic maps from a government bookstore in Girona and suggested we all take the bus.  On the ride back, a woman overheard me talking about writing and asked if I’d be interested in doing a podcast interview with her husband.  I politely took her card, not really intending to follow up.

Fast forward a few weeks, and we’re home again, going through the maps, brochures, receipts, and miscellaneous pieces of paper we typically accumulate on a vacation.  I come across the woman’s card.  My wife says, “Why not?”  So I check out the fellow’s website.  Impressive.  Moreover, he’s a Mac guy, like me.  I contact him by email, we set up a time for an interview via Skype, and the result is what you’ll hear if you click on the link above and press the “Play” button.

By the way, this man does have a name, David Allen.  He’s a British expatriate living in the same Spanish town as our friends, and he turns out to be a superb editor (which you can only appreciate if you know what I actually said versus the parts he stitched together for the podcast).  He has a page dedicated to writing (http://answer20q.com/category/writers20q/) on which you can listen to interviews with other authors.  I’ve listened to several and found them interesting.

One more word about David.  He made the interview painless.  Not only painless, but actually fun, like two pals just shooting the breeze.  I thank him for the opportunity and thank his wife, Victoria, for “accosting” me on the bus.