Desert God

I stopped reading Angle of Repose temporarily in order to read the next book chosen for the Book Club.  My first question as I read more of the book is: Is this historical fiction?  And the answer is answered right at the top of the photo of the front of the book.  Stephen King says that Wilbur Smith is the best historical novelist!  Pretty high praise....so I guess I will stick with it.  Wikipedia says:

Desert God is a novel by author Wilbur Smith first published in 2014. It is part of a series of novels by Smith set to Ancient Egypt and follows the fate of the Egyptian Kingdom through the eyes of Taita, a multi-talented and highly skilled eunuch slave.

Oh, wow....I just read the rest of the synopsis and I am not sure that I am going to be able to get through this book....lots of battles...lots of gore....not sure that it is my kind of book.  But below is what I am reading this morning:



Here are a few maps to help understand the first of the book....







And here is the link to the website for Wilbur Smith's books:

http://www.wilbursmithbooks.com/books/family-trees/ancient-egypt

Oh, wow, this is too complicated to figure out this close to Christmas.  So I am going to throw up my hands.   Here is what I found about another of Wilbur Smith's books that is helpful:

River God is a novel by author Wilbur Smith. It tells the story of the talented eunuch slave Taita, his life in Egypt, the flight of Taita along with the Egyptian populace from the Hyksos invasion, and their eventual return. The novel can be grouped together with Wilbur Smith's other books (The Seventh Scroll, Warlock, The Quest, Desert God and 'Pharaoh') on Ancient Egypt. It was first published in 1994. 

A new threat to the kingdom emerges — the warlike Hyksos. Equipped with the horse and chariot, as well as a superior recurved bow, their technological superiority is far greater than the Egyptian army's. The Pharaoh is killed, forcing a majority of the Egyptian nobility (including Lostris, Tanus, and Taita) to flee Egypt by heading up the Nile with the remaining army.

[So the book that we are reading is after River God...Taita and the Pharaoh have already fled south on the Nile after the Hyksos invasion.  They are planning a huge and complicated series of events to oust the Hyksos and thus reunite the land that is Egypt so that the Pharaoh can wear the crown of all of the land and so that they will have access to the Mediterranean Sea which they are lacking because of the rout.]  

And here is an answer to the idea that Wilbur Smith has based this novel on a particular reign or date: 

The central conflict of the novel is the Hyksos invasion, which took place approximately 100 years after the claimed date of 1780. 1780 was approximately the beginning of the Thirteenth dynasty of Egypt: The Hyksos have been assigned to the Fifteenth dynasty of Egypt.^[4] Thus, it is not possible to relate characters and events in the novel to specific characters and events in history.

I am quite surprised that I am finding the book entertaining.  I might just get it read for Dec 15th after all.  The reader is PERFECT for the book!  He is without a doubt native born British speaker.  And it actually gives the vain Taita the perfect voice!  This morning I laughed out loud as Taita explains to Pharaoh how they are going to change huge silver ingots that they have stollen into a form that they can spend without giving away the secret that they are the culprits who have stollen the gold.  The exchange between the two men reminds me of Forrest Gump!  Movie that I loved....In solving the problem of turning all of the stollen silver into a form that they can use to purchase much needed commodities, they make coins.  And Taita (unlike Forrest Gump who was anything but vain) takes the credit for having invented coins that changed the ancient world!

I finished the book tonight.  It is a bit of a silly book.  But at the same time, it appears that the crazy volcano eruption did really happen:

• MORE

Each Monday, this column turns a page in history to explore the discoveries, events and people that continue to affect the history being made today.

The world map might look differently had the Greek volcano Thera not erupted 3,500 years ago in what geologists believe was the single-most powerful explosive event ever witnessed.

Thera didn't just blow a massive hole into the island of Santorini – it set the entire ancient Mediterranean onto a different course, like a train that switched tracks to head off in a brand new direction.

Advertisement

Minoan culture, the dominant civilization in the Mediterranean at the time, crumbled as a result of the eruption, historians believe, changing the political landscape of the ancient world indefinitely. Environmental effects were felt across the globe, as far away as China and perhaps even North America and Antarctica.

The legend of Atlantis and the story of the Biblical plagues and subsequent exodus from Egypt have also been connected to the epic catastrophe.

Dwarfed the atomic bomb

Historians and archaeologists have had trouble deciding on the year Thera erupted, with dates ranging anywhere from 1645 BC to 1500 BC. Studies of ash deposits on the ocean floor have revealed, however, that when the volcano did blow, it did so with a force dwarfing anything humans had ever seen or have seen since.

There are no first-person accounts of what happened that day, but scientists can compare it to the detailed records available from the famous eruption of Krakatoa, Indonesia, in 1883.

That fiery explosion killed upwards of 40,000 people in just a few hours, produced colossal tsunamis 40 feet tall, spewed volcanic ash across Asia, and caused a drop in global temperatures and created strangely colored sunsets for three years. The blast was heard 3,000 miles away.

Thera's eruption was four or five times more powerful than Krakatoa, geologists believe, exploding with the energy of several hundred atomic bombs in a fraction of a second.

An absence of human remains and valuables like metal suggest that the Minoan residents of Santorini predicted the eruption and the island was evacuated, but the culture as a whole did not fare as well.

Based on the nearby island of Crete, the powerful Minoan civilization declined suddenly soon after Thera blew its top. Tsunamis spawned by the eruption would have swamped its naval fleet and coastal villages first off, historians think. A drop in temperatures caused by the massive amounts of sulphur dioxide spouted into the atmosphere then led to several years of cold, wet summers in the region, ruining harvests. The lethal combination overran every mighty Minoan stronghold in less than 50 years.

In just a short time, their peaceful, efficient bureaucracy made way for the warring city-state system of ancient Greece to dominate the Mediterranean. The Aegean would turn out to be a fundamental building block for the history of Europe, and the Minoan decline changed its early foundation completely.

Famous legends

Thera didn't just alter the cultural make up of Europe, it has kept adventurers and treasure hunters busy too.

When the Greek philosopher Plato described the lost city of Atlantis over a thousand years after the volcanic eruption, he may have been referring to Thera folklore passed down in Greece over many generations and exaggerated like a game of broken telephone.

The eruption has also been loosely linked with the Biblical story of Moses and the exodus from Egypt. The effects of Thera's eruption could have explained many of the plagues described in the Old Testament, including the days of darkness and polluting of the rivers, according to some theories.

So the book has not been a waste of time.  I might never have read anything about the Minoan culture nor the volcano eruption nor of Egyptian politics had I not read this book.  But I will have to say that I am not tempted to read more of the series.  This book reminded me of the James Bond series that I read as a teenager.  My father LOVED the books.  Tatai reminds me of an ancient James Bond set in ancient Egypt.