Fortunately, much of the research for JOURNEY had already been done. I did have to read up on blind harpists, though (apparently this was not unusual in ancient Egypt) and chironomists. 🙂 I bought a book on ancient Egyptian music and devoured it. I would love to hear how an ancient Egyptian band might have played!
Add to this research on the latest Pharaoh and his progeny, and that about covers it. Oh, and embalming. (Goodness, I’ve been fascinated with embalming longer than I realized.)
Tomorrow: the writing
~~Angie
The embalming details is what impressed me. You wrote that in without the novel sounding like a textbook, yet it was quite detailed.
I thought I had a pretty good vocabulary, but what in the world is a chironomist?! Just tried to find it in 2 online dictionaries and they gave me the computer equivalent of “huh?”
The chironomist was basically the music conductor:
“Of special interest in Egyptian music is the development of chironomy, the use of hand signals to indicate to instrumentalists what they should play.” (freedictionary)
Correct. My English teacher always taught us to dissect the Latin roots: “Chiros” has to do with time and any word that ends in “ist” is usually a person who does a thing (typist, racist, allergist . . .) So a chironomist is the person who keeps time. The conductor. (But in ancient Egypt, he may have also indicated pitch as well.)
Angie
interesting! i learn so much on your “blog!”
jan