Author’s Note

Fans of ancient Egyptian history will easily recognize the pharaoh Hatshepsut as the inspiration behind Hathorkare in The Stolen Queen. Due to storyline constraints, I had to alter dates and locations, and so instead created a fictional version of the female pharaoh who ruled Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty. In the same vein, Saukemet I and II are fictionalized versions of Thutmose II and III.

Here are the facts of Hatshepsut’s story: In 1903, British archaeologist Howard Carter came upon two mummies in tomb KV60 in the Valley of the Kings, one of which had a bent left arm, a mark of royalty. Egyptologist Elizabeth Thomas was one of the first to suggest it might be Hatshepsut, in the 1960s.

Early editions of the Met Museum catalog did indeed describe Hatshepsut as a “vain, ambitious, and unscrupulous woman,” based on the erasures of her image by her successor. However, in 1966, Charles F. Nims published an article in The Journal of Egyptian Language and Archaeology that questioned the timing of the destruction and erasures, and posited some of the reasons mentioned in the novel as to why they might have been carried out.

In 2007, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass placed the mummies from KV60 and a canopic box marked with Hatshepsut’s cartouche—containing her internal organs as well as a molar tooth lacking one root—through a CT scanner and declared the mummy with the bent arm to be that of Hatshepsut, who is now exhibited at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo.

For more information on Hatshepsut, I recommend reading the Met’s exhibition catalog for Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, edited by Catharine H. Roehrig, with Renée Dreyfus and Cathleen A. Keller.

Much of Charlotte’s early experiences in Egypt are inspired by the famed female French archaeologist Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, who is the subject of a terrific biography by Lynne Olson, Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction. It’s a fantastic read.

The Cerulean Queen statue is based on a Met antiquity called Fragment of a Queen’s Face, which was possibly modeled after Nefertiti, Kiya, or Meritaten. Sculpted out of yellow jasper, the piece is hauntingly beautiful and has never been stolen, nor has its provenance been questioned. The theft in the book is inspired by one that occurred at the Met in 1979, when a thief plucked a 2,500-year-old marble head from a pedestal in the Greek and Roman galleries. Luckily, the head was recovered from a locker at Grand Central Terminal less than a week later.

The Ma’at organization mentioned in the novel is completely fictional. The Theban Mapping Project, on the other hand, is very real and, since its founding in 1978 by Dr. Kent Weeks, has become an important resource for scholars, tourists, and educators in its mission to protect and survey the hallowed grounds of the ancient pharaohs while also keeping them accessible to the public.

The staff of the Met Museum were incredibly generous with their time and expertise as I researched this book. While the plot and characters are completely fictional, I hope readers will seek out Hatshepsut’s likenesses, linger in front of the Fragment of a Queen’s Face statue, and wander the many galleries of this iconic New York City institution in order to appreciate the inspiration behind The Stolen Queen. You never know what you might find…

Finally, the Met Gala did not have a red carpet for its guests in 1978, but the image is so iconic, I simply couldn’t resist including one in the novel.

Author’s Note

Further Reading