In case you are in any doubt, this story is made up. It never happened. However, some of it is based on real facts, especially the parts about the girl with the ivory knife. Archaeologists really did find her bones on Lant Street in Southwark, a few minutes’ walk south of the Tate Modern. DNA analysis really did tell us her eye colour and stable isotope analysis indicated the place where she might have grown up. The ivory knife, wooden box and little glass bottles were all found buried with her. We know she had bandy legs that were getting better. We don’t know her name, her story or how she died. I made all those things up.
One fact I bent a little is the location of London’s recently re-opened Mithraeum. Although it is very close to the original position, it is off by a few metres.
You could take the same facts about the Mithraeum and the Lant Street Teenager and make up a completely different story.
One of the differences between an archaeologist and an author is that an archaeologist has to stick to the facts, but an author can use their imagination to create a story. The report on the bones or the DNA of the girl with the ivory knife is fairly dry, and there are lots of gaps showing what we don’t know. But I am very grateful to the scientists and lab technicians who gave us the reports, and especially to bioarchaeologist Dr Rebecca Redfern.
I would love to go back 1800 years to Roman London and meet the girl with the ivory knife and find out her real story. But time travel will probably never happen, so in the meantime our imaginations are the best portals we have to the past.