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The Cinnamon Garden was inspired by my research into wills and inheritance in Ancient Egypt. Women in Ancient Egypt enjoyed a greater level of equality than most women in the ancient world. Women could inherit land, and their wills could be quite specific. For example, one woman chose to specify in her will that only four of her eight children would inherit her possessions because the other had not looked after her in her old age (this is in the Hieratic Papyrus Ashmolean). Some wills included clauses that required a certain son or daughter to pay for the deceased’s funeral before they could inherit their portion.
I have not encountered the sort of conditions Imi’s father placed in his will. Instead, I chose to take some liberties in order to explore the experiences of a woman who, while enjoying more freedom than most women in the ancient world, would still have to navigate a world dominated by the men around her.
Eelam – or modern-day Sri Lanka – really was a source of cinnamon in the ancient world, although it’s possible it didn’t make it to Egypt until after the time this book takes place. The other locations Imi and Nehesy travelled to on their way to Eelam – Punt and Hindush – were located in the lands south of Egypt, and India. They would have also traversed below the gulf states and the Gulf of Oman.
When Imi and Nehesy reached Eelam, what they encountered would not have been a cinnamon garden, so much as a cinnamon forest. The species of cinnamon tree native to Sri Lanka (Cinnamomum verum) can grow up to 50 feet tall.
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