Author’s Note: Princess of Babylon

The story of a foreign princess sent to Egypt with the expectation of being queen, only to discover she won’t be, is one I’ve wanted to tell for a long time. I’ve also long been intrigued by the events that ended the reign of Ramses III, who is one of perhaps no more than two or three pharaohs who were assassinated (or probably assassinated — as with so many things in ancient history, there are no certainties). Given Ramses had a mystery queen — Queen X — who we know absolutely nothing about, this seemed like a prime opportunity to combine the two stories I wanted to tell.

I’ve often wondered how the women who were shipped off to Pharaoh coped with their situation. Did they know they were going to be one of many hundreds, or even thousands, of “wives”? How many expected, like Kassaya, to be queen? To rule side-by-side with Pharaoh? How did they cope when they discovered the reality of the situation they had been sent to?

The harem inhabitants weren’t just those who were sent to Pharaoh by their families either. They also included women captured as spoils of war. Amenhotep II had more than 600 women stolen from Palestine alone, more than half of whom were princesses. So Pharaoh’s harem would have comprised a mix of royalty, nobles and peasants. Those who were sent by their families, perhaps some who came willingly, and a lot of women who had been stolen or kidnapped, and didn’t want to be there at all. And, of course, the women sent by their families would have brought attendants with them, in some cases, hundreds of them. The palace or palaces that housed all these women, along with the servants who attended to them, must have been truly enormous.

Many of the characters we’ll meet in this series have names and occupations drawn from the court records of people who were convicted in the trials following the attack on Ramses III. Most of the male characters are based on people who actually participated in these events. Unfortunately, we don’t know the names of the Ornaments involved. For some reason unknown to us, their names were mostly withheld from the court records. However, Ramses did have a secondary wife called Tiye and he had the mysterious Queen X.

The characters of Tall and Half are entirely fictional. I wanted Kassaya to have companions who would be considered outsiders in this time period, people who would be shunned and largely ignored at court. I’m very fond of both Tall and Half, and I’m looking forward to learning more about both of them as the series progresses.

Kylie Quillinan, June 2023