Pharnuchus, -nouchos
Phraates
Sataspes
Teaspes
Tithraustes
Vans*
Xerxes
Zamaspes
Zarina, -naia
Zoroaster, -astres, Zarathroustes, Zaravastes,Zathraustes, Zaratas
OLD PERSIAN
Hakhamanish
Arshaka
Arshama
Artabanush
Artakhshathra
Haruvanta
Aspamithra
Ashta
Bagabukhsha
Bardiya
Besha
Kambujiya
Uvakhshatra, Hua-
Kurush
Datavahya, Daduhya
Darayavahush, Dareyavosh
Data
Davirisha
Emba
Gaumata
Haraspa
Vidarna
Vishtaspa
Yazata
Mazdai
Mathishta
Vahauka
Farnukha
Frahata
Sataspa
Chaispish
Chithravahishta
Vahush
Khshayarsha
Jamaspa
Zarinari
Zarathushtra
Readers who find the name "Skhâ" bothersome may pronounce it simply like "scar" without the r.
As for place names, in most of the area covered by the story there are three strata of names: pre-classical names (Babylonian, Aramaic, Egyptian, etc.); classical names (Greek or Latin); and post-classical—medieval or modern—names (mostly Arabic). I have usually given places in the story their oldest known names, except in cases where a more recent form is much better known. Hence Marath (not Marathus or Amrît) but Damascus (not Dar Mesheq or Damaskos or Dimishq or esh-Shams). For ancient and modern forms of these various places see Baedeker's Egypt and the Sudan (1929) and Palestine and Syria (1912). The map at the end of the first volume of Baikie's History of Egypt (1929) and Map No. 20 in Shepherd's Historical Atlas also have many such variant forms of place names. The pre-classical forms of the names of Meroê and Napata were Barua and Nepita or (or Nept) respectively.
All the places named in the novel are real except Ravonga and the castle of Takarta, which are imaginary. However, it is pure surmise to have located Pliny's Tenupsis near modern Kaka, and to have identified his Boron with modern Bor, and ancient Karutjet with modern Korti, because the true locations of these places are not certainly known. The Tower of the Snail (Burj el-Bazzâq, more accurately "of snails") at Marath =: Amrît exists, although I may have taken liberties with its date. While this date is not certainly known, some archaeologists believe it to be later than the time of my story. The tomb of King Siptah is as I described it.
Ancient geographers distinguished between the White Nile and the Blue Nile, calling them the Astapous and the Astasobas, but they differed as to which affluent bore which name. Since the Blue Nile once had a town named Soba on it, and the White Nile has a tributary called the Sobat, one can argue either way.
Most of the African tribes mentioned are from Pliny. As no more "authentic" forms of their names are known, I have left these names in their Latin form. I have assumed that the Alabi, Bugaitae or Bougaeitai, Dankala, Mattitae, Nubae or Nubians, Ophirites, and Shaikaru of ancient writings are identical with the modern Aliab Dinka, Bega or Bisharin, Dongolavi, Madi, Nuba and Nubians, Afar or Danakil, and Shankalla. This may or may not be true in all cases.
The customs attributed to the Kushites and other peoples of the Upper Nile are based upon those reported by the first European explorers to penetrate those regions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Remarks of ancient writers about the customs of the Negroes of the White Nile of going naked, smearing themselves with ash or clay, extracting some of their teeth, and raising cattle indicate that the Nilotics have changed their ways but little in 2,000 years.
In the Central African episodes, the native words used by African characters are (with a few minor exceptions) in Swahili. Of course Swahili (properly Kiswahili) was not spoken in the fifth century B.C. It is a trade language, which grew up in recent centuries on the East African coast. Its basis is a simplified Bantu, but it also has a large minority of words of Arabic and other non-African origin.
On the other hand, nobody knows what sort of languages were spoken in the Lake Region of Africa 2,400 years ago. One can only guess that they were related to those used there today. So the Swahili phrases are meant to give the right fictional flavor but not to mislead the reader. Kahawa is Swahili for "coffee," from the Arabic qahwa. Nagana is a corruption of the modern Zulu name for the livestock disease caused by the flagellate Trypanosoma brucei, spread by the bite of the tsetse fly Glossina rhodesiensis.
The day on which the story starts, 3 Nisanu, 20 Xerxes in the Babylonian calendar, would be April 8, 466 B.C. in ours. Xerxes was murdered in 465 B.C., not sooner than August 4 and not later than August 8; I have assumed August 6 as the date. Diodorus, Ctesias (apud Photius), and Justin give somewhat divergent accounts of the murder; I have followed the first of these because it best suited my story. Dates are given throughout in the Babylonian calender, although the calendric situation in the Achaemenid Empire had been complicated by the attempt of Darius, some decades before, to make the Egyptian solar year standard for the whole Empire. A lunar calendar like the Babylonian has a great advantage for the historical novelist, namely: it is always easy to tell what the moon looked like on any date, without calling up the planetarium.
A "penny" in the story means "one twelfth of a shekel." The people of those days actually used such awkward expressions, or some even clumsier, such as "three twenty-fourths of a shekel." Distinctive names for small coins had not yet been invented, and the coins themselves had not yet come into wide use. As a weight, a shekel was one sixtieth of a pound (the Babylonian pound being 1.1 times ours). A silver coin of that weight was about the size of a U.S. quarter or a British shilling, but its purchasing power was something like that of ten or twenty dollars. The daric stater, the standard Achaemenid golden coin, was worth twenty silver shekels.
"The boats" and "the ashes" were two methods of capital punishment employed by the Achaemenids. In the former, the culprit was placed in a coffinlike structure with his extremities sticking out and then left in the sun to die. In "the ashes" he was placed on a beam above a deep bed of ashes and left until he fell off to smother.
The rules of Egyptian checkers, or tjau (later known to the Romans as ludus latrunculorum, "the game of robbers") were reconstructed by Edward Falkener in his book Games Ancient and Oriental and How to Play Them (1892, 1961). If Falkener is right, the game is played on a board twelve cells on a side. Each of the two players has thirty pieces ("dogs") arranged at the start in five rows on alternate squares as in modern checkers. Each piece may move one square in any direction, orthogonally or diagonally, and may jump a hostile piece if the cell beyond it is vacant. But the only way that a player can take a hostile piece is by placing two of his pieces on opposite sides of that piece, orthogonally or diagonally. (One may move a piece between two of one's opponent's without losing it.) It is not a bad game as board games go, though each game takes much longer than a game of modern checkers.
The research trip for this novel proved exceptionally lively. In Uganda I was chased by a camera-shy hippopotamus. In the Congo I unwisely tried to swing, like Tarzan, on one of those dangling jungle vines, and shook down on myself a swarm of venomous ants.
The thing I remember with the most amusement happened when I was driving from Khartoum to the ruins of Meroê (a fifteen-hour round trip, and you need a four-wheel drive because of the sand). Seeing dead camels by the roadside with vultures picturesquely perched upon them, I thought that what I needed to add to the junk in my study was a well-bleached Sudanese camel's skull.