Marjorie Vernelle
Seti I is most frequently known as the father of Ramesses II, but in fact, he was a great pharaoh himself, though with a relatively short reign of just eleven years. A great warrior king, a strategic thinker, and a man who knew the life of the ordinary people, he was an extraordinary ruler. His brand was excellence, and he used that in many forms to win his people to a king who was not born royal. A warrior with the soul of an artist, his Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak is a wonder. His tomb in the Valley of the Kings is the most beautiful, with a burial chamber referred to as the 'Sistine Chapel of Ancient Egypt.' His mortuary temple in Abydos venerates the main deities of old Egypt with some of that ancient culture’s most beautiful raised relief art.It is that temple, the Temple of Seti, that forms the structure of this novel which attempts to recreate the diary of the pharaoh. It is written on the temple walls that the king kept a diary and had it hidden somewhere in the temple. As yet it has not been found, but one can easily imagine the king in the solitude of the night writing of his life, as he realizes his shortness of breath and pressure in the chest may mean it is the last year of that magnificent life. Temple in the Sand, the Memoirs of a Pharaoh is a tribute to the mysterious and beautiful sacred structure built by Pharaoh Seti I in Abydos and to the man behind the royal regalia.
