Notes on the Pharaoh's Heart

 My historical novels don’t include endnotes, which was an editorial decision. But those who like to dig a little deeper into the period may feel a bit cheated by their absence. So I intend to make it up to those readers (I’ve already added a partial bibliography to my Acknowledgement page). I've barely begun, but I intend to slowly rectify that. If you have any questions from your reading, just note them in the comments below, and I'll try to address them.

Check back for the missing endnotes to each of my novels.

The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle 

The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter  

The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart

 

The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart

Pg. 9.--The Cottingley fairies were a cause celebre for Watson's editor, Arthur Conan Doyle, who may have influenced Holmes in his own championing of the incidents. In 1917 five photographs supposedly taken by two young cousins who lived in the village ofCottingly purportedly evidenced the existence of fairies. The photos were rather bad fakes, but they seized the public imagination at the time. Holmes went so far as to write a defense of the two girls in The Strand. It was not until the 1980s that the women admitted the pictures were faked, using cardboard cutouts of fairies taken from a childrens' book of the time.

Pg. 10--Lady Evelyn Beauchamp, Lord Carnarvon's daughter, was actually the first person to breach King Tut's burial chamber on the night of November 26, 1923, on an unauthorized visit by herself, Howard Carter and Arthur Callender. through a small hole in the chamber's sealed doorway. Since she was smallest, she went first.

Pg. 12--Hugh Evelyn White was an archaeologist and Egyptologist who lectured at the University of Leeds. In 1922 he was one of the experts working with Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter on Tutankhamun's tomb. His suicide two years later in a taxicab has often been attributed to the "curse of Tutankhamun,"  but was most likely due to extreme personal stress following an affair.

Pg. 13-- "Prince"Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey was not an actual prince, but a wealthy Egyptian aristocrat. He wed the courtesan Marguerite Alibert in 1923. Later that same year, after attending a performance of The Merry Widow in Paris, they returned to their hotel, the Savoy, where they argued. The argument culminated in her shooting him to death. They was arrested and later acquitted of all charges.

Pg. 13--Aubrey Herbert, the younger half-brother of Lord Carnarvon, was a British soldier, diplomat, linguist, and intelligence operative who was twice offered the throne of Albania. He had poor eyesight, and was soon to go blind when he decided to follow dubious medical advice to have every tooth in his head pulled--which was somehow supposed to alleviate his impending blindness. Instead he developed blood poisoning and died--only five moths after Lord Carnavon died, also of blood poisoning.