Marjorie Vernelle

I have been a museum lover since I was nine years old. Wherever I have lived (California, Washington, Colorado, Mexico, Toronto, or Paris, Antibes, and Avignon in France), I have been involved in the arts, its beauty and its history. It all got started with the ancient Egyptian collection that was in the Joslyn Museum when I was a child in Omaha. Therefore, it is not odd that my latest work is a novel set in the time of Ancient Egypt's 19th Dynasty. The Great Temple of Abydos, built by Pharaoh Seti I drew my attention because of its wonderful raised relief art and its mysterious interior of columns. In researching it, I was drawn to find out more about the pharaoh who built it. He created a unique national monument where his people could pay tribute to any of the main gods of Egypt as they made their pilgrimage to the sacred soil of Osiris. It is written in that temple that the king hid a personal diary there in a treasury. So far, neither the diary nor the treasury have been found. Temple in the Sand, the Memoirs of a Pharaoh is a fictional creation of that diary and a look at the man who was a great warrior, great builder, a great leader, and a person with a fine sense of aesthetics. He is the true founder of the 19th Dynasty, the wonders of which are being explored through studies of the art in his temple and in his magnificent tomb.