Writing Prometheus alive: Where history and mythology meet
I know I’ve blogged before about Project Prometheus and its inspirations in mythology. But I thought I’d touch on where it departs from history and mythology, today.
I know there are historical scholars out there who’d debate the history and mythology of ancient Mesopotamia with some of the details in IN HER NAME. I’ve never claimed that I was writing historical fiction. I know the history of Sargon written in books, and I also know the mythology of the area, as is written in books. Thing is, I’m also aware of something many historians - whether through choice or the nature of things - forget: We don’t know everything about history.
There is an age-old adage which says “history is written by the victor.” In the case of ancient Mesopotamia, there’s not a whole lot written at all. Even today, there are discoveries constantly being unearthed in the Middle East and North Africa which change how we view different eras of the ancient world. IN HER NAME was written to take up the areas where history and mythology are vague, where what is and what could have been meet.
History tells us Sargon I of Akkad was the first great king of Mesopotamia. Mythology tells us of Ishtar’s adoption of a young man who later rose to become a great king through Her tutelage.
History tells us that Ashuribanipal degenerated from a decent king, in his youth, to a depraved and dangerous man in his later years. Mythology tells us of the epic struggle between Ishtar and Ereshkigal, and of demons that feed on souls and inhabit the bodies of their victims.
History tells us that every culture on the planet has tales of sunken cities and great floods. Mythology (and Homer) tell us that Atlantis was once the center of the ancient world, but not where or how.
Through IN HER NAME, I sought to bring these two areas of the same world together, to tell the story that fills in the gaps between segments of history and the rich tradition of mythology - to explore the possibilities that these events might all be part of a cosmic struggle between forces beyond the scope of human history to quantify. The purpose of this? Simply, I wanted to show the world that there are undercurrents to every action that are capable of rippling acros the pages of time.
So was born the story that became the genesis of Project Prometheus, IN HER NAME. Originally, it was meant to be a stand-alone novel - a response to the fear, paranoia, and terror that marked one of the darkest days in American history. But, as the story grew, those ripples became evident, and spread outward, encompassing more stories - more tales spun from where history and mythology met, and a new world was born.
