HEDVIG E. JENEY
Hedvig E. Jeney was born in Hungary. Although she has lived around the world, she has lived in Egypt for the past thirteen years. Over this time, she travelled the country, feeding her fascination and love for Ancient Egypt, the historical facts encompassing the people, the culture, the food, the traditions and the social and diverse conflicts. Through this knowledge and experience, her historical novel, “Nanshaya, The Echo of Time”, was born.
She also worked as a journalist with different magazines and newspapers in Egypt and wrote short stories for children. The novel’s idea came to her from her first passion for history, fueling her curiosity for mysterious and unsolved stories that keep driving her to know more. Hedvig tirelessly researched the subject matters because she could easily imagine a beautiful story filled with human emotions while giving the readers an authentic picture of ancient Egypt, about the ancient Egyptian’s lives and beliefs through an exciting, mysterious, and action-packed story. The author simply gave voices to the ancients to tell the story of the ancient Babylonian oracle, Nanshaya.
Interview on Nile Life TV, Egypt with the Author and Prof. Mustafa Riad about the novel
THE STORY OF THE BOOK
A few years ago, I travelled between the Sinai mountains to a birthday party at Castle Zaman with a driver.
I was alone, the driver barely spoke English, and I admired the beautiful mountains passing us during the long ride. Ancient Egyptian history has fascinated me since I was a little girl, and while watching the colourful rock formations and cliffs along the road, I wondered.
If those high mountains could talk, what kind of story would they tell me?
Maybe a lost princess sleeping in her eternal dream in a collapsed cave surrounded by her maidens and treasure? Maybe ...
In a short time, I wrote down the idea in my notebook (which I always carry with me) and in my excitement, I told the story to the driver to see if he liked it. When I finished, he became so enthusiastic that he wanted to stop by a nearby village and talk to the chief in the hope of searching for the princess and her treasure. I told him I just invented the story, which was all fiction, but he insisted. In the end, I managed to convince him to continue our trip without a stop, but he encouraged me to think more about my idea.
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When I returned home, I researched the subject to see what era I could place my story and – believe it or not – I found my princess. She was a living person (obviously, there was no mention in the records about her final destiny), but she disappeared from the historical records at a certain point.
The more I dug (my curiosity fully awakened), the more I realized that the story of Nebetah, the daughter of the pharaoh Amenhotep III., was so captivating that it soon became my obsession. I realized that all the necessary characters were there and the historical events could have happened as I imagined. A dear English friend urged me to continue, and I contacted archaeologists, Egyptologists, and professors of the subject, and in a few years, “Nanshaya, the Echo of Time” was born.
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I am so proud that I could give a voice to the ancients, and through me, they could tell their story.