Well, yeah, the chapter I'm working on is in its own way a big set-piece, bringing together threads and hints that were spread out over the rest of the story. So I was going to have to look up at least a thing or two.
But really I'm doing the research because it is so fun. Take the boarding school in Scotland. Gordonstoun, the real Gordonstoun, is a perfect choice. Aristocracy went there. It has an unusual emphasis on physical fitness -- at its founding it had a physical regime which verged on Spartan. Someone over at Eidos did their research. So already excuse to talk about the weirdness of Sparta, and to quote Wellington.
And it looks like he didn't actually say Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Dammit, march of history!
Then I hit the best quote of all. Prince Charles went to Gordonstoun. Which he called, pithily, "Colditz in kilts." Oh, yeah. I gotta write about this place now.
So next I needed a throwaway detail -- a place that is just background so a character has a place to have some life changing thoughts. And I have no idea why, but I thought of the mummy room at the British Museum. A little diversion first to who said it had lost its charm (George and Ira Gershwin, and there's a great cover by old Blue Eyes himself.) Then on to the Egyptian collections.
After a little poking around I came across a paper that attempts to establish a baseline for nomenclature and provenance of the mummies in their collection. And, oh, the wonders in there. About Budge buying them wholesale in Cairo, the so-called Sales Room of the Cairo museum, the factories on the west side of Thebes swapping mummies and cases and grave ornaments to make the best-looking composites for the mummy trade. And of course the complete lack of provenance up until -- yeah, you could have seen this coming -- Flinders Petrie.
Yeah, but none of this is going to fit. I decided early on that Gebelein Female 1 was the best mummy for the scene I need to write. Who was nicknamed "Gingerella" despite her brown hair because at one point she temporarily replaced the male specimen known as "Ginger" (who was a ginger -- or at least he used henna to that effect) in the mock-up pit burial he was displayed in. And, yeah, even that is too much for the scene.
Besides, I need space to talk about Roman-era grave paintings (something I knew about already) because it underscores so well the point I'm trying to make in my little ode on a Grecian Urn...I mean, Pre-dynastic Egyptian Mummy. (And, dammit -- I was going to let it go but now I can't remember if it was the very Greco-Roman paintings hung like creepy posters or a really cheap Halloween mask on the front of a wrapped mummy, or actual carved death masks that are what I was thinking of. Heck...I think it might have even been a completely different funerary good...so I'm going to have to fact-check anyhow.)
Nope, nope, I'm wrong. Or rather, I was right before. I was thinking of the Fayum, the mummy portraits of the coptic and Roman era, and it has been contended based on comparative analysis that the apparent naturalism is less true than it could be. Which was the point I wanted to make for the story, connected as it is to preserved remains which are separated from their burial goods, the correct signifiers of status and gender, even their names -- in those rare cases that history recorded them in the first place).
And yet one more thing that won't fit into the scene. I love the life and character of the Fayum Mummy Portraits but there's something about the eyes that makes me think of the goggle-eyed gaze of Byzantine mosaic art.
Of course little of this fits, and I'm far enough above my target word count I may have to split the chapter as it is. Thing of it is, it is making me think more and more of a place it could fit. There are so many stories and so many incredible characters in the earlier days of Archaeology. From the mass of scientists and artists Napoleon gathered around him at Giza to the famous names like Schliemann and Carter to the often unsung women and non-European archaeologists whose stories are finally starting to be unearthed.
I rather want to write a novel set in that transition period between antiquarianism and modern science. The research, though -- it is terrifying just how much one could find oneself wanting to do.
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