The A to Z Challenge continues on my blog! At this rate, I’ll probably be wrapping up with Z about the time every other blogger in the world starts up again. I’m having fun though and I hope you are too.

The first thing that comes to my mind for the letter “H” is Hamunaptra, mostly because

I spend entirely too much time cruising eBay and look what I found and HAD to have! It’s only a resin replica of the Key to the Book of the Dead (in the movie) and doesn’t actually open (so no treasure map inside) but the 1999 “The Mummy” is one of my all time favorite movies. And the invented-for-this-movie  “city of the dead” Hamunaptra was the destination everyone in the movie was going to, for better or worse.  My younger daughter and I watched the movie at the theater on opening day, went outside, bought another set of tickets and watched it again immediately. SO good! All that adventure, hints of ancient Egypt, Brendan Fraser in his prime, Ardeth Bey the Medjai leader, with the long hair and the big gun….mummies, cats, scarabs….what more could I ask??? I try to capture that spirit of adventure, magic, romance and  anything-is-possible in the “Gods of Egypt” novels I write, which are set in ancient Egypt.

H would also be for the goddess Hathor, of whom I’m very fond. She appears in “Magic of the Nile” at a critical point and I have an unfinished novella  where she’s very key to events.  She was the Goddess of many things, but particularly of love, beauty, motherhood, music, joy and dancing, and could appear as a cow, a cow-headed woman, or a woman with curving cow horns.

Or, H can be for honeybee. Those little guys are so important to our food supply….plant flowers for them if you can, ok? This site seems to have a good year round list of what flowering plants the bees prefer.  We need the bees! (Yes, the bees are a total non sequitor from the subject of Egypt…)

So I’ll leave you with this photo from “The Mummy” – can’t talk about all that Ardeth Bey goodness and not have his picture anywhere. In our house we also quite loved Jonathan as portrayed by John Hannah.