This is a talk I gave at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY on May 14, 2024
Many writers I know begin their work on a brand-new novel by considering their cast of characters, particularly the main character. Others devise a plot line before they begin writing. And still others sit down without much in mind, letting the muse and their fingers on the keyboard guide them.
Not me. Because I write historical fiction, I always begin with research.
One of the questions I’m asked is: how much research do you have to do? And the answer is – a lot. Of course, that always begins with the events of the day. In BABYLON, for instance, it’s 567 BCE. The Judeans have revolted against Nebuchadnezzar II. So he’s angry and sends his troops to raze the capital city of Jerusalem and burn Solomon’s Temple – a replica of which Helen’s going to show us on today’s tour. And the novel starts on that horrible day, when the Chaldeans – Nebuchadnezzar’s soldiers – force the affluent, influential Judeans across the desert sands to exile in Babylon.
In my novel, this is embodied through the character of Sarah, a beautiful 15-year-old girl growing up on a farm outside of Jerusalem. Her beauty gets her in considerable trouble, but also gives her a glimpse into the political rivalries in the royal palace – and introduces her to Daniel the prophet.
When we talk about worldbuilding, setting becomes crucial. If we think about the various settings I had to bring to life on the page, we move from a destroyed Jerusalem to desperate desert sands to the city of Babylon, then the center of the world, to the royal palace and to a lowly barley farm on the outskirts of the city, which is where Sarah and three generations of her family end up. And at the end of the novel, when the Persian King Cyrus allows the Judeans to head home, we have the trek back to Judea, the disappointment over the still defenseless Jerusalem, overrun by foreigners, and the rebuilding of the Temple.
Honestly, I’m daunted just remembering everything that I had to describe. And it’s through both the research I did, which included some information about the lives of the Babylonians, as well as what’s called in writing circles my “respectful imagination” that helped me picture these scenes.
For instance, there’s a lot about bricks in the novel. Babylon was situated on the Euphrates River – you might recall that from Psalm 137, By the Rivers of Babylon – and so the building materials that were primarily used in this magnificent city came from river mud. If you were wealthy, you shaped bricks and had them fired in kilns. If you were poor, you set out your bricks to dry in the sun – which were nowhere as durable as the baked bricks. So there’s a scene in the novel where the bricks are weeping in winter rains.
It’s small details like this that help immerse my readers into what it might actually have been like to live in Babylon. And we historical novelists gather those details not only from books, but also from paintings and artifacts.
I often say that research presents me with gifts. In my BEYOND THE GHETTO GATES, for instance, a novel set in 1796-97 about a young General Bonaparte on military campaign in Italy, I set the novel in the town of Ancona, where Napoleon first learned that the Jews were locked behind ghetto gates from sundown to sun up each day. I knew nothing about the city until I started researching it, when I discovered two amazing facts: that Ancona at that time was the world center of ketubah, or Jewish marriage license, creation, and that there had been a miracle portrait of the Virgin Mother that seemed to turn its head and cry at cathedral worshipers. These two discoveries became instrumental literary devices for the narrative.
Which brings us to the Met Museum and the invaluable information I was able to glean as I was researching the novel. I owe a huge debt to the Met, because in 2008 they mounted a spectacular exhibition, Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade and Diplomacy in Second Millenium BCE. They included some 350 objects, including a replica of the Ishtar Gate and the royal throne room, with a mosaic floor, both of which are included, of course, in the novel.
Here’s what I wrote about that mosaic floor when the prophet Daniel is summoned to an audience with King Nebuchadnezzar:
Daniel walked upon the intricate mosaic of the Babylonian Empire sprawled across the entire floor, taking care not to tread on the small area signifying Judea, his homeland.
It’s a single line, but it would never have happened without seeing that mosaic here.
he description of the Ishtar Gate, a portion of which is now reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, is given a little more space in the novel:
Uri went straight…to the Ishtar Gate, determined to find Zakiti. Once again, she did not show up. Instead of heading straight home, he stood for a while, looking up at the massive blue gate with its crenellated bastions, its glittering blue tiles adored with white and ochre bulls and dragons. He’d been told that the gate’s walls were thick enough to allow a four-horse chariot to turn with ease high above the city.
Now, you can’t describe Babylon without mentioning the Ishtar Gate, but the initial inspiration came from seeing the replica here at the Met. The rest – especially the ability to ride a chariot on its immense walls – comes from further research. And placing it at this juncture of the novel, when the Judean Uri the scribe despairs of his Babylonian sweetheart, creates a strong contrast between the poor, captive Judeans and their conquerors. At least, I hope it does!
Descriptions of the gate, the massive Ziggurat where the god Marduk was worshipped, the enormous marketplace fed by traders from all over the globe – these all help capture the sense that Babylon was truly the center of the world at this time. And of course there’s mention of one of the seven wonders of the world, the Hanging Gardens – including the expense it took to construct and plant all those exotic plants, a gesture of love by King Nebuchadnezzar for his wife, Queen Amytis, who sorely missed the foliage of her native land, Media.
Before we head out to view the many ancient artifacts and paintings of the Met, I did want to mention one more particular artifact that made its way into the novel. As I was looking at all the items in the collection – including the amazing jewelry that I placed on the royals, the cuneiform tablets and cylinders that Uri and other scribes would use to keep the Judean oral tradition intact – it was in Babylon that many of the Bible stories we know today were first written down – and the idols that the Babylonians worshiped – I must have spent close to an hour with one dagger, bending over the glass case it was in. Without spending that time, I’d never have been able to describe it so completely:
Ophir glared at the weapon in his father’s hand. Like most Amorite daggers, the tang was made of copper smelted with tin and hammered to a deadly edge, a thick layer of twine nearly covering the grip. A weapon for close quarters fighting, for plunging into a heart at near range. There had been more than fifteen years of such attacks, intimidating the returning Judeans.
Such artifacts allowed me, in my worldbuilding, to create the ancient settings that – to my absolute delight – my readers have said make them feel like “they were there.” This is the ultimate goal of worldbuilding and I certainly wouldn’t have attained this level of it without this exhibition at the Met.
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