Epic birth of a fledgling saga by Jocelyn Righton, The Bay Post, Friday 21st of March, 2014

WITH assassins and mercenaries on the family tree, Elisabetta Faenza couldn’t resist the temptation to write about them.

On March 27, the first book of a trilogy based on her famed ancestors, The Infidel, will be introduced by the author at the Bay Bookshop in Batemans Bay.

As the title suggests, this work of historical fiction takes place during the Crusades, which ended in the 13th century after 200 years of religious fanaticism.

Elisabetta, who lived in Batemans Bay for 25 years and now lives in Mongarlowe, says the original idea to write her epic work came from a project on family history at high school in Canberra.

“My family had a family tree on parchment which came from the Vatican,” she said.

“The family tree traced the Faenza family back to the 12th century, when they arrived in Italy from Faiyum in Egypt. It started a quest to fill in the gaps.”

When the parchment’s text was translated into English, Elisabetta was more than fascinated to find out that the males in the line became mercenaries and assassins, were appointed captains of Verona and Venice, and worked for the Doges of Venice and the Sforza family in Rimini.

From 1989 to the early 1990s, she wrote the original script of the trilogy.

Advised that Australian publishers weren’t interested in non-Australian content, she sent a sample to agents in the UK and US, where it was picked up by a literary agent in California.

“They said a film company was interested,” Elisabetta said.

“I then sent the entire script but the company vanished and, unbeknown to me, it was passed around Hollywood under another name and the film rights were sold.”

The fate of her work was brought to her attention by a newspaper article about the most expensive film ever planned at that time, but shelved because of an unwieldy script and a budget blowout.

Bells began to ring when she made further investigations and realised it was her story.

“I heard Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to play the protagonist, but I don’t know why because the character is North African,” she said

A letter from her lawyers to the production company informing it of her authorship and with an offer to help with the script was met with the news of its bankruptcy.

Elisabetta was so disillusioned she swore off writing fiction for the next 10 years, though she did write the libretto for Bay Theatre Players’ production of D’Arc, The Legend of Saint Joan in 1998.

“When I met my new partner, John Duffy, I didn’t have any money so I wrote him a story for a Christmas present,” she said.

“He was working offshore and he and his workmates kept asking for more stories.
I showed John the script of The Infidel and he was so impressed he encouraged me to pursue it.”

She reworked the entire script, broke it into three parts and, once again, tried her luck.

This time, it was a perfect run. The book was accepted by a reputable US publisher, Strategic Books, is now in print and negotiations are under way for it to be translated.

“It’s a dream come true that people are finally able to read it - and enjoy it,” she said.

Elisabetta takes a realistic view of her place among writers.

“I wouldn’t describe myself as a literary giant – I’m a storyteller,” she said.

“My stories are really fast-paced, have a lot of adventure and are a little bit naughty. They are an alternative romp through history!”

The Infidel is part one of The Condottiero Trilogy, which is but just the first trilogy of the Kingmaker Saga.

Part two, Veritas, about the fall of Constantinople, will be published later this year, and part three, The Assassin, swings back to the life and times of St Paul, will follow.

Elisabetta said she was very grateful to Vince and Glenda Heys.

“They were the first people to read it, and were really encouraging all those years ago,” she said.

With Elisabetta at Bay Bookshop will be her very good friend the Hon Dr Margaret Reid AO, an ACT senator for 25 years, who will speak at the gathering.

They first met in 1983 when Elisabetta was the Queen of Canberra for her fundraising and work for people with a disability in the ACT.

Everyone is welcome to attend the Bookshop, in Orient Street, from 5pm.

An RSVP is not essential but would be appreciated to 4472 6338.

The Infidel can be bought online from the publishers:

http://sbprabooks.com/ElisabettaLFaenza

or through Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Infidel-Elisabetta-L-Faenza/dp/1625164602/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395640550&sr=8-1&keywords=the+infidel+by+elisabetta+l+faenza




For more news about The Infidel see:

http://www.braidwoodtimes.com.au/story/2104106/the-infidel-book-launch/?cs=743http://www.braidwoodtimes.com.au/story/2104106/the-infidel-book-launch/?cs=743

Unlocking the Secrets of the Nimrud Lens

I've written before about the vast amount of technology that arrived in Europe from the Middle East during or just after the Crusades.  Christianity destroyed or forbid thousands of ancient scientific texts, and it was only after Christians were exposed to these books and technological advances while traveling to such ancient cities as Antioch, Ascalon, Jerusalem, Alexandretta, Tyre and Acre that the West began to crave what had long been forbidden.

The works of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Pythagoras had been preserved by Islamic scholars, debated and further developed, leading to such advances as the modern clock, telescope, compass and the wonders of hydraulic and mechanical robotics.

Travel back in time to the medieval and ancient  Middle East in The King Maker Saga, read Book 1 - The Infidel: http://sbprabooks.com/elisabettalfaenza/

Of course many inventions predate even the Greek masters, and are unique to the ancient scientists of civilizations like Egypt and Assyria.  One such invention is the Nimrud Lens.

Below is an excellent article by Ancient Origins - enjoy...

The Nimrud lens is a 3,000-year-old piece of rock crystal, which was unearthed by Sir John Layard in 1850 at the Assyrian palace of Nimrud, in modern-day Iraq.  Since its discovery over a century ago, scientists and historians have debated its use, with one prominent Italian professor claiming the lens was used by the ancient Assyrians as part of a telescope, which would explain how the Assyrians knew so much about astronomy.
The Nimrud lens (also called the Layard lens), which has been dated to between 750 and 710 BC, is made from natural rock crystal and is a slightly oval in shape.  It was roughly ground, perhaps on a lapidary wheel. It has a focal point about 11 centimetres from the flat side, and a focal length of about 12 cm.  This would make it equivalent to a 3× magnifying glass (combined with another lens, it could achieve much greater magnification). The surface of the lens has twelve cavities that were opened during grinding, which would have contained naptha or some other fluid trapped in the raw crystal. The lens is said to be able to focus sunlight although the focus is far from perfect.
There has been much debate over the original use of the Nimrud lens.  Some speculate that it was used as a magnifying glass, or as a burning-glass to start fires by concentrating sunlight, while others have proposed that the lens was part of a telescope.  However, if we are to believe the British Museum’s description, the Nimrud lens “would have been of little or no practical use”, and while they acknowledge that “this piece of rock crystal has been carefully ground and polished, and undoubtedly has optical properties”, they reach the unusual conclusion that the optical properties were “probably accidental”.  I wonder if the British Museum also maintains that the hundreds of other carefully crafted and polished lenses found throughout the ancient world were also “accidental”?
The British Museum finished by saying that: “There is no evidence that the Assyrians used lenses, either for magnification or for making fire, and it is much more likely that this is a piece of inlay, perhaps for furniture.” However, many disagree with this claim.
Sir John Layard suggested that Assyrian craftsmen used the lens as a magnifying glass to make intricate and miniscule engravings, such as those that have been found on seals and on clay tablets using a wedge-shaped script. But experts on Assyrian archaeology are unconvinced. They say that the lens is of such low quality that it would have been a poor aid to vision.


Another hypothesis is that the lens was used as a burning glass to start fire. Burning-glasses were known in the ancient world. Aristophanes refers to "the beautiful, transparent stone with which they light fires" in his play The Clouds (424 BC). Pliny the Elder (23-79AD) describes how glass balls filled with water could set clothes on fire when placed in line with the sun. However, there is no clear evidence to support the theory that this was the purpose for which the Nimrud lens was created.
Italian scientist Giovanni Pettinato of the University of Rome has proposed that the lens was used by the ancient Assyrians as part of a telescope.  According to conventional perspectives, the telescope was invented by Dutch spectacle maker, Hans Lippershey in 1608 AD, and Galileo was the first to point it to the sky and use it to study the cosmos. But even Galileo himself noted that the 'ancients' were aware of telescopes.
While lenses were around before the Nimrud lens, Pettinato believes this was one of the first to be used in a telescope.  The earliest lenses identified date back around 4,500 years ago to the 4th and 5th Dynasties of Ancient Egypt (e.g., the superb `Le Scribe Accroupi' and `the Kai' in the Louvre), where it appears they were used as schematic eye structures (iris/pupil inserts) associated with funerary statues. Latter examples have been found in Knossos dated to around 3,500-years-old.  In total, there are several hundred reported lenses now on record from around the ancient world, so it appears that the ancients knew a lot more about lenses than some, like the British Museum, give them credit for.
Saturn’s Serpents
One of the reasons Pettinato believed that the Assyrians used the Nimrud lens as part of a telescope is that some of their knowledge about astronomy seems impossible to have acquired without a telescope.  For example, the ancient Assyrians saw the planet Saturn as a god surrounded by a ring of serpents, which Pettinato suggests was their interpretation of Saturn's rings as seen through a telescope. However, other experts say that serpents occur frequently in Assyrian mythology, and note that there is no mention of a telescope in any of the many surviving Assyrian astronomical writings.
Whatever its purpose, as an ornament, as magnifying lens, a burning glass, or part of a telescope, the Nimrud lens certainly appears to be more than an “accident”.  But exactly how it was used, we may never know.

Featured Image: The Nimrud Lens. Photo credit: Wikimedia
By April Holloway
References
The Nimrud Lens / The Layard Lens – The British Museum
World's oldest telescope? – BBC
The Development History of the Telescope – Antique Spectacles
Ancient Lenses - Ancient Wisdom
Ancient Optical Lenses – Ancient Cinema