Elham LEMEUR, Franco-Moroccan, born in 1966 in France. She works as an accountant in Paris. She is a fan of classic films and science-fiction novels.
Fascinated by the mystery of the archaeological site of the Gobekli Tepe temple in Turkey, she created a work of fiction and developed an entire universe, which she completed three years later.
“The Hill of the Three Gods” is one of the few fantasy novels about Göbekli Tepe, dominated by the supernatural, adventure and history.
TBE: Your novel weaves together mythology, ancient history, and the supernatural in fascinating ways. What inspired you to blend the ancient myth of Etana with the mysterious archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe to create this rich narrative world?
Elham Lemeur: Etana is said to be a legendary king from Mesopotamian history, and served as the basis for my novel.
Of course, I’ve made some changes to adapt it to my fiction.
Having heard of the archaeological discovery of the Gobekli tepe temple in Turkey, near the town of Sanliurfa, I took the liberty of blending the ancient myth with the temple for my story.
Etana is symbolized by a man flying on the back of a giant eagle.
Given the size of the eagle, my imagination ran riot: for me, the giant bird must have been an ancient god, and what was this god doing on Earth?
Fed up with reading fantasy novels and science-fiction films, my imagination is, I admit, overflowing, probably to compensate for my boring job.
TBE: The concept of “birth debt” forms a central spiritual framework in your story. Could you talk about how this idea developed and what it represents to you philosophically?
Elham Lemeur: I assumed that what all religions had in common was the concept of the soul or afterlife.
And then I thought of a debt, a loan. Like a “supernatural” contract between nature and the living.
Indeed, our birth is conditional on a contract. We were granted a soul (which would animate our body for a certain period of time), but the contract stipulated that it had to be returned once specific rituals had been performed.
So, from the moment we are born, we are indebted to nature. Failure to return the souls would have consequences for the tribe.
And so I imagined that the Gobekli tepe temple (which, at the time, didn’t go by that name) might have had this customary function: an incredible place with amazing people capable of knowing whether the deceased had indeed repaid his birth debt.
TBE: I was struck by your portrayal of the Efys, these small, vibrant guardians who bring so much life to the sanctuary
Elham Lemeur: Historically speaking, this African forest population is descended from an ancient Paleolithic population in the Great Lakes region.
In ancient Egypt, dwarfs and pygmies were considered to be endowed with celestial gifts. They were highly respected and enjoyed high social status.
However, I was interested in them because of their cosmogony, i.e. their worship of strange births, especially twins, which they likened to genies! According to them, the birth of twins disrupts the normal order of things, giving rise to important ritual practices.
As a result, my characters had to become guardians of the Gobekli tepe temple – it is, after all, a holy house.
As in ancient Egypt, I had them play the role of chief steward and guardian of the sacred site.
TBE: Your portrayal of disability through the priestesses is quite powerful. Rather than “fixing” their differences, you elevate them to spiritual significance. How does your personal experience with your son’s autism inform this perspective?
Elham Lemeur: I decided to sublimate disability and transform disabled and deformed people into “spiritual” heroes and saviors of souls.
In fact, it was the American Marvel superheroes who inspired me. Remember, they got their powers from strange phenomena, like Spider-Man who was bitten by a radioactive spider. Well, I’ve done the same, only it’s a divine energy that will transform my disabled characters.
My heroes are not contaminated by deadly radioactivity.
Pakousane will meet the Efys tribe on the banks of the Nile. They are African pygmies, who will reveal to him this important information about “abnormal” beings who are protected by the gods because they are, in a way, demigods on Earth.
TBE: The complex friendship between Pakousane and Sihiru spans decades and evolves through separation and reunion. What were you exploring through this particular relationship?
Elham Lemeur: Pakousane, the main hero, a semi-orphan, is a suffering young man in need of answers. Also looking for meaning in his life, he must leave his bleak village to rub his skin with the world.
Sihiru is his inseparable childhood friend. He’s a well-balanced young man, a bon vivant with a penchant for alcohol, who will nonetheless become a sorcerer-healer, a profession for which his father so painstakingly trained him.
The two are brothers at heart, from different backgrounds but complementary.
As it turns out, Sihiru’s journey will reveal his own limitations – he lacks stability, and the length of the journey is too much for him.
For Pakousane, on the other hand, it’s a rebirth, propelled by the call of the road, of discoveries and encounters.
Their aspirations diverge, and it’s time for them to part ways and fulfill their own destinies.
Sihiru, being somewhat lazy and dependent, will have to face life on his own, and their parting must be brutal, as will happen in India. The two young men had to be separated by an ocean.
However, the heart is never at peace after such a separation, so they reunite three decades later. The reunion is a means of calming each other’s nerves, the better to separate them a second time.
TBE: The “long sound” theory that Libaye develops becomes a fascinating element late in the story. What drew you to explore the concept of sound as both spiritual communication and healing power?
Elham Lemeur: According to certain scientific studies, there is a vibration emitted by the Earth that has significant effects on the health of living beings.
This vibratory wave is known as the Schumann resonance, which translates into very low frequencies in the Earth’s electromagnetic field. Some compare these waves to our planet’s heartbeat, whose frequency of 7.83 Hz at the Earth’s surface is inaudible to the human eardrum. It struck me that the human body could be strongly affected by this strange sound.
And I immediately thought: “Damn! What if this resonance were to stop, would we all be dead?”
So I imagined that one of my secondary characters, one of the thirty disciples, would play the role of a sound specialist, experimenting with new sounds using prehistoric instruments. He was convinced of the existence of magical sounds inaudible to the human ear. He named it “long son”, the mysterious sound.
TBE: I’m curious about your research process! How did you balance historical accuracy with the freedom to invent in your worldbuilding, especially regarding ancient cultures like those of Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley?
Elham Lemeur: I spent a great deal of time on GALLICA, a major digital library, delving into ancient archives and documents.
My novel is set in the year 9600 BC. I’ve tried to sketch out a “probable ancient world” in which my characters would wander through a credible fertile crescent-through upper/lower Mesopotamia, the Harran plains, southern Arabia, Egypt and India.
My main sources dealing with the history and geography of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Andalusian agricultural techniques, ancient cuisine and navigation are drawn from the following authors:
GASTON MASPERO (1846-1916), French Egyptologist.
EUGENE NAPOLEON FLANDIN (1809-1889), French Orientalist painter.
IBN AL AWAM, born in Seville. He was an Arab agronomist and horticulturist who lived in Al-Andalus, Seville, in the 12th century. He wrote a treatise on agronomy, the Book of Agriculture.
JEAN BOTTERO (1914-2007) is a French historian, Assyriologist, specialist in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, and one of the world’s leading experts on Mesopotamia.
AHMAD IBN MADJID was an Arab poet, navigator and cartographer, born in Ras el Khaïmah (UAE) in 1432.
The most difficult task in historical fiction, and especially in such a remote period, was to provide the information on places and locations that would make the novel acceptable.
I relied mainly on map features (mountains, valleys, capes, rocky canyons, palm groves, bays…) and sometimes named them differently, which was very complicated for me.
Indeed, striking a balance between historical accuracy and the freedom to invent was no mean feat, which explains why it took me three years to write the book.
