In my new novel, Aphrodite’s Tears, set in the 1970s, the heroine Oriel is an archaeologist who has been hired to work on a subsea exploration around the small, private Ionian island of Helios. An ancient wreck has been found off the coast, calcified and half buried in the sand, and a salvage operation is underway. Oriel is to cast her expert eye over the artefacts recovered from the wreck.

When she arrives on the island, she discovers another archaeological dig is underway, the excavation of a Minoan temple. Of course, she is intrigued, and keen to visit the site.

At this point, I confess, I had a wonderful time writing about Oriel’s findings at the site, for I love archaeology myself and am fascinated by what is discovered on such digs. (Take me to any museum, and I will spend hour upon hour poring over exhibits. It is like all the history weaves a spell over me, and I lose track of time.)

At the Minoan temple excavation site, Oriel sees all kinds of amazing relics of the past. But she is especially excited by one find in particular:

He led Oriel further down the corridor to an inside portico, half of it resurrected in all its elegant glory with a row of graceful arches and stone pillars, the other half still under reconstruction, including the fallen portions of a beautiful triangular tympanum with carvings of rearing horses. Two men were bent over a large marble head and torso on the ground, working carefully with a brush and small chisel… Oriel was transfixed by the gigantic torso on the ground.

‘The Prince of Lilies!’ she gasped, kneeling to look at it more closely, her hand reverently and gently outlining the necklace of carved flowers and the curling peacock feather of his headdress.

Oriel’s thrill at the sight of the Prince is an echo of my own, when I saw this, in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum on Crete:

It is so vivid, don’t you think? And yet parts of this fresco date all the way back to around 1550 BC!

The Prince of Lilies is one of the best surviving examples of a Minoan fresco. The subject, wearing a necklace of lilies and crown of lilies and peacock feathers, is thought to be the Priest King of Knossos, leading a beast – a bull, perhaps.

You may have noticed that I wrote parts of this fresco date back to circa 1550 BC. Therein lies the reason that Oriel is so excited to see another depiction of the Prince.

It was English archaeologist Arthur Evans who excavated the palace of Knossos on Crete at the turn of the twentieth century, and who found The Prince of Lilies. It was fragmented, and so he had it completed by an artist. How far the final fresco resembles the original Minoan painting and how far it represents Evans’/the artist’s vision of how it would have looked has been debated ever since.

Imagine how Oriel feels, then, upon discovering a new depiction of the Prince – and then she is told that no fewer than twelve pottery versions have been excavated too. Besides everything else that will be discovered on this temple dig and on her own excavation, this alone is ground-breaking: she knows now the face of the true Priest King.

‘I find it thrilling,’ Oriel says of her job, ‘to walk where ancient feet have trod.’

In that sense, Oriel is a heroine after my own heart. I admire her learning and skills; I admire her thirst for knowledge; I admire her reverence for the past. Most of all, I admire her for following her own star.

‘Are there any lady archaeologists, darling? Isn’t that what men usually do?’ said her mother when Oriel announced she was going to be an archaeologist.

That doesn’t remotely deter Oriel, however. If you will walk where ancient feet have trod, after all, why not walk where male contemporaries tread? And walk with pride, with your head held high, knowing that you are their equal.