From the author of the bestselling Clytemnestra comes another intoxicating excursion into ancient history, painting the brutal and captivating empire of gods and men, and the one queen destined to rule them all.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Costanza Casati’s Babylonia, which is out January 14th 2025.
A common woman. The governor she married. The king who loved them both.
Babylonia across the centuries has become the embodiment of lust, excess, and dissolute power that ruled Ancient Assyria. In this world you had to kill to be king. Or, in the case of Semiramis, an orphan raised on the outskirts of an empire:
Queen.
Nothing about Semiramis’s upbringing could have foretold her legacy. But when she meets a young representative of the new Assyrian king, a prophecy unfolds before her, one that puts her in the center of a brutal world and in the hearts of two men – one who happens to be king.
Now a risen lady in a court of vipers, Semiramis becomes caught in the politics and viciousness of ancient Assyria. Instead of bartering with fate, Semiramis trains in war and diplomacy. And with each move, she rises in rank, embroiled in a game of power, desire, love, and betrayal, until she can ascend to the only position that will ever keep her safe.
In her second novel, Costanza Casati brilliantly weaves myth and ancient history together to give Semiramis, the only female ruler of the Assyrian Empire, a voice, charting her captivating ascent to a throne no one promised her.
Prologue
She kills her lover on the altar of a foreign goddess.
It is the month of beginning, and the valley is flat and green. The sanctuary stands in the darkening sky, with no attendants in sight. Derceto walks past the temple’s columns. In her arms, her baby stares with eyes as big and bright as moons. Don’t worry, Derceto thinks. It will be over soon.
She finds him in the main chamber, his body shrouded in shadows. The muscles in his shoulders tense as he polishes the altar with loving care, as if it were a woman he had under his hands, not a piece of stone.
He turns when he hears her. His expression is torn between panic and pity. She can’t help but remember the wonder his eyes held the first time he saw her. Is this all you feel for me now? she wants to ask. Instead, she holds the baby toward him. “This is your child.”
“You can’t do this, Derceto,” he says. “You can’t haunt me. You must live without me.”
I can’t. She knows she is weak. All her life she has walked in the darkness, fearing every shadow, every spirit. He was her only light, until he pushed her away and her world grew cold again. Somehow, she can’t find the light within herself.
“Don’t you want to hold your child?” She is aware of the desperation in her voice, but it doesn’t matter. There is no dignity left in her.
He blinks. “That is no child of mine.”
Suddenly she is furious, her pulse throbbing. You won’t leave us behind. She walks closer until their faces are only inches apart. He tries to push her back, b she shoves the baby into his arms. He takes her despite himself, wincing when the baby starts to cry. For a moment his face softens, a glimpse of affection. Derceto takes a knife out of her vest—the one she found outside the temple, used by votaries to sacrifice pigs and doves. He doesn’t have time to react. She stabs the blade into his chest, and they cry out in unison, as if both were wounded. Blood flows between them, wetting his white tunic and her dark dress. The knife stands in his chest, like an evil limb.
He looks at the blade in shock. “This is my goddess punishing me,” he whispers.
“No,” Derceto says. “This is me punishing you.”
Her tears fall on his cheeks. He stretches one shaking hand toward her, touches her hair before burying his face in it. The memory is like a burning brand pushed through Derceto’s head. She welcomes it. She wants to remember there was a time when she thought she could be happy. And she wants to remember how she lost it all.
***
The first thing he had ever said to her was, “Your hair is made of waves so dark they seem cut from the night sky.”
Men had often told her she was beautiful, but their words were empty, spoken to please themselves and their pride. He seemed to speak from the heart. He wasn’t interested in her reaction: he spoke as if he felt the need to say what he thought. That was why she didn’t walk away from him.
Outside the sanctuary, he was cleaning the statue of a woman, naked except for a tunic draped across her hips, so detailed and beautiful it was hard to believe it was made of stone. Behind him, a temple with columns like long, pale legs.
“Did you sculpt this?” Derceto asked, for she had never seen such a beautiful statue.
“I did.”
His gift is a wonder, she thought, almost equal to a god. “What is your name?”
He nodded to the statue, whose face was unreadable. “If I tell you, my goddess will punish me.”
“And what is her name?”
“The Greeks call her Aphrodite. She is the goddess of love.”
“Surely she will forgive you, then,” Derceto said, and she kissed him. He didn’t pull back but kept a hand on the statue, as if to anchor himself. That is how I want to be touched, she thought. As if I am a rock in someone else’s world, not just a twig carried by the current.
She started walking to the temple every evening, passing the marshes and small villages clustered on the banks of the river. There were other sanctuaries on the way, where travelers worshipped the animal-headed gods from Egypt or the deities Derceto had known all her life: fierce Ishtar, crafty Ea, shining Anu.
They spent night after night together by a lake near the city of Ascalon, where silver fish gleamed beneath the surface as if the water was filled with gems. She confided in him that her family was dead and all that was left for her was a hut at the edge of her village, where she treated fevers and illnesses with herbs and amulets. He didn’t tell her much, just listened, but she didn’t mind. Every part of his body, every bit of his skin, was hers. There are different ways to know a person. Sometimes if you know the body, you know the soul. He left her every morning at dawn, back to the smooth halls of his temple, and she went back to her village, the promise of the next night like a heart inside her, keeping her alive.
But happiness is a liar, for it makes us believe it will last forever, when it never does.
The goddess Aphrodite didn’t forgive, and her lover was a coward. When Derceto told him of the child growing inside her, of his child, he betrayed her. He slithered off to his temple, desperate to win back the love of his goddess. Derceto wept and cried and pleaded, but the votaries of the sanctuary sent her away. She returned to her village with madness in her eyes and grief in her heart, but even they rejected her: a pregnant woman without a husband was only a stain.
And so Derceto was alone again.
***
Outside the sanctuary the sun has sunk, and the world has gone cold. Derceto’s arms are bare, the wind pressing against her skin like a blade. Desert nights are unforgiving, and so are the gods to those who insult them.
The baby in her arms stares at her resentfully. As if she knows what her mother is about to do. You’d do the same if you were me, Derceto thinks.
The lake rests under the darkening sky. The wind carries the gods’ whispers. Derceto’s head throbs as she tries to lull the baby. She is an angry child, carrying her mother’s sorrow inside her. And why shouldn’t she? This world has no mercy for people like them.
The water below her looks like a pool of tears. Derceto settles the baby on a rock before tying one end of a thick rope around her own ankle, the other to the heaviest stone she can find.
All her life she has been afraid. Now she will finally rest. She takes a deep breath, then pushes the stone into the lake. The rope stretches and pulls, dragging Derceto with it. The impact of the water shocks her, and instinctively she tries to swim up.
The last thing she wonders, before her body stops fighting and her lungs fill with water, is what kind of woman her daughter will become if she lives.
