Deplorable Word word itself, and had vowed that none of them, nor their descendants, would seek to discover it. Jadis said she had "learned it in a secret place and paid a terrible price to learn it". The book does not say what that price was, or give further details on the Deplorable Word. Lewis does not explicitly link the Deplorable Word to any specific weapon of mass destruction, but he alludes to the power of humanity to destroy life. Writing in 1955 in the midst of the Cold War, Lewis has the lion Aslan say to the central characters from the
Lion mummified lions were excavated at the necropolis Umm El Qa'ab in a tomb of Hor-Aha, and at Saqqara in the tomb of Maïa. In Sub-Saharan Africa, cultural views of the lion have varied by region. In some cultures, the lion symbolises power and royalty, and some rulers had the word "lion" in their nickname. For example, Marijata of the Mali Empire was given the name "Lion of Mali". Njaay, the founder of the Waalo kingdom, is said to have been raised by lions and returned to his people part-lion to unite them using the knowledge he learned from the lions.