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 of Knidos 175 BC. This variation is summarised in the British Museum's estimate of 200-250 BC as its age. The rest of the monument is still in Turkey where it has been excavated by the British Museum. It was originally 12 metres square. Excavations at the site, and similar monuments nearby, have failed to find an artefact or inscription that would more definitely date the statue. The Lion of Knidos was found in 1858 by the British archaeologist Richard Popplewell Pullan as he walked the cliffs near what is now the Turkish town of Datça. Three miles away Pullan was helping Charles