Khokarsa

Khokarsa
Map of Khokarsa and Opar
Hadon of Ancient Opar, Flight to Opar location
Other name(s)	Khokarsan Empire
Created by	Philip José Farmer
Genre	Adventure novel, Prehistoric fiction
Type	Matriarchy
Ethnic group(s)	Khoklem, Klemsuh
Notable locations	Khokarsa Island (capital)

Khokarsa is a fictional empire in ancient Africa that serves as the primary setting for Philip José Farmer’s prehistoric fantasy novels Hadon of Ancient Opar, Flight to Opar, and The Song of Kwasin (the Khokarsa series).

Farmer has stated that he derived Khokarsa from Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (1891), in which the narrator's spirit visits an ancient fallen civilization. Over time, Farmer states, the syllables of the name "Khokarsa" were transposed so that the civilization eventually became known as "Carcosa." An examination of Farmer's notes relating to the Khokarsa series has indicated that he also drew on classical sources to create his fictional civilization, such as Robert Graves' The White Goddess (which inspired the matriarchal basis of Khokarsan culture), Jessie L. Weston's classic Arthurian study From Ritual to Romance (whose "freeing of the waters" theme influenced Farmer's conception of the downfall of Khokarsan civilization), and the plays of Euripides (Farmer drew his depiction of the Khokarsan oracles directly from Euripides' description of the Oracle of Delphi).

The origins of the Khokarsan civilization date back to 12,000 B.C., as the Khoklem people were expanding over the northern shore of the Kemu (the prehistoric northern inland sea of Central Africa). At this time, a man known as Sahhindar, the Gray-Eyed God, appeared in the region and came to be regarded by the locals as the god of plants, of bronze, and of Time, reputedly having been exiled from the land by his mother, the fertility goddess Kho, because he stole Time from her. Sahhindar appeared and reappeared among the Khoklem over a period of two thousand years, teaching them how to domesticate plants and animals, mine copper and tin, and make bronze tools, as well as teaching them the concept of zero. By circa 10,000 B.C. when the Khokarsa series begins, Sahhindar has brought the Khoklem from the Old Stone Age to the Bronze Age. “The Chronology of Khokarsa” addendum in Hadon of Ancient Opar hints that Sahhindar is actually John Gribardsun, the time-traveling protagonist from Farmer’s 1972 novel Time’s Last Gift, one of Farmer's many characters based on Tarzan.