Arthur Phillips search for meaning in life. The novel was well received commercially and critically, winning Phillips the 2003 Los Angeles Times/Art Seidenbaum Award for Best First Fiction, as well as other honors. "The Egyptologist" is structured as journals, letters, telegrams, and drawings, from several different points of view. The main story is set in 1922 and follows a hopeful explorer who, working near Howard Carter (the man who discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun), risks more and more of his life and savings on an apparently quixotic effort to find the tomb of an apocryphal Egyptian king. The book was an
Battiscombe Gunn of 1921 to 1922 he was a member of the team led by Thomas Eric Peet and Leonard Woolley excavating at Amarna. He was then appointed (1922 to 1928) to the staff of the Service des antiquités de l'Égypte (the Service of Antiquities of the Egyptian government). During this time he worked with Cecil Firth in the investigations of the pyramid of Teti. He assisted in the translation of ostraca from the tomb of Tutankhamun. Using field glasses, he was able to read the name Sneferu in the tomb which was eventually shown to be the tomb of Hetepheres I.