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
Tomb of Thutmose the much larger tomb of Maya, nurse of Tutankhamun. The entrance to the tomb chapel is cut into the rocks at Saqqara and faces south. The whole tomb chapel consists of an entrance corridor, the main chamber, and a large niche on the western side where there opens a shaft to the underground burial chambers. The whole tomb is approximately 4.20 meter long. The main chamber is approximately 2.60 by 2 m big. A pillar stands in the middle of the main chamber. The burial chambers had been looted previously. All walls of the tomb chapel were decorated with paintings