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 King Muryeong list of World Heritage Sites. The tomb was accidentally discovered during water drainage work on the No.5 and 6 tombs in 1971. It had been untouched by grave robbers and thieves for over a millennium, and when it was excavated it was the first time the tomb had been opened since the bodies of the king and queen were interred there fifteen hundred years earlier. The exterior of the tomb looks like an earthen mound, 20 meters in diameter and 7.7 meters () in height. It is believed that the mound was originally larger. Notably, the tomb employed a drainage