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
Tutankhamun chamber, which was purported to possibly contain a burial of Nefertiti. For many years, rumors of a "curse of the pharaohs" (probably fueled by newspapers seeking sales at the time of the discovery) persisted, emphasizing the early death of some of those who had entered the tomb. The most prominent was George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon who died on 5 April 1923, 5 months after the discovery of the first step leading down to the tomb on 4 November 1922. A study of documents and scholarly sources led "The Lancet" to conclude as unlikely that Carnarvon's death had anything