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 willed the throne to Paramessu, who founded the Ramesside family line of pharaohs. Tutankhamun was nine years old when he became Pharaoh, and he reigned for about ten years. Historically, Tutankhamun is significant because his reign was near the apogee of Egypt as a world power and because he rejected the radical religious innovations introduced by his predecessor and father, Akhenaten. Secondly, his tomb in the Valley of the Kings was discovered by Carter almost completely intact—the most complete ancient Egyptian royal tomb found. As Tutankhamun began his reign so young, his vizier and eventual successor, Ay, was probably making