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
Exploration of the Valley of the Kings Carter to explore it. After a systematic search they discovered the actual tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) in November 1922. At the end of the century, the Theban Mapping Project re-discovered and explored tomb KV5, which has since been discovered to be probably the largest in the valley (having at least 120 rooms) and was either a cenotaph or real burial for the sons of Ramesses II. Elsewhere in the eastern and western branches of the valley, several other expeditions cleared and studied other tombs. Until 2002 the "Amarna Royal Tombs Project" explored the area around KV55 and KV62, the Amarna