It is the only one of Christie's novels not to be set in the 20th century, and - unusually for her - also features no European characters. Instead, the novel is set in Thebes in 2000 BC, a setting for which Christie gained an appreciation whilst working with her archaeologist husband, Sir Max Mallowan, in the Middle East. The novel is notable for its very high number of deaths and is comparable to "And Then There Were None" from this standpoint. It is also the first full-length novel combining historical fiction and the whodunit/detective story, a genre which would later come to be called the historical whodunit.