On November 5, 1922, at Highclere Castle Library, while retreating from her mother’s complaints and her father’s irritability, Eve receives a telegram from Howard. Since Carter had only reached Luxor on October 28, she expects nothing significant. She reflects on an argument she had with Carter before his departure about pursuing a Tutankhamun-linked site rather than one tied to Hatshepsut. She now recognizes she was being unreasonable. Opening the telegram, she reads that Carter has found a magnificent tomb with intact seals. Stunned, she wonders whose tomb it is and races into the main hall to find her father.

On November 24, 1922, Eve and Lord Carnarvon arrive in Luxor and are met by Carter, who warns them to stay quiet because word of the find has already reached locals. The group, including Arthur Callender, a railway engineer who has helped on past digs, briefly rests at Carter’s house before riding donkeys to the tomb. Eve carries her faience scarab for luck.

Sixteen carved steps lead to a sealed stone doorway. Eve and Carter brush away soil, and a cartouche gradually emerges: The tomb belongs to Tutankhamun, not Hatshepsut. Though deeply disappointed, she suppresses her feelings and tells Carter they will find Hatshepsut next time, though she privately doubts it.

At dusk the next day, Eve peers through a small hole in the sealed doorway of Tutankhamun’s tomb and sees hundreds of gilded objects. She confirms the discovery is wonderful, and the three embrace. With only their most trusted workers remaining, they decide to enter illegally that night, violating the Egyptian law requiring government witnesses. Eve is uneasy, thinking of Zaghloul’s criticism of colonial archaeology, but secures a promise that no artifacts will be moved or removed.

The trusted men chisel a narrow opening. Carter, Eve, and Lord Carnarvon squeeze through one by one, receiving torches from a foreman. The antechamber holds gilded furniture, a golden throne depicting Tutankhamun and his queen, Ankhesenamun, and signs of ancient, interrupted tomb robbery. There is no sarcophagus. Eve deduces a second room must exist, finds a small opening beneath the golden bed, and peers into a cluttered annex, but there is no coffin. Spotting two life-size black-and-gold guardian statues along a wall, she investigates behind them and finds loose plaster concealing a hidden opening. Over Howard and Lord Carnarvon’s safety warnings, she crawls through. Inside, her torch reveals a statue of the god Anubis and a large, gilded shrine which, she believes, holds the sarcophagus.

It is now February 16, 1923, in Luxor. Eve briefly recounts the months since November: a staged formal tomb opening, a London trip including an audience with King George V and Queen Mary, and a holiday at Highclere with Brograve. Back in Egypt, systematic cataloguing work with photographer Harry Burton grounds her amid the global “Tutmania” frenzy that has overtaken Luxor. She slips into the Winter Palace lobby unrecognized but finds Brograve waiting, accompanied by his parents, Lord and Lady Beauchamp. Lady Beauchamp is shocked to learn Eve actively participated in the excavation; Lord Beauchamp jokes that Lord Carnarvon is a gambler whose biggest win came from ancient Egypt, which irritates Eve. Before she can excuse herself, Lady Beauchamp announces they have arrived just in time for the formal ceremony to enter the burial chamber.

On February 18, 1923, select guests—including government officials and the Beauchamps—are seated before the guardian statues for the formal opening of the burial chamber, while an angry press mob of Egyptian reporters excluded from coverage, surrounds the site. Carter gives a brief account of Tutankhamun’s reign and his restoration of polytheistic religion before beginning to chip away at the mortar sealing the entrance. After two hours, the opening is wide enough to enter.

Eve, Lord Carnarvon, and Carter step through first. The chamber holds vivid painted walls, a large pink quartzite sarcophagus, and a gilded canopic shrine guarded by statues of the gods Isis, Nephthys, Neith, and Sereket. Eve is most moved by seven wooden oars Tutankhamun believed would ferry him to the afterlife. Egypt’s director of antiquities, Pierre Lacau, inspects the chamber before the other guests file through.

Afterward, as everyone exits into the press frenzy, Eve overhears Lord Carnarvon and Carter screaming at each other inside. Carter accuses Lord Carnarvon of treating the dig as entertainment and of handing nationalists a weapon by selling exclusive coverage to The Times and cutting out the Egyptian press. They shove each other. Eve steps between them, orders Carter to announce a temporary closure of the tomb, and tells her father—who looks visibly unwell—that they are sailing to Aswan until a coherent plan can be established.

The day after the burial chamber opening, Brograve is at the Luxor train station, preparing to leave with his parents for Cairo and then England; the celebration dinner from the night before never happened. Eve apologizes for his ruined visit. Brograve dismisses her apology and says that wherever her archaeological work leads, he intends to be at her side. Seeing his parents watching from the train window, he leads Eve to a quiet corner of the station and kisses her. He tells her he loves her and, forgoing the elaborate gesture he had planned, proposes marriage on the spot. Eve accepts just as the final boarding call sounds. As the train departs, Brograve suggests their next Egyptian trip could be a honeymoon. Eve feels hopeful for the first time that marriage and archaeology can coexist.

Eve and Lord Carnarvon return to Luxor in early March after more than a week on the Nile. Luxor is now barely recognizable, flooded with tourists and Tut-themed commerce. The hotel manager brings them quietly to a private dining room where Carter waits; the men reconcile. Carter then delivers troubling news: Saad Zaghloul is projected to win the upcoming election for prime minister by a wide margin, with a platform that includes ending partage and asserting full Egyptian ownership of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Government officials will arrive at the site the next day. Without proceeds from artifacts, and with the payment from The Times nearly spent, Lord Carnarvon declares they must walk away from the excavation. Lady Carnarvon has already refused a further request for funds.

Carter then gestures to a stack of diplomatic pouches on the sideboard. Eve realizes he is suggesting they use diplomatic mail, which Egyptian authorities cannot inspect, to smuggle artifacts out of the country. She confronts both men, appalled. Lord Carnarvon argues they are owed compensation for their years of effort; Eve insists Egypt’s history belongs to the Egyptians. When she lunges for the pouches, Carter and Lord Carnarvon block her. The three are at a standoff. Eve accepts she must walk away on principle, abandoning any chance of finding Hatshepsut. Then Lord Carnarvon staggers forward, burning with fever, and collapses.

1458 BCE, Thebes: Hatshepsut and her adviser and lover, Senenmut, stand on a hilltop overlooking her nearly complete mortuary temple, which she considers the finest building Egypt has produced. She privately worries about dynastic succession. Her daughter, Neferure, and co-ruler, Thutmose III, have only one surviving child, her grandson, Amenemhat. Senenmut points out the two adjacent locations in the nearby cliffs where he has designed their secret tombs. There, identical sarcophagi will be positioned to face each other, with star-painted ceilings. A soldier interrupts to report an urgent summons from Thutmose III at the palace.

Hatshepsut and Senenmut rush to the palace and find Thutmose III visibly distraught. He reveals that Neferure has been kidnapped by allies of his grandmother Mutnofret’s family, who demand Hatshepsut’s death in exchange for Neferure’s freedom. Thutmose insists he summoned Hatshepsut to find another path, not to carry out the demand, and confirms their grandson Amenemhat is safely under his watch.

Hatshepsut concludes her enemies’ goal is to eliminate the precedent of female rule and prevent Neferure from becoming a successor. Then, she announces that the world must believe she has died by Thutmose’s hand, which would convince their enemies the threat of female leadership is finished and ensure the safety of her daughter and grandson. Both men are devastated. Hatshepsut will go into hiding; Thutmose promises to arrange periodic meetings with Senenmut. As her final act of authority, she orders Thutmose to deliberately remove her name from the historical record.

On March 4, 1923, in Luxor, Lord Carnarvon lies feverish on a cot at the riverbank, too ill to travel by train, awaiting a dahabiya to carry him and Eve to Cairo for treatment. The press has attributed his collapse to a pharaoh’s curse rather than a mosquito bite, which is a reminder of how easily narrative replaces truth, just as Hatshepsut was erased from history. Eve says farewell to Carter, who cannot meet her eyes. Alone at the water’s edge, gazing toward the Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut’s temple, Eve accepts that the mystery of Hatshepsut is not hers to solve, and that claiming it would make her complicit in the same greed she has rejected. She removes the scarab from her pocket, digs into the soil, and buries it, symbolically relinquishing an artifact that did not belong to her. She boards the dahabiya with one final wish: that no woman should ever be erased.

Lord Carnarvon dies from his infection, giving rise to the myth of Tutankhamun’s curse. Eve escorts his body to England and never returns to Egypt. She marries Brograve and remains close to Howard Carter until his death in 1939. After Lord Carnarvon’s death, Lady Carnarvon agrees to fund the ongoing excavation, ultimately receiving £36,000 in reimbursement and selling Lord Carnarvon’s Egyptian collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Carter spends nearly a decade cataloguing the tomb, becoming a reluctant celebrity despite a period during which the Egyptian government bars him from the site. Egypt retains Tutankhamun’s artifacts, which will be permanently housed in the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza. The author notes that some objects have since surfaced in other institutions under unclear provenance. As for Hatshepsut, the discovery in 2025 of a royal tomb belonging to Thutmose II may yet bring answers to the questions the novel raises about her life and erasure.