On July 3, 1920, Eve and Lady Almina receive Saad Zaghloul’s delegation at Highclere. The Egyptian party includes Mohamed Mahmoud, Adly Yeken, and Ahmed Lufti el-Sayed, director of Cairo’s National Library and a nationalist organizer. Lufti requests a library tour; Zaghloul unexpectedly joins.

Lady Almina names an Ariosto from 1538 as her favorite volume. Zaghloul mentions that his wife, who led the Egyptian independence movement during his exile, also loves poetry. When asked for her own choice, Eve leads the men to the ancient Egyptian history section and reveals her scholarly focus on Hatshepsut, startling and impressing both men. Zaghloul concludes the visit by reminding her that Hatshepsut’s history belongs to the Egyptian people.

On Armistice Day, November 11, 1920, the family gathers at the Seamore Place mansion after attending the burial of the Unknown Soldier at Westminster Abbey. Present are Eve; her parents; her brother, Porchey; her step-grandmother, Grandmama Elsie; and her uncles, Aubrey and Mervyn.

After the men leave for billiards, Lady Almina declares that Eve must remain in London for the full season. Eve invokes her father’s promise; Lady Almina dismisses it as his to give, not hers to honor. Eve’s long-suppressed anger surfaces: She compares her passion for archaeology to her mother’s wartime work building hospitals and accuses Lady Almina of hypocrisy. Lady Almina counters that excavating is foolish and that Eve’s real duty is to find a husband.

On February 2, 1921, Eve arrives in Cairo with her parents. Although Eve won the battle to visit Egypt again, Lady Almina has barely spoken to her since the Armistice Day confrontation. Outside Shepheard’s Hotel, Eve collides with a British officer she recognizes from the previous year’s Residency ball. He jokes about always losing track of her and invites her to this year’s ball, but she explains they leave for Luxor that morning. Her parents arrive just as she realizes she never learned his name; he introduces himself as Second Lieutenant Brograve Beauchamp, whose father chairs Lloyd’s. Carnarvon offers condolences for Beauchamp’s brother, killed in the war. When Carnarvon invites him to the dig, Beauchamp graciously declines because his troop of Life Guards will soon depart Cairo to return to England.

On March 18, 1921, Eve arrives at the Valley of the Kings dig before dawn, greeting the reis, or supervisor, Mansur Mohammed el Hashash and young water boy, Ali. Carter joins her to review the string grid Eve had introduced, a method she adapted from a lecture by Augustus Pitt Rivers, laid over the chosen triangular site between the tombs of Ramses II, Ramses VI, and Merneptah. While Carter steps away to settle a workers’ pay dispute, Eve notices a faint straight-line indentation in the sand that may mark a step or tomb threshold. Lord Carnarvon then arrives unexpectedly with British soldiers conducting patrols ahead of a rumored insurgency. Eve instinctively scans their ranks for Beauchamp, who has been back in England for several weeks and has sent her three letters. Carter is drafted to tour the soldiers around the site, postponing the digging decision. With the afternoon free, Eve resolves to do something (not yet revealed) that she knows her father would dislike.

Still on March 18, 1921, Eve stops at Hatshepsut’s temple before returning to the hotel. She encounters Harry Burton, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s photographer, who offers her a tour of the ongoing restoration work. Burton confides that prevailing scholarly opinion views Hatshepsut as a ruthless usurper because they believe that is the only way a woman could have gained the power she possessed. Eve identifies a partially reconstructed granite statue as Hatshepsut in the act of transitioning from queen to pharaoh, because of the nemes, a pharaonic headdress, worn over unmistakably female clothing. Burton is struck by her expertise. When two museum archaeologists, Mr. Lansing and Mr. Hauser, join them, Hauser casually asks whether Eve has brought any artifacts to sell, noting that Carter recently offered them an early 18th Dynasty toiletry set, and he assumes she is involved in the family’s antiquities trade. Eve is deeply unsettled.

Returning to the Winter Palace that same evening, Eve cannot dismiss Hauser’s assumption that her father and Carter deal in antiquities. She thinks through the uncertain origins of her father’s collection and Carter’s possible role in procuring objects beyond what their own digs have produced. At dinner, her father is in unusually high spirits; she and Carter briefly agree that the ridge looks promising. When Lady Almina insists they dance together, Eve uses the opportunity to question Carter. He explains the partage system and confirms that Carnarvon, as patron, is entitled to take artifacts home. Eve carefully asks whether a license permits selling artifacts one has not personally excavated. Carter pauses, then relaxes when she claims idle curiosity about the local markets. He explains that locally dug objects are routinely sold despite being illegal, and that authorities generally ignore the practice, unaware she is thinking specifically about the toiletry set.

By March 30, 1921, the excavation has uncovered six stone steps at the chosen site. A jar fragment naming Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, a relative of Hatshepsut’s father, was found near the stairs, raising hopes they are close to Hatshepsut’s tomb. With Carnarvon’s blessing, Carter gives Eve the honor of entering first. She examines the unmarked slab at the base of the steps, nods for the workers to lever it open, and steps into the dark chamber before Carter can join her. The room is nearly empty; Carter reads drag marks as evidence of looting in antiquity. As they examine a faint seam in the opposite wall, the ceiling partially collapses and seals the entrance. Carter restrains Eve’s impulse to dig out immediately, warns that noise could worsen the collapse, and organizes the workers from outside. The chamber grows dangerously hot and a sulfur smell builds as they wait; Carter keeps Eve focused by discussing future dig sites. After what feels like hours, foreman Ahmed Gerigar breaks through and frees them.

On April 8, 1921, the family’s car is stopped in Port Said by a large women’s protest led by Safiya Zaghloul. With the Saturnia preparing to depart, Lady Almina panics. Eve proposes they disguise themselves with shawls and walk to the dock, keeping Carnarvon and Carter shielded in the middle. Ahmed Gerigar, who had escorted the family from Luxor, joins and blends into the crowd. They nearly reach the dock before a woman recognizes them as English and raises the alarm. Ahmed reappears with a group of men who form a barrier, giving them just enough room to break through and run. They board the Saturnia as the gangway is pulling away. From the railing, Eve spots Ahmed on the dock. Realizing he has twice put himself in danger to protect her, she feels shame at her ignorance of his life. When their eyes meet, she bows, hoping to convey gratitude and remorse.

In 1479 BCE, following the death of Pharaoh Thutmose II, Hatshepsut sits on her throne with Neferure beside her as priests, ministers, and rival noblemen argue over the succession. The leading candidate is Thutmose III, an infant fathered by the late pharaoh through a harem woman rather than a royal wife. Drawing on Senenmut’s counsel that her role as God’s Wife of Amun grants her unique divine authority, Hatshepsut silences the chamber. She claims that during the Great Festival two seasons earlier, the statue of Amun came to the palace gates and in a sacred trance revealed she must lead Egypt. Invoking that vision, which no one can challenge, she declares herself regent queen, pledging to stand beside whichever pharaoh is chosen until he is ready to rule.

Four years later, in 1475 BCE, Hatshepsut is worn down by the demands of her many daily roles. When generals interrupt a public audience to report a Kush uprising and request violent suppression, she dismisses them and tells them to return in the morning for her decision. Then, she retreats to her chambers, admitting only Senenmut. She proposes treating Kushite goods as the basis for equitable trade and suggests extending rights to the Kush people. Mid-conversation, she asks abruptly why Senenmut has never taken a wife. He says he prefers serving her. In his gaze she sees affection for her as a woman and for the first time considers that she might be free to choose a lover, and that it could be him.

Still in 1475 BCE, Senenmut intercepts Hatshepsut just before her morning ritual, warning that an informant has overheard a plan to kill her during the ceremony. He leads her through inner passages to his private room and reveals that, while the instigator is unknown, he suspects rival royal families who view a female regent over a child pharaoh as an opportunity to seize the throne. When running soldiers are heard nearby, Senenmut hides them inside a wooden wardrobe, pressing close to shield her. In the darkness, Hatshepsut becomes aware of a growing mutual attraction. The soldiers pass, but they are hers, calling her name. Before leaving the wardrobe, Senenmut whispers that his loyalty springs from his belief in her as both pharaoh and woman. The admission crystallizes an idea: Hatshepsut tells him she must gradually make herself pharaoh outright.

In 1474 BCE, Hatshepsut leads the Opet festival wearing the atef crown and the shendyt—a kilt worn only by pharaohs—layered over her female gown. The plan, developed after Senenmut found records of two historical female pharaohs, is to assert pharaonic authority through appearance rather than declaration. During the long procession, Hatshepsut overhears a citizen puzzling over her attire but detects no outcry. On impulse, she addresses the crowd at the Temple of Ipet-Resyt and unveils a stone relief showing herself in pharaonic dress receiving Amun’s blessing—announcing that the god himself commanded her to appear this way.

After the procession, Hatshepsut retreats inside the temple and dismisses the servants, allowing Senenmut into the sacred preparation chamber. Senenmut praises her while lightly reproaching her for deviating from their plan by explicitly invoking Amun’s blessing before the crowd. She tells him he is the truly magnificent one, then declares that the final barrier to her power is the distance between them. She steps forward and kisses him.

In 1473 BCE, Hatshepsut, Senenmut, and Neferure share a private afternoon picnic by the Nile, briefly resembling an ordinary family. When a servant arrives to take Neferure to her lessons, Senenmut admits he misses tutoring her directly. Hatshepsut reminds him of their shared achievements: stable governance, expanded trade routes, a diplomatic resolution in Kush, and his grand design for her mortuary temple, which is to have three colonnaded terraces carved into the cliffside across the river from Thebes. She then suggests he should marry and have children to secure his own legacy. Hurt, he asks if she doubts his love. She explains that she cannot remarry or bear more children, and that Neferure will soon leave to train as God’s Wife of Amun; she does not want to deny him a future family. Senenmut declares that she and Neferure are the only family he will ever want.