Marie Benedict’s 2026 historical novel, Daughter of Egypt, interweaves two narratives separated by millennia. The novel follows Lady Evelyn Herbert, daughter of British nobility, as she joins archaeologist Howard Carter in 1920s Egypt, driven by a personal quest to find the lost tomb of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut. Her archaeological ambitions unfold against a backdrop of intense political turmoil as the Egyptian nationalist movement fights for independence from the British Protectorate. This modern story runs parallel to a fictionalized account of Hatshepsut’s own rise to power in the 15th century BCE, from her early role as a high priestess to her strategic assumption of the throne. The author, a New York Times bestselling writer known for novels that explore the lives of influential women in history, uses this dual-narrative structure to draw connections between ancient and modern times via the themes of The Ethics of Archaeology and Cultural Ownership, The Erasure of Women From the Historical Record, and The Conflict Between Personal Ambition and Familial Duty.

This guide refers to the 2026 St. Martin’s Press First Edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of illness or death, racism, gender discrimination, and pregnancy loss.

Plot Summary

Set in 1920s England and Egypt, with parallel chapters in ancient Thebes circa 1486-1458 BCE, the novel interweaves the story of Lady Evelyn Herbert, a young aristocratic Englishwoman passionate about archaeology, with a fictionalized account of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, one of the only women to rule ancient Egypt. The two narratives mirror each other thematically, connected by Eve’s lifelong quest to locate Hatshepsut’s lost tomb and understand why the pharaoh’s name was systematically erased from history.

The novel opens in July 1919 at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, England, during a grand ball marking the end of Eve’s debutante year. Eve, the daughter of George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, resents the forced gaiety designed to erase the memory of the Great War. Her mother, Lady Almina Herbert, the Countess of Carnarvon and illegitimate daughter of the wealthy Alfred de Rothschild, expects Eve to find a husband. Eve slips away to meet Howard Carter, a brilliant archaeologist her father has patronized for 13 years and who has tutored Eve in ancient Egyptian history since childhood. Carter reports that Wallis Budge, the British Museum Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, has confirmed Eve’s theory that a small, blue-glazed scarab figurine, unearthed at the Valley of the Kings in southern Egypt where New Kingdom pharaohs were buried, belonged to Hatshepsut. Its hieroglyphs record her early title as God’s Wife of Amun, the highest priestly position a woman could hold. Carter calls Eve a colleague and invites her to examine other overlooked artifacts that may lead to the pharaoh’s undiscovered tomb.

The narrative shifts to 1486 BCE Thebes, where Princess Hatshepsut, daughter of Pharaoh Thutmose I and Queen Ahmes, performs the sacred ritual of awakening the god Amun each dawn. Her father, a former military commander who was not born royal, teaches her governance. When both of her older brothers die, Hatshepsut becomes the sole surviving child of the royal bloodline. Thutmose I reveals his plan: He will select a boy from the royal nursery to succeed him, and Hatshepsut, as that child’s wife, must be prepared to guide the kingdom.

Back in modern England, Eve and Carter work secretly in Highclere’s Music Room, reassembling quartzite fragments into a cartouche, an oval hieroglyphic symbol naming a royal figure, that they believe belongs to Hatshepsut. Eve’s father dismisses the idea of searching for Hatshepsut’s tomb, declaring the season’s target will be Tutankhamun, a boy pharaoh from later in the same dynasty. He also forbids Eve from joining the excavation. Carter privately promises that while they will search for Tutankhamun as ordered, they will simultaneously hunt for Hatshepsut.

Eve’s father surprises Eve with a ticket to Egypt on Christmas Eve 1919. In Cairo, she is struck by the vibrancy of modern Egyptian life and the artificial separation between British and Egyptian society. At a Residency ball, she shares a brief but candid conversation about English hypocrisy with a tall officer. In Luxor, at a site in the Valley of the Kings, Eve makes her first excavation find, an aragonite vase, but it does not bear Hatshepsut’s cartouche. News of an uprising by followers of Saad Zaghloul, the Egyptian nationalist leader demanding independence from Britain, forces Eve and her mother to flee.

In the ancient timeline, Hatshepsut’s father dies. She marries Thutmose II, his slight, sickly son by a second wife, while her mother, Ahmes, serves as regent. Hatshepsut gives birth to a daughter, Neferure, and secretly guides her weak husband’s rule. A lower-class official named Senenmut impresses her with his knowledge and loyalty, and she brings him to court, where he becomes her most trusted adviser and Neferure’s tutor. When Thutmose II dies, Hatshepsut faces a power vacuum.

Over two more excavation seasons, Eve deepens her political awareness. She encounters Second Lieutenant Brograve Beauchamp, recognizing him as the officer from the ball, and a connection forms between them. She introduces systematic recording methods at the dig, identifies a statue of Hatshepsut transitioning from queen to pharaoh, and grows troubled by evidence that Carter deals in antiquities privately. Zaghloul’s wife, Safiya, mobilizes Egyptian women behind the cause of independence, and Eve witnesses their power firsthand when she must lead her family through a women’s protest march to reach their departing ship. Zaghloul himself warns Eve during a visit to Highclere that Hatshepsut’s past belongs to Egypt. Inspired by Madame Safiya Zaghloul’s comparison of women’s power to desert sand that will one day rise in a mighty storm, Eve hypothesizes that Hatshepsut might have situated her final tomb near her father’s burial place. She and Carter reopen the old tomb but find only a fragment of a funerary figurine with a partial cartouche that could belong to Hatshepsut.

In ancient Thebes, Hatshepsut declares herself regent queen after Thutmose II’s death, invoking divine revelation from the god Amun. Senenmut alerts her to an assassination plot by rival royal families who see a child pharaoh and female regent as vulnerable. Hatshepsut decides to gradually assume pharaonic power, and Senenmut finds precedent in two earlier women pharaohs who wore the pharaoh’s crown and kilt to accustom their people to female rule. At the Opet festival, a major religious celebration, Hatshepsut appears in pharaonic regalia for the first time, and the crowd accepts her. She and Senenmut become lovers and a de facto family with Neferure. In 1472 BCE, Hatshepsut undergoes formal coronation, using a grammatically female throne name. Her reign brings prosperity: a triumphant trade expedition to Punt, monumental building projects, and the strategic appointment of the growing Thutmose III as military commander. At the Sed festival, a royal jubilee, she appears entirely in male pharaonic guise, warning that to rise against one ruler is to rise against all.

By August 1922, Eve’s father cannot afford another excavation season. Eve makes an emotional appeal, promising to follow whatever path her parents set afterward, and her father relents for one final year. Carter, who goes to Egypt before them, sends a telegram in November about the discovery of a new tomb. Eve and her father race to Egypt, but the cartouche identifies Tutankhamun, not Hatshepsut. That night, they secretly enter the tomb and find it filled with golden treasures: gilded chariots, life-size statues, and an extraordinary throne. The formal opening in February 1923 ignites global “Tutmania.” Eve’s father sells exclusive coverage to the London Times, infuriating Egyptian reporters. Brograve arrives and proposes to Eve, who accepts. But the political situation darkens: Zaghloul’s impending election threatens to end partage, the system of splitting archaeological finds between excavators and the Egyptian government. Carter reveals he has smuggled Tutankhamun artifacts in diplomatic pouches. Eve is appalled, arguing the artifacts are not theirs to take. Before the standoff can resolve, Eve’s father collapses from an infected mosquito bite.

In the novel’s final ancient chapter, set in 1458 BCE, Neferure is kidnapped by rivals who demand that Thutmose III kill Hatshepsut to eliminate the precedent of female leadership forever. Hatshepsut devises a solution: The world must believe she has died. In her final act as pharaoh, she orders Thutmose to erase her name from every monument. The central mystery is resolved: Hatshepsut ordered her own erasure not as punishment by hateful successors but as a sacrifice to protect her family and the dynasty she built.

In the final chapter, Eve accompanies her feverish father onto a dahabiya, a traditional Nile sailing vessel, bound for Cairo. She says goodbye to Carter, who cannot meet her eyes. Standing on the riverbank and gazing at Hatshepsut’s temple, Eve acknowledges that solving this mystery drew her to Egypt, but she has learned it is not her puzzle to solve. She takes the scarab from her pocket, digs into the soil, and buries it, returning to Egypt what was never hers. As she boards the boat, she expresses a final wish: that whenever the storm of women’s power arrives, it will transform the world into a place where no woman is ever erased.