Mummies in the Morning

Published in 1993, Mary Pope Osborne’s Mummies in the Morning is the third book in the Magic Tree House series. The story blends time-travel adventure with historical fiction, bringing young readers into ancient Egypt through an accessible mystery. Whisked back in time to a pyramid, Jack and Annie must help a ghostly queen solve a mystery so that she can reach the afterlife.

The story explores themes of cooperation, courage, and discovery. In 2001, Osborne published a companion piece to Mummies in the Morning entitled Mummies and Pyramids as part of the Magic Tree House Fact Tracker series of nonfiction books for children. She has written over three dozen volumes in the Magic Tree House series, and her honors include the Ludington Memorial Award and a Random House Lifetime Achievement Award.

Citations in this study guide refer to the e-book edition released by Random House in 2014.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death.

Plot Summary

Eight-year-old Jack and seven-year-old Annie live in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania. The siblings find a magic tree house at the top of the tallest tree in the woods near their home. Their first adventure in the time-traveling tree house takes them to the Cretaceous Period, and their second takes them to medieval Europe. The day after their adventure to the medieval castle, Jack and Annie return to the magic tree house. Annie selects a book about ancient Egypt, which contains a picture of a procession of people and a black cat following a long golden box toward a pyramid. When Jack points to the picture and wishes to travel there, the magic tree house whisks the children back in time.

The tree house comes to a stop at the top of a palm tree in the middle of a desert. When the children look out the window, they see a black cat and a parade heading toward a pyramid, just like the scene in the illustration. Jack consults the book about ancient Egypt and learns that they are witnessing the funeral procession of a deceased royal. The children hurry toward the procession because they are eager to see a mummy in person. When the parade suddenly vanishes, Jack says that it was only a mirage, but Annie believes that the people they saw were ghosts.

The black cat guides Jack and Annie to an entrance in the side of the pyramid. Using the book about ancient Egypt as their guide, the children learn about the culture’s funerary practices and make their way toward the burial chamber at the center of the pyramid. Suddenly, a figure in white dashes past the siblings and drops a scepter adorned with a carving of Anubis. Concerned that the person is a tomb raider, Jack and Annie decide to leave the pyramid.

Before they can exit, the ghost of Queen Hutepi approaches them. Her spirit has been trapped in the pyramid for thousands of years because she cannot find the Book of the Dead that will guide her through the perils of the Underworld into the Next Life. Hutepi’s brother hid the book to protect it from tomb raiders, and he left a secret message to help her locate it. Hutepi’s near-sightedness prevents her from reading the message, so she asks Jack and Annie to describe the hieroglyphics to her. The first image looks like a staircase, the second looks like a boat, the third looks like a jug, and the fourth looks like a folded cloth.

Once the message is decoded, Queen Hutepi leads the children deeper into the pyramid. Jack and Annie grow excited when they see a staircase like the one the first hieroglyph depicts. The ghost-queen floats through a wooden door at the top of the stairs, and the children follow her. Inside the burial chamber, they see furniture, musical instruments, and a small boat, but no sign of their spectral friend.

The children are thrilled to see the boat because it matches the second hieroglyph in the secret message. The boat is filled with luxurious objects like goblets encrusted in jewels, golden plates, statuary, precious blue stones, and a clay jug that matches the third hieroglyph. The children’s excitement grows when Jack reaches into the jug and finds a folded cloth like the one at the end of the secret message. The folded cloth is wrapped around an ancient scroll covered in hieroglyphics.

Elated, Annie calls out to Queen Hutepi and announces that they’ve found her copy of the Book of the Dead. The ghost doesn’t reply verbally, but a door to her burial chamber creaks open. Jack is fearful to proceed, but his sister reminds him that Hutepi has been trapped inside the pyramid for thousands of years. The children step into the burial chamber, where they find Hutepi’s golden sarcophagus. The coffin begins to glow when Annie says that they’ve found the Book of the Dead. Jack wants to leave the scroll on the floor and leave, but Annie tells him not to be afraid. Together, they approach the glowing box and look inside. The sarcophagus contains Hutepi’s mummy. Jack is fascinated by the withered remains, but Annie is disgusted and quickly leaves the chamber.

When Jack places Hutepi’s scepter and the Book of the Dead inside the sarcophagus, the mummy’s face seems to grow calmer. Jack exits the burial chamber and goes back the way that he and Annie came. When he reaches the bottom of the stairs, he hears his sister calling for help in the distance. He returns to the room with the boat and discovers that there is a second door that leads to a staircase and a hallway that looks just like the ones on the way out of the pyramid. Jack finds Annie and explains that they’re in a false passage built to fool tomb raiders. Before the children can leave the passage, the door creaks shut, and the torches extinguish.

The children are trapped in the pitch-dark hall when the black cat suddenly returns. The sound of its meowing leads them through the pyramid’s winding corridors out into the light of day. Jack marvels that the cat was able to find an exit when they couldn’t, and Annie declares that the animal has magic. The siblings thank the cat, who waves its tail at them before vanishing into the desert. Jack and Annie trek through the hot sand to the palm tree that holds the magic tree house and scale the rope ladder. The siblings look out the tree house window and see a boat gliding over the desert. Jack isn’t certain if this vision is just a mirage or truly Queen Hutepi on her journey to the Next Life at last.

The children return home by wishing on a picture of Frog Creek in the book about Pennsylvania.

Annie suggests that they tidy up the books in the tree house in case its creator returns. Their cleaning reveals a large shining “M” on the wooden floor. The children take this as proof that the person who owns the tree house is the same person who lost a medallion in the Cretaceous Period. Jack and Annie decide to search for this mysterious person the next day and hurry home.