Egypt 2153 BC eighty priests set out under cover of darkness into the western desert taking with them a mysterious object swathed in cloth. Four weeks later having reached their destination they calmly slit each other's throats... Albania 1986 A plane takes off from a remote airfield bound for the Sudan. On board a cargo that will forever change the Middle East. Somewhere over the Sahara the plane disappears... The western desert the present day A group of Bedouin discover a mummified corpse half-buried in the dunes. With it are a roll of camera film & a miniature clay obelisk inscribed with a curious hieroglyphic sign... Three unconnected events Or so it seems until Freya Hannen arrives in Egypt for the funeral of her sister a desert explorer who has inexplicably taken her own life... For Freya it is the start of a terrifying life-or-death adventure
- one that will lead her & Egyptologist Flin Brodie deep into the forbidding wastes of the Sahara. Their goal: one of archaeology's greatest mysteries & the astonishing secret at its heart.