Book excerpt: The story of Princess Beketaten, otherwise known as Scarab, comes to an end. Her story started in the royal court of her father, Pharaoh Amenhotep of Egypt, moved throughout the ancient land of Kemet, into Nubia, the Sinai and Canaan, where she left her life story written on the walls of chambers carved out of solid rock in modern-day Syria. Now her story will move again to Egypt, to her tomb in the wastes of the Western Desert. Three thousand years after the reigns of the Amarnan Kings, the archaeologists who discovered the inscriptions in Syria, journey to Egypt to find the tomb of Smenkhkare and his sister Scarab, and the fabulous treasure they think is there. Unscrupulous men, and religious fanatics, also seek the tomb, either to plunder it or to destroy it. Can the gods of Egypt protect their own, or must they rely on modern-day men and women of science?