The thrilling new archaeological adventure from the bestselling author of The Last Secret of the Temple.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 and 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 and Egyptologist Flin Brodie deep into the forbidding wastes of the Sahara. Their goal: one of archaeology's greatest mysteries and the astonishing secret at its heart...