The Eye of Horus
The Eye of Horus is set both in the late 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt and in present-day Colorado and Texas. One half involves the efforts of a fictional physician, Senakhtenre, to protect a daughter of Nefertiti – the former Queen of Egypt – from her mother’s murderous schemes. The other half tells of a modern researcher, Kate, who investigates the mummy of a young woman who was buried with a male’s head between her legs. (Such a mummy does exist, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.) The two plotlines gradually come together, arcing across the intervening 3300 years.
Several plot twists are strained. For instance, it is unlikely that Nefertiti, after her marriage to King Akhenaten ended (assuming that she did survive him), would have then married a priest of Amun, the very god Akhenaten sought to dethrone from a position of eminence in the Egyptian pantheon. Nor is it likely that Akhenaten ended up wandering in the Sinai for years and became the Biblical Moses.
The author does succeed admirably, though, in bringing to life ancient Egyptian settings. As the physician makes his evening house calls, the reader can easily imagine the scene, including the medicines the doctor mixes, the night sounds, and the fears of the parents of a sick child lying in a hut.
