Edward Davis was a promising rookie in the Time Service. He had made jumps into the past - two, three, even six centuries - but nothing could prepare him for a leap of thirty-five centuries, all the way back to Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt. In the blink of an eye, he found himself in a world of temples and tombs, pharaohs and pyramids, jackal-headed gods, mummies and talking beetles. In the ancient city of Thebes, Davis must rescue two members of the Service lost in time. Taken in by a mysterious temple priestess and befriended by a beautiful Egyptian slave girl, Davis is sent to the City of the Dead to learn the trade of embalming. But as the hour of his scheduled return to his own time approaches, Edward Davis must come to grips with the truth behind the fate of his comrades - and the seductive allure of ancient Egypt.