Hearing that an English adventurer plans to search for the vanished treasures of the Temple in Jerusalem, Emerson and Amelia Peabody go after him in order to prevent an inept excavation and the possibility of armed protest in 1910 Palestine.
In 1922, as her husband Emerson unsuccessfully tries to persuade his rival Howard Carter to turn over digging rights in the Valley of the Kings to him, Amelia Peabody and her family head for Luxor to search for the long-lost tomb of King Tut.
The Emersons learn of a mysterious death that has been attributed to a curse, a situation that enables Amelia Peabody and her family to enter the banned Valley of the Kings in order to return a stolen statue.