Ms Amelia Peabody's philosophy... on marriage "Marriage in my view should be a balanced state between equal adversaries."

Amelia & Radcliffe Emerson... both strong minded & opinionated... not always on the same track... but with a mature & erotic love...

And they return to Egypt with Ramses... who is quite a handful... curious, resourceful, and literal (like Amelia Bedelia)... Mommy Amelia has to be very specific about what he can or cannot do, and he is constantly looking for ways around those rules...

When he tries to free a lion cub in a baronesses' home, his mother explains and gains his agreement that the lion could not take care of himself in the wild anymore... so he breaks into the baronesses' home, and brings the lion cub to their camp, where he can care for it & train it & and give a degree of freedom.

Two bad guys in this story... one set that are stealing antiquities from the tombs and selling them, and a crazed missionary who inadvertantly finds a papyrus strip in Greek that seems to refer to the son of Christ...

both lead to murder... and the almost death of the Emersons... but by joining together, they successfully free themselves & bring the bad guys to justice.

The mummy case is the way that the antiquities (& papyrus) are smuggled outof the country..