By the Gods Beloved

by Emmuska Orczy

Mark and Hugh are school friends. Mark has visited Hugh's house, whose father is an archaeologist and Egyptologist and where there is an odd museum, complete with mummies. One day, Mark receives word from his friend to 'Come at once if you can'. He finds Hugh has taken over his father's work and is in possession of a secret encoded papyrus that is thousands of years old. He has also discovered that the descendants of ancient pharaohs are still living in the Libyan Desert. The two friends set out at once for Egypt. Their journey involves incredible adventures, strange sights, a beautiful princess and great dangers.

Genres: Fantasy

156 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1905

About the author

Full name: Emma ("Emmuska") Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi was a Hungarian-British novelist, best remembered as the author of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1905). Baroness Orczy's sequels to the novel were less successful. She was also an artist, and her works were exhibited at the Royal Academy, London. Her first venture into fiction was with crime stories. Among her most popular characters was The Old Man in the Corner, who was featured in a series of twelve British movies from 1924, starring Rolf Leslie.

Baroness Emmuska Orczy was born in Tarnaörs, Hungary, as the only daughter of Baron Felix Orczy, a noted composer and conductor, and his wife Emma. Her father was a friend of such composers as Wagner, Liszt, and Gounod. Orczy moved with her parents from Budapest to Brussels and then to London, learning to speak English at the age of fifteen. She was educated in convent schools in Brussels and Paris. In London she studied at the West London School of Art. Orczy married in 1894 Montague Barstow, whom she had met while studying at the Heatherby School of Art. Together they started to produce book and magazine illustrations and published an edition of Hungarian folktales.

Orczy's first detective stories appeared in magazines. As a writer she became famous in 1903 with the stage version of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Reviews

[Kori · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the tradition of Rider Haggard's She, By The God's Beloved was the Baroness' favourite book. So whatever happened to the original Egyptians? Sure you think you know, conquered by Alexander the Great, beaten by the Romans, assimilated... disappeared.... Well no, seems a bunch of them are rumoured to be living in a secret canyon somewhere in the Libyan desert. Armed with an ancient papyrus two friends Mark and Hugh set off to find them. Their journey involves incredible adventures, strange sights, a beautiful princess and great dangers. Fortunately they have a card to play, timing is everything...

[Surreysmum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read in an undated Hodder & Stoughton edition. [These notes were made in 1984:]. There was a curious sense of déja vu about this tale of a lost Egyptian civilization, till I realized that it's a monumental rip-off of Rider Haggard's She. The story's told by a Watson-like figure who accompanies the idealistic and physically commanding Hugh Tankerville into and through the desert, past a splendid wasteland of bleached corpses and skeletons, into a sensual and treacherous paradise walled in by mountains as Shangri-la is. Here Hugh Tankerville gets himself engaged to one woman and involved with another (Maat-kha and Neit-akrit respecitvely), and although possessed of great power (the people consider him "Beloved of the Gods") eventually has to leave the country in order to ensure peace. Orczy is not in her element here - she is better with the high honourable passions of 18th-century aristocrats and horrors of the French Revolution. There is one rather impressive murder-in-the-temple scene (faithful sidekick trapped where he can see but not act, of course), but it drags on a bit too long, and since we are left very ambivalent about Neit-akrit's position in our sympathies, we take leave of her with more cheerfulness that our authoress would perhaps prefer.

[Thor The Redbeard · Rating 3 out of 5]

6/10

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the melodramatic end of the output of a melodramatic author. As noticed by other reviewers here, distinctly indebted to H. Rider Haggard's She. Could be classified as old fashioned hokum - definitely including themes that nowadays are frowned upon.