Egypt under the Eighteenth Dynasty: a queen's daughter hidden at birth, a prince who must not know her, the priesthood of Amen and a throne that has been promised twice. Haggard travelled in Egypt and dedicated the book to the Egyptologist Wallis Budge, who checked its details; Morning Star is his straight Egyptian romance, without Quatermain, and the temple politics are the real machinery. Sixty plates of Roman ruins and classical landscapes by painters including Panini and Colman carry the ancient world of the story in paint.
