Gerald O'Farrell

What starts out as an enjoyable if workmanlike introduction to Egyptology and the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 becomes, about halfway through, an outlandish and – crucially – unsubstantiated conspiracy book. Author Gerald O'Farrell's initial supposition that Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered the tomb years before they said they did, and kept it secret so that they could plunder its riches under the nose of the Egyptian authorities, can be filed under 'well, I wouldn't be surprised' and is fairly enjoyable to read, even if O'Farrell's prose isn't the best.

However, the author then goes on to claim that Tutankhamun's father is actually the biblical Moses and that Tut himself is the historical analogue to Christ. He claims evidence from the tomb was suppressed and those involved in the 1922 discovery were murdered to cover it up – hence the infamous 'Mummy's Curse' – including, bizarrely, Sigmund Freud. All of this is entertaining in a 'wtf' sort of way, and if this were a Dan Brown thriller, I'd be reasonably intrigued. (Better yet, a new Broken Sword adventure…) However, O'Farrell is presenting it as fact without providing any actual evidence, and peppers his account with a frankly insulting number of 'maybes', 'very possiblies', and 'I believe's. I had hoped, considering the book has been published by a reputable publisher (Pan), that it would have a bit more to it than this, but then again I guess this sort of stuff sells easily. It's interesting, like most conspiracy theories, but the lack of rigour and the high suggestibility leaves you slightly embarrassed to be reading it.… (meer)

This is possibly the worst book I have ever read. While I appreciate a good conspiracy theory, there is a saying that the more outlandish the theory is, the more evidence it has to have to back it up. None is given in this, only the author's gut instincts and feeling.

The author feels Carnarvon's and Carter's deception, he feels that they must have found papyri that show that Tutenkhamun was Jesus and that Ahkenaten was Moses, and offers nothing to suggest why. Given that he also suggest that the deaths associated with the dig were due to the Secret Service bumping people off because these papyri showed how similar Tutenkhamun's story is to Jesus's, one wonders why archeologists investigating Zoroaster since his story too is very similar to Jesus's.

Linking the death of Freud into this garbled narrative is an other added flavour of bizarreness in a theory too garbled to be possible, in a book too badly written to be recommend to all but die-hard conspiracy nuts (and not even to them, I think they could write better) and generally, it's a terrible book.… (meer)