Which Agatha Christie novel is set in ancient Egypt?
Answer
Death Comes as the End
Which Agatha Christie novel is set in ancient Egypt? The answer is Death Comes as the End.
Published in 1944, Death Comes as the End is Christie’s only novel set entirely in the ancient world. Its story takes place in Egypt around 2000 BCE, during the Middle Kingdom, and follows Renisenb after she returns to her father’s household following her husband’s death.
The household becomes increasingly divided after Renisenb’s father, the mortuary priest Imhotep, brings home Nofret, a young concubine. Resentment, rivalry and fear grow within the family, followed by a series of murders. The novel combines Christie’s familiar closed-circle mystery with an ancient Egyptian setting reconstructed from historical research.
It is not a conventional modern Poirot or Miss Marple story. Christie worked with the Egyptologist Stephen Glanville, whose advice helped her develop the setting and social details. That historical framework is why the book stands apart from her twentieth-century detective fiction.