Other editions of book Crocodile on the Sandbank

Crocodile on the Sandbank is a novel by Elizabeth Peters, first published in 1975. It is the first in the Amelia Peabody series of novels and takes place in 1884-1885. Amelia Peabody is left a wealthy orphan after the death of her studious father, who has left her everything in his will because she is the only one of his children who shared his interests, namely history and archaeology. The inheritance enables her to travel abroad in order to follow her enthusiasm for antiquities. Amelia, a determined and unorthodox English female, supports women's suffrage and believes she will never marry. In Rome she meets the destitute Evelyn Forbes, whose titled family have cast her off after she eloped with, then was abandoned by, an Italian art teacher. Amelia takes Evelyn under her wing and employs her as a companion. They travel together to Egypt, where they encounter the Emerson brothers, Radcliffe and Walter, archaeologist and philologist respectively, and where Amelia falls in love with pyramids. Amelia and Evelyn decide to travel up the Nile, stopping at various sites along the way. When they reach Amarna, they discover the Emersons excavating the city which for a while was the capital of Egypt under the mysterious Akhenaten. Amelia and Radcliffe Emerson loathe one another on sight, but after he is taken ill and she helps to keep his excavation going, they grudgingly begin to respect one another. Things get complicated when Evelyn's cousin Lucas shows up at the remote site with a story about her grandfather's death, his (Lucas') inheritance, and a proposal of marriage. Amidst the romantic entanglements and attempts to continue the excavation, Emerson and Amelia must also deal with the nocturnal visitations of a mummy that walks moaning through the desert. Once the mystery is solved, Amelia plans to stay in Egypt and conduct her own archaeological expeditions, with Emerson at her side...as her advisor and as her husband.

Amelia Peabody, 32-year-old Victorian gentlewoman, inherited two things from her father: a considerable fortune and an unbendable will. The first was indispensible in allowing her to indulge in her life's passion: Egyptology. Without the second, the mummy's curse would have made corpses of them all. Promptly upon her father's death, Amelia takes ship for Cairo. But her companion, Miss Pritchett, succumbs to typhoid in Rome -- weakminded female that she is. That's just when an unexpected distraction drops, more or less, at Amelia's feet. What happens next makes for a delicious mystery and pyramids of fun. (9 compact discs/10 hours)