Amelia Peabody Series - Series Narrative

Series Narrative

Amelia Peabody is introduced in the series' first novel, Crocodile on the Sandbank as a confirmed spinster, suffragist, and scholar. She inherits a fortune from her father and leaves England to see the world, with the side benefit of escaping various suitors and family members who were neither aware that she would be the sole beneficiary of her father's estate nor that he had amassed a small fortune over the course of his lifetime.

In Rome, Amelia meets Evelyn Barton-Forbes, a young Englishwoman of social standing who has run off with (and subsequently been abandoned by) her Italian lover, and the two make their way to Egypt. There they meet the Emerson brothers, Egyptologist Radcliffe and his philologist brother Walter. Over the course of the first book the couples pair up: Amelia marries Radcliffe (referred to throughout the series by his last name "Emerson"), and Evelyn marries Walter.

Following the birth of their son Ramses (né Walter) Emerson ("as swarthy as an Egyptian and as arrogant as a Pharaoh"), the Emersons initially settle in Kent, from where Emerson commutes to a job lecturing in Egyptology at university in London. Despite Amelia's suggestions that he resume seasonal digs in Egypt, Emerson insists on staying in England with his family while Ramses is too young to travel.

Peabody and Emerson return to Egypt at least once without Ramses (The Curse of the Pharaohs) in 1892 before deciding to bring him along on their annual digs (The Mummy Case), beginning in the 1894-95 season. Amelia's desire to explore pyramids is countered by Emerson's refusal to be diplomatic with the Egyptian Service d'Antiquites, resulting in their firman (permit) to excavate at Mazghuna, a minor pyramid field southwest of Cairo.

While the Emersons are excavating at Mazghuna, they encounter an enigmatic criminal mastermind who runs an illicit underground antiquities trade, stealing artifacts from tombs, which puts him at odds with the Emersons. Amelia initially calls "The Master Criminal," although his nom de guerre is eventually revealed to be Sethos. Sethos is initially presented as a rival to Emerson for Amelia's affections, but later becomes an important part of the Emerson's large circle of friends, allies, and acquaintances in later books when it is discovered that he is Emerson's half-brother, Seth.

The Emerson family expands during the 1897-1898 season while on an archaeological expedition to Nubia. The family encounters a hitherto unknown civilization in a remote wadi in the desert (The Last Camel Died at Noon), becomes embroiled in turbulent politics, and discovers Nefret Forth, the daughter of a long-presumed dead explorer. Nefret returns to England with the Emersons and becomes their ward.

The family expands again in the 1899-1900 season when the family encounters David Todros, the son of Abdullah's estranged daughter and her Christian husband. David is living in a state of semi-slavery, working for a forger of antiquities. He is taken in by Evelyn and Walter Emerson as a ward. David later marries Evelyn and Walter's daughter Amelia (known as Lia to avoid confusion with her aunt).

Nefret's introduction initiates a running story arc of sexual tension between her and Ramses. This becomes an important part of the plot in the subset of books beginning with Seeing a Large Cat in which the younger generation of the family begin a parallel narration to Amelia's through the introduction of "excerpts from Manuscript H" (eventually revealed to have been written by Ramses). Among the pitfalls in this story arc is the arrival of Sennia, a young girl initially suspected to be Ramses' illegitimate daughter with a local prostitute. Sennia's arrival, and the suspicions about Ramses that it raises, precipitates Nefret's brief marriage to another man. Sennia is revealed to be the child of Amelia's nephew Percival, first seen in Deeds of the Disturber, who is reintroduced as an adult in a villainous role for several volumes beginning with The Falcon at the Portal. Sennia is adopted by the Emersons, who take her back to England at the conclusion of the volume.

The tension between Ramses and Nefret is finally resolved in He Shall Thunder in the Sky, with their marriage taking place at the end of that book and recounted in flashback sequences in the next. The two eventually have three children: a set of fraternal twins (a son, David John, and a daughter, Charlotte, or "Charla"), and an unnamed daughter born after the current conclusion of the series. It is through the youngest daughter that John Tregarth, a character in Peters's Vicky Bliss series, is descended from the Emerson-Peabodys.

Additional characters in the series include members of the large Egyptian family who support the Emersons in their digs. The head of the family is Abdullah ibn al-Wahhab, Emerson's reis or foreman, who supervises their archaeological digs. Abdullah has several children, among them his youngest son, Selim, who, originally assigned as a bodyguard of sorts for Ramses (The Mummy Case), eventually replaces his father as reis.

A number of prominent figures from the time appear in the novel as characters, including Howard Carter, William Flinders Petrie, Gaston Maspero, and E. A. Wallis Budge, whom Emerson considers an arch-rival (even if the feelings are not mutual). Another recurring character is that of Cyrus Vandergelt, an American entrepreneur who finances a number of archaeological expeditions in the Valley of the Kings (with little success) and becomes a close friend and confidant of the Emerson clan. The Vandergelt character is at least partly based on Theodore Davis, the American entrepreneur who first hired Howard Carter to dig in the Valley of the Kings, and who himself appears in The Ape Who Guards the Balance.