Delusion by Medhat Shanan

The novel takes place in the city of Chicago when the Egyptian Egyptologist Dr. Hassan Abdul-Rahman is chosen to be among the American mission entrusted with the discovery of the Pharaonic monuments in Qurna Mountain in Upper Egypt, that dream for which he lived to decipher the mystery of the message he inherited from his grandfather, the chief Abdul-Fattah Harb, one of Howard Carter’s assistants, who discovered the Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb. That message has included a call from the Pharaoh Akhnattun to his daughter, Tutankhamun’s wife, to return to the homeland and support the father against the oppression of Amun’s priests. Dr. Hassan returns to his hometown of Qurna, after an absence of decades, to search for evidence that confirms his research on the origin of Satanism. The conflict develops, and the times overlap between the abyssal past and the living present, in many places among Cairo, Luxor, and Chicago. The nationalities converge and interact with each other by interests and whims, and feelings range between love and lies, honesty and betrayal, strength and weakness, reality and imagination, until Dr. Hassan reaches his goal, and achieve an archaeological and historical discovery that upends the world, and reveals the secret of oblivion through Attun’s Hymn. He revealed its hidden part, challenging the problems of ignorance, superstition, and the dominance of tribalism and money, with the help of Qurna’s conscious youth. However, the forces of evil were on the lookout for him, when they prepared in Chicago to get rid of him in his homeland's heart.