Nofret is the daughter of a Hittite nobleman, captured by enemies from Mitanni and sent as tribute to the Pharaoh in Egypt: the strange, otherworldly Akhenaten, who rules from his raw new city of Amarna. As servant to his daughter, she witnesses the rise and fall of Akhenaten and his one god, the lives and deaths of his queen and his heirs, and the brief reign of Tutankhamon. Then, freed at last from Egypt, she embarks on a years-long journey into the desert oases of Sinai, and there finds love and family.