The Mummy's Kiss

About the Book

Michael Manning, martial arts instructor, Egyptologist, despondent over a recent divorce, falls asleep in Sutros Museum.  Perched on the edge of the turbulent Pacific Ocean, near San Francisco’s famous Cliff House, Sutros Museum had been a landmark attraction since 1896.  

    Because Michael is able to park his motor home nearby, he spends a great deal of time in the museum.  Among the Ancient Egyptian artifacts there are several mummies.  One of them is of a young woman.  The placard said “Mir-eh, Princess of Thebes, 3,000 years ago, relative of Ramses the Great.  Michael is puzzled by a strange affinity for this mummy.  He spends long minutes beside her, wondering what she was like, he knew, she was once a beautiful lady.

    He is awakened by a thunder storm.  Suddenly, ball lightening crashes through the skylight, and strikes the glass case holding Mir-eh.  Pieces of glass whistle over his head.  

    While trying to find his way out, a lightening flash reveals the fire ball had cloned her DNA, and the Princess is alive.  He carries her to his motor home, and because he can read and write her Hieroglyphic language

they learn to communicate.  The Princess suffers from a partial amnesia and is frightened by traffic noises.  She asks Michael to take her home.  While Michael is away getting passports, the motor home is seized by his ex-wife’s lawyer for non-payment of alimony.  Michael recovers the motor home, and they leave San Francisco.  On the way Mir-eh becomes ill and Michael realizes his greatest fears, that the illness from which she had died 3,000 years ago, had been in her genes, and had been cloned along with her.  He stops at a hospital where a few days of treatment with penicillin cure her ailment.  Then Michael calls his close friend, Egyptologist Howard Weitzman, who flies over to meet a Princess from the Ancient Egypt he’d been studying all his life.  Howard is the only person in the whole world who would believe Michael’s fantastic story.

    Michael drives to Los Angeles, sells the motor home, buys tickets to Egypt, and the three of them go to the airport.  Howard makes Michael promise to let him know their address when theythey find a place to live.  Howard goes home with a secret he can never tell anyone.

    In Egypt Michael goes in search of a location which will make her feel at home.  While stopped on the bank of the Nile, near the ruins of Thebes, young boys firing at crocodiles, shoot at the insulators.  And wires

carrying high voltages from the Aswan Dam power plant, fall on them and oblivion.

    Michael regains consciousness in Ancient Egypt during the 19th Dynasty, about 1286BC, and learns Mir-eh is the daughter of Ramses the Great.  For bringing his daughter back from the dead, the Pharaoh offers Michael anything in his kingdom.  Michael chooses marriage to Mir-eh.

Ramses grants Michael’s wish, and since Mir-eh is a crown princess, the Pharaoh ordains Michael a prince.  They also get a villa on the Nile, near Thebes.

    Married to a Princess, living in luxury, Michael faces continuous danger from jealous members of the Pharaoh’s court and the general of the army.                                                                                

Being a Prince in Ancient Egypt had responsibilities, Michael finds himself leading a small group of soldiers against desert raiders.  An expert swordsman, he has to learn to kill, or die.

    During a honeymoon trip down the Nile in the royal barge, Michael sees the Pyramids as they used to be.

About the Author

Born on a farm in Wisconsin, served in the Navy during World War Two, aboard a submarine and a destroyer, advanced to Naval Intelligence before the end of the war. Studied writing at the San Francisco Fiction School. Worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad as an investigator, traveling from Portland to New Orleans. Then I became self employed, working as a private investigator, photojournalist and freelance writer. More than thirty years ago, I discovered in Sutro’s Museum the 3,000 year old mummy of a young woman. Her name was Mir-eh and she was a relative of Ramses the Great. I felt a strange affinity for her and decided she would live again, in the printed word. To quote an Ancient Egyptian Philosopher, “Loved ones are never really gone until their names are no longer spoken.” In my spare time, I researched Ancient Egypt and began writing her story.