Nefertari, Princess of Egypt (A Journey Through Time Series)

Anna is a little girl who loves cats, even though she is allergic to them. On vacation with her family in Egypt, she notices a gray cat and decides to take her picture. Following her new friend, the little girl slips right into the tomb of Nefertari, the mighty and beautiful Egyptian queen. Anna is admiring the splendid wall paintings when Nefertari herself appears with the cat in her arms. The queen explains that cats were sacred in Egypt, and introduces Anna to the cat goddess, Bastet, and other gods. She asks the little girl to take her photograph with Osiris-Ra and the other figures in the wall painting. At the crucial moment, however, the jackal-headed god Anubis barks and startles the cat. She jumps into Anna's arms, Anna sneezes, and the photograph is ruined. The tomb keeper wakes up and rushes in to find innocent-faced Anna all by herself, but all the Egyptians have switched positions on the walls. A three-page chapter at the end of the book goes back through time to tell us who the mighty Egyptians were, how they built their gigantic pyramids, who their gods were, how their kings were buried, and how they wrote down words. It also explains such fascinating words as pharaoh, sarcophagus, papyrus, and hieroglyphs.