Alexandria under the first Ptolemies: a sculptor takes a girl of Tennis as his model for Arachne, the mortal who challenged a goddess at the loom and was punished for winning. Ebers was an Egyptologist who wrote fiction to pay for excavations; this late novel is about art and hubris, and the weaving, the guilds and the harbour are all reconstructed from what he had personally dug up.

Georg Ebers (1837-1898) was a German Egyptologist and novelist. In 1870 he was appointed professor of Egyptology at the University of Leipzig, and he is known for his discovery of the Ebers Papyrus as well as a series of historical novels set in ancient Egypt, including An Egyptian Princess, Uarda, and Cleopatra.