The professor explores one of Saqqara's last pyramid complexes to illustrate how Ancient Egypt's 'Pyramid Age' came to an end. A worsening climate combined with political upheaval, famine and economic difficulties to plunge the state into a dark era of civil war, with the land dividing into smaller city-states headed by ambitious small-town leaders. In an obscure tomb in Thebes, she uncovers the stories of warriors who fought in the bloody battle that would eventually lead to Egypt's reunification, and reveals how settlers known as the 'Hyksos' tried to infiltrate the fledgling nation's government to seize the throne