Thirty-one-year-old Victorian gentlewoman Amelia Peabody has not only inherited her father's fortune, but she is also blessed with his strong will as well. Now she's headed for Cairo, accompanied by a girl with a tarnished past, to indulge her passion for Egyptology. Little did she know that murder and a homicidal mummy lay in wait for her.
Archaeologist Nathan Lee Swift is coaxed by his mentor to steal an ancient vial of blood from Golgotha in Jerusalem. When the relic is opened, a 2,000-year-old plague is unleashed. As the pestilence threatens to wipe out humanity, Nathan Lee must race with a desperate strategy to find a cure: the use of human lab rats cloned from blood from the year zero.