The Pharaoh's Shadow, By Anthony Sattin

In the time of the pharaohs, a magician was a senior official. In modern Egypt, he may be a tourist guide in flip-flops, but the magic retains its potency, "I will put the blood from the frog over your eyes… you can call the djinns and the people who live under the ground."

It rattled Sattin: "I arrived as a cynic… but I was terrified." Weaving an edgy path through dusty sun and eerie darkness, his search for ancient Egypt reaches a plausible conclusion with a Coptic scholar who claims his derided sect are true descendents, "Outside we are slaves, but inside we are pharaohs.