“I did not want to be stuck in history. At least not permanently. Not in an age before antibiotics, anaesthesia and modern dentistry."

"The Ghost of the British Museum"

My own age was the oxygen I breathed, it suddenly hit me, and without it I was left gasping like a fish out of water, flapping on the banks of the river. I knew very surely at that moment that Egypt was more than a place or an age for me. Egypt was a concept. It was the Egypt of the mind I loved, self-contained and endlessly satisfying. I loved to hanker after its mystery, not live in it and die in it. Why had this universe-splitting event happened here and now? Clearly this doorway must be some kind of threshold... of time? It could be the only explanation for my shocking transformation. I had fallen into the impossible and now was standing on the brink of the forbidden and unknowable. Could I proceed? I must. I had to find answers, search for a way to undo what had happened. And the answer might lie across this threshold, my instincts told me. I would have to dare crossing it. I moved forward.” From "The GHOST OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM" AMAZON