In the following chapters I will take you on a chronologically ordered retelling of my time in ancient Egypt. I will recount to you the story of my time in this world; day to day interactions, rituals in which I participated, how I came to be a priest. and my relations with others. I will include excerpts from my conversations with others, logs of events and a selection of notecards that were widely distributed in the community. Some of these set out the process of becoming a member, some explain how role play worked and some are intercommunity communications.

Some terms used in these notecards and chat excerpts will be unfamiliar to the reader; Out Of Character (OOC) this refers to actions or speech by the avatar rather than the avatar’s character, Teleport (TP) instantaneously moving an avatar from one place in the world to another, Instant Message (IM) a private message from one resident to any one other resident, In Character (IC), Role Play (RP), Avatar (avi), What the fuck? (WTF), laugh out loud (LOL), in my humble opinion (IMHO) and ‘crash’ meaning that the software client used to access the world becomes unstable and the program terminates or that one loses one’s connectivity to the internet and thus one’s avatar disappears from the world. Em hotep (htp) is an Egyptian phrase that translates as ‘in peace’. It was used as a greeting in the sims and this accounts for its use in this ritual when the participants are welcoming the presence of the goddess. Senebty (snb) is a Egyptian word which translates as ‘health’, with an ending which shows a noun form made out of the second person of a verb. So literally it means ‘your state of being healthy’. It was used as a farewell in the sims. No one seemed to know how it was that these phrases came to be used. It was a case of “everyone just knows it”.