Lord of the Silent is the 13th in a series of historical mystery novels, written by Elizabeth Peters and featuring fictional sleuth and archaeologist Amelia Peabody.

Married eight months upon return to Egypt, Ramses and Nefret Emerson live in the dahabeah named Amelia on the Nile, hoping for a bit of honeymoon then checking on dig sites in Luxor.

In Cairo, an unknown man guides Sennia to find an authentic stele in a heap of waste from digging out the tombs.

Working at the dig, Emerson and Amelia find Asad's corpse placed in an ancient tomb.

As Ramses climbs to reach an opening, a large rock falls past him down to where Nefret and George Barton stand.

Emerson suspects Kuentz as the competitor to Sethos and responsible for recent murders, based on the stele left for Sennia to find.

They stop work, as Emerson, Selim and Daoud take over, digging to reach a shrine to Amon Re, a figure of him in gold, not a tomb.

The title of the book refers to Amon-Re, a major deity of ancient Egypt (as early as 2000 BCE), usually depicted with the head of a ram.

“Epithets and attributes of Amon-Re, A composite from various prayers” Epigraph in Lord of the Silent Publishers Weekly predicted this novel would be a best-seller, describing the series as "uproarious Egyptological mysteries".

They went on to say that "readers will find all the delicious trappings of a vintage Peters extravaganza—lost tombs, kidnappings, deadly attacks, mummies and sinister villains.

However, the accumulation of family members and other characters in this novel is harder work for the reader than the earlier novels: "it takes a lot more concentration to keep track of the swarms of adopted children, relatives, native associates, political enemies and family cats that have accrued to the series since 1975.