[1] It is the fourteenth of the eighteen overall stories Haggard wrote about the hunter Allan Quatermain, and the tenth novel in the series.

In the frame story, he and Lady Ragnall (introduced in The Ivory Child) inhale Taduki, a fictional drug that induces visions of previous incarnations.

Thus, Quatermain relives the experiences of ancient Egyptian aristocrat Shabaka (a descendant of the pharaoh of the same name)—alongside flashes of his earlier lives—and Ragnall those of Amada, an ancient priestess of Isis; several other characters of the Quatermain novels, such as the Hottentot Hans, Lord George Ragnall, the wizard Harût, and the elephant-god Jana, also appear under various guises.

"[2] The Ancient Allan, like many of Haggard's works, is an adventure story with strong fantastical elements involving metempsychosis and telepathy.

By this time he is over sixty years old and living comfortably in England, although he returns to Africa in the chronologically final story, Allan Quatermain (1887).