100 pages • 3 hours read
The Red Pyramid
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “I Drop a Little Man on His Head”
Carter protests that Amos told them not to go into the library, but Sadie reminds him of their situation and the impending disaster, which makes him agree to explore. The doors are chained and locked closed. Sadie holds up a hand, says the word for “destroy” in ancient Egyptian, and the doors explode. Inside, they find more statues and several items, but no books. Their dad’s work bag is there, and Carter finds the box his dad used at the museum. Inside, they find magicians’ tools, including a stylus, papyrus, and a wax figurine. Sadie jokingly asks the figure to tell them about their dad, and the figurine comes to life. Sadie screams and drops him “on his tiny head” (92).
The little man introduces himself as a shabti (answerer) named Doughboy. When he learns Julius is gone, he makes a break for freedom, but Sadie tosses him back in the box. Carter tells Doughboy what happened to their dad, and Doughboy declares his service fulfilled before turning back into solid wax. Next, they search the shelves, finding scrolls. One lists the pharaoh’s bloodlines, and their last name, Kane, is at the bottom. Next, they find a scroll showing the five gods their dad released from the Rosetta Stone. Carter can’t recall the exact story and wishes aloud that he could find a copy in English. In response, one of the statues comes to life, retrieves a scroll, gives it to Carter, and returns to its pedestal.
As requested, the scroll is the story of the five gods. Nut and Geb (goddess of the sky and god of the earth, respectively) wanted children, but Ra (god of the sun) foretold that one of their children would replace him as king, and he forbade Nut from having children on any day or night of the year. Nut gambled against the moon god and won enough moonlight to tack on five days to the end of the year, making the year a total of 365 days. She had one of her children on each of these days, and the days came to be collectively called the demon days. The five children are Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys, and the demon days begin the day after tomorrow. Carter and Sadie have a week before Set destroys the world, and Sadie writes, “To save Dad, we must defeat Set” (103). As the full weight of everything settles on the kids, an alarm blares from outside the library.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Muffin Plays with Knives”
In the main room, Muffin and Khufu are anxious, and outside, Philip of Macedonia battles two longnecks—monsters with the bodies of leopards and necks of serpents. The crocodile slams part of the terrace, so it crumbles, sending it and the longnecks plummeting. Sadie wants to rush outside, but Carter reminds her of Amos’s warning not to open the doors. He drags her back into the library, where he orders one of the shabti’s to “bring me the Narmer Palette” (107). The shabti disappears in a puff of smoke and then reappears with the real palette from the museum in Egypt. Carter confirms that the longnecks are creatures of chaos, which means they were sent by Set.
Outside the library, the longnecks are somehow back on the terrace and sniffing around the glass doors. They bash their way through the mansion’s weakened protections, and Khufu hands Muffin to Sadie, making urgent noises, before attacking the creatures and being batted off the edge of the terrace. Sadie is amazed the cat doesn’t run away and remembers Amos saying Muffin would protect them. Sadie orders Muffin to help, and the cat transforms into a dark-haired woman who wields a pair of knives.
The woman is Bast, goddess of cats. She dances around the longnecks until the monsters twist themselves into knots and then beheads them. Knowing more monsters will be on their way, Bast tells the children they need to leave “while we can still make it out of here alive” (113).
Chapter 9 Summary: “We Run from Four Guys in Skirts”
Carter retrieves his dad’s bag, and the three leave the mansion moments before it explodes. Four men wearing kilts descend the stairs carrying a metal box between them. They are carriers sent by Set to capture Sadie and Carter. Bast steals a car and weaves through traffic at a ridiculous speed, the carriers keeping pace even though they’re on foot. The kids ask why Bast can’t just disintegrate the carriers, to which she responds that “Set’s magic is stronger than mine” (119), adding that they don’t have time for a discussion on magic, hosts, and gods.
Bast explains that she made a deal with their father after she was freed from Cleopatra’s Needle. He didn’t reimprison her, and in exchange, she agreed to remain a cat and watch over Sadie. She refuses to say more on the subject and instead concentrates on keeping ahead of the carriers. They need to get out of New York and find help. When the kids ask what help they could possibly find, Bast says, “We’ll summon more gods, of course” (121).
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
The longneck attacks in these chapters foreshadow a few things. First, the monsters are a hint that Amos has been compromised by Set. Amos told the kids to stay in the mansion because they’d be safe, but the longnecks broke in with little effort. They don’t know it yet, but Set had Amos sabotage the protections to force Carter and Sadie into the open. The longnecks are also the first in a long line of chaos creatures that chase Carter and Sadie along their journey and show the level of destruction and strength chaos is capable of. Bast’s defeat of the creatures foreshadows how she protects the kids throughout the story and how she eventually gives up her power and is forced deep into the Duat by the destruction of her human form.
The carriers are another group of chaos creatures. While there is no mention of them specifically in Egyptian myth, Riordan took the concept of Set using a box or coffin to imprison Osiris and expanded upon it. In myth, Set tricked Osiris into lying in a perfect-fitting coffin before sealing the box and throwing it into the Nile. The box the carriers have in Chapter 9 may be the same one. Rather than throw Carter and Sadie into the river, Set has tasked the carriers to imprison them in the box and bring them to him so he may use them. Carter and Sadie do not yet know they host Horus and Isis, but Set’s aim to capture, rather than kill, them shows that Set may already know that Carter and Sadie are hosts.
Chapter 7 introduces shabti, which translates to “answerer.” Ancient Egyptians believed the afterlife mirrored life on Earth, complete with homes, food and drink, and work. On Earth, a person was allowed to send someone to work in their stead if they could not work themselves for any reason. In the afterlife, rather than sending a friend, a shabti was sent instead. The shabti were created in life and set in a tomb, typically a tomb of a pharaoh, so that when the person arrived in the afterlife, they would have someone to perform duties for them. In Chapter 7, the shabti in the library are fashioned as fully formed humans, which allows them to carry out various research-related jobs. By contrast, Doughboy lacks feet, and Julius likely made the shabti this way so it could not escape and be forced to give information to the House of Life.
Unlock all 100 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Rick Riordan
