Amonkhet is a Magic: The Gathering expansion block consisting of the sets Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation. Amonkhet was released on April 28, 2017, and Hour of Devastation was released on July 14, 2017. The eponymous new plane has an ancient Egyptian theme, and features concepts like mummies and embalming. Plot The block's setting is inspired by ancient Egypt, with themes of social hierarchy and contrast between life and death. In Amonkhet, Gatewatch set out to destroy the evil dragon planeswalker Nicol Bolas after learning of his dominion over the titular desert plane Amonkhet. In the desert, they find a city (Naktamun) teeming with food, water, and life, ruled by five gods, with Bolas seemingly absent altogether. The people of Naktamun train their entire lives to die in ritual combat, hoping to experience pure bliss in the afterlife when the God-Pharaoh (Bolas) returns to Amonkhet. In Hour of Devastation, Bolas returns as prophesied, only to raze Naktamun and reveal the true purpose of the training and combat: to create an army of physically-perfect and combat-adept mummies to serve as an unquestionably loyal army. Mechanics Amonkhet introduced three new mechanics: Exert: A keyword appearing on creatures. If a creature is exerted upon attacking or using an activated ability, it provides a bonus but does not untap during its controller's following turn, as seen on . Embalm: Paying the Embalm cost of a creature and exiling it from the graveyard creates a white Zombie creature token that is an exact copy of that creature, such as . Aftermath: A new split card mechanic present on instants and sorceries. The first half is played as normal, but the Aftermath half can only be cast from a graveyard, such as and . Hour of Devastation introduced two additional mechanics: Eternalize: Similar to Embalm, paying a creature's Eternalize cost and exiling it from the graveyard creates a black zombie creature token copy of that creature with base power and toughness 4/4, as with . Afflict: A creature with Afflict will cause an opponent to lose a defined amount of life when the creature becomes blocked in combat, as with . Related products Art book The Art of Magic: The Gathering – Amonkhet (2017) by James Wyatt was published by VIZ Media in July 2017. Rebecca Angel, for GeekDad, highlighted that Wyatt "has done an excellent job bringing together all the aspects of one of the