Pyramids, Popes and Parallel Worlds

"From the summit of these monuments, forty centuries look upon you!" stated Napoleon. Two centuries ago. The Great Pyramids of Giza defy age. They stand unbowed, piercing the skies, axes around which the rest of human history revolves. These were already ancient mysteries when Herodotus named them among the Seven Wonders of the World in the fifth century BC. Indeed, the Pyramids of Giza were already as ancient to Herodotus as the Colisseum in Rome is to us today.

‘Awe-inspiring’ is too banal a word to describe these monsters. It seems silly, but I just did not expect the Pyramids to be as big as they actually are! The smallest of the three (that of Menkaure / Mycerinus) is the size that I probably expected the largest (that of Khufu / Cheops) to be. The first glimpse you get of these behemoths, looking through the smog off Pyramid Road, framed by twentieth-century high-rises, blew me away. The Pyramid of Khufu loomed overhead oppressively as we drew nearer, almost out of perspective, as though it and its sisters had been badly super-imposed over the scene by a budding Harryhausen. Because this is not some remote, untouched site. Modern-day Cairo abuts Giza, the living and the dead in close proximity. According to the cosmology of the ancient Egyptians the eastern bank of the Nile was associated with the rising of the sun and hence life in the minds of the ancient Egyptians; it was there that their towns and temples were largely sited. In comparison the western bank was the domain of the darkly-aspected god Set, associated with the setting of the sun and death. This is why tombs were often located to the west of the Nile, whether we are talking of the Tombs of the Nobles across from Aswan, the Valley of the Kings across from Luxor / Thebes, and of course the famous pyramid fields from Giza down to Dahshur. Now the city sprawls west to Giza, only stopped by the harsh and unforgiving desert. It is here, on the very edge of Set’s domain that the Pyramids sit.

First a note on terminology. The Pyramids are best known by the Greek names of their entombed occupants – Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus. However, I prefer to use the actual Egyptian names – Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure respectively. Khufu’s is the largest; Khafre’s looks equal in height (or even slightly bigger), but that is because it was constructed atop a rise. Menkaure’s is noticeably smaller, a little bit further away, and slightly out of line with the other two (compare their alignment with the stars of Orion’s Belt…).

Abdul, our driver, directed our minibus up the plateau while Laila, our guide explained orientation (top lesson: trust no one – be paranoid!). Honestly, she never stopped for breath. LE50 allows access to the Giza Plateau for the Great Pyramids, several smaller pyramids for queens and so on, an assorted huddle of tombs, the solar barque museum, and of course the Sphinx (to be reviewed separately). The plateau is not a flat courtyard. It is a rugged terrain of knobbles and crevasses, sudden extrusions and dips, all scattered with fragments of masonry and rubble. Tourists weave in and out – noticeably to my eyes the khaki-clad westerners were greatly outnumbered by Egyptians in clean white shirts and brightly-coloured skirts and headscarves. The presencde of so many Egyptians all dressed up to take their children out to see their heritage actually imparted a sort of festival atmosphere to the procedings.

Firstly, we headed to a stand on the northern side of Khafre’s Pyramid. Close to, like all the pyramids, it is not smooth, but comprised of numerous jagged blocks. It was once faced with limestone however, and the limestone cap can still be seen on the Pyramid of Khafre. And for a mere LE25 (little more than £2 GBP) you can plunge into its interior. Leaving our cameras behind, we bought tickets , and then climbed up to the entrance. Bending double (literally – you crouch in half and keep your head down!) we descended via a steep duckwalk, delving deeper and deeper into the monumental edifice, aware of just how many thousands of tonnes of rock pressed down above our contorted bodies. Finally this introductory metre-square passage opened up into a horizontal corridor where I could almost walk upright. Then, time to crouch once more as we ascended into the pyramid’s very heart.

At least we breached the burial chamber. By this point I was slick with sweat. The heat was intense, like a sauna. The chamber was high, with a peaked ceiling, but this did nothing to cool me. The air was dead. But at least I could stretch up to my full height. The chamber was unadorned, save for a large inscription in Italian on one wall, daubed by the archaeologist Belzoni who first discovered this chamber in 1818 (now imagine taking that route in total darkness, with no footholds, the air foetid with having been trapped in here for millenia, your only guide a flickering torch…). A plain stone sarcophagus lies in situ – it was too big to get out through the passge. Notably, it was also too big to have been brought in via the passage – the pyramid was constructed around it. Unprompted, I climbed into the sarcophagus. Lying down, at the very core of the pyramid, I lay, arms folded across my chest. The old god-complex rearing its ugly head again!

Back to the outside, gulping greedily at the air, wafting my shirt to try to cool myself down. There was a lot of haze in the air. Desert dust or city smog? Actually, my photos came out better than I thought they would. Walking with a female friend we were approached by a young man:
"You are married?"
"No."
"You are friends?"
"Yes."
"You are lucky man."
He then proceded to offer me twenty million camels for her. I swear these guys must be employed by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism – it’s just the most stereotypical thing we expect to hear in the middle east, it makes the woman feel complimented, it was not in any way sleazy… It is the perfect memory!

In actual fact, in general the pestering (for camel rides, postcards etc) was nowhere near as bad at Giza as in the Khan el-Khalili market in Cairo. I was quite impressed. And it vanished entirely once you rounded the corner of Khafre, to where Menkaure’s Pyramid sat a little apart. Behind it, the scarp of the desert rising up behind it. Here there were no flotillas of coaches, as there were around the foot of Khufu’s Pyramid, here there was no press of crowds. I felt like I had stepped once more from one world to the next, that I was in one of those 19th-century David Roberts watercolours. This could have been the very view that Mark Twain had in his ‘Innocents Abroad’ before he was bodily dragged to the top of the Pyramid of Khufu. I wouldn’t have fancied it myself. The things are steep. The warning signs against climbing were quite extraneous as far as I was concerned, even if I had never read Twain’s description: "Each step being fully as high as a dinner-table; there being very, very many of the steps; an Arab having hold of each of our arms and springing upward from step to step and snatching us with them, forcing us to lift our feet as high as our breasts every time, and do it rapidly and keep it up till we were ready to faint – who shall say it is not lively, exhilarating, lacerating, muscle-straining, bone-wrenching and perfectly excruciating and exhausting pastime, climbing the Pyramids?"

Apart from the varied low tombs and piles of rubble, there is one last area of interest around the pyramids. Several solar barques were buried around the Pyramid of Khufu, and one 43-metre long boat is now preserved in a temperature-and-humidity-controlled building. Viewing it costs LE35, but I was put off by the frightful queues.

Coaches progress from here up a surfaced to a viewpoint on the scarp from where you can gaze upon the three great pyramids marching away east, the grey blur of Cairo merging into the sky seamlessly behind them. There is a little open-air bazaar here, where you can buy trinkets and curios. And then it was back on the coach, heading for the mysterious Sphinx.

(One final tip. There are toilets on site, but the queues are appalling. Go before you come. Or wait until you reach the Sphinx, where there are much saner underground toilets just in front of it).

And so. Abu Hol. The Father of Terror. The Sphinx. Included in the same LE50 ticket for the Pyramids, this mysterious apparition is part of the funerary complex of the Pharoah Khafre. Its exact provenance is still the subject of fierce conjecture and debate. What is not in question though is the almost hypnotic attraction it exerts. In many ways it is quite rough and eroded, its later head disjointed from the rock that makes up its body. Yet this does not detract from its appeal.

To gain audience with the mysterious sphinx you navigate through Khafre’s funerary Valley temple. This allows you a view of his / her / its profile once you make your way through the scrum of people – headdress, eyes, ears, the trace of a quizzically superior smirk, smiling at our antics and unanswered questions. But the sphinx keeps its mysteries to itself (except during the thrice nightly sound and light shows [LE60] which are ‘narrated’ by the Sphinx). Closer to, one can see that the lower portion – the paws, flanks, and the tail curling up to the right – are faced with brick. The press of people can be pretty intense. I heard one American complain that it was too crowded, especially compared to, say, the Great Wall of China. His wife pointed out that they had been to just one of 500 miles of Wall, but in terms of the Sphinx: "This is it!"

There are toilets out front of the Sphinx’s enclosure, before the carpark. These were clean, free, and did not have a five minute queue outside – unlike those located up at the Pyramids.

Egypt and its incredible history deserves better than the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo. This Museum has been the repository for many of the relics of the Pharoanic period for 150 years now, and its treasures are legion: statues and sphinxes, murals and mummies, ornaments both religious and practical in nature, and of course the treasures of King Tutankhamun. Yet, maybe do to the sheer bulk of its collection (some 136,000 pieces), it does not seem to have been extensively reorganised since the 1920s. Exhibits are crammed in, poorly labelled, many open to be pawed by every passing visitor. In general it is a crowded, poorly-labelled jumble of relics, with only some pretence at order. This is not an Egyptian disease; the Egyptians can run fantastic museums of the standard of the Nubian Museum in Aswan, the Luxor Museum, and the Coptic Museum here in Cairo. A new museum is currently being constructed out on Pyramids Road, and I have a well-supported belief that once relocated (in around 2015 unfortunately), the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities will once more take its place as one of the world’s great museums, and not just a building housing great exhibits poorly.

The nearest Metro station is Sadat at Midan Tahrir to the south beyond the Nile Hilton. Taxis can be hailed to the north of the museum or outside the Hilton – bear in mind that drivers will artificially inflate their starting prices if you catch one from either of these locations. It costs LE50 to visit the museum (around £4.50GBP). Cameras need to be left in one of the security offices outside the grand rosehip-pink building (remember to reclaim them afterwards!). Inside there is a vague itinerary. The ground floor is loosely chronological in order; the upper is devoted to individual aspects - Tutankhamun’s treasure, royal mummies, model boats, tools etc. In general the displays are not great at contextualising what you see. It is therefore advisable to have some form of guide. Our guide, Laila said that as we only had two-and-a-half hours she would just cover the highlights! You could easily spend a half-day or longer here. If I’d had more time I would have used my introductory tour as a basis, and then returned to look around at further length under my own steam.

We started in the Atrium with Zoser, occupant of the very first pyramid. I was later to see a replica of this statue in its original location, the serdab outside his step-pyramid at Saqqara, staring off north for eternity. There is a copy of the famous Rosetta stone that enabled translation of hieroglyphics; the original I had seen previously in the British Museum.

From there we went upstairs to see the treasures of the boy-king Tutankhamun. His grave had survived looting until its rediscovery in the Valley of the Kings by Howard Carter in 1922, and hence the vast bulk of his grave goods (some 1700 pieces) remained intact. Here you will can see leopard-skin shields, still in good condition after 2300 years.The walls are lined with 365 ushabtis, holding the spirits of the servants, soldiers and farmers who would cater to his needs in the afterlife. There is a fabulous folding bed with modern-looking hinges, and ornate thrones where the pharoah could rest his feet on depictions of his defeated foes. Who were these foes? Well, his walking sticks (the ‘Prisoners’ Canes’) show effigies of Nubians, Persians – even Chinese, stylized in such a way that they could have been 19th century artifacts, rather than dating from the 1352 BC!

A separate room is given over to Tut’s most personal effects – the jewellery and ornaments that went into his sarcophagus with him. His funeral mask is everything you dream. Gold, black and turquoise, ears pierced, cobra rearing from the forehead, it is truly stunning. I am used to the full-on face-on viewpoint, so I was enraptured by the profile (you can do a full 360 around the mask). Whisper it quietly for fear of controversy, but from the side the jawline and thick lips look much more ‘African’ than the Semitic Egyptians of today…

From here we returned downstairs to see his parents, Akhenaten and Nefertiti and the Amarna period. Akhenaten dispossed the powerful priesthoods of Amun and instituted a monotheistic religion centered on the Aten sun-disk. Conventional art also went out the window, as you can see by their exaggerated depictions – wide hips, distended bellies, elongated heads. Laila said this was a genetic deformity due to inbreeding. Not a choice made by binding their heads? "No no no! Who old you they bound their heads?" Um, no one. Just a guess. Sore nerve?

With that little controversy dying down we went on to see relics of Hatshepsut (the loathed female pharoah), the Hyksos, and the ‘big three’ pyramid builders from Giza (including the famed mural of the ‘Meidum Geese’).

For another LE100, you can see the Royal Mummies. Quite expensive, considering that you can see other mummies for no additional fee elsewhere in Egypt (the Luxor Museum for instance). There are eleven bodies displayed here, all looking pretty much the same – dark skin, seemingly cut from stone, withered stick-like limbs, oily waves of black hair, teeth ivory against the ebony skin. You are expected to show respect for these fathers of Egypt and no guides are allowed; you are expected to progress in silence and read the panels (which for once are actually very informative). So what did I learn about those cousin-marrying dynasties? Well, mainly that they suffered from a wide variety of ailments – elongated skulls, very bad teeth, arthritis, arteriosclerosis, obesity (Hatshepsut), and – in the case of Ramses V – a distended scrotum! Outside there are animal mummies that require no additional fee to view. Two giant crocodiles steal the show, but there are also cats, baboons, and even shrews. The easiest job must have been the mummified snake!

I’ll have to give the Egyptian Museum five-stars as a must see. You cannot come to Cairo and pass on the opportunity of seeing the glorious grave goods of Tutankhamun. But that doesn’t mean I like the museum. I personally think it gives a very bad image of Egypt as a ramshackle, disorganised collection of historical treasures and little more to commend it. I look forward to the completion of the new, larger museum out by the Pyramids. Having seen some of the country’s newer museums I have little doubt that it will be a professional and cutting-edge gallery that will happily make most of my words above redundant.

I never thought I’d be reviewing a Hilton hotel. By nature one of life’s budget travellers, this is the sort of place I never usually step inside. However, I was recommended the Nile Hilton for one special reason, and I will recommend it to you for that self-same reason.

The Nile Hilton’s rooftop bar (called, I think, ‘El Mojito’ – very Egyptian!) has one of the views in Cairo. This is the place to come for a sundowner. It is open from noon until 2.30, but you really want to time your visit for dusk. Sat with a drink, watching the sun blazingly sink down across the mighty Nile and behind the skyscrapers, all conversation dies. Thirty-six hours previously I had been in the wilderness, perched atop Mount Sinai watching a betroot-red sun limn the horizon and tiger-stripe the jagged Sinai cliffs, and this view from the heart of the metropolis was just as impressive I thought. And then – then I noticed something to make the heart swell in the throat. It is not just skyscrapers that you can see to the west. There is an artful gap between two buildings, and there, in the distance, can be seen the pyramids, almost lost in a dim purple haze. Breathtaking!

Of course, there is a price to this. To keep with my pyramidal theme I ordered a bottle of Sakara beer. This would have cost me LE5 in laid-back Red Sea Dahab. Here the charge was a whopping LE22. In other places you could get a restaurant meal for that. Hell, in even in Cairo you can get a perfectly decent big bowl of hot filling koshary for a mere LE5! An orange juice was a bit cheaper at LE18, though I was used to paying no more than LE8 at most. But the view – out of this world. Just once duing your stay in Cairo you need to come here to watch the sun sink behind the pyramids into the great western deserts.

One interesting half-day in Cairo can be taken up by a visit south of the modern core of the city to ‘Coptic Cairo’. Here, sequestered inside the walls of the old Roman fort is a remarkable huddle of religious establishments. Almost ghetto-like, this is the heart of the Coptic Christian faith. The Bible was translated into Coptic a century before it was translated to Latin, and the early primates of Egypt rejected the version of the life of Christ and his teachings that was put forward by the early Catholic church. Likewise it kept its distance from the Byzantine, Greek and Russian Orthodox churches. Even after the Islamic conquest the Copts preserved their faith and identity, and even today they number some six million adherents. This figure is not likely to grow – the state has arrested over 200 converts from Islam under the National Security Act, and presidential permission is needed to open a new church…

Considering its location way down in the south of the city, Coptic Cairo is actually one of the easiest attractions to reach. Cairo’s wonderfully efficient Metro system runs right to it on the southbound Helwan line. Mari Girgis station sits right across the street from the ornate gateway into the Hanging Church. Stalls sell postcards of the Pope and recordings of his sermons. Pope Shenouda III that is. Stairs lead up to the church – it is actually suspended over what was once the water-gate of the Roman fortress (the river has now retreated some way to the west). A dark-wood roof like that of an upturned boat hangs overhead.

To the left of this tall yellow portal a wider way leads to the Coptic Museum, yet another exceptional museum to put the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities to shame. Entrance to the museum has a charge, unlike the other places you will visit in the area; even so, it is only LE40. Further down the street is the raised circular Greek Orthodox church of St George. And yet further, a way leads down steps into the labyrinth of the still-living neighbourhood, where churches and residences abut.

History and faith hang heavy in the air in this neighbourhood. The prize relic of the Hanging Church is an olive stone once chewed by the Virgin Mary. The Church of St Sergius is built over the site where the Holy Family supposedly rested on their flight into Egypt. The Ben Ezra Synagogue, newly restored through donations, sits where legend relates the infant Moses was found in his basket amongst the reeds. And in the basement of the Convent of St George a ancient nun placed a shackle around my neck that allegedly once confined the saint; rubbing my forehead (I had to stoop) and arms with the chain, she blessed me. The narrow streets are mazelike. You have to descend into them due to the changes in street level over the last couple of thousand years; yet many of the churches are above you as they were originally located atop the towers of the port fortress. The ways are covered over between the tall blank walls, and merchants hawk souvenirs. Yet a sudden turn leaves all the hubbub behind and brings you to a residential street, where grubby children peer out from doorways in buildings that predate the rise of Cairo itself, or to the edge of an immense graveyard.

Another day, another museum to put the Egyptian Museum to shame.

For the last century this institution has sought to preserve the relics of both Egyptian Christianity and Egyptian Christians. This hence means that domestic utensils and childrens’ games share space with Gnostic gospel scrolls and monastic murals. And the museum in no way suffers from it. In many ways, it takes up the story told in the later rooms of Aswan’s Nubian Museum and continues up into the second millenium. The LE40 I feel is eminently reasonable.

The ground floor is arranged chronologically, showing how early Christianity coexisted with other religions. You see ankh crosses, comically plump carvings from Greek mythology, and names such as ‘Phoebamon’. Murals from the desert monasteries (many of which still survive in the remoter reaches of Egypt’s mountains and deserts) follow. The main pieces, saved from defunct hermitages, come from Bawit monastery near Assyut, and the Monastery of St Jeremiah at Saqqara. Some of the images are almost manga-like, all big shaded eyes and clear colours. Upstairs there are examples of the Nag Hammadi scrolls, documenting life in a gnostic community.

The building itself is equally as impressive, full of exquisite mashribiyya carvings and ornate lamps. One section of roof is decorated with images of Nilotic towns. One moment sticks in my memory. 11:30, the Call to Prayer from numerous mosques reverberating through the windows, layered one atop the other. Two tourist police in their white uniforms sat facing the window, heads down on their arms, in prayer in the Christian museum.

This is a lovely museum, and interesting even for those who are neither Christian, nor massive fans of applied decorative arts. Considering that the sights of Coptic Cairo are free (save for donations) I personally consider the LE40 entrance fee here a good deal. Located almost exactly across the road from the Mari Girgis Metro station, it is also one that is marvellously easy to get to.

This is where it begins. Saqqara is a place of death, yes, but also of birth. The birth of architecture, of pyramids, and of the timeless legends that have entranced for millenia.

The pyramids of Giza are world famous, but I wanted to see where the story began, and see the first prototypes of these awe-inspiring tombs. For that you have to head south of Giza on the west bank of the Nile, where the desert still abuts Cairo and its outlying villages. Courtesy of George, the concierge at my hotel, I arranged a taxi for eight the next morning. For LE180 I would be transported to Saqqara, Dahshur, and Memphis.

A cooling breeze ruffled the tree tops as I stepped out to meet my driver the next day. Ari was a pudgy fellah in a striped shirt with more than a touch of the Omar Sharifs about him. We set off south. From the highway the pyramids of Giza, the pinnacle of pyramidology, could be seen through the murk, framed by high-rises like a glimpse into another world. I lived for four years in Cambridge, testily shoving through the crowds of gawping and camera-clicking tourists, oblivious to the history that lined my daily walk to lectures. Was it really possible for Cairenes to feel so blasé about these immense monuments, could these things ever fade unnoticed into the background, regardless of however many times you passed them? Ari just laughed at the question.

We headed first to Saqqara, about 45 minutes by road. The contrast between the lush thickets of palms, the mango orchards, and the vivid green fields that lay along the irrigation canals and the sudden onset of grey desert is brutal. The pyramid fields are literally on the very edge of dark lord Seth’s kingdom of the dead.

Saqqara sprawls over some 7km of desert, though the heart of the site is the precinct that sits around the step pyramid of King Zoser. This is open from 8am to 4pm, with an LE50 entrance charge. By the paved carpark there is a museum dedicated to Imhotep. Imhotep essentially created architecture and was the first to break away from the low mastaba ("bench" in Arabic) dwellings that had previously been the norm and dared to dream of reaching the skies. So instrumental was he, that he was still being venerated as a god a millenia after his death. The exhibits within stress his achievements: ‘the first column’, ‘the first arch’, ‘the first wall carving’ (cobras, since you ask). All these things that we take for granted, all springing from the genius of this one man, Imhotep. So, all-in-all, he deserves a bit more recognition than merely being remembered as ‘the bad guy from The Mummy’…

Switching up the slope onto the sun-baked plateau, you come across ‘the first pyramid’, built to entomb King Zoser. It is a yellow-brown brick-built structure comprised of six steps, more reminiscent of Mesoamerican step-pyramids than the smooth-sided Egyptian confections. However Saqqara pre-dates, say, Chichen Itza in Mexico by some 2700 years. The largest edifice ever built of stone at the time of its construction in the 27th century BC, today the pyramid looks somehow primeval, like a reef thrust from the seabed, like a strange rock formation in the Australian outback Atop each tier piles of sand still lie humped, as though it had just been revealed by a sandstorm. You really are back at the very dawn of history.

The precincts around the pyramid have been partially restored by Jean-Philippe Lauer who was granted an eight-month license in 1926 and ended up staying until his death in 2001. Indeed, you enter the site through a narrow restored hypostyle hall. To the north of Zoser’s pyramid a slanted cubicle is set into the sand, a serdab. Peering through the two eye-holes you can see a life-sized statue of Zoser, staring out across the desert for eternity. Following his gaze, the later pyramids of Abu Sir can be discerned on the horizon. (The original statue is now in the Egyptian Museum – what a fate!). Other tumbledown pyramids, tombs and edifices surround this central court and stretch off seemingly at random.

At LE50, entrance to the site at Saqqara might cost as much as entrance to the more famous one at Giza, but here you are spared the crowds and the hawkers (well, most of them, anyway…). At Saqqara, on the edge of the desert, the birthplace of the pyramids, with dust on your shoes, you feel like one of the very first explorers to stumble into this timeless world.

Constructed later than Zoser’s step pyramid at Saqqara, but earlier than those at Giza, Dahshur’s history reveals the adjustments that were made to refine the art of pyramid construction. The two most iconic pyramids here, the ‘Bent Pyramid’ and ‘Red Pyramid’, were built for the same pharoah, Snefru, father of the more famous Khufu (Cheops). In fact - according to the theory of Kurt Mendelssohn - these two were actually versions 2.0 and 3.0 along the learning curve. The argument is that the first attempt at a tomb for Snefru occurred much further south at Meidum – the ‘Collapsed Pyramid’. What caused its collapse? A trigonometric cock-up they reckon – it was built with its angled sides too steep.

A second pyramid was being built simultaneously here at Dahshur. Corrections were immediately taken on board and the angle of the slope was reduced. Hence, the Bent Pyramid. This iconic silhouette originally rises at a far steeper slope than any other surviving pyramid, before altering to a gentler angle. It looks like a squared-off nosecone from a missile. You cannot actually access the Bent Pyramid, but I think this preserves its mysteries. You can see it hulking in the distance, its angles all… wrong.

However, you are able to approach Snefru’s third pyramid, the Red Pyramid. Approach… and enter!

After that of his son Khufu / Cheops at Giza, the Red Pyramid is the second largest in existence. It was so named because of the colour of the limestone it was constructed from, though to my eye it was only marginally darker in hue than those at Saqqara or Giza. A staircase leads up the north face to just under half its height. From this vantage point you can just see through the smog Saqqara (just as at Saqqara you could look south to Dahshur and north to Abu Sir). And here is located a low cleft that allows access into the pyramid. Sloping duckboards lead down into the depths for those prepared to crouch and waddle down, down into the heart of the funerary construction. Down at the bottom, in the furnace-like heat that raises a sweat to your skin, there are three chambers. These are high, narrow, wedge-shaped spaces, ridged like a christmas tree. Two of these follow in sequence; you then climb a staircase up, which leads you to a balcony over a third similar chamber arranged at right angles to the first two. There were no lights here on my visit, so bring a torch.

One additional thing – it stank. The Rough Guide called the air inside the Red Pyramid ‘fetid’. That doesn’t describe it. The air had a sort of peppery hospital disinectant aroma. It smelt the way dentists’ mouthwash tastes. You have been warned.

Dahshur does not have a vast amount to do. You can climb inside the second largest pyramid in existence, true, and once down there you only have two of three other individuals for company rather than the dozens within the Pyramid of Khafre at Giza. As such, LE25 for your fee is in no way excessive. But the other pyramids at Dahshur – the Bent Pyramid, the Black Pyramid of Amenemhat III etc can only be seen in the distance, mysterious and forbidding.

Predating Thebes / Luxor, Memphis was capital of Lower Egypt, and once was situated at the very apex of the Nile delta. Yet Memphis is no Luxor. Nothing remains of this, the world’s first imperial city. Its glories have been buried beneath century after century of Nile sediment. Some tresures have been unearthed and carted off to museums. Some statues remain in situ in the fenced off and tree-shaded area that comprises the ‘archaeological site’. For LE30 the trip is not worth it.

Memphis is located in the village of Mit-Rahina, on the Nile side of the irrigation canals, and so is greener than the stark plateau of the pyramids. It is also much busier – coach parties were disgorged into queues that I had not seen at Saqqara or Dahshur.

So what is there to see? Well, the only true jewel is a giant statue of… guess who? Yep, Ramses II. Inside a prefabricated warehouse-style affair the pharoah lies flat on his back, carved from a smooth creamy limestone. Clearly he was once striding forward vigorously, though with a more kindly smirk on his face than I had previously seen at Karnak and Abu Simbel.

Other statues dot the grounds. Smaller Ramseses, a grinning alabaster Sphinx. But my judgement is that you can easily bypass Memphis, a location with so little to offer that it has to use an image of the Saqqara step pyramid as the image on the official Department of Antiquities ticket!

If the mud-brick houses of Memphis dissolved back into the Nile from whence they had come, and the masonry was pillaged by later rulers, the route back to Cairo was able to reveal scenes of life that might not have changed substantially in two millenia. Donkeys were tethered outside mud-brick huts amongst the palms, old men in gellabiyyas chewed sugar cane, another rode a donkey so laden down with canes that all that could be seen of it was four legs and two ears. Bracketted between the irrigation canals and the river, here was a timeless Egypt, just half an hour south of one of the biggest and most bustling metropolises in the world. Yet, I reflected, as once more the Giza Pyramids danced like a mirage on the western horizon, even in Cairo there are geleabiyyas and head-scarves alongside the designer jeans and Sean John tops, horse-drawn carts and air-con BMWs travelling on the same road. Maybe the universes are not parallel after all, but tandem. Cairo is that rarest of places where Pharoahs, Romans, popes and imams all coexist alongside each other.