Chapter 2 - London, Sunday 1 July, 1990

Silly, perhaps, but rather touching too.  And I didn't nag you about the book, did I?  I don't know where you get this idea that I resented you spending money on yourself: on the contrary it was always you who was so obsessed with money and saving.  I've offered many times to go back to work, but you've always taken it as some grave insult:  you and your male pride, I suppose.  And as for saving, well, since we agreed that it was too soon to think of a family, I don't see why we couldn't have spent some of it on ourselves occasionally.  Except, of course, for your eternal book.  But I won't say anymore of that for now.  I want to describe the things that happened to me that day.

I awoke feeling rather strange.  Perhaps it was the travel, something I ate, perhaps what that woman had said.  Anyway, you didn't comment, though I am pleased to find now that you did at least notice something had happened the night before.

I am afraid I can't share your enthusiasm for the Egyptian Museum.  It was big and dark inside, and it seemed obsessed with death.  The idea of having dead people, dead babies, in cases for us to 'gawp at' as you put it, is horrible.  And yes, many of the items from Tutankhamun's tombs were beautiful, and the story of its discovery is certainly extraordinary, but I liked your extra piece of information about Carter's theft.  I suppose that's what I feel about all archaeologists, not that I've ever met any, so it's a bit unfair.  But it seems to me that they have this unhealthy obsession with the past, with digging around in graves, finding bodies.  I don't know, perhaps I'm being ridiculous.  But I found the museum oppressive and depressing.  It was also so big, that I found everything swimming before my eyes and mind: you can have too much of a good thing, you know.

Anyway, it was a relief to sit down in the café, to sit and watch the people milling around outside.  Not doing anything in particular, just being themselves, doing ordinary things.  I think that you are being rather hard on tourists.  After all, you were leading a group of them, and I seem to recall that your book is designed for tourists.  Or are your readers going to be different?  But surely that's the problem with being a tourist: you can't be different, just being a tourist of whatever kind puts this barrier between you and what you come to visit.  And just being there, being a tourist is bound to change what you're looking at, if only because the people who live there will act differently simply because you are there.  The only way to really see a place is to be a part of it, in which case it is home, not somewhere you travel to for that extra bit of exotic excitement.  So perhaps the secret is finding whatever it is you are looking for at home?  Anyway, that was why I decided to stay in the café rather than follow you around again.  I'd seen enough of death and mummies for one day.

I don't know how long I'd been sitting there, not thinking about anything in particular, just letting my mind relax, staring out at the lovely gardens below, watching all the people come and go, the young people with their backpacks sitting by the fountains, when I became aware of someone standing beside me.  I looked up and saw him: tall, dark, strikingly handsome, mid-thirties, immaculately dressed in a light blazer, white shirt and striped tie, the creases of his cream-coloured trousers crisp, his shoes perfectly polished.

"Forgive me for intruding on your reverie, madam, but would you mind possibly if I sat here?"  He gestured at the vacant seat at my table with his free hand.  In the other he held a folded newspaper.

"N-no, of, uh, course not," I said, but with an action that was born almost reflexively of my Englishness, my eyes quickly scanned the room to check that there were indeed no seats elsewhere.  I tried to cover my gaucheness with a simpering smile.  'God! he must think I'm a typical stupid tourist' I thought to myself with annoyance.  But he simply bowed very slightly, with a tilt of the head, gracefully turning both movements into a prelude to the act of sitting down. He put the newspaper on to the table in front of him.

"How are you enjoying our country and its relics?" he asked with a naturalness that comes from perfect manners and perfect self-assurance, neither inquisitive nor perfunctory.

"I'm afraid that I've seen so little of it yet.  We, the group I came with, that is, only arrived last night."

"Yes, the Egyptian Museum is a good place to start", he said, almost as if answering a question he himself had posed.  "Today our great country is sadly reduced; it is a salutary experience to enter this memorial to our glorious past.  And yet that past is not wholly dead, and there will come a day....", he concluded, narrowing his eyes as he looked out through the windows into the distance, again as if speaking to himself.

This time it was me who broke the silence between us:

"You speak such perfect English."

"You are too kind.  I am only too conscious that I am rather out of practice, particularly as regards the more modern idioms.  They do change so fast, I find."

"Did you learn here, or....?"

"No, in England actually."

"Oh, really?" I said, continuing to curse myself for the inane answers I was making.  Why couldn't I say something witty?  And why did I want to so much...?

"Yes.  As a matter of fact, I went to school in England."

"Whereabouts?"  He turned and looked at me.  He could see that I was genuinely interested, and, satisfied apparently, sat back in his chair.  He was in profile to me as he gazed out to the gardens, his hands joined together lightly at the fingertips, tapping them slightly, and lifting them occasionally to touch his lips.

"I went to Eton and then to Oxford," he said simply.

"I see.  You seem to have learnt a fine English reticence along with your excellent English accent.  And that's not a criticism."

For the first time, he smiled at my words.  

"Indeed, from an English lady, it is perhaps even a compliment?"

"Perhaps it is," I said, smiling back.  "Why did you study in England, I mean, were there particular reasons?"  I felt that I was floundering again, crossing some unspoken boundary.

"My father," he hesitated slightly, choosing his words carefully, "was a traditionalist, but he was also far-sighted.  He knew that the future lay not with our language, nor with theirs, but with English.  He wanted me to become fluent in it, to be able to deal with those who wielded the power in the world today, for they invariably speak English, if not as a mother tongue.  I went to Oxford, but I'm sorry, I must be boring you."

"No, please," I said, "I'm interested."  And I was.  But I also felt obscurely guilty.  "Please go on, Mr...?"

"Call me Omar, please.  In this one respect I fear I must ask your forbearance if I do not follow proper English form."

"Certainly, Omar. And please call me Janet."

"Janet, yes..." he said in rather curious manner, as if I had simply confirmed something he suspected or even knew.  "I went to Oxford, then, to study at the school of the great Professor Gardiner, the world's greatest authority on the ancient language."

"So you can read all the hieroglyphics?"

"No, no, far from it.  Only a small part of them, alas.  Unfortunately much remains to be done in understanding some of the deeper texts that have come down to us."

"Is this what you do then, Omar, for a living, a teacher, professor, I mean?"

"I hope that I both teach and profess.  But, forgive me, I am playing with words.  No, this is purely a hobby now.  Mostly I am a rather boring businessman."

"What sort of business?  Or am I intruding?" I asked.

"No, Janet, please do not even think that.  No, but it is hard to describe.  I buy and sell many things, sometimes selling before I have bought.  I suppose it is simplest to say that ultimately the commodity in which I traffic is power, as all men do."  He smiled slightly at the thought.

"That sounds rather sinister, " I said, meaning it as a joke.  But a shadow passed across his face.

"Sinister?  Please, do not say such things."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean...."

"No, forgive me, dear Janet, that was a stupid thing for me to say.  Of course not, of course.  But in this country, words have a weight to them, and the floors will catch them...."

There was a slight pause as we both seemed to think over some of things that had been said.  Again, it was me who spoke first.

"Talking of words, what exactly did you mean when you said 'the future lay not with our language, nor with theirs?'?  Have I misunderstood something?"

"Ah, no, Janet, so you have understood well.  No, I will tell you because, frankly, I trust you.  As a businessman I often have to judge people on little, to decide on a moment whether I will work with or against them.  And I can tell you, in all honesty, that I have no hesitation in trusting you, no hesitation at all."  And yet he did hesitate then, but only to turn to me one of his powerful, magnetic smiles that I would come to know so well.

"Well, then, it is true, I have said 'our language' and 'their language.'  You must know that although an Egyptian to the blood and bone, I am not, and never will be, an Arab.  No, I," he paused again slightly, to emphasise the point, "I am a Copt."

"I am afraid that like many Britons, my knowledge of geography or whatever, is not very good."

"No, Janet, you are right, I am wrong.  But it is good that few know the Copts now, at least.  Well then, the name 'copt' is nothing less than the word 'Egypt' itself, worn down through the centuries as various barbarian tongues have mangled and murdered it.  The Copts are the original, pure historical Egyptians.  Our tongue, Coptic, is nothing less than the latest offshoot of the mighty stem of Ancient Egyptian."  He stopped, his face shining with a quiet, fierce pride in his people.

"You mean that your language, Coptic, is a descendant from something spoken, what, five thousand years ago?"

"Well, Janet, if I were playing the pedant, I would point out that all languages must be derived from something spoken five thousand years ago, otherwise they would not have evolved.  But yes, you are of course absolutely right: Coptic is the lineal and direct descendant, as a king today is the descendant from his ancient forebears who give him the power and right to wield it.  Coptic has the longest continuous history, written history, known and transmitted history, of any language in the world."

"Do people still speak it, then?"

"Coptic is the living tongue of the Coptic church, a branch of your own Christian church, which helped keep alive the Coptic tongue when the Arabs stormed across the sands and invaded our lands.  Even today, you can go to Coptic churches, here in Cairo, or out in the wadis, and hear our tongue publicly proclaimed, though with a slightly strange accent, I must say."

"Omar, you speak as if there were others of you who speak this language, as well as the priests."  

"Yes, you have heard my words.  And I would not say these things to many.  But there are isolated villages, deep within the heart of Mother Egypt, where no tongue but Coptic is spoken, a Coptic spoken with a pure and clear accent that is a joy to hear.  And moreover, there are those of us, some quite powerful, I do not say myself, who have remained true to our glorious ancestors, here in Cairo, no villagers us.  We have not submitted to this alien culture, with their alien tongue and their alien god."

"So you're a Christian then, a follower of the Coptic Church?"

Omar smiled again.

"Not exactly, my Janet.  You must understand that in this country it is wise to seem sometimes what you are not.  I do not follow the official Coptic rites, but neither do I believe in Mohammed's god - except when it is expedient to do so.  But I am shocking you with all this apparent cynical dissimulation.  Janet, do not judge me too harshly.  I have begun to reveal things to you which I hope will soon fall into place.  Please trust me as I trust you."

"I do, Omar, I do."  But why?  "Yet I am confused, because you speak as if we were certain to meet again, and as if you have more to tell me."

"Oh yes, my Janet, we will assuredly meet again, and very soon.  And I do indeed have much to tell you, much that is vitally important, and that will change your life, and the lives of millions."  I was about to question him further when his face changed, and reached over for his newspaper.  "But look, here comes your party.  I can say no more.  But rest assured, we will meet again.  May the gods walk with you."  

And with that he abruptly unfolded his newspaper and engrossed himself in its Arabic curlicues.  At almost the same moment, I saw you and the others returning from your second tour of the museum.  As you approached I noticed Omar had now risen and was walking towards you, then past you down the stairs.  As he reached the stairs he seemed to turn and smile at me for a moment, before passing on down to the gardens outside.

"Who was that?" you asked.

"Who?" I asked in return.

"The man at your table?"

"Oh, just somebody who was sitting there."  True, but hardly totally true.  I hardly dare guess how you are taking this news now.  Then, it would simply have been impossible.  Fortunately you lost interest in pursuing the matter further, and we all trooped off to that café you had been talking about.

I must confess that when I got there, I looked around, half expecting to see Omar.  Once I had confirmed that he was not, I withdrew into myself again.  You were arguing with the waiter about something, I vaguely recall.  The rest of our group were reading your notes and their guidebooks, busily mugging up on our trip the next day.  Almost despite myself, I found myself thinking about the things Omar had said, the things he had implied.  And I realised how he had started calling me 'his' Janet, and even his 'dear' Janet.  Perhaps I was just naive, and he was just trying to pick up a lonely western female.  I had heard stories about that sort of thing, but never imagined it would happen to me.  After all, I had a wedding ring on.  And yet it seemed a very odd way to go about it.  I looked forward to our trip to the pyramids the next day with extra interest: would anything happen, I wondered?

• Chapter 3 - The First Pyramids

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters

Chapter 3 - The First Pyramids

For most tourists, pyramids mean Giza, the spot on the outskirts of Cairo where timeless desert meets restless modern city.  But though the greatest, the Giza pyramids were not the first.  That honour belongs to Saqqarah, some 10 miles south of the city on the West bank of the Nile.  To understand more fully the achievement of those later wonders, and to enjoy experiences unique to the place, a visit to Saqqarah is indispensable.  For at Saqqarah is laid out for those who have eyes to see the extraordinary story of the pyramids, their birth and their ramifications.

Around the time of the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by King Narmer the use of stone for building was restricted to the characteristic low, flat-topped tombs now known as mastabas - so named from the Arabic word for the benches which they resemble.  Some three hundred years later, about 2700 BC, something miraculous happened.  While the funerary mastaba for the pharaoh Zozer was being built, someone had an inspired idea: to stack smaller such mastabas on top of the first, to produce a pyramid-like shape, albeit in steps, six of them.  We will never know what prompted this leap of imagination, but it seems highly probable that we do know the name of the man who one day came up with this innovative masterstroke.

He was Imhotep, Zozer's Grand Vizier, High Priest, Chief Judge, Architect and Supervisor of Building Works - perhaps the first Renaissance man in history.  Later generations were certainly impressed, and he was soon revered as a god.  What is important for us is that he is one of the first people other than a king or a queen to emerge from the past's obscurity with not only a name, but also an achievement and a life.  More so perhaps than the king he served, he has through his works attained immortality.

Once the conceptual breakthrough of the pyramid form had been made, others soon followed.  But as might be expected in this land of the extraordinary, some unusual events punctuated this progress.  The next pyramid to be built was at Meidum, some 50 miles south of Cairo.  It too was a stepped pyramid to begin with, though a true pyramidal casing was later added.  Today it is just a heap of rubble, for mistakes were made in the design - clearly no Imhotep was to hand - and at some point during the building the mis-directed weight of thousands of tons of rock proved too much, and the whole thing collapsed, leaving only the core we see today.

This in itself might only be of passing interest, were it not for the fact that its occurrence allows us to make an astonishing deduction about the way pyramids must have been built.  Another pyramid begun around the same time about 10 miles south of Saqqarah is known as the Bent Pyramid, because it is just that: two-thirds of the way up the angle of the four faces changes dramatically to a less steep one.  The explanation seems to be that this was the point attained when the disaster at Meidum occurred.  As a result, the builders lost confidence in their plans, and flattened out the pyramid design for safety's sake.

If this interpretation is true - and it seems very likely - then it is clear that more than one pyramid was worked on at once.  Indeed, this is in accord with other facts which suggest that the pharaoh concerned - king Sneferu - was responsible for other pyramids too.  But if a pyramid was intended as a final resting place for the king, and for him alone, why did he need more than one?

The answer seems to have to do with the logistics of building such colossal structures.  The organisation involved in constructing pyramids - still the largest such projects in history, unsurpassed even in our own day - was immense and without precedent.  As well as full-time teams of thousands of skilled specialists such as quarriers, stone-masons, surveyors and so on, there would probably have been seasonal forces of tens of thousands of men, perhaps even a hundred thousand men, who would have carried out the mind-boggling task of moving hundreds of thousands of blocks of stone without the aid of wheels or pulleys, using huge earth ramps which first had to be built.  The task of housing and feeding such numbers required an organisational skill never before seen - because never before needed.

Having set this immense machine in motion, King Sneferu seems to have taken the eminently sensible decision to use these unparalleled forces to work on more than pyramid at once, each specialist group moving on as each successive stage was completed.  After all, later pharaohs would require just such tombs; when and by whom they were built was unimportant.

Whether Sneferu or his advisers thought exactly along these lines is an interesting question, but the alternative is even more intriguing.  It could be that having set up the organisation to build his own pyramid, he or his advisers realised that the focus of that single task had created something unique, and uniquely important.  It had created a powerful apparatus for getting things done, with the workforce drawn from the whole kingdom of Egypt, Upper and Lower.  It demonstrably unified the country in a common goal.  Moreover, to work, the new forms of that apparatus called for a hierarchy of overseers - with the pharaoh at the very top of what turned out aptly enough to be an organisational pyramid.  In other words, the invention of the pyramids not only brought about a revolution in building technology, it also changed fundamentally the society which built them.  With the pyramids, the Egyptians invented large-scale architecture and, more importantly, the concept of the organised state.

Whatever the explanation for Sneferu's actions, the outcome was the same: the construction of the pyramids became the main catalyst in the creation of the unified Egyptian nation led by the pharaoh in a dual capacity as both god and as head of the associated apparatus of state.  That this power became independent of the pyramids is shown by the fact that the building phase ended almost as abruptly as it began, a mere 350 years later.

The site of Saqqarah is therefore of unique importance in understanding the rise of the Egyptian Empire.  It also offers the tourist many other treasures.  As well as Zozer's stepped pyramid, there is the Pyramid of Unas - one of the last built during this golden age - which contains on its interior walls the first mortuary texts dealing with the passage of the soul from this world to the next.  Also of note are the fine mastabas of officials nearby, dating from the same era, and the extraordinary underground Serapeum from the Ptolemaic period, late in construction but with ancient and sometimes disturbing roots in pre-history.

• Chapter 3 - Saqqarah, Monday 20 February, 1990

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters

Chapter 3 - Saqqarah, Monday 20 February, 1990

Up early, and then after breakfast by taxi - E£50 each for the day - out to Saqqarah.  South along a busy road parallel to Nile.  The English road signs which you find in Cairo, and give the place a deceptive air of being easy to find your way around, disappear suddenly, to be replaced by meaningless squiggles.  I'm glad I'm not driving - and don't.  Cool day, sun breaking through the clouds.

Saqqarah is magic - Saqqarah, from Sokkar, the god of the dead in nearby Memphis.  Unlike the Great Pyramids, which are much too near Cairo, here you feel away from things, nearer to the real Egypt.  When you get to the site it seems all sand and rubble.  The pyramids set on a plateau.  A cool breeze blows, the sun occluded.  As we get out of the taxis, to leave the drivers to chat, have a kip, there is a strange disembodied ringing tintinnabulation.  Stonebreakers(?) out of sight, metal hammers on stone like the cries of prehistoric birds. 

The long impressive causeway to the entrance in what was once a huge girdling wall.  The stone beautifully dressed.  Walking through a colonnaded corridor, some of it reconstructed, but already I get a sense of what lies ahead for us in Luxor.

By the South Tomb.  The Stepped Pyramid of Zozer.  It is hard to respond adequately to this building.  Today it looks a little woe-begone, its steps crumbling, covered in sand.  But it is still magnificent, a tremendous affirmation of man's power, of his ability to create something enduring.  I try to imagine what it must have been like when Imhotep suddenly had the idea: why not put another mastaba on top of the first?  Had he intended to stop there, but was so struck by the success that he went further, adding another then another?  Or had he intended from the start to see how high the gods would let him build before they struck his wonder down?   Because he was voyaging into the unknown, testing the strength of stone with each added layer.  With this pyramid the Egyptians discovered the essence of what architecture is about: it is about 'up', the struggle of a building to lift itself off the earth, to be taller than mere men, to impose, to impress.  I suppose in that respect it represents man's aspiration to the heavens, to reach the gods.  Appropriate enough for the tomb of a god.

Interesting that the equivalent Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel - another impious exercise in building a stairway to God - ended in disaster, and in the loss of linguistic unity, and in the creation of a babble - Babel - of tongues.  By contrast, Zozer's tower stood - and stands - and the Ancient Egyptian speech consolidated its power, rather than being dissipated.  Which reminds me: I was reading Gardiner last night - bliss! - and came across his fascinating speculation on the origin of the language.  It seems it has elements of Semitic - like Arabic and Hebrew - but also of Hamitic, the group of North African languages from which modern-day Berber derives.  So, Gardiner suggests, what we have in Ancient Egyptian is the fusion of two languages - two peoples - to form an amalgam.  In the process much of the structure of both was simplified, leaving only a kind of watered-down Semitic tongue.

In fact this is just like Modern English: it too derives from the battle of two languages - Anglo-Saxon and Norman French - and came about after the invasion of 1066.  The Normans were assimilated, but greatly changed English in the process, simplifying its structure to only a shadow of its Germanic roots.  An amazing thought that something similar must have happened in Egypt.  But when?  Perhaps 6,000, 7,000 years ago.  Staggering that we can still detect the linguistic shockwaves of that conquest of one people by another so long after the event - like light reaching us from stars which exploded millions of years ago.  But I have sat here too long.

Down to these frightening relics of something incredibly ancient: the 'B'-shaped objects in the courtyard.  Supposedly part of a race that the king had to run after 30 years, somehow symbolising the union of Upper and Lower Egypt.  But this 30 years business, the king's race, it all seems to hark back to those anthropologically murky times when the king was killed as his strength began to fail, or when the crops were bad.  Not so much fun being a king then when you were literally responsible for everything - from the sun rising to the rain falling.  Ancient Egypt feels paradoxically modern most of the time - everything is so well-preserved, so functionally perfect - it is only when you get odd leftovers like these strange race markers that you realise how close they were to the dawn of mankind, and all the mysteries that lurked there.

Saqqarah is a rather awkward site to visit in any sensible order - everything is so spread out.  Since we can't enter the Stepped Pyramid, we go to that of Unas instead.  It is one of my favourites, even though from the outside it looks like a heap of rubble.  Apparently it was excavated at the expense of Thomas Cook and Son with the express purpose of becoming  a tourist attraction for that company's visitors.  No wonder I feel at home here.

It is a very odd experience descending steeply into the heart of the earth like this.  The passageway is very low, quite claustrophobic.  Once in here, you are hit by the sudden warmth - and the smell of tobacco - from the little Egyptian man, waiting to 'explain' everything.  Eventually he takes the hint and goes away.  After I have done my explanation, the others look around for a bit, then wander out into the fresh air, leaving me here alone.

I love it, just being here in this strange little wendy-house shaped room, covered in the ultimate wallpaper - hieroglyphics.  The first such mortuary texts that we have.  Again, I find it hard to grasp that these beautiful shapes around me were written there some 4,500 years ago, that somebody composed them, thought them, felt them.  That these are some of the oldest writings in existence.

And this time I have a new delight in store: Lichtheim.  Discovering this two-volume collection of translations from Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics - all the most famous texts - was one of my chief excitements this year.  I couldn't believe it when I came across them in Foyles - and quite cheap too.  They were exactly what I had been looking for, a key to unlock all these texts.  It has become my Bible, almost - I've read and re-read it so much that it's quite dog-eared.

So now I sit here, with these chants hovering around me, the cartouche of Unas himself- a rather fetching rabbit, a wavy line, a chopper and a kind of shepherd's crook - I  must check in Gardiner to find out what exactly they are - repeated again and again like a hypnotic chant, a call to attention, an echo.  On the north wall at one point I can count 56 of them.  Directly above, another row, but not so many.  Interestingly, the cartouche is reversed between the north and south walls - presumably all the texts are.  One worrying thing: according to Lichtheim some of the text goes on about 'eating' the gods, and is thought to be a throwback to those dark times again when human sacrifices and cannibalism took place.  Ugh, sends a shudder through me.

Out into the sunshine, the air suddenly cool by contrast with the pyramid's staleness.  Before rejoining the others, a quick look at the Persian tombs.  Locked again - with a padlock made in China....

I climb a dune, and am confronted by sands stretching away to the horizon.  In the far distance I can see the Bent Pyramid: I think of that day, thousands of years ago when there was a warning shout, then a huge explosion of dust and stone, when the pyramid at Meidum collapsed.  A messenger runs across to the chief supervisor at this other pyramid, tells him of the disaster, of the danger.  The latter calls a halt to the works, consults with his masons.  And this is the result, a testament to one of those great swerves in history, and an ever-present warning against hubris.

Turning back I see hieroglyphs on the outside of Unas' tomb: an Ancient Egyptian billboard.

To the House of the South - a smaller building east of the Stepped Pyramid.  This really is getting ridiculous: what we have come to see - what all tourists come here to gawp at - is graffiti left by other tourists.  Admittedly these are the first tourist graffiti in history, dating from around 1000 BC, and left by a group who had travelled up from Thebes - modern-day Luxor -  further up the Nile.  As well as saying the usual 'John was here', there are others extolling the beauties of the place - at least they had good taste - and saying what a fine man this Zozer must have been.  But it is amazing this urge to leave your mark, to colonise the past in this way.  It is as if by doing so we become as old and as rooted as the thing we scribble on.  But does that mean that these Thebans had any sense of us one day coming along to admire their marks?

A long trek across the dunes - good to get the feel of honest sand beneath your feet - to the mastaba of Ptah-hotep and Akhet-hotep, possibly his father.  Ptah was apparently a 'priest of Maat' - Maat being the goddess of balance, very important in those early turbulent days.  From the outside the long, low building is nothing to look at, but inside is a revelation.

The interior walls are covered with delicately carved reliefs, most of them still brilliantly coloured.  It is probably the nearest thing to family snaps we are ever likely to get from four and half thousand years ago.  The colours are so vivid - but surely damaged by the careless visitors pushing in and against them.  I can't help feeling that fairly soon it will all be shut off to protect it - another instance of this being the Golden Age of Tourism.  We should feel privileged that we can get so close to - touch, even, if we are selfish enough - these ancient masterpieces.  

Once again, I stay in here long after I have explained all the sights to the others - I've told them how to get to the refreshments tent, so I hope they don't get lost and end up as wind-whitened bones in some abandoned excavation pit somewhere.

No gods, no cartouches, that royal vanity which gave us the secret of its mysterious signs.  Even to my unpractised eyes I can see that the hieroglyphs here are early, lacking the easy, more conventional flow of later texts.

Passing through the slightly eerie pillared hall into first the vestibule and then Ptah's tomb chamber, the best room of all.  The musicians over the door: flute, singer, harpist, clapper.  A long low flute - and that silent music again.  Ptah undergoing a complete manicure and pedicure, huge feasts before him everywhere, everyone running around entertaining him - life's obviously been pretty much the same at the top for the last 5,000 years.  The ochres, greens, blues, blacks.  The details: the calf's birth, wrestling youths, acrobats, the simulated palm trunks of the ceiling.  Standing here, looking and looking and looking I feel as if it were all painted yesterday, that Ptah the priest might come in at any moment to inspect with a satisfied smile the lists of all his possessions.  Nowhere else has this tremendous sense of the past in the present - born of the unparalleled condition of so much that has come down to us, born of the perfection and vigour it offers us.

With the others in the refreshment tent.  I rather like it here.  It reminds me of something from school - athletics days? prize days? - lazy, hazy days of eternal summer, that dusty, slightly choking smell of canvas beaten by the sun, the cool sense of being inside.  Unfortunately the food is rather less impressive than I remembered, and we are reduced to eating curry-flavoured crisps washed down with Sport cola.  My group resign themselves to this with only the odd murmur.  I think they're too tired to argue.  They're just glad to sit down out of the heat.  I hope the old couple are going to be all right - they seem to be clinging to each other as if one or both are about to fall down.  I'll have to watch.  Nice view from the table at the edge of the tent, looking back across the mastaba to the Stepped Pyramid.

So a short walk from the resthouse to the totally weird Serapeum.  Lots of horses around, ready to be hired out to tourists, but business looks quiet.  Janet seems half-attracted to the idea, but when I ask whether she wants a quick spin around the site she says no.

Brilliant entrance, sinking down and down into the earth, into the cool and the dark.  Turning left and then left again leads to a dead-end and a huge bright puce sarcophagus - the first of the tombs.  That first pink granite sarcophagus looks vaguely ornamental; it is not threatening or frightening - not in the way that the others will be.  To reach them, you turn around and begin one of the oddest journeys in Egypt.  My party were visibly quailing the deeper we entered this set from a Hammer horror film.

The corridor is long - about 500 feet - and illuminated poorly, with only odd pools of light, some lamps missing, leading to long stretches of near darkness.  Your spirits are not helped by the huge but rickety scaffoldings erected to shore up what is obviously a deeply unsafe roof.  The air is disturbingly warm again.  A dead silence, except when somebody speaks - or one of the tunnel's birds twitters suddenly - strange to find them this far in - I wonder where they came from.

As you go deeper and deeper into this hall of madness, there are recesses alternating to the right and to the left.  In each of them is a huge sarcophagus, this time of the deepest black granite, looking like tombs for some giant race, long since vanished.  Moving closer you see crude hieroglyphics scratched in the beautiful stone - the Egyptians seem to have had a real feeling for stone, perhaps because of their early successes with it.  You see that the stone of the coffin is one foot thick, and that the massive lid is two feet thick - imagine the weight of these things.  But in fact these were not coffins for gods or giants, but for huge bulls, the bulls of the god Apis.

This was a kind of bastard cult, bringing together many different religious strands - Egyptian and Greek - in an attempt by the last Pharaohs - the Ptolemies - to unite their fragmenting nation of Greek and Egyptian speaking peoples.  To our eyes it defies any original logic, and seems instead just madness.  To bury one sacred bull, yes, perhaps, but more than twenty of them, each with its own colossal coffin?  The sheer effort involved in getting them to the end of this long tunnel - a tunnel which ends so abruptly, so unsatisfyingly, as if it should go on further and further under the sands....

Just how much of a struggle getting the sarcophagus down can been seen on the way back.  Taking the side passage you come across one of the huge coffins abandoned there, almost blocking the way.  There is no room for manoeuvre.  You feel that they must have used black magic, not human means.  And that is one of the worrying things about this place.  In its hugeness, the implicit power required to effect it, its audacity - and particularly with the bulls themselves - there is a feeling once again of plugging into something older, stronger than ourselves, something terribly pagan.  It is good to get out into the warm sun again.

To lift my spirits I have come to Teti's pyramid.  Visually this is not so impressive as the interior of the pyramid of Unas because apart from the beautiful pale blue ceiling with its five-pointed stars, the wall-paintings are very damaged.  However what has survived is one of the most poignant of the early Egyptian texts.  I have just read it out to everyone and they seemed genuinely moved.  In fact I like it so much that I think I'll copy out from Lichtheim now as a reminder to use it in The Book:

'O great strider/who sows greenstone, malachite, turquoise - stars!/As you are green so may Teti be green,/Green as a living reed!'

I sit here with these words in my head, in my mouth, and in my eyes, stars! above me.

I felt it pointless to write any more after that at the site, it seemed the perfect way to end.  So here I am now, back at the hotel, with an exhausted tour group, and pretty exhausted myself.

On the way back, as on the way out, we passed through Memphis, but didn't bother stopping.  Such an evocative name - though I keep on wanting to add 'Tennessee' after it, the modern site usurping the ancient one - so charged with history, yet such a disappointment in reality - a dusty lay-by on the road to Cairo.  A sphinx, a few stelae - all that's left of what was once the capital of that first great king of Egypt, Narmer.  Except of course for the ultimate insult - poor old Ramses II, a huge prostrate form lying flat on his back, the weakest position.  Massive  - and impotent.  He can't even see Memphis.  Typically, he is covered - shoulders, chest, girdle, wrists, the sticks in his hands - with his cartouche, like labels on an enormous parcel left in lost property.  In fact he was indeed abandoned: apparently the Egyptian government gave him to the British Museum who couldn't be bothered taking him away.  I prefer to remember Ram in some of his more glorious forms.  My other memory of Memphis is of being offered some tourist souvenir by a hawker there with the memorable words 'real papyrus - no bananas!'.

The journey back to Cairo long and hot - the sun burning my neck - I just know I'll get sunburn - the same tape of wailing Arab music played endlessly.  As soon as we got to the centre of Cairo, the traffic coagulated, barely moving.  Ramses Square outside the station particularly bad - traffic coming from everywhere, everybody working on the 'Just Me More' principle that one more won't hurt however small the space, or however much it will add to the gridlock.  I see there one of the saddest sights on this earth: a traffic policeman with his thick chequered sleeves vainly attempting to control this lot, and being ignored - or even mocked - for his pains.  What a job - even worse than mine back home.  But what will Cairo be like in a few year's time?  Terminal gridlock from dusk to dawn.  Finally back to hotel where everyone collapses and I grab a much needed coffee and biscuits down in the cafe - and write this.  One thing I must add: the whole site of Saqqarah cost but E£3 per person - about 75p.  Surely the best value on this planet...?

After coffee and before dinner, three of us - the Greek and the Blue Stocking - go out for an evening stroll - the others seem to need more rest - tomorrow is another early rise.  We go out to Al-Azbakiyyah Garden which, inevitably, is closed.  The others seem fairly quiet, not really saying much.  We pass by the busy stalls - clothes, shoes, music cassettes, books.  We watch the sunset, picturesque in its colours, my mood shaped by the evening bustle around me - something I have always found melancholy, perhaps from memories of coming home from school in winter through the market in Huddersfield, so lively, the air so cold.

Then back to the hotel, and out to the usual Felfela - full, so once round the block to listen to the crazy clock near Groppi's which insists on playing the chimes of Big Ben horribly amplified through a ropey speaker before it strikes, then back to the restaurant where they have a table for us.  Everyone really pleased - it's amazing how quickly you can establish a routine in foreign parts, a sense of a place being 'yours' that you return with relief as if to home.  Felfela is definitely 'ours' - everyone seems to feel it, which is good.  The menu, the waiters, the cats, the turtles, the buzz - they are all part of our happy family.

Now waiting for the crowning moment of Om Ali - all this and the Great Pyramids to come...!

• Chapter 3 - London, Saturday July 7, 1990

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters

Chapter 3 - London, Saturday July 7, 1990

I awoke without difficulty that morning, eager to rise and experience whatever would happen.  I suppose looking back on it now I should have been surprised that one curious chance meeting should have changed me so much, so suddenly.  But was it chance?  Omar seemed to hint otherwise, and yet....

I also found that I was much more observant on the way out to the pyramids.  I have never really looked at things in this way - not so as I would remember them afterwards as noteworthy.  It is perhaps almost unbelievable, but I have almost no memories of my childhood.  It is as if I had been born at the age of 18, at the moment you walked in through the door of that bookshop I used to work in.  No, that is too melodramatic.  But it is true that I remember so little of my schooldays, of what I did as a girl.  I suppose I went to school, sat through lessons, came home, read books, and then went to bed.  I had few really close friends at school - but never really felt the lack of them either, so I was not deprived in that sense.  If I have any one sensation of my first 18 years or so it is of things happening to me - not in a bad sense, just neutral.  It was if I had just stood there and watched things - people, life - come up to me.  But I woke up that morning with a strange feeling that I was beginning to be me.

This is unfair on you, I know.  I know you tried hard to 'draw me out' as you put it, and I did appreciate it.  But in the end I found it very hard to focus on anything.  You probably thought I was stupid: I don't feel stupid, at least not any more.  Perhaps you came to regret marrying me so quickly: I hope not.  It's just that I couldn't hold on to things as they went by.

Anyway, I'm sure you'd rather hear whether Omar turned up again, and what happened at the pyramids.

On the way out to Saqqarah, after we had crossed the Nile and driven alongside it for while, out beyond the outskirts of Cairo, I was very struck by how lush and green the landscape became.  It was as if it had sprung up overnight - I mean I was so unprepared for it after Cairo which is, as you pointed out earlier, such a big urban sort of place.  But suddenly it was like passing through a time-warp.  There were waving palm trees, little blindfolded donkeys circling water-pumps endlessly, camels, horses, bikes and motorbikes everywhere.  And the towns and villages we passed through were filled with so many people, so many laughing, wide-eyed children.  Beautiful colours too, neat mounds of oranges and other fruit for sale at roadside stalls.

I must confess I was a bit disappointed when we got to Saqqarah.  The step pyramid as you called it looked a bit shabby, what with bits missing and sand covering parts of it.  I suppose I was expecting something, well, grander.  You would no doubt say that it was my failure of imagination or of intellect.  Perhaps.  And I wasn't very taken with the small pyramid with the hieroglyphs either, which is why I didn't stay long, and left you in there with the others.  I thought I'd sit outside and enjoy the lovely sun which was shining.

"Might I offer you some help?," a subtly accented and familiar voice said as I stepped up into the blinding light.

I blinked at the form holding out his hand; it was him, of course, dressed slightly differently - his trousers were khaki, his blazer replaced by a light jacket with various pockets down the front - but just as immaculately.  He also had a small rucksack with him.

"How are you today?" he asked solicitously as I took his hand and he helped me out.

"I'm fine, thank you Omar, though a little surprised to see you here."  Pleasantly surprised, though.

"But Janet, did I not say we would be meeting soon?  And what better place than here, at the start of one of the most glorious episodes of our nation's history?"  It was hard for me to argue with that, and before I could gather my thoughts, Omar was gently moving me on.  "Come," he said, I have some things to show you."

"But the others - " I said weakly.

"They will be some time, there is much to see with old king Unas - just as there is much to see down here.  For example," - we had reached the edge of the great court by now - "do see those curious stones between us and the great pyramid?"

"What, half buried in the sand, there?"

"That is correct.  Insignificant now, they once spelt life and death for the king - and for the nation.  These are only copies of course - the originals were once in Memphis, before that city's sad recent decline - but they will help you visualise the scene."  As we walked towards them, Omar continued to explain.  "Many years ago, before even these monuments, before the hieroglyphs, the king was chosen as the gods' representative on earth for only thirty years.  At the end of that thirty years he had to prove he was still king, or face death.  For you must know that an old and weak king will lead to an old and weak people just as a young and powerful king makes a nation mighty: the people draw their strength from the king as the king draws his from the gods.  

Thus, at the end of the thirty-year term the king came to a place - very like this one - with the priests and high officials, the sacred trumpets shrieking, the gongs ringing and the cymbals clashing.  The king's task was to run from one altar to the other, and back again, thirty times.  As he ran, purified sand fell from a tiny hole made in a large holy vessel kept by the start.  If the king succeeded in completing his run before the sand had finished, he was king for another year; if not, instant death, for he was no fit king for the people.  Nor was his course simple: along the way there were tests: wild beasts were tethered between the markers - lions, crocodiles, wolves; elsewhere there were beautiful naked maidens, chosen from the king's harem, covered in only the thinnest of gauzes, begging him to stop by them - for they would win great honour and treasures if they could divert from his course; and there were other attendants with choice foods and drinks bidding him stop and partake - the king had fasted for a day and an hour before this test, and was both hungry and thirsty."

"And did kings fail this test?  Were they killed?" I asked almost in disbelief.

"In the earliest days they were, because the laws were harsh and implacable.  But one day, only a few centuries before this pyramid was built, there was a wise old king who was to run the race again.  He knew that he could never finish the course in time with his old legs, and with his broken wind, and his weak constitution made yet weaker by fasting.  So the day came when he was to be tested.  All the appointed officials were there, the musicians played as usual.  The bung was removed from the great jar, the sand began to fall.  The king began slowly and painfully to hobble round the course.  

A great silence fell over the priests and high officers as they beheld this painful sight.  As time passed, the naked concubines in their gauzes no longer sought to distract him with their beauty: they knew his hour had come.  The attendants forbore from offering him food and drink.  Now, the sand was running out, only a fistful lay in the bottom of the jar.  The king still had six circuits to complete; it was impossible.

Then, he did a strange thing.  He went up to one of the attendants who held a goblet of the finest wine, and took the goblet.  The crowd gasped: was this then to be his end, was this his last act as a man on this earth?  Instead of drinking it, he continued walking round the course until he came to the start, and to the jar.  He went up to the jar as if to inspect how much sand, how much life, he had left.  And then, calmly, and with a truly royal grace, he poured the thick wine into the jar of sand.

The crowd was amazed, the priests confounded.  The damp, sticky sand stopped flowing.  With a confident ease the king proceeded to walk calmly and slowly round the course six more times.  From that day on, no more kings were killed, and the course was completed just as that wise old king had completed it, at ease, and without danger."

"But is this true, Omar?, or just some story to entertain a silly female tourist?"

"It is all true, dear Janet, by all the gods, it is true.  But it is also a story - how else would I know it and be able to tell it to you?" he said earnestly, without a hint of mockery that I could detect.

I was about to ask him to explain, when I noticed the rest of our party coming up.  Omar had noticed too and had silently moved off, peering intently at the Step Pyramid like any other tourist.  I felt dissatisfied with what he had said.  This was not the meeting I had expected; I felt that he had been playing with my gullibility.

But what, you may well ask, John, did I expect?  Often it is easier to say when things are not as we want rather than to say what we do want.  I just felt that what had happened was in some sense not right.  Perhaps things will become clearer later on, when I recount my next meeting with him.

This occurred after we had trooped in to admire the graffiti in the temple - though quite why we should find someone else's scribblings of interest escapes me.  If I wrote my name there, would tourists one day come to look at it?  Yes, after three thousand years, you would probably say.  So we are looking at the time that has elapsed rather than the graffiti themselves?  I suppose you would say that we are looking at the fact that people, actual living people were here, and these marks are the proof.  In which case I can see why graffiti have a certain poignancy.  But personally, I prefer living people now, not three thousand years ago.

Anyway, as we started trooping out towards the underground house - the mastaba with the beautiful reliefs - I got sand and stone in my shoe - I said I'd catch you up.  Again, you probably didn't think it was worth noting in your journal - but then frankly I'm a bit surprised at some of the things you have noted - I mean, what's so special about padlocks being made in China?  But sorry, I'm being unfair again: you never asked anyone to publish your intimate thoughts in this way, it was me who hijacked them.  OK, I promise not to make any more such comments, not to abuse my power over you in this way.

So back to my shoe - which is relevant, as you will see.  I leant against the wall of the Stepped Pyramid to steady myself.  - And felt to my horror my wrist being grabbed by someone.  I was about to scream when I heard Omar say "Janet, - it's only me.  Come, follow me."  And so saying he pulled me gently but firmly inside the pyramid.

Yes, that is what I said, inside the Stepped Pyramid.  As I passed through I saw a stone swing shut behind me - I suppose part of the outer wall was hinged here in some way.  Unlike the other pyramid we went in, the air was beautifully cool and fresh.  It was also dark here.  "Omar!" I said with growing concern.  What on earth was I doing here?  You must be calling me a fool for allowing myself to be placed in this situation.  After all, anything could have happened - rape, murder, anything.

But then Omar switched on a torch he had brought with him.  "Do not be afraid," he said.  "I will show you a wonder."  And taking my hand gently he turned and began to pass deeper into the pyramid.

The stone floor was quite smooth, with hardly any sand - almost as if someone had kept it swept.  The passage widened into a small chamber with beautiful paintings on the walls - we moved through quickly, so I only had time to note a king and a queen on their thrones, with fan-bearers around them, food and drink being offered, and people doing homage.  The colours were incredibly vivid - far more so than those in the other pyramid.

The other side of the chamber the passage continued, sloping upwards now.  There were no steps, just smooth stone.  I wanted to ask Omar where we were going, but it seemed a stupid question - it was clear where we going, but not so clear what we were doing there.  I also felt intimidated by the silence, and the growing sense of tons - millions of tons? - of stone about us.

After climbing for about 30 feet, there was another small chamber.  The stones seemed to change here judging by the walls.  There were more paintings, showing what looked like various gods.  One had the body of a man and the head of a jackal.  Once more we passed through this into another passage, this time much narrower, steeper and only about 4 feet high.  It was quite awkward climbing this in the dark, with only Omar's torch casting its small patch of light.  My sandals were slipping on the rock too.  Omar steadied me as we rose.  My thigh muscles were soon killing me.

Eventually we reached the top of this passage, where there was a very small ante-chamber.  A tiny hole - only about 3 feet high led away from it.  "What?  Through there?" I asked in disbelief.

"We are nearly there, the passage is very short," Omar replied.

Fortunately he was right.  We emerged in a spacious chamber, about twenty feet square, and fifteen feet high.  There was natural light in here, emerging from cavities cut in the walls which narrowed down to slits like those you see in medieval castles, except that these were horizontal, not vertical.  There was a beautiful fresh breeze, too.  In between the cavities the walls were covered with hieroglyphs, in fact with those cartouches, row upon row of them, all in their neat ovals.  Some looked much older than others, some quite recent - well, comparatively.

"Behold the Room of the Heart, for it lies at the very heart and top of the pyramid."

"I don't remember reading about this in any of John's guidebooks," I said.  

Omar smiled.

"I should hope not.  No tourist has ever seen this place, indeed no westerner until this moment.  It is one of the many secrets this site - like so many others in Egypt - has yet to give up.  Nor will it ever be given up: those, like myself, who do know of it, will ensure that its secret remains forever.  For the heart of Egypt, which this spot is, must remain hidden."

"How do you know about it, then?  - Or is that a secret too?"  I was finding all this mystification a bit annoying - why couldn't he just say what he meant, what he wanted?

"I know because...no, let me first show you something, and all will be made clear.  Do you see these cartouches - you know the significance of them, yes? Good - these cartouches which start on the east wall and work round the south to the west?  These are the cartouches of the pharaohs of all Egypt from the first - Menes, also known as Narmer - through Zozer, the same who built this pyramid, through Khufu, known perhaps as Cheops to you, through to the greatest of them all, Ramses II, and beyond to some of the lesser pharaohs who let their grip loosen over the land."

"So, what, this is a list of kings up until when - weren't the Ptolemies the last rulers of Egypt?"

"Almost correct, my Janet.  The Ptolemies - degenerates that they were - were indeed the last public rulers of Egypt, before the country fell to the Roman barbarians, but see here: this is the last Ptolemy..."

"But the list goes on for 70 or 80 more: who are they all?"

"They, like the others are the pharaohs of Egypt."

"But you said - "

"I said that the Ptolemies were the last public rulers.  It is true, they lost their manifest power, but they did not disappear.  The desert is the perfect place for concealment: where a city has a thousand ears and eyes and tongues, the desert has only the all-seeing but silent sun."

"So," I said, trying make sense of all this, "you're saying that the Egyptian royal dynasty lived on, in hiding, for hundreds of years.  After the conquest by the Roman Empire."

"Hidden, dear Janet, not in hiding.  Kings do not hide, but they may chose not to show themselves - until the time is right."

"So whose was the last cartouche?"

"Look, Janet - ah!, if only you could read the signs, you would see a form similar to that found the length and breadth of the country.  See here - beneath the sedge and the bee, beneath the words 'son of Re': Usermare Rameses."

"But I thought Ramses lived three thousand years ago?"

"So he did, Janet, Ramses II.  But this is the sign of the sixteenth Ramses."

He looked at me expectantly.  

"I'm sorry, I don't see what you're getting at.  Could you...?"

"But is it not clear?  The name Usermare, worn down by time, became Usmare, then Umar, then..."  He paused again, as if unwilling to spoil the effect he was seeking.

"Oh, you mean Omar is the same name as Usermare?"

"More than that.  Ah! Janet, I see this is harder to grasp than I thought.  I have said that the kings live on, that the line has not ended, that we will rise up one day - soon - and claim back what we lost so long ago."

I finally understood.

"So you mean you - the Copts - are the descendants - that - surely not, Omar?  Are you seriously saying that you are - "

"Janet, you have understood, say no more.  You are right, this is unbelievable.  But how did I know how to enter where no one else does?"

"Well, you said yourself that others also know - "

"True.  Yes, I owe you more proof - especially before I reveal the one last thing to you.  Very well, we must in any case be getting back before your party misses you.  Fear not, I will speak to you again, and allay your fears.  Come, let us descend."

I was still trying to grasp everything Omar had said to me as he led me back to the bottom, and out through the swinging stone to the sunlight.  Was he mad?  Was there some crazy ulterior motive?  Was he just playing me along for the hell of it?  And yet his fervour, the fire in eyes - and it is true, he did know of the secret entrance....  I felt frustrated that every time he seemed near to explaining everything I had to rush off back to you and the others.  I was beginning to resent the restrictions your itinerary was imposing on me.  I had to find out what Omar meant - and who exactly he was.

Since I did not expect to see him again that day, I tried hard to concentrate on the sights you were showing us.  I too was very moved by the reliefs in Ptah's tomb.  They were so vivid, he felt like an old friend of the family.  I wanted to talk to him, ask him how his wife and children were, almost.  And that rabbit coming out of his burrow with a grasshopper in his mouth - the tiny details everywhere.

I certainly preferred it to that ghastly bull-place.  I don't like the dark at the best of times, but this was positively spooky.  And as you said, it looked very unsafe too.  The deeper we walked into this huge morgue, the more I was conscious of the desert above me.  What would have happened if the roof had caved in?  And those huge, stupid coffins for bulls.  'Why?' I wanted to shout.  All that effort, the hundreds, thousands of people who worked for no reason.  It's just such a typically male thing to do, worshipping bulls, burying them like gods.  I just wanted to get out of the place.

I was about to go when suddenly I saw Omar at the back of the chamber where the last huge coffin was kept.  He motioned to me to come over.  But as I did so you called out for me to 'come along'.  I didn't want to be left in there, even with Omar, and I certainly didn't want you coming to get me and finding Omar there - you'd already seen him with me once, in the cafe at the Egyptian Museum.  Even you would have got suspicious by then.

So I quickly went up to Omar.

"I'm sorry, I must go"

"But Janet - " he seemed really pained " - I must show you something here, I must prove to you that my words were not false, that I am no - for I know the thought must have occurred to you - not mad or dangerous to know.  You must let me show you."  He was almost pleading.

"Not now, Omar, it is just not possible."

"Tomorrow, then, promise me."

"How can I come here without John knowing?"

"At night, we must meet in Cairo, and then come out here."

"But Omar - "

"Promise me Janet, I beg of you."

John, I'm sorry, but I had to do it.  I had to know.

"Very well, Omar."  This was madness, but mine, not his.

"Tonight, then"

"No - not tonight.  We are rising very early to go along to the Giza pyramids - the night will be short."

"The next then."

I breathed in slowly and deeply.

"Very well, then."

"At midnight, outside your hotel, I will meet you...."

You called again, John.

"Janet," Omar said as I turned to go, "you will come, you will keep your word?"

"I will keep my word."  And then I left.

• Chapter 4 - The Great Pyramids of Giza

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters

Chapter 4 - The Great Pyramids of Giza

The Stepped Pyramid of Saqqarah is undoubtedly an astonishing achievement and moves us with its triumph of man over materials.  But how much more astonishing and moving then are the Great Pyramids of Giza, beside which even Imhotep's work looks small?  And yet the time-span which separates Zozer's pyramid from that of Cheops, is a mere 100 years - so far and so fast did the art of constructing in stone progress in the hands of these ancient masters.

The Great Pyramid of Cheops - his Greek name: properly he should be called Khufu - was the first to be built on the imposing rocky plateau which overlooks the Nile and present-day Cairo, around the year 2,550 BC.  It was originally 460 feet high, now reduced by loss of stones to 450 feet.  It once had over 2,500,000 blocks of limestone, mostly from local quarries.  Some 170,000 were stolen by the Arabs and Turks for building in Cairo; that such a massive quantity of stone could be removed with barely any visible effect on this man-made mountain is a testament to the ungraspable quantity involved.  Although the nearby pyramid of Chephren, or Khafre, appears larger, this is because it stands on higher ground, and it retains the smooth stone casing at its peak whereas Khufu's has lost blocks even here, reducing its height.  There is also a third pyramid, of Mycerinus or Menkaure, less imposing than the other two, as well as a host of even smaller ones, probably for the kings' queens.  Each of the pyramids is meticulously aligned with the cardinal points of the compass, the entrances facing due north.

For the tourist, perhaps the most exciting experience - apart from the initial impact of these ancient masterpieces - is to venture deep inside them.  Khufu's pyramid offers the most rewards in this respect, allowing the visitor to climb up a long and steep shaft and gallery to the main burial chamber, constructed of massive slabs of perfectly-fitting stones at the heart of this tremendous construction.

Each pyramid stood not on its own, but as part of a larger funerary complex including temples, causeways and mastabas for the burial of the king's nobles.  The best-preserved temple is that of Khafre, adjacent to the famous Sphinx carved within one of the quarries which provided building stone.  The latter's small size and obscured location can prove something of a disappointment to visitors accustomed to photographs taken from certain flattering angles.  It has suffered much through wind-erosion and from human abuse.  Its nose is today in the British Museum.

It was in the mortuary complex of Khafre that the fine diorite statue of the king was found, one of an original 23, and now in the Egyptian Museum.  It was also here that the important ceremony of the 'Opening of the Mouth' was performed to enable the king to live on after the death of the body.  A few words on the vexed issue of Egyptian religion are probably in order at this point.

The pyramids were first and foremost tombs.  The earliest, those built in the mastaba form, were simply buildings to house the dead king. The invention of the pyramid was partly practical - it provided more protection for the king's body and spirit - and partly symbolic - its form offered a ready means of ascent into heaven.

Other reasons for the new shape have also been suggested.  For example, the true pyramidal form is said to mimic the form taken by the sun's rays breaking through the clouds.  It is also claimed to be a representation of the original mound from which the universe sprang.

There are several Egyptian creation myths, representing different local religions.  Just as politically the various towns had fought for supremacy, so the various religions tried to impose their particular beliefs on others.  What emerged in time was a synthesis of elements from many different religions, paralleling the fusion of different local tribes into one people.

Although the religion and creation myth based around the sun-god - originally from Heliopolis, the 'city of the sun' - came to dominate, the resulting theological mish-mash is highly confusing for modern-day visitors.  Thus the sun-god Re is also known as Atum, and later as Amun - all originally gods from different religious centres.  The god Osiris, in some cycles the great-grandson of Atum, also became an important deity in his own right.  He was particularly associated with the cult of the dead - and the detailed story of his death and resurrection has surprising similarities to that of Christ.

Just as the Egyptian conception of gods was complex, so too was the Egyptian idea of the soul.  Each person had a 'ba', able to move in and out of tombs at will.  The 'ka' however, was a double, born and dying when a man was born and died, and needing sustenance within the tomb.  It was for the ka that all the offerings of food and drink and furniture were provided, and for whose consolation the tomb might be painted to represent the walls of a house or tent.  Together with these came the 'akh', the 'shining one', the unique essence of a person which endures for ever.

The famous Egyptian mummies - the word comes from the Arabic 'mummiya' meaning bitumen, one of the substances later used in the embalming process - were attempts to preserve the earthly body for the use of the 'ka'.  Various charms and amulets were included in the wrappings as an additional help and protection for the spirit in its journey to the next world.  So far as we can tell, heaven was conceived of as very similar to existence here on earth.  At first only the pharaoh, the son of the god, could  benefit from this resurrection, but soon anyone able to use the appropriate spells and perform the correct rituals was guaranteed salvation.  In addition to human mummification, the Egyptians also preserved the bodies of various sacred animals, such as the bulls of Apis, found in the Serapeum, and ibises and baboons which were sacred to Thoth, the god of writing, and hence of spells and magic.

Though we know them largely through their funerary monuments such as the pyramids, the Egyptians emerge as a people obsessed not with death, as it might first appear, but with life and its continuance.  They exulted in its joys, as represented by scenes in their tombs, and in the comprehensive paraphernalia with which they were provided for its continuance there.  They were, however, conscious of the fragility of life and its pleasures.  Perhaps aware of their dependence on the fickle Nile's annual rising which brought both life to the fields but also threatened destruction by drought or flood, they saw life as a constant battle against chaos, a chaos that could only be averted by an unending round of prayers and supplications to the right gods.  Chief among these, along with Re in all his forms and Osiris, was Maat, the goddess of balance without whom all the other gods were impotent, and life itself was impossible.

• Chapter 4 - Giza, Tuesday 21 February, 1990

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters

Chapter 4 - Giza, Tuesday 21 February, 1990

As I write, I sit at the heart of Khufu's pyramid.  What an experience.  Tens of thousands of tons of stone above me.  The huge slabs are so perfectly dressed - not even the tiniest gap in the smooth black granite.  No hieroglyphs anywhere, a very noble, austere place.  As we sit and stand in here, we are very trusting of the ancient engineers - I wouldn't trust anything of our time after 400 years, let alone 4,000.

A crazy passage here: very long, narrow and steep - quite claustrophobic if you think about it too much.  And getting out is going to be a problem with the hordes now pouring in - there's only room for one to pass at a time.  In many ways the sloping gallery - after the narrow passage - is the most impressive part, because you get a better idea of the scale of the achievement.  It is very high, quite narrow, and on each side you can see the diagonally placed slabs of stone, like a cross-section of the pyramid.  Turning back, you look down a 100-foot slope of 45 degrees, down into the narrow passage which suddenly looks very long - it is - and very steep - which it also is.  You feel crazy to be doing this.  You want to be outside - now; but can't.

We arose early, trying to get here before the crowds did.  Which we managed, arriving here about 8 am, to find it deserted, a glorious clear blue sky overhead.  The pyramids cast huge, dark, cold shadows across the ground.  Magic to walk out of them, the sun, the great god Re, suddenly peeking over the jagged edge of the pyramid.  As always, my dumb heart leaps unfailingly at this meeting of the old memory.

There is a light mist over Cairo, which seems a million miles away.  Wonderful approach to the pyramids - through dull, dull, dull streets, past blocks of flats, dusty shops, and then suddenly these great textured mounds ahead of you, appearing from nowhere as if they have just sprung from the earth.  Close up they seem such an affirmation, an aspiration.  The pyramidal form is simply perfect, in aesthetic terms: it offers both enormous height, plus a simultaneous sense of massiveness - perhaps a new word like 'massivity' is needed for such a unique experience - that no other shape can.

My party seemed genuinely impressed - partly by the numbers involved, the scale of the undertaking , the vision, the dedication - and partly just by the sheer physical impact of it all.  Janet very moved, which is good.  Unfortunately, the inevitable reaction when confronted by something this glorious seems to be to get out the camera and snap it.  But this is crazy: of all things, surely the pyramids are the least able to be captured on a piece of film?  Close up and the camera fails to seize  anything of the majesty - you just get old rocks; sufficiently far away and they look like big sandcastles.  You simply have to be there.

But what is this urge to take pictures?  It can't be to remind yourself how things looked - professional pictures are far better for that if you need such crutches for the memory - though I'd be inclined to say that if you don't remember something without such help then it was hardly worth seeing it.  But the invariable preamble before showing holiday snaps is 'Of course, this doesn't really show what it looked like' - so why bother?  I fear that the main reason people take photos - especially of themselves - is to prove that they were there.  'Look!' these pictures seem to say, 'we were there, here is proof - we did something once!'  On the other hand, I can see why you might want to take photos of those dear to you, as memorials to what was, on that day, that moment you caught them with that smile, in the funny hat, sitting on a camel.  I sometimes wish that my parents had taken more photographs before they died, before I had had time, been old enough, to take all the photographs I wanted, to be able to keep, to remember.

A miracle - we have the chamber to ourselves.  As the other groups descend, the place booms menacingly.  I remember the first time I came here, I literally had it to myself.  Once the noise of the others had died away, it was utterly silent.  I suddenly felt very alone, oppressed by the weight of masonry, even more by the weight of history, of being so insignificant compared to all this, this which had endured and will endure.  My head began to swim - perhaps partly through lack of oxygen - it was very warm in here, the stored body heat of thousands I suppose.  I felt, well, very frightened.  I can't really explain it.  It was as if I had been abandoned at the heart of the biggest tomb in history.  I felt like a lonely 'ka', lost without my body, wanting to go on living, but trapped here for eternity.  I was getting more and more scared, until I had literally to flee from the chamber.

So for once I'm quite glad to have my tour with me.  Actually, I feel the same way about the Egyptian Museum.  Towards the end of the day, just before closing, when the tinny electric bell rings away like some cheapskate last trump, the halls are almost empty.  Then it is just you - and 100,000 ancient artefacts.  There too I start to feel obscurely frightened.  I don't really believe in ghosts and all that sort of stuff - I think - but in the museum it is not hard to imagine thousands of mummies rising up at night, joining in primitive dances and rituals, to picture  Anubis, the jackal-headed god, Thoth, the ibis-headed god, and Sekhmet, the goddess with head of a lioness, all coming forth to reclaim their own.  Ugh.

Outside now in the fresh air, resting after our exertions.  I didn't take them down to the bottom chamber - it's a hell of a long way, and I fear that a couple of my party might not have made it - and I certainly couldn't carry them.  I can still remember the feel of the deep, hot pain in my legs from the last time I staggered down there.  It was like some fiendish torture, step after trembling step on the wooden slats running across the floor of the passage.  The view was amazing, like something out of an adventure film, just down, down, down into the bowels of the earth, lit by a bulb every so often.  Whenever I'm inside the pyramids, I keeping thinking about what happens if the lights go out - which they did once when I was there.  Luckily I was near to one of the entrances - the original upper one - through which light streamed, thank God.  But in the distance I could hear the startled screams and cries of those who were making the long ascent to the main tomb, frightening enough for many at the best of times, but now in the pitch-dark, with the prospect of being trapped in there....

But it's worth going all the way down to the bottom chamber - if you can put up with the smell of ammonia.  Down there - some considerable way into the rock base of the pyramid - it all feels much more primitive than all the efficiently engineering above.  Everything is so much more exposed, the raw sense of rock.

I am sitting now waiting for everyone to finish their bloody camel rides.  Quite why they do it, I don't know - five minutes on some flea-bitten old thing.  And then they'll want me to take some photos of them.  It's rather ironic that it's always me, the person without a camera, who ends up taking the most pictures for everyone else.  When I was telling them about the passages within Khafre's tomb, there was no desperate clamour to rush over and explore them.  In fact, everyone's pegs are noticeably weak and wobbly.  

Yes, they all wanted pictures.  

Inside the solar boat museum.  I can't quite make up my mind about this place.  From the outside it's a real blot on the landscape - horrible concrete, like some big melon or great blister on the side of the Great Pyramid.  But the boat itself is so magnificent, and so, well, actual, that it seems churlish to moan.  Shuffling along in the curious over-slippers they make you wear inside - when they also take away everyone's cameras - hooray! -  you can really see this majestic 100 foot long craft soaring down the Nile.  Imagine a flotilla of them.

The ancient Egyptians' idea of the sun god sailing his boat across the sky by day, and then descending by night beneath the earth in the west, sailing his other boat there underground and re-appearing in the east again is rather beautiful, I find.  A great but ineffably peaceful god - not a jealous one who judged and damned.  And this boat would have been worthy of Re.

At the cafe by the son et lumière.  We gave Menkaure's pyramid a miss because the rest of them are tiring in the sun.  A pity, because despite its much smaller size it is rather atmospheric with its well-preserved mortuary temple ruins.  Also you see the desert stretching away before you - down to Saqqarah.  We'll do Khafre's temple and the Sphinx after lunch.  A stunning view here, of course, the temple, the half-obscured Sphinx - covered in scaffolding - the shimmering sight of the pyramids in the distance.  An interesting optical effect: the surface of the pyramids looks textured, almost like a cloth.  

One thing that strikes me now, watching all the tourists milling around - and has struck me every time I've been to Egypt - is how many old people come here to see the sights, far more than I've ever seen elsewhere - not that I've been to that many other places, but the impression I get is that Venice or Athens or Barcelona are not filled with wrinklies in this way.  Why here?  It can't just be the climate, because the problems caused by  heat and sun and unfamiliar diet - the Pharaoh's Revenge - would surely outweigh the benefits.  Perhaps they just 'do' everywhere else when they're younger, and finally end up here.

But I can't help feeling that it's deeper than that, that it's intimately bound up with the ancient Egyptians' preoccupation with passing on to the next world, the mummies and the tombs and all that.  As I said in my notes, although we have an unfairly biased view of their interests - it's mostly tombs and graves that have survived and been excavated, few towns etc. - the Egyptians do seem to have been very concerned about survival, about passing through death.  Perhaps this is just a reflection of the sophistication of their civilisation: once you've sorted out all the boring stuff like where your food and clothes are going to come from, and once you have supreme rulers, generals, nobles and priests with time on their hands - and minds - you start thinking about the 'bigger' questions like 'what does it all mean?', 'what's the point of all this effort?', 'what happens after death?', 'will any part of me live on - either here on earth, or somewhere else?'.

In some ways they seem to have thought longer and harder about death than we do.  With all our wonderful technology and achievements we try not to worry too much about such things.  If you are old I suppose this is understandable: you don't want to waste valuable moments worrying and fretting.  And for those of us who are younger, well, we just regard death as something that happens to other people.  Which is ridiculous of course.  If I think about death, which I do sometimes, especially here, it's when I think about my parents, and how little I knew them, and how little they knew me.  I wonder whether we'll ever meet again, 'somewhere', where we can get to know each other properly, to say all the things we never had a chance to, or to unsay some of them we shouldn't have said.  I suppose that this is the extent of my religion, my belief in God, this hope that there is something more.  Yet again I feel inadequate compared to the ancient Egyptians and all their thought-out systems and answers.  Perhaps all their Res and Atums and Amuns, their charms and spells, are not so ridiculous after all.

Come to think of it, it was just near here that I came very near to killing myself.  God, what stupidity.  It was the first time that I'd come to Egypt.  I wanted excitement, I suppose - though it's not normally something I go out of my way to get - and it's certainly not something I'd go out hunting for today, but perhaps I'm getting old, perhaps turning 30 really is the beginning of the end....

Say it was something about the situation: the mighty pyramids, the great banks of clouds wheeling over them, the god Re punching holes in the sky and pouring forth his pyramids of light over the sands.  Well, anyway, I found myself irresistibly drawn to hiring one of the horses that were on offer between the pyramids.  Definitely not a camel: I could see that these were ridiculous animals, and that only tourists rode them here.  But the horses....  There seemed something true and noble about these fiery Arab steeds, with there sullen dark-browed masters, disdainful of the hirer even as they took his money.

So I said to this Arab - a young and haughty man - that I wanted to go for an hour's ride around the pyramids.  "You want walk?" he asked with a curl of his lip.  "No," I said, impelled by God knows what madness.  "A real ride."  "You want good ride, yes?  Gallop?"  He pronounced the last word like a challenge, smiling contemptuously.  "Most certainly," I said, "a gallop round the pyramids."  I would show him, I thought.

But as he offered me a horse - it looked very big close up, and its eyes were starting out of its head - I began to have misgivings - serious misgivings - horrible squirming misgivings in my bowels.  What the hell was I doing?  I suddenly thought.  I had never been on a horse in my life, and here I was asking for a gallop round the pyramids.

Getting on proved a nightmare - the horse kept moving away when I had one foot in the stirrup - leaving me doing the splits rather inelegantly and painfully.  I had half a mind to be sensible and give up.  Unfortunately, three of them helped me up - one holding the horse, one the stirrup and one pushing my backside.  It felt a long way down to the ground - and what was I supposed to do with the reins.  I was soon told: if I pushed them towards the horse's neck, the faster he would go.  And how did I stop?  I asked - and was told that the horse would know when to stop.

I was not encouraged when my guide raced off over the dunes, leaving me alone with the horse.  I moved the reins forward, and nothing happened.  The guide came back, gave my horse a swift thwack with his whip - and we were off.

And how.  By the time I gathered my wits together we were flying over the sands, down a steep dune and then out onto the level.  It felt as if we were going at about 100 mph.  Or rather it felt as if the horse were going that fast: sick down to the bottom of my boots, I realised that I was simply perched precariously on top of this beast - it would only take the slightest jog, the slightest swerve, for me to lose my balance and come off.  I grabbed hold tightly to the reins, but this only made the horse throw its head violently back and to the side, and made staying on even harder.  I relaxed my grip.

I was trying to work out the best way to fall off when I was acutely conscious of something else: I was wearing my usual trainers, which I find the most comfortable for travelling, and the tongues of them on both feet had contrived to get caught up with the stirrups, so I couldn't get my feet out.  I realised this meant two things: (a) if - when - I fell off, my feet would remain stuck in the stirrups so (b) I would be dragged behind this galloping monster, and my brains dashed out on the rocks and stones.  Quite calmly I realised something else: I was going to die.  I remember saying to myself, out loud, and with perfect equanimity "I'm going to die, I'm going to die."  Since it was inevitable, there was point worrying about it.  Instead, I looked around me - I thought I might as well enjoy the view since it would be the last thing I ever saw - watched the slowly wheeling pyramids, the clouds of sand kicked up behind my guide who was now far ahead of me.  

And then, wonder of wonders, my horse slowed down, and then stopped by the side of the guide's.  "Good gallop, yes?" he asked with a wicked grin on his face.  I gibbered something back to him, wondering whether this was what heaven or hell was like - since I had to be dead by now.  I soon found out it was hell.  For somehow this man had brought me into the backstreets of Giza - where had the pyramids gone?  Dirty children kicked cans around a dusty plot of wasteland.  As we passed, women looked up briefly from their washing or from suckling their babies.  Old men stared at us with a timeless, impudent stare.

But it was a hell that smelt like heaven, an overpowering melange of choking perfumes.  And then I felt myself dismounting, my legs trembling, buckling beneath me as I staggered up some cracked steps into a shop.  It was a perfume shop, run by a 'friend' of the guide, who 'only' wanted me to look to have a cup of tea, to sample some of the wonderful perfumes his 'friend' sold.  I was still limp like a rag, unable to concentrate, unable to argue.

I accepted the tea with shaking hands, the cup rattling embarrassingly against the saucer.  I smelt perfume after perfume, all improbable puces and scarlets and cyans, all sickeningly sweet, all soon quite indistinguishable.  The perfume merchant asked if I were married; unable to lie, I said 'yes'.  He pressed a perfume on me, 'for your good lady wife'.  My eyes met those of the guide who sat behind his 'friend'.  His eyes seemed to dare me not to buy.  I had confused visions of being led at an even greater gallop across even stonier and more uneven deserts.  I bought the perfume, paid the outrageous price, allowed myself to be pushed back on to my horse, and was led at a mercifully sedate pace back to the other horses. 

I slid off, clutching the bloody bottle of perfume - which I threw away as soon as I got to the hotel, unable to face telling Janet about all this shameful episode when I got back home.  To this day strong scents produce a Pavlovian reaction of blind, nauseous fear in me - I remember once - to my shame - insisting that Janet take a shower after dousing herself with perfume, probably in my honour.

Poor Janet.  As I slunk away, I could almost translate the guttural conversation punctuated by coarse laughs behind me.  Typical stupid westerner - can't even ride a horse, and was gulled by the perfume seller - didn't even haggle - these contemptible tourists.  Followed by the inevitable spitting.  And the worst was, he was absolutely right.

Nor did my punishment end there.  The next day, I felt as if somebody had beaten me repeatedly between the legs with a truncheon or something - I was frightened that I'd done some permanent damage, it was all so sore.  Come to think of it, I suppose I still don't know whether I have or not.

So, then I thought that I would die, and I was - God be praised - wrong.  But now, I have - or had until writing all this stuff - no thoughts of death.  And a maniac might come up to me and stab me; I might suffer a fatal heart attack; be involved in a car crash on the way back - quite likely given the way they drive here; I might contract food poisoning this evening and die in agony.  So many possible deaths lie ahead of me, all of them cutting off my life before I have had a chance to do all the things I want to do, to see all those places, to write those books.  It would all be so unfair.  And what would poor Janet do?  She would be distraught.  And it's all a mystery, all out there, waiting for me.  There, I'm really quite depressed now.

But the others have finished lunch and everything, so, off to the Sphinx, for the inevitable photographs, scaffolding and all.  Pity it can't answer this particular riddle of mine while I'm there....

• Chapter 4 - London, Saturday July 14, 1990

Egyptian Romance - list of chapters