Cairo

Thursday, 4th March 1999

Another delightful breakfast was served to us on our balcony at the Ismalia House Hotel and the predictably warm sun filtered its way through the sky. We made our way across death-defying Midan Tahrir and to the taxi stand in front of the Nile Hilton. We heard the drivers bargaining down trips to Saqqara yesterday and were keen to go there today. A crowd of drivers swarmed around us and eventually after half-an-hour of serious haggling a deal was struck for E£80. Our driver was a quiet man in his mid-thirties who drove an immaculate Fiat which was souped up with racing tyres. Firstly we stopped at a shop to pick up some fruit and water then we were on our way racing through the streets and blasting horns.

The luscious scenery down the Nile was wonderful, depicting a rural scene - men on donkeys, women carrying green leaves on their heads, water buffalo worked in the fields and basked in the sun by the canals, endless lines of workers would cut plants and cultivate crops, their colourful jelebahs and scarves flapping in the breeze and small children would work pumps to irrigate canals. Yet on the edge of all this stood unforgiving hamada desert, whipping you back to reality.

A dirt road took us up to the ticket office at Saqqara and into the carpark. There, in front of us, the crumbling step pyramid of Zoser looked somewhat uncared for and forgotten as a blanket of desert sand lay over its stones and the rest of the vast necropolis was hidden underneath mounds. Pharaohs, royal family members, high-ranking officials, and animals were brought here from nearby Memphis, the capital of Old Kingdom Egypt (now all that stands there is a museum reminding us of its importance) and were ceremoniously immortalised forever in these large tombs and monuments. For 3000 years from the time of Memphis to Greek rule the site grew to a 7km stretch.

We were taken by a caretaker (who I now call "baksheesh bandits") to two newly opened tombs. Their names I cannot remember but they are located behind the toilets. The tombs both had elaborate chambers and the odd area of brightly coloured wall painting, depicting solar barques, working animals, and pharaohs mingling with the gods. Walls of engraved hieroglyphics were a feast for the eye and the whole tomb was so amazing that the story behind them didn't need to be revealed. Outside the burning midday sun heated the desert and we wandered along a paved causeway in complete isolation. Taking in the site and the sounds of sand in sirocco crawl.

The causeway then took us towards the Pyramid of Unas which now almost resembles a mound of rubble. Although not open to the public it holds the earliest examples of hieroglyphics written in Pharaonic tombs, being created some 350 years after the first pyramid of all, Zoser, and the perfection of smooth pyramids in Giza. A large man in a white turban popped out of nowhere and wanted to usher us into the tomb and temple of Horemheb over the next mound. From the outside we could see the interesting remains of the temple and decided to follow his lead. We passed an even fatter man near the entrance and, ignoring the wooden planks screaming that the site was closed for renovation, we all entered the temple. Not much was left except for a few wall paintings and carvings depicting everyday Pharaonic life and offerings being made to divine deities. The most interesting part was closed and that was the Tomb of Horemheb. Buried some 25 metres under the ground it's one of the deeper subterranean burial chambers in Egypt. On our exit Dave gave our guide a small E£1 tip. He baulked at this then the other "guard" also wanted a tip. Our guide suggested E£10. I threw my hands in the air, shook my head, and began to walk away. For a lot of Egyptian's that's a weeks pay! Ah, the first of many joys to come. I was then astonished to find a scarab beetle the size of my thumbnail crawling through the sand, as it too had survived millennia.

We then look into deep Solar Barque pits on the way to Zoser's funerary complex, where the bus tour groups were beginning to gather. The southern entrance took us through a reconstructed Hypostyle Hall, with towering lotus pillars inscribed with hieroglyphics and pictures. Some stairs at the back of the great southern court led us up to a terrace overlooking the site. In front of us was Zoser's step pyramid, which was constructed by Imhotep, the pharaoh's architect, in the 27th century BC and would have been the largest structure ever built. At the time the tombs of the pharaohs were of the mastaba style, a flat, one storey structure, which Imhotep added to five times making them smaller each time. A walk around his pyramid passed us through more temples and ruins, until we reached his mortuary temple and sat down for an orange. In the area was a piece of granite with two holes carved into its face and upon looking through the hole we come face to face with Zoser himself, or to be precise, his statue.

More burial chambers lie further on hidden below the desert sand and in the scorching heat we threw of the scent of camel and donkey touts to make our way over. The Greek statues in the Philosopher's Circle have seen better days and since their heads are missing it's impossible to tell them apart. Unfortunately the Serapeum, where the sacred bulls were buried, and the Mastaba of Ti were closed, but through the gate at the entrance of the Serapeum we could make out the huge sarcophagi of the bulls, adorned in hieroglyphics.

Before returning to the car we soldiered on over the sand dunes to the beautiful tombs of Mereruka and Teti. Mereruka was a maze of thirty-one rooms, all complete with beautiful carvings, paintings and inscriptions depicting pharaohs, gods, everyday life and most importantly, the wildlife of ancient Egypt. My favourite scene was at the entrance, involving wide-mouthed hippopotami and crocodiles. We also enjoyed exploring short dark passages with flashlights, except for some corridors which smelt like the caretakers toilet. No wonder Europeans carted stuff off in hordes!

Teti's tomb was subterranean and from the entrance we crawled down a sloping corridor and into the burial chambers, to be welcomed by a musty smell, broken sarcophagus and side chamber covered in hieroglyphics. On very tired legs we hauled our bodies back to the car, where our driver was surprised to see us take so long.

We drove off with dust flying behind and with the wind in our hair, towards Dahshur, another site containing a necropolis. It was a military zone, off limits to foreigners, until 1996. The Bent and Red pyramids, built by Cheops' father, Pharaoh Sneferu, are the most interesting. In fact, they still confuse Egyptologists, as why would one pharaoh need two tombs? The taxi driver let us out at the deserted entrance to the Red Pyramid, where we were joined by a sleepy guard from the tourist police and a caretaker in his galabiyyas and turban.

The aging caretaker confusingly ran up the steps to collect our tickets at the top. It was very inspiring to be able to enter through the original entrance to this wonderful structure. We were then thrown down the most claustrophobic corridor, on a steep slope for at least 100 metres where all you could hear was our heavy breathing. A large, musty red granite chamber opened up in front of us with its ceiling raised in steps up to a central point. At the far end a series of wooden steps took us up into another chamber. The air was thin and stiflingly hot here, as the corridor continued into another chamber. From the balcony above we looked down alone into the burial chamber. The floor lay in broken ruins below and unfortunately some visitors used it as a bin. In this room the temperature was at its highest and the air so musty I was almost choking. The thrill of being there alone was so overwhelming and the atmosphere reeked of millennia past. The slope on the exit ramp pulled all the muscles in our legs although it was nice to feel the cold breeze on my face again.

The elderly gentleman who guarded the room didn't ask for baksheesh but we gave him some as the guidebook didn't even mention that we could get in. A few men from the tourist police had gathered around the base. We said hello and continued around to the mortuary temple. Obviously our slow-thinking policemen smelt opportunity and two of them joined us to try to tell us that the ruins of the mortuary temple were around the corner, requesting baksheesh for this gem of information, all the while nursing their semi-automatic weapons. They just love to state the bleeding obvious and demanding "baksheesh with a gun" is not appropriate behaviour for the "tourist police". They're supposed to be on our side!

We returned to the car unscathed and asked our driver to take us across dirt tracks to the Bent Pyramid. Its bent angles show the design transition between a step pyramid and a perfect pyramid. It is not known why it is bent but it is estimated that the initial angle of 52° was too steep to be stable so it was changed halfway up to 43.5°. What is so interesting about this massive structure is that its outer casing is still intact and as you marvel at its smooth sides it's easy to picture the grandeur of others that no longer have this casing. Sadly the entrance was closed but we spent a good half hour walking along its base, the ruins of a mortuary temple and the view to the south taking in the ruins of Saqqara at sunset.

After such a tiring day I even fell asleep in our hurtling taxi ride back to Midan Tahrir, where we dragged ourselves into the kushari joint for dinner. Being suckers for punishment we continued to walk around the main shopping district, looking for fiction novels and eating ice cream and our favourite cakes. Even the view from the balcony still dazzled with the came charisma. Cairo is a very interesting city full of people living contrasting lifestyles and where all 22 million of them are in your face. Some travellers don't like it here but one can assume that it is because new arrivals are devoured by an intense culture. Morocco taught us to be ready for it and from the moment I met the taxi driver, dealing with the intense people was a breeze. There is a lot to explore in this monster of a city and nothing should be missed.