It took me over 30 years to tick my biggest, and first, goal off my bucket list. At the time I didn’t know it as a bucket list, in fact I didn’t even have a list when I was five years old, I just knew I really had to get my ass to Egypt.
The Treasures of Tutankhamun Tour had travelled to the UK several years before, but I didn’t need the pharaoh’s treasures to inspire me. Even without them I was captivated by the vibrant colors of the hieroglyphics, the compelling weight of the Rosetta Stone, and the eerie silence of so many mummies. I think my parents were just happy wasn’t bored at the British Museum.
Throughout my school years I nursed my passion for the ancient world. At primary school I doodled cuneiform, voraciously consumed the myths of Egypt and Greece, got annoyed when people co-mingled the names of Greek and Roman gods, and couldn’t get enough of Arthurian Legend. At secondary school I studied Latin and ancient Greek, read Virgil, Euripides, and Aristophanes, learned where “cloud-cuckoo-land” (Νεϕελοκοκκυγία) came from, and giggled with all the maturity expected of a fourteen year old kid at an all boys school when my teacher introduced the class to Lysistrata’s sex strike.
Then I took a massive hiatus. I moved on to science and other distractions, but fifteen years later found myself working at a global organization, working on a global project, when I was selected to fly to Egypt for a project. My passions were reignited, but a month before I was due to depart the Twin Towers fell in New York, and all travel was cancelled, everywhere.
My near miss was frustrating, but the world had bigger worries than my bucket list. For a while Egypt did not seem a safe place to visit, but in 2009, when the world seemed calmer, and I became frustrated waiting for life to hand me another opportunity ton a plate, I booked myself on a trip, on THE trip.
As with many trips and vacations, I recall them as moments – life is about the moments – and what follows are a succession of recollections of the more memorable moments:
Touching papyrus. I was so used to paper feeling smooth but there is a primal quality to this ancient material, which you can wash and reuse. Was this the first recycled paper?
The pyramid of Kefren (Khafre). Tourists were milling around as we stood in the centre of the giant, mid-sized pyramid, surrounded by thousands of tonnes of stone. I felt, safe, and at peace, and despite the throng I felt totally alone.
The Hard Rock Cafe. It was a shabby affair and I didn’t go in. I turned 180 degrees on the spot and my gaze fell upon the majesty of the sphinx. The city of Cairo has pushed right up to the ancient monuments.
The Sphinx. It’s hard to shake the memory of being pestered by hawkers selling Tut tat. I had wanted solitude, I wanted to absorb the timeless quality of the place, but I couldn’t get away from people who wanted to sell me things. I recall my conflict at seeing the poverty of the country, and yet being upset that my experience, as I had imagined it, was being ruined. I recall my guilt at being so self-absorbed.
Saqqara. The Giza plateau was visible in the far distance from the site of the ancient stepped pyramid on this burial ground. Here I found all the depth of history I had hoped to find at Giza. I closed my eyes, felt the wind on my skin, and the sun of my face, and I was transported 3,000 years into the past.
The train to Aswan. Traveling south from Cairo we took a choo-choo train. I upgraded myself and was one of only two people in our group of about 20 to give the uncomfortable chairs a miss by reserving myself a sleeper cabin. The porter flopped the bed down for me, hidden as it was in the wall, I climbed up, wrote in my journal, and had the sleep of the ancients, dreaming of Isis and Horus.
Abu Simbel. You feel truly insignificant standing in the tiny entrance of Ramses II’s majestic temple, but what blew me away was not the scale but the precision of the engineering. The ancient Egyptians had created a temple so grand, and yet so delicate, that the sun would pierce the entrance to light up the face on the statue of the pharaoh on only two days in the year, the beginning of the growing season, and the king’s birthday. The temple had to be carefully dismantled and reassembled in the 1960s when the Aswan dam was built. The modern architects could not quite replicate the precision of the ancients – they were one day off for the solar alignment – due to the new geography of the temple.
The metal detectors. We passed through so many metal detectors. We asked our guide about them. He explained they were required by law at the tourist attractions and that everyone needed to pass through them. We pointed out to him that many of the detectors had no staff, in fact they didn’t seem to be working. Our guide replied that staffing them, and even turning them on was not required by law.
Drifting up the Nile on a Felucca. We were given the choice of a paddle steamer or a Felucca, and I loved he romance of drifting up the Nile for a day and a half, under the Milky Way, on an ancient sail boat. Despite my best efforts I hadn’t allowed for getting the shits quite so badly, and I was constantly asking the captain to pull over to the bank so I could take a roll of loo paper, a plastic bag, and a trowel, and wander off into the bushes without my dignity to deal with my issues. The seven members of the tour group with whom I shared the sail boat were very forgiving. A toilet on the paddle steamer would have been more convenient, but when life gives you lemons you take your one (and probably only) opportunity to swim in the Nile, because quite frankly I couldn’t have got any sicker.
Karnak. Columns made for giants. Enough said.
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo. I finally saw the item I had missed at the British museum nearly 40 years before – the gold death mask of Tutankhamun. I took out my journal and flipped to a blank page. I drew a large tick. Goal achieved! But as with all goals we need them not for the destination to which they guide us, but for the journey they cause us to take.
