128 GOURMET TRAVELLER
Kings, only a handful are open to the public at one
time. Touching the walls and taking pictures with a flash
is forbidden, but merely breathing and sweating in the
chambers, creating humidity and carbon dioxide, robs
the walls of the tombs of their colour and brightness.
And what colours. Their brilliance is as startling
as the elegance and intricacy of the hieroglyphs is
absorbing. Carved into plaster laid over limestone in
tunnels dug deep into the hillsides, iron-oxide red,
rust yellow, copper green, these designs celebrate the
lives and victories of these kings, their kinship with the
gods, and show scenes from the Egyptian Book of
the Dead. Enter the tomb of Tutankhamun – minor
king, major archaeological discovery – and be bathed
in golden light. Unlike most of the tombs, which
have had their inhabitants stolen or removed to
museums, this one still contains a mummy. Look at
Tutankhamun: this is at once a pharaoh of the 18th
dynasty, son of Akhenaten the god-king heretic, but
also the body of an 18-year-old man, roughly five-
nine, curved of spine and cleft of palate, buried in
this place 3,300 years ago. One can become inured
to the faces of mummies, distanced from their reality,
their death. The sight of wizened toes poking out
from under the shroud, though, is inescapably human.W
e fly to Cairo, leaving the boat but
rejoining the Nile. Here the river
snakes through a huge modern capital
and sustains nearly 20 million souls.
Seeing Cairo, the Egyptian Nobel literature laureate
Naguib Mahfouz wrote, was “like meeting your beloved
in her old age”. Yet for all its chaotic grandeur and
operatic despair, Cairo is still a big city, with the
traffic to match. All the more reason to see it by foot.
Start in the heart of the bazaar with a glass of
hibiscus tea at El Fishawy – touristy but refreshing- and wander out towards the walls of the old city.
Soon the shops selling mass-manufactured souvenir tat
give way to antique souvenir tat and then to everyday
businesses, all against the backdrop of a mind-boggling
enjambment of porticos and buttresses, stone vaults
and vast wooden doors studded with iron, punctuated
by mosques and palaces, churches and citadels. Things
are still made right here, too: whole blocks given over
to the manufacture and sale of scales, lamps and grills.
In one ancient shopfront, felt is being pressed to make
fezzes. Loaves tumble hot and puffy from bakery ovens.
There are two very good reasons to brave the
traffic: a trip to the other side of the river to see the
three pyramids and the Great Sphinx at Giza, and a
visit to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities off Tahrir
Square. Even those who don’t fetishise institutions
with a strong whiff of the 19th century – the finds of
centuries of digs piled in heaps, with dusty cases and
frayed wires are in abundance – will find this museum
is a place of joy. There’s the Mummy Room, of course,➤
Clockwise,
from above:
the Museum
of Egyptian
Antiquities,
Cairo; camel
man Samy Ragab
at Giza; the tomb
of Rameses IV
in the Valley of
the Kings; camel
men, Giza.