Into the Tomb

I’d been warned about the low overhead. No, it wasn’t because people were shorter in those days. The low ceiling was just a design decision. So the bending low, I expected, but what did surprise me was the temperature. I thought it would be cool down there but in rethinking that if a rock (in this case a stack of them) has been lying in the sun at the same latitude south as Presidio, Texas or Needles, California, the heat should not be much of a surprise. Down the tunnel led and then up, I met people who either had had enough of the heat or had got all the way back to the tomb. I went on, laying knots on the back of my head reminding me to show a little humility for the builders and previous resident.
Then I did stand up. I’d reached the burial chamber, which was dimly lit. The chamber measured about 25 feet across and about 50 or more feet long. Above was a gabled ceiling. There were no hieroglyphics and the only “furniture” was a stone coffin at one end of the room and an old fellow who was to interpret and who was in need of a tip. I gave him one. Anyone who would willingly put up with this heat had earned a pound or two. I think I lost a pound or two in sweat.
I’m running on memory and with no connection to the internet so if I misspell “Belzoni,” I apologize. He had painted his name high and safe above any possible graffiti and left the date in the early 19th century of his entering the tomb. Keep in mind that in the infancy of archaeology that there were some rough techniques and rougher technicians but Belzoni was to his field what Attila was to diplomacy.
Back out of the pyramid, I bought a bottle of water to replac what soaked my shirt. I wanted to leave the plastic bottle somewhere it would be taken away, preferably with the fellow who sold the water. So while downing the water, I paused a moment and looked up at the structure I’d just been inside. There are some things that can not be photographed or even explained. The sequoias of California must be seen to give you the sense of scale. The forest and tundra of Alaska and Canada can give an inexplicable sense of space. And these pyramids are the most massive structures I’ve ever stood next to. I know mountains are taller and greater in size but when you look up at the noonday sun glinting on the edges of the thousands of stones set one at a time, you feel something akin to gravity drawing on you. The pyramids are something to be experienced first hand. There is no substitute.
Camel and driver awaited me on the south side of the pyramids and holding on to both saddle horns, I rose up with less surprise and probably more grace than previously. We took a different route back, more easterly from the pyramids. I saw an odd goblet of stone and wondered how it was formed. No need to ask the camel driver. I’d ask Abdul when I saw him. A quarter hour later, the goblet came abeam on the left and it became the profile of the Sphinx. We rocked on down the slight incline, my watching the face as we came more in front of the statue. The driver asked if I wanted to get down so as to walk closer. We were in camel range just as we had been at the pyramid. Hanging on to both horns, we settled down and somehow I climbed off. My legs were hurting from the endless walking a tourist does plus the unusual exercise of clamping my knees into a camel saddle. So I walked round at a distance in front of the Sphinx and had a little surprise. The Sphinx is a pharos’s head carved onto a lion’s body. After the millennia of storms and sometime gentle breezes, the statue was nearly covered in sand. This was removed exposing the front legs and paws. The photos, I suspect because of their wide angle lenses, make the legs look much longer than they do to the eye, perhaps twice as long. When you see the Sphinx, the front legs are much more in proper lion-like proportions. Of course, for a few extra pounds, you could go up and stand right by the Sphinx. My hundred yard distance seemed good enough. I walked around viewing on the statue’s left side. There is a road here for people who can’t deal with camels, camel drivers, and who don’t want to walk across miles of sand. There is even a sidewalk by the paved road. Four or five polished vehicles pulled and parked by the curb and men in suits and dark glasses got out and looked in all directions except toward the Sphinx. Then one suited European climbed out of his car, pulled out a camera, and snapped a picture. I had by then walked into the group but it could be that the bodyguards though that anybody so unfashionable as to wearing NPS issue shoes would surely not harm their charge. The picture taken, the new pharos looked me over suspiciously and then climbed back into his car and they were away by the time I doubled back. Who he was, I’ll never know and I wondered if my not showing enough interest, to stop to ask, hurt the man’s feelings. Whoever he was, he was surly must be worth killing.
So there lay my camel with the driver sitting beside him and leaning back on the old animal’s bulk. The driver seemed happy to see me. The camel wasn’t saying anything one way or another. Then I was reminded that I was 71 years old. I couldn’t get my leg over the saddle. My leg muscles were too tight. I was beginning to hurt. If I ever imagined myself as a latter day T.E. Lawrence, the image disappeared as the driver lifted me onto the saddle. The camel lacked its earlier ambition and there was none of this jumping up and let’s-get-going behavior. So back we went across the lose sand, the driver urging the animal on with tugs and shouts of the Egyptian equivalent of “Giddy up!” I tried to help out by calling, “Mush!” but the camel ignored his native language and didn’t speak English either. The driver encouraged me to kick the camel in the ribs with my heels but my legs weren’t functional by this point. I was going to remember this ride for a time to come. The driver turned us both lose once within the confines of the street, hoping that the camel would trot on home but we had had enough for the day and perhaps for me for a lifetime. In an earlier time, the activity might well have been as exciting as dog driving but the sun was going down on my generation and it was time to think of other things.
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