Beneath the Sands of Egypt (8 page)

When I would occasionally jog to the lake, the sight of a foreigner running by in a colorful outfit never failed to cause astonishment. Invariably, the spectators would turn to see who was chasing me. Sometimes a boy on a donkey would challenge me to race his braying steed, the donkey often winning through sheer endurance and the noisy encouragement of his jockey. Down at the lake, I would wade neck-deep in its waters to witness the sunset, the cliffs in the distance evolving through a chameleon transformation from yellow to orange to purple, then gray and ultimately black. The emerging lustrous orb of the moon, the chirping of birds at dusk, and the silhouettes of palms all marked the end of another beautiful Egyptian day.

 

A
PART FROM BEING
my introduction to Egypt, the Fayyum project provided my first real lessons in excavation. “From the known to the unknown. That's what it's all about,” explained my vastly more
experienced fellow graduate student Paul Buck as his trowel scraped across a blackened layer of earth to reveal more of the same as the sun's heat screamed down upon us in an unequal contest of wills. “Marshalltown. That's the brand you need, the archaeologist's best friend.” Paul continued to scrape away at the ancient, fire-cracked encirclement of stone. Soon several fish bones were revealed, the remains of someone's millennia-old prehistoric dinner. From the known to the unknown—it could serves as the credo for any explorer or a metaphor for archaeology in general.

I learned a lot about digging from Paul in the Fayyum, and in later years I would meet Doug Esse, a master of the trowel, a young man eulogized as the best of his generation and whose impact on Near Eastern archaeology was blooming when he passed away while reaching what would have been a truly stellar prime. “A sensitive touch is necessary,” claimed Doug, so sensitive that sight is not necessarily a requirement. Under his skillful handling, a bewilderingly complex record of the past would be revealed, which would require an equally complex mind to interpret. Doug's trowel was refined, its edges sharp, and its surface area reduced through twenty years of use. The handle fit his hand like a custom glove, and the tool was constant and at the ready. “It's my magic trowel!” Doug would pronounce, grinning, as he repeatedly denied my many requests to give it a try during the first summer we worked together. “Nobody uses my magic trowel!” It did what it needed to do and had the amazing capacity to find what needed to be found.

During an apparent moment of weakness the following year and after days of annoying begging on my part, Doug amazingly consented, “but only for a few minutes.” The trowel gleamed when I gripped its handle. Its special qualities were soon confirmed as it cut through the earth like a knife through warm butter. The sharpened edges easily found the borders of ancient mud bricks
virtually invisible in the glaring sun; the subtle change of texture that indicated the mortar was readily detectable through minor vibrations in the handle. A few minutes of supervision with this magical instrument were all I was allowed. “Time's up! Gotta go!” announced Doug as he retrieved his companion. Subsequent pleading was fruitless. I understand that he was ceremoniously buried with his trowel, a tool that merely assisted his extraordinary intellect in revealing the ages.

 

T
HE
F
AYYUM
A
RCHAEOLOGICAL
P
ROJECT
wasn't all work. Friday is the Islamic sacred day, and on Thursday afternoons we loaded ourselves into vehicles and made the tedious journey to Cairo for some relaxation before returning on Friday evening to resume work the next day. I usually checked in to Garden City House, while others sometimes opted for the luxury of the Hilton or other nicer hotels to indulge themselves, if just for a day. The contrast between Cairo and the Fayyum was drastic. Cairo provided lots of activities and a wide array of food. I chose to spend most of my free day exploring the ancient sites, including several more trips to Giza along with the pyramids and tombs of Sakkara just south of the city, and I spent numerous hours in the astounding Egyptian Museum off Cairo's central square.

At one point we were allowed an extended break and headed down south to Luxor to see as many of the ancient sites as we could possibly cram into a few short days. It was at that time that I made my first visit to the Valley of the Kings, and the impression would be profound and lasting.

After three hot summer months, it was time to go home. I left Egypt with a wealth of experience and, equally important, enough enthusiasm and ideas to motivate me for years.

W
HEN
I
RETURNED
to the rainy Pacific Northwest and the Big University, thoughts of my experiences in Egypt and the Fayyum were unshakable. I had to return. It wasn't a mere desire, it was a
necessity
. I didn't know how or under what circumstances I could return, but I knew I hadn't seen nearly enough. I also knew that although I'd received an excellent education at the Big University, we were a bad match in several ways. On top of that, my adviser, Dr. W, was leaving for a couple of years to serve as director of a research center in Cairo.

In December 1982 I turned in the final requirements for my master's degree and was off to Egypt again, this time on my own. With little money to finance my excursion, I had secured airline reservations as inexpensively as possible on a red-eye flight on an obscure African airline, which brought me to Cairo. Stepping off the plane at 1:30
A.M.
, I was greeted with a cold blast of January
air. Having only experienced the sizzling summer, I was dressed in light clothing and was completely unprepared for winter conditions. Freed from the constraints of a formal expedition, I had no particular agenda, and with only two hundred dollars in my pocket, I would stay for about two months.

I met a young Scotsman on the plane, Iain Bamforth, who had never been to Egypt before. I knew the procedure for getting into downtown Cairo, and Iain had a list of the cheapest accommodations in the city. He, too, was on a limited budget, and even the modest Garden City House was too rich for us. After we'd done quite a bit of walking downtown, a hotel sign hanging over the empty sidewalk indicated a potential temporary home. We had arrived at the Golden Hotel, the legendary ultra-budget, hippie-backpacker flophouse. It consisted of a nondescript lobby and a couple of tawdry rooms, the latter crowded with packs and clothing strewn everywhere. We were informed that we could find a place on the floor or on a mattress for 1.50 Egyptians pounds per night. The hotel hosted an ever-changing international cast of migratory characters, and one never knew with whom or how many one would be sharing his room on any given night. It would serve as a tolerable base camp from which we would explore Egypt at our leisure.

The hotel was owned by an elderly man in his eighties by the name of Mr. Faris. Faris was educated at Oxford during the 1920s and spoke impeccable British English. He was quite wealthy and maintained the hotel as a service to the budget traveler. He also had great compassion for young people, and each afternoon he held court in the lobby, providing assistance to all who asked. Mr. Faris was a wonderful encyclopedia of local knowledge, including the best and cheapest places to eat, bus schedules, obscure places worth visiting, cautionary advice, and consolation for the dis
traught. “And how was your adventure today?” he would sincerely inquire of every returning traveler as each one entered his hotel. A kind word and plenty of sympathy or congratulations was always offered by the gentleman in the black suit. I would like to assume that he was naïve to the questionable behavior of some of his residents; he generously ascribed it to the follies of youth and looked the other way.

Iain, the Scotsman, became a fast friend. We would travel together through Egypt for about a month. Another fellow denizen of the Golden Hotel was a young woman from New Zealand named Maria. Maria, whom we somehow assigned the nickname “Madame Nadia,” had traveled the distance from South Africa to Cairo over the previous year, temporarily residing here and there in places she found appealing. Egypt was the last stop on her African journey before Europe, where she hoped to find employment and fund her journey home.

Being the resident “expert,” I accompanied Iain and Maria out to the pyramids and other sites near Cairo, and at one point I invited them to join me for an excursion out to the Fayyum, where we visited some of the local friends I had made during the 1981 project. My reunions with old friends were delightful, and we were treated with overwhelming hospitality, as if we were long-lost relatives.

After returning to Cairo, Iain, Maria, and I decided to travel by train up to Alexandria for a few days to examine the old city on the Mediterranean coast. It had been established by Alexander the Great in the fourth century
B.C.
and became one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the ancient world. Two of the most spectacular monuments of antiquity had once stood there: a giant lighthouse that made it onto the list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and a library that contained the accumulated knowledge
of the Western world in its day. Sadly, neither survived, the latter perishing in a fire that produced an immeasurable loss. It wasn't a particularly good trip; it rained furiously for days and literally dampened our enthusiasm before we returned to Cairo.

After several weeks as vagabonds in the name of Egyptian antiquities, we bade adieu to Maria. All of us had quickly learned the art of living on the cheap in Egypt. I could eat three acceptable, and usually tasty, meals a day for about a dollar. Sandwiches made of beans and falafel were a staple, as was koshari, a filling dish of pasta, lentils, and tomato sauce, purchased and consumed on the street. Occasionally I'd eat some shawarma—little meat sandwiches carved from a vertical spit—or some freshly squeezed guava juice, but if I wanted to splurge, I'd venture to Felfela's, an inexpensive restaurant serving Egyptian comfort food in downtown Cairo. Despite my budget accommodations and spartan existence, life wasn't bad at all.

With Maria gone, Iain and I excitedly agreed that the mountains of Sinai would be our next travel destination. It had been just a few months since the Israelis had officially vacated the peninsula after about fifteen years of occupation after the 1967 Six-Day War. United Nations troops were now in place, and the Sinai was once again accessible to tourists from Egypt. Before leaving I consulted Dr. W about my latest plans, and he offered a few words of caution: After so many years of conflict, many of the beaches were mined, and several people had been blown up while traveling through remote desert valleys. Be careful, he warned.

We bought seats on a small airplane that traversed the eastern desert, soared over the Suez Canal, and deposited us on a small airstrip beneath craggy Sinai mountains near the village of St. Catherine. The area is most noted for its ancient, fortresslike monastery built at the foot of a mountain, Gebel Musa, which has been
traditionally identified as Mount Sinai and the location where God presented the Ten Commandments to Moses. Dedicated monks have lived here since the monastery was established by the Roman emperor Justinian in the sixth century
A.D.

I badly wanted to climb to Sinai's summit, so Iain and I hiked up a rocky valley past the monastery to pitch a tent among huge boulders. The ascent the next morning was cold but not particularly difficult, and the summit, topped with both a small mosque and a Christian chapel, offered splendid views of the surrounding snowcapped mountains. Snow? In one of the world's great desert wildernesses? To our great surprise, we returned from a trip into the village for supplies to find our tent collapsing under heavy new snow later that day. News of the weather in various parts of the country was a regular topic of discussion by the steady stream of drifters passing through the Golden Hotel with their reports. “Intense cold and windy on the northern Red Sea coast! Head south!” and many did. When the Cairo winter is chilly and dreary, the southernmost Egyptian city of Aswan can be a pleasant seventy degrees so it seemed perfect for our next destination.

In keeping with the general penurious theme of our visit to Egypt, Iain and I purchased tickets on the most inexpensive form of transportation we could find, the third-class train. These trains are usually occupied by the poorer folk of Egypt, like the hard-laboring occupants of rural villages. Passengers are seated on uncomfortable wooden benches next to windows that are often broken or completely missing as the train crawls across the landscape, stopping at nearly every little town on the banks of the Nile. Despite its simplicity, traveling in such a way allowed us to enjoy remarkable views of the lovely Egyptian countryside and to meet lots of interesting people.

While seated in the dark third-class compartment, I noticed
something falling on me from above. Looking up, I saw an Egyptian soldier in the luggage rack directly above me snugly tucked away, peeling and eating an onion. At first we were merely amused by the spectacle, but after a short while it became clear that the luggage rack was the best seat in the house. Thus inspired, Iain and I each picked out a nice section of rack upon which we laid our sleeping bags. Inside the bags we stayed warm and relatively comfortable, and by grasping or tying ourselves down to the slats that made up the racks, we could spend a comfortable night, lulled to sleep by the continuous rocking of the train.

After about eighteen hours, we arrived in Aswan to find a quiet, wonderfully warm, pleasant little city. The ambience there was completely different from most places I had been in Egypt. Perhaps it is the low-key Nubian people or the small-town atmosphere. Even the Nile here seemed different, broken up as it is by large rock islands. Though brutally hot during the summer, Aswan is probably the nicest part of Egypt to visit during the coldest times of the year in the north.

Iain and I made our way to another classic cheap accommodation, which made the Golden Hotel look like the Hilton. The Continental Hotel was aptly named, filled with the typical budget travelers, except with private rooms instead of a dormitory floor. The price was right, about a dollar a day, and establishments of this sort are always excellent places to meet all kinds of characters. Many sat in front of the hotel whiling the days away, sipping drinks or playing backgammon, joined by locals who might bring along a pet monkey or a water pipe. Aswan was indeed pleasant. We hired a sailboat to visit tombs on the western side of the river and to explore the many antiquities of Elephantine Island. We even took a stark look at the present and future by hiking across the top of the giant and controversial Aswan Dam.

Among the principal attractions of Aswan that interested me were the granite quarries that provided Egypt's pharaohs with some of their most desirable stone. The reddish Aswan granite can be found as far north as Giza, where it lined Cheops's burial chamber, or it can be seen in profusion at such places as the temples of Karnak at Luxor. Huge blocks of stone, including towering obelisks, were cracked out of the rock and loaded onto sturdy river barges to be shipped sometimes hundreds of miles.

One does not need to look far to find granite in Aswan; it is everywhere—in the quarries on the banks of the Nile and the rock islands in the river that once defined ancient Egypt's natural southern borders. As a climber, I kept a lookout for appealing ascent possibilities, and during our wanderings I found a natural fissure splitting a granite bluff above the river for several dozen feet. With rock shoes tightened, I jammed my hands and feet into the crack and began to walk my way up the vertical stone. A number of feet off the ground, I passed the name of Rameses II well incised in hieroglyphs on the wall to my right, an experience one could have only in Egypt.

In due course it was time for Iain to return to Scotland. He was a fine friend, and here and there I met others whose paths I would cross occasionally. I traveled again to Luxor to see more of its innumerable attractions and revisited the Valley of the Kings, a site I found increasingly intriguing. Eventually it was time for me, too, to go home. I returned with a hefty load of stories, a wealth of travel experience, and ever more fascinated with Egypt.

 

S
OKNOPAIOU
N
ESOS IS
the desolate shell of a once-thriving town. There are no tourists here. My friend from the Fayyum prehistoric project, Paul Buck, seemed to enjoy the sound of that name, and
occasionally I would hear him muttering those words to himself as we drove across the desert. Sometimes he would break out in a loud spontaneous outburst. “Soknopaiou Nesos!” It was the Greek name for the remote ruins of an ancient city abandoned on the desolate plateau of the north Fayyum. Translated, it means “Island of Sobek,” Sobek being the ancient Egyptian crocodile god associated with the Fayyum. The name is almost preposterous, because the nearest water is the Birket Qarun lake situated far below the plateau upon which the city sits, as it was in ancient times. And crocodiles? Luckily, they were the least of my worries in this sandy wasteland. The site is perhaps better known by a more recent name, Dimai, which somehow defies translation.

Dimai remained as an ancient mud-brick edifice on the horizon, an eerie sentinel serving as a geographical landmark for modern explorers. Startling from a distance even on a clear day, its ghostlike image initially appears as a mirage when blowing dust obscures the view. Its high walls still stand resilient, almost defiant against the forces that continue to whittle away at its structural integrity over the past two thousand years.

It was 1984, a year after the end of my low-budget adventure, and once again I found myself in the Egyptian desert. This time I wasn't a mere footloose traveler but had a mission. I was in Egypt to study certain aspects of ancient technology, and along with that, Dr. W had facilitated my participation with Paul's efforts to explore prehistory in the north Fayyum.

We were heading for a site just a few miles from Dimai in the real wilderness. Everything we might need for survival, including water, food, and fuel, had to be carried. It was March, and it was cold, with a continuous brisk wind unsuccessfully tempting us to quit. Paul was particularly interested in geoarchaeology—the application of geological knowledge to learn about ancient
environments—and he pointed out the places worthy of surveying. We mapped some sites, and when we had our day's fill, we'd retreat to the Pink Palace, a tiny brick hut in which we prepared hot food and drinks. Strangely, even in this isolated place we weren't completely alone. In some curious way, word of our presence would imperceptibly carry across the sands, and the few guards from the widely spaced sites of antiquity in this area would appear, grinning in hopes of a hot bowl of chili or some of Paul's specialty, “Seven Treasures Rice.”