A Break from Pyramids

Mini Abu Simbel in Cairo

Thursday 6 December, 2007. Richard and I are in Cairo to research Roman Mystery 15, The Scribes from Alexandria. I wake up at 4.00am with a plan.

Instead of going to Heliopolis today to see an obelisk and some more tombs, we could get a taxi to the Pharaonic Village, the theme park about way of life in ancient Egypt.

At breakfast that morning, Richard gamely agrees to the plan. After some investigation I find a taxi driver called Omar – a jewel beyond price – connected with the hotel. He says the Pharaonic Village opens at 9.00am and that he will take us for 70 Egyptian pounds (£7). I agree and we set off just after 8.30 and arrive on the dot of 9.00. Half an hour later Richard and I find ourselves the only ones on a kind of flat bottomed boat with chairs. A few others – full of Egyptian schoolchildren – are towed by tug, but ours has its own motor.

The barge putts slowly around the perimeter of an island fringed by papyrus beds. There is an English commentary on a loudspeaker which gives a handy summary of Egyptian cosmology as we pass painted plaster statues of Egyptian gods and goddesses. There is even a mini Abu Simbel.

ploughing at the Pharaonic Village in Cairo

sheepish shadouf demonstrator

Then we get to the good bit: real Egyptians and animals acting out the way of life: ploughing with a wooden plough, sowing the seed and getting sheep to press down the ground, threshing by cow, winnowing, a man operating a shadouf for bringing up water, landowner paying taxes, making honey, building boats of papyrus and a fisherman beating the water. (We saw this last activity for real on our boat trip from Luxor to Aswan last May.) There are also tableaux of brickmaking, mummification, perfume-making, painting and carving, a carpenter and armourer's workshop, potters, grape-treaders, spinners and weavers. We also see a demonstration of papyrus making. The actors look a little sheepish but were mostly cheerful. I fear they may not be paid much.

guide #5, Ahmed

We disembark from the barge and are met by Ahmed, guide number 5. We are the only English-speakers so we had him all to ourselves. He is very charming and informative, though a little nervous at first. He punctuates every other sentence with the phrase 'By the way'. But then he relaxes and gives us an excellent tour of a rich man's house, a poor man's house and a temple. There is incense burning in the temple and it makes the air smoky, catching the beams of sunshine coming down past columns. Finally Ahmed takes us to see a reconstruction of King Tut's tomb. All the grave articles are fake, of course, but it is good to see how they had been left in the rooms. And it is all very accurately done. We recognize some of the items from the King Tut exhibition in London and see others later that afternoon at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

blue lotus at the Cairo Hilton

Omar had taken us to the island in his comfortable car, chatting about mothers-in-law and his four children. The taxi to our rendezvous with the others at the Nile Hilton is a ancient, battered, black and white vehicle held together with duct tape. No seat belts, naturally. Luckily the traffic is moving at a snail's pace.

'It's not far to the Nile Hilton,' I say to the taxi driver. 'Is it?' Blank look. 'The Nile Hilton,' I say slowly. 'Is it far?' More blank looks. 'Do you speak English?' I finally say. 'My English,' he replies carefully, 'is not perfect.' But he gets us there and we meet up with the rest of our group for a quick snack before the dusty treasures of the Cairo Museum.

And there, in a pool before the museum are several perfect specimens of the rare blue lotus!

[I was researching Roman Mystery 15, The Scribes from Alexandria. It is now available in paperback, Kindle and as an abridged audiobook, and is perfect for primary schools studying Egypt in Key Stage 2.]

Pyramids R Us

by Caroline Lawrence
(author of The Roman Mysteries)

Today is a day of pyramids. We see a red pyramid, a bent pyramid, a mud pyramid, a rubble pyramid and an off-limits pyramid. We travel to sites south of Cairo: Dahshur, Saqqara and Abusir. We are mainly alone at these sites and not hassled by other groups and touts.

Nevertheless, my favourite thing is driving through the villages, seeing life unchanged after 4000 years: a woman carrying a circular tray on her head, it was piled with disc-shaped pieces of bread. I see a donkey drawn cart, a butcher taking cuts from a side of beef hanging in the street. In a palm grove a man squats by a campfire while his friend is stretched out on the earth behind him, fast asleep. All the women here wear headscarves and the men all have skullcaps or turbans. Some ride donkeys astride, with their feet straight out, others ride side-saddle. In a mastaba at the site of Saqqara I spot several reliefs of the oxyrhynchus or sharp-nosed fish!

At Abusir, a site not usually open to tourists, we see one of the earliest columns with a capital. This one has a lotus capital. I ask Joclyn if she has ever seen a blue lotus. She says only twice. Once at the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities in Cairo and once at the Pharaonic Village. The Pharaonic Village is a kind of educational display on an island in Cairo with living tableaux of ancient life along the banks of the Nile. She explains how it came to be. 25 years ago an Egyptian named Hassan Regeb wanted to research how papyrus was made but discovered that none of the original Nile papyrus plants had survived. So he bought a plot of marshy land cheap from the government on condition that after he grew his papyrus he would make it a tourist attraction. It sounds good.

[I was researching Roman Mystery 15, The Scribes from Alexandria. It is now available in paperback, Kindle and as an abridged audiobook, and is perfect for primary schools studying Egypt in Key Stage 2.]