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what was in store for me that day, when we paid our first visit to Gizeh.
    Everyone goes to see the pyramids. Since the Nile bridge was built, they are within an easy hour-and-a-half drive from the hotel. We left early in the morning so that we should have time to explore fully.
    I had seen engravings of the Great Pyramid and read extensively about it; I thought I was prepared for the sight. But I was not. It was so much grander than I had imagined! The massive bulk bursts suddenly on one’s sight as one mounts the steep slope leading up to the rocky platform. It fills the sky. And the colour! No black-and-white engraving can possibly prepare one for the colour of Egyptian limestone, mellow gold in the sunlight against a heavenly-blue vault.
    The vast plateau on which the three pyramids stand is honeycombed with tombs – pits, fallen mounds of masonry, crumbling smaller pyramids. From the midst of a sandy hollow projects the head of the Sphinx, its body buried in the ever-encroaching sand, but wearing more majesty on its imperfect features than any other sculpture made by man.
    We made our way to the greatest of the three pyramids, the tomb of Khufu. It loomed up like a mountain as we approached. The seeming irregularities of its sides were now seen to be huge blocks, each one higher than a man’s head; and Evelyn wondered audibly how one was supposed to mount these giant stairs.
    ‘And in long skirts,’ she mourned.
    ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘We shall manage.’
    And we did, with the help of six Arabs – three apiece. One on either side and one pushing from behind, we were lifted easily from block to block, and soon stood on the summit. Evelyn was a trifle pale, but I scarcely heeded her distress or gave her courage its due; I was too absorbed in the magnificent view. The platform atop the pyramid is about thirty feet square, with blocks of the stripped-off upper tiers remaining to make comfortable seats. I seated myself and stared till my eyes swam – with strain, I thought then; but perhaps there was another reason.
    On the east, the undulating yellow Mokattam hills formed a frame for a picture whose nearer charms included the vivid green strip of cultivated land next to the river, and, in the distance, shining like the towers of fairyland, the domes and minarets of Cairo. To the west and south the desert stretched away in a haze of gold. Along the horizon were other man-made shapes – the tiny pyramid points of Abusir and Sakkarah and Dahshoor.
    I gazed till I could gaze no more; and was aroused from a reverie that had lasted far too long by Evelyn plucking at my sleeve.
    ‘May we not descend?’ she begged. ‘I believe I am getting sunburned.’
    Her nose was certainly turning pink, despite the protection of her broad-brimmed hat. Remorsefully I consented, and we were lowered down by our cheerful guides. Evelyn declined to enter the pyramid with me, having heard stories of its foul atmosphere. She knew better than to try to dissuade me. I left her with some ladies who had also refused the treat, and, hitching up my skirts, followed the gentlemen of the party into the depths.
    It was a horrid place – stifling air, debris crunching underfoot, the dark barely disturbed by the flickering candles held by our guides. I revelled in every moment of it, from the long traverse of the passage to the Queen’s chamber, which is so low that one must walk bent over at the waist, to the hazardous ascent of the Grand Gallery, that magnificent high-ceilinged slope up which one must crawl in semidarkness, relying on the sinewy arms of the Egyptians to prevent a tumble back down the stone-lined slope. There were bats as well. But in the end I stood in the King’s Chamber, lined with sombre black basalt, and containing only the massive black coffin into which Khufu was laid to rest some four thousand years ago; and with the perspiration rolling down my frame, and every breath an effort, I felt the most overpowering sense of