Air Conditioning Solves the Riddle of the Sphinx

My wife and I have returned alive from a rigorous 18-day tour of Egypt and Israel. We have seen civilization’s most ancient and holiest lands.

I returned with swollen feet and a devastating case of jet lag, but otherwise undamaged, much to my surprise.

It was indeed an arduous tour. We went with about 100 friends of the Music Center, few of whom were very young, and all of whom were amazingly hardy and high spirited, despite some tough going.

We flew EgyptAir, spending 45 minutes on the ground in New York before going on to Cairo. EgyptAir is not the most gracious of airlines, though the cockpit crew was expert. The flight attendants, evidently Muslim, rudely ignored me when I asked for wine, but of course it was Ramadan, their holy month of fasting.

In Cairo we stayed three nights at the Mena House, an old hotel within view of the Great Cheops Pyramid of Giza. I first saw it while walking from our wing across the garden to the dining room. It looked like a movie set.

After breakfast the next day our group climbed on three buses for the first of many days of relentless touring. Late in the morning we arrived at the pyramids. They stand in the desert just beyond an encroaching scab of remarkably ugly apartment buildings.

The pyramids have been so thoroughly described in word and picture that there is no point in my describing them again, except to note that they are indeed quite large, the Cheops Pyramid standing 481 feet high and containing 2.5 million blocks of stone weighing 2.5 tons each. One wonders how they were ever built.

They stand in utter desolation. The desert is nothing but sand and stones. It was unmercifully hot--115 degrees, we learned. My wife set out with some of the braver members of our party to enter the Cheops Pyramid, the largest of the three, and go through a low tunnel to the king’s chamber. Being claustrophobic, I wouldn’t have gone with her for a million dollars.

I walked around to the shady side of the pyramid. It was a fiesta day, Ramadan having ended the night before. Hundreds of children of various ages, all in brilliant finery, played at the base of the pyramid in the shade. They ignored a sign that said “No Climbing” in English and Arabic. Boys climbed as high as nine blocks up the wall, teetering on the narrow footholds and waving and shouting vaingloriously down to their friends. Others played soccer in the shade. They were beautiful children, and

friendly. Many said “Wel-come” to me and asked my name. I would say, “Jack.” One said, “My name is Mohammed. Wel-come.”

I went back to the bus and waited anxiously for my wife to emerge from the pyramid. I was to wait anxiously for her on several other occasions. There is nothing she will not attempt. Finally she came out. She said the tunnel was so low she had to crouch to go through it. She had gone into the burial chamber and seen the empty sarcophagus. I shuddered.

We drove around Cheops’ two slightly smaller companions and pulled up in front of the Sphinx. We were disappointed to see that the sun was behind the famous monument, shadowing its battered face, and it was further obscured by scaffolding.

Below it a swarm of vendors tried to sell us postcards, pop and souvenirs, lowering the price with every “No.” Camel drivers offered rides on elaborately caparisoned camels. I was not surprised that my wife insisted on riding one.

We had lunch at the Sakkarah Country Club on the edge of the desert. The club’s green lawn stopped suddenly and the desert began--nothing but sand and stone; not even the tiniest blade of grass. That is the way it is all up and down the Nile; the green ends suddenly, and the endless desert begins, stretching out to distant barren mountains.

I thought of Marlene Dietrich in “Morocco,” slipping out of her heels and striking out across the desert to follow her Legionnaire, Gary Cooper, as he marched with his company to a distant post. True love.

That evening I saw the Great Pyramid through the window of the air-conditioned hotel bar. It seemed the best way to see it.