We found accommodations at an inn not far from the river, and were given a room on the upper floor. Antipater complained about the steep steps, but when I opened the shutters and raised my eyes above the nearby rooftops, I saw the Great Pyramid looming in the distance
Antipater joined me in gazing at the sight. “Wonderful!” he whispered.
“Shall we set out to see it at once?” I said eagerly.
“No, no!” said Antipater. “The day is far too hot, and the hour too late, and I need my rest.”
“Rest? All you did today was lie in the boat and read Herodotus!”
“How lucky you are to be nineteen, Gordianus. Someday you’ll understand how an old man can grow tired simply by drawing a day’s ration of breath. Leave the shutters open, but draw the curtains. It’s time for my nap.”
* * *
We did not go to see the pyramids that day, or the next, or even the next. Antipater insisted that we acquaint ourselves with the city of Memphis first. To be sure, it was a place of marvels, decorated with shrines, temples, ceremonial gates, colossal stone statues, and towering obelisks the likes of which I had never seen before, all constructed on an enormous scale. The strange architecture of the city exuded an air of mystery and great antiquity. It was easy to believe that mortals had been living and building in this spot since the beginning of time.
Memphis was no longer the capital of Egypt—the heir of Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, had chosen to move the royal administration to Alexandria—but its monuments were well kept, and the city was bustling and vibrant. I had thought that in Egypt we would arrive at the edge of the world, but Memphis seemed to be its center, the crossroads of all the earth. Among the people I saw every shade of hair color and complexion; I had never known that mortals came in so many hues. The city seemed at once impossibly ancient and incredibly alive.
We dined on tilapia and exotic fruits in the palm grove next to the Temple of Selene (who is also Aphrodite, according to Antipater). We observed the sacred Apis bull dozing in its luxurious enclosure; it seemed quite strange to me that a mere animal should be treated as a god. But the grandest of the temples was that of Serapis, the god most favored by the Ptolemy dynasty. To reach it, we traversed a broad ceremonial walkway lined on both sides by life-sized statues of a creature with the head of a man and the body of a lion. These, Antipater explained, were sphinxes.
“Like the sphinx that guarded the Greek city of Thebes and posed the famous riddle to Oedipus?” I asked. Antipater himself had taught me the story.
“I suppose. But if Oedipus truly met a sphinx, the creature must have come from Egypt. No Greek I know has ever seen a sphinx, but their images are all over Egypt. These statues look as if they’ve been here forever.”
The long walkway was exposed to a strong wind from the west, and drifts of sand, some quite high, had gathered around the bases of the statues. One of the sphinxes was buried up to its chin, so that sand covered the lower portion of its
At every turn we were accosted by men who offered to serve as guides to the local sites. Antipater eventually picked the one who struck him as the least unscrupulous, a fellow named Kemsa, and charged the man with arranging our transportation to the pyramids. Kemsa, who spoke passable Greek, advised us to wait a while longer, for soon a three-day festival to celebrate the summer solstice would claim the attention of all the locals and tourists in the city; during those three days we might be able to visit the pyramids in peace, without hordes of sightseers around us. The guide also insisted that we buy long white robes and linen headdresses, not unlike those worn by the sphinxes, saying that such garments would protect us from the desert heat.
At last, early on the appointed morning, dressed in our desert apparel, we set out to see the pyramids.
Kemsa supplied a camel for each of us—to my dismay, for I had yet to meet a camel that did not dislike me on sight. This beast was no different. Almost at once, he tried to bite me. The guide chastised the camel by striking him soundly on his enormous nose. After that the creature seemed content to turn his long neck, give me a baleful stare, and spit at me from time to time. Despite his sullen nature, the camel was an obedient mount, and we made steady progress.
First we took a road that followed the west bank of the Nile downriver for a few miles, then we took a sharp turn to the left and ascended to a dry, sandy plateau. We hardly needed the guide to show us the way, for at every moment the Great Pyramid was visible, looming ever larger as we drew closer. By the early light of morning it appeared pale pink in color, and as flat as if it were a drawing cut from a piece of papyrus; but as the sun rose, and the heat increased, the pyramid appeared white and began to shimmer. At times it seemed to levitate above the earth, and at other times it quivered so much that I thought it might miraculously disappear before our eyes, but the guide explained that these uncanny visions were merely illusions caused by the waves of heat rising from the sand.
Larger the pyramid loomed, and then larger still. I glanced at Antipater and saw that he was as astonished as I was. It was one thing to be told that the Great Pyramid is the largest object ever made by men, and another to actually see it. My imagination had been inadequate to prepare me for the awesome scale of what I beheld.
The plateau was crisscrossed with ceremonial roadways and dotted with temples, altars, and shrines, but because of the festival in Memphis there was not a person in sight. The solitude was uncanny. A part of me was glad we had waited for this day, to have the pyramids to ourselves. But I also felt slightly unsettled, that we three should be the only specks of humanity on that vast, sandy plain. My sense of perspective was undone; in vain I looked for some way to judge size and distance.
Only once was the Great Pyramid blocked from view, as we passed close by a very large sand dune that seemed out of place amid the surrounding temples. Once we passed the dune, the Great Pyramid reappeared and filled my whole range of vision, not only from side to side but up and down, for the structure was nearly as tall as it was wide. From a distance, the pyramid had appeared to be made from a single block of stone, so smooth was the surface. Closer up, I could see that it was actually faced with many different stones expertly fitted together, and that these stones were of many different colors and textures—pale violet and glossy blue, sea green and apple gold, some as opaque as marble and others as translucent as sunlight captured in a wave. At a distance all these various stones merged together and appeared scintillating white. I had expected the Great Pyramid to be immense, but I had not expected it to be so beautiful and so finely made, as fascinating to behold close up as it was at a distance.
Around the bottom of the pyramid, great drifts of sand had accumulated. We remained on our camels and
