Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Oberoi Mena House
Giza, Egypt
Agenda
Saqqara
Imhotep Museum
Step Pyramid
Pyramid of
Wenis
Wenis Causeway
Tomb of
Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep
Pyramid of Teti
Tomb of
Kagemeni
Tomb of
My-Kau-Isesi
Lunch at
Saqqara Palm Club
Dashur
Red Pyramid
(inside)
Bent Pyramid
and Satellite pyramid (outside)
Cobra Freize
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| Cobra Frieze. Step Pyramid complex, Saqqara, Egypt. |
My new favourite thing in the Imhotep
Museum is a fragmentary cobra frieze, four of them, carved from white
stone. I think I could have looked at them all day, though I probably
spent only ten or fifteen minutes. I think I've always liked them,
but not as much as this visit. See – when Gayle was in India
earlier this year, I made her a gunky lion-snake (that's something
you see on a couple of Egyptian coffins – a snake's body with the
head of a lion) as a welcome-back present. It's not until you try to
make a thing that you really appreciate its line and form. I was
working from photos, in coloured felt from a craft store. I drew a
pattern on graph paper, and held it at arm's length to judge the
proportions. The cobra's hood could be wider, I decided, and changed
the pattern. It was still the same lion-snake, and looked almost
exactly the same as it did a moment before, but now it was just a bit
better. Or was it? Maybe it was better before? Did I really change
anything? Moments of indecision ran together as I slowly sewed and
glued, finally calling it quits around two in the morning, still
wondering whether I had made something that was even worth giving.
The ancient carvers worked in stone.
That's permanent. No fooling around. You really have to know what
you're doing to work in stone. And to do it over and over again,
because there were at least a dozen of these cobras on the frieze,
probably a whole lot more. As I stood in the museum, looking at the
first snake, I inventoried its features: the striated body, the flare
of the hood, the cobra's face and eyes, and the hint of a smile.
Maybe. Or maybe that's what I wanted to see; in truth, the enigmatic
inflection of the lips is impossible to read. I imagined running my
hands along the side of the carving to get a better sense of its
proportions. All the snakes are similar, but none are identical.
Some have longer snouts. Some vary in lateral position of the head
when viewed straight-on. All have a loose, simple, sensual line that
runs from the body up to the hood, then to the crown of the head. All
of them are lovely.
How something so simple can holds me so
completely falls just beyond my grasp.
Museum Dogs
Let me tell you about Lloyd.
Lloyd is a published American novelist,
a university professor, an accomplished pianist, and one of the
kindest people I have ever met. He is also Gayle's sweetheart, which
is how I've come to know him.
Lloyd and I were a little bad the other
night. Instead of joining the rest of the touring group for supper at
a restaurant Giza, we opted for a simpler, smaller, quieter supper in
the hotel restaurant. Neither of us were particularly hungry, but we
knew we should eat something.
We talked at length about the novels of Arthur C. Clarke, and how
Lloyd had met Clarke in the late 1960s. I have been a huge fan of
Clarke's work since I've been a teenager, and tried to explain to
Lloyd why that was so. “His writing is so clear and poetic. And he
can do the trick where he talks about something without actually
talking about it.”
Lloyd nodded.
“Indirection is one of the most important things in novel writing.
You could have a man and a woman talking, and he could say something
like, 'I really love you, and I think you should come back to my room
now,' and it would be very direct, but not very satisfying. Instead,
you could have them walking on a beach, and the man could pick up a
sea shell and give it to the woman, and say, 'Isn't this the most
beautiful thing you've ever seen?' You can tell he's interested in
her from what he does, without him saying what he's feeling.”
It had the sound of
truth to it, and that left me feeling deflated for selfish reasons. I
have been lately reading a book of short essays by Hunter S.
Thompson. I adore his work, and often pilfer the tone of his pieces
without a backwards glance. It's great fun, but his writing is all
very direct. And so my own writing tends to be very direct as well.
It's something to work on, I suppose.
After leaving the
restaurant, Lloyd played on the hotel's grand piano in the lounge,
filling the bar and the lobby with jazz standards and other songs I
didn't recognize. The music was forceful enough to replace much of
the ambient sound, and in doing so, became the soundtrack for the
hotel staff. I watched as the bell captain crossed the wide lobby,
one step at a time, in no particular hurry. Three men in black
jackets and immaculate pressed white shirts cross-checked receipts at
the concierge desk. The reception staff processed arriving guests.
These mundane activities all seemed to have a special purpose when
observed with the addition of music.
And today, as we were about to leave
the Imhotep Museum, I watched from the bus as Lloyd tore off bits of
old piece of pita bread and tossed them to a pair of dogs in the
otherwise empty parking lot. The dogs live nearby, at the edge of
the desert, and looked to be in good heath -- lean, but with good
coats and a solid build. He would tear off a bit of bread, and toss
it to one dog, who would catch it in its mouth. Then he'd do the same
with the other dog. Then back to the first, and so on until there was
nothing left. The dogs never missed. I have seldom seen Lloyd look so
pleased.
The Saqqara Palm Club
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| The Saqqara Palm Club. Saqqara, Egypt. |
|
There was no one at the Saqqara Palm
Club when we stopped in for lunch. The last two times I have been
there in 2008 and 2010, it was packed. Today, there was a couple
using the pool, and our group. That's it. It's a good place with
excellent service and solid food. Please give them your custom.
That's all I really wanted to say. I
have no particular anecdote to relay about the restaurant; I just
wanted to recommend it because they have always been good to me
there. For example, when I'm in Egypt, I prefer not to eat meat.
It's not a big thing, but if I have the choice, I prefer to eat a
vegetarian meal. When I mentioned this to the waiter taking care of
us, the manager overheard, and offered to make up a plate of mixed
vegetables, and some french fries. Would that be OK, he asked?
Perfect, I said, because it really was exactly what I had been hoping
for. Two plates soon arrived, one of very tasty seasonal vegetables,
and one of really excellent french fries. I offered some of the
latter to Gayle, knowing that she had also declined the mixed grill.
She took a handful. And then later on, she took a few more.
The Red Pyramid at Dashur
We were all on the bus, on the road to
Dashur. Someone asked Gayle how hard the pyramid was to go into.
“The entrance is up pretty high, so you start by climbing the
outside of the pyramid, you go in, and then you go down a whole lot
of steps. There's a short flat section, and a ladder.” Then she
asked me, “Do you remember how many steps there are?”
“A hundred and thirty-nine,” I
said, referring to the small black notebook I carry with me in Egypt.
I had counted on a previous visit. Twice: once down, and then again
going up.
 |
| The Red Pyramid at Dashur, Egypt. |
I'm never really eager to leave a
pyramid once I've gone through all the trouble of getting into it in
the first place. So I usually hang around in the burial chamber as a
slow stream of people come, gawk, and leave. Most people do not
linger long. Once they've look at thecorbelled ceiling and the
floor, which has been torn up badly by vandals in search of treasure,
they leave. That's fine. I like the sense of place one has in a
pyramid. You know that you're in Red Pyramid, and there is only one
of them in the world. You can't be anywhere else, and keeping your
attention focused there is slightly easier as a result.
Gayle always sings a requiem for
Sneferu, and I like to hear it. It calls an end to our visit, and
after that, we usually leave together. The last time we were here, I
said, “Until the next time,” as we left the burial chamber. This
time, I didn't say anything by way of farewell.
As a rule, pyramids are humid, very
warm, and dark. You climb a long set of steps though a narrow
passage before emerging high above the desert floor, and because
you're half way up the pyramid, you have an expansive view of the
flat sands of south Saqqara, and farther to the north, the Step
Pyramid complex. On a really clear day, you can see the pyramids at
Giza. Going from darkness to the airy brilliance of day is not unlike
being reborn.
Gayle looks at me, a little winded, but
all smiles. “We did it! Again. Why do we do this?” It's a running
gag – why do we fly 7 time
zone to be here, or why do
we tromp through the desert to look at a rock quarry, or why do
we risk life and limb crawling into pyramids? We smile because there
is no answer that makes any sense, then pick our way back down to
ground level using a set of worn and tricky stone steps. Part way
down, we take a breather. Gayle picks a flat white sea shell
from a crumbling pyramid block and hands it to me. “Eocene rock,”
she says, “from when this was all covered by ocean. Forty million
years ago.”
We complete our descent under an open
blue sky, in the shadow of Sneferu's pyramid.
