Carcosa Bound

The sounds of the street dogs gives way to the braying of camels shortly before dawn. Our hotel was beside their mustering point.

Beyond them, the Pyramid complex of Cheops, the Sphinx, and the desert. This is what we came here for.

Giza is hard work.

The food is not great, the people working in the tourist areas are pushy. Everyone gives earnest warnings about all the scammers in the area, then offers an upsell, unique experience, or special deal.

How the whole situation is managed is, as we come to expect of mostly everything in Egypt, both highly proscribed and wonderfully anarchic at the same time. The rules always apply, except sometimes, but there is always some sort of accommodation that can be reached.

As tourists, we’re apparently confined to a specific area, and warned to stay inside it, for our own safety. There are checkpoints with armed police, but they seem focused more on smoking and drinking beverages in little cups than us.

The streets are full of touts selling somewhat-satisfactory experiences to wide-eyed tourists (like us) seeking the romance and mystery of Old Egypt. A lot of history has happened since then, though.

Like, they’re predominantly Muslim, for starters. This is like asking an Italian Christian to give a complete and accurate retelling of the glories of the Pagan Roman religion, or a modern New Yorker about the worldview of the various Iroquois tribes. They’re different people, now.

All the guides are accredited, which also seems to come with a certain type of official narrative.

Our wonderful, patient guide (possibly a wizard)

Over the course of our adventures, our excellent but world-weary guide, Johnny, gets to know us. He cracks hilarious and ribald jokes and smokes.

As he comes to accept we’re sincere seekers of great truths, or at least, greater understanding, he gives us a more academic and info-rich account of the many monuments and artifacts we are ushered past. The incredible Pyramid complex, the Sphinx, the many breathtaking items at the Cairo Museum.

Still, he’ll not entertain any of our wilder speculations or lines of questioning. Not a bar of of it.

Neither the Pharaohs nor the Egyptian Pantheon were aliens. The pyramid builders used manpower, rollers, pulleys, block and tackle, not magical harmonic resonance to move the massive stones. The structures were monumental tombs for kings, not some kind of trans-temporal or teleportation gateways to other lands or dimensions. Mention of Atlantis gets a shrug.

The souls of the Pharaohs, transformed into birds with human faces, were not eternally flying around in the desert, hungry, homeless and enraged, after their magically-warded bodies and gold death masks had been removed and sold or stored in museums.

Through all, Johnny brackets the archeological and historical storytelling with warnings to be careful of the many scammers who would not hesitate to take all our money.

We still got caught, though. We tell him the ticket-check guy inside the great pyramid of Cheops took us through a “ritual” to draw on the power of the ancient stones to make wishes come true (for a tip; even the staff are running a hustle).

Our exasperated guide looks at the group, then dramatically draws deeply on his cigarette, and adopts the look of an inscrutable occult researcher. The mood darkens. He asks us all if we were sure that our souls had not been trapped and bound by the dark magicks of forgotten Pharaonic necrotechnology. He performs this with a masterful intensity. It was a great move.

I get the sense he knows far more than he tells. He has a very impressive and detailed knowledge and recollection. I begin framing up how to ask if had been involved in these events himself; perhaps due to alchemical life-extension techniques, or deep initiation into secret Orphidian mystery cults, but decide against it. We’ve got a long drive back and this could make things awkward.

Giza is hard work, and probably made harder by the centuries-long procession of idiot foreigners turning the local culture into a service centre to access dreams of a lost, deeper, more mystical past.

It’s not to say unsolved mysteries are not there, and it’s not a worthwhile place to visit. But, like any trip into the Desert, be prepared.