Where the Mummies Are Buried

On April 3, my first day of vacation in Egypt, my phone erupted in a flurry of texts from friends, asking if I was lining up on the streets of Cairo to watch the spectacle of the mummy parade. For those unfamiliar with recent terrestrial movements of ancient Egyptian immortals, the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade celebrated the conveyance of 22 royal mummies in elaborate, shock-absorbing chariots, from their longtime dwelling at the old Egyptian Museum in the city’s downtown nerve center, Tahir Square, to their new home in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Fustat. My friends assumed I wouldn’t miss the likes of Ramses II or Queen Hatshepsut ambling through the streets of Cairo.

As it happened, on that day, sweaty and sunburnt, I was managing to one-up even that pharaonic extravaganza. I was 400 miles south in the Nile city of Luxor (formerly Thebes); more to the point, I was spending the morning exploring the Valley of the Kings and Queens, descending deep into the ornate chambers and tombs from which many of those parading mummies had been excavated after 40-plus centuries of sleep.

Egypt-Mania in Suburban Ohio

Egypt-mania might have started in the 1920s but it flourished in my house as a kid, in the leafy suburbs of Cincinnati. My interest may have been kickstarted by my globetrotting aunt and uncle, who traveled to Egypt and sent back postcards and the usual trinkets: scarabs, cartouches, and guides to reading hieroglyphics. Other kids might not have taken these souvenirs as prophetic talismans, but I did. The ancient Egypt fixation triangulated with my youthful obsession for Agatha Christie, and a wall of my bedroom was devoted to the movie poster for the star-studded 1978 film “Death on the Nile.” Yes, instead of Reds or Bengals players, I had a campy illustration of Bette Davis, Peter Ustinov, and Angela Lansbury hanging over my bed. Their faces were arranged on the poster around a golden relief of Tutankhamun himself, as the film smartly exploited the fanfare around the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibition that same year. In other words, this vacation was something of a calling. And if the cataclysmic nature of the past year has taught me anything, it’s not to wait for the places you’ve been dreaming to touch since adolescence. This trip to Egypt would send me up the Nile on a leisurely boat cruise from Luxor to Aswan.

My ship consisted of 12 cabins below deck (I splurged and chose a panoramic suite at the bow with wrap-around windows) and a roomy open-air upper deck fitted with cushions and low-slung couches for relaxing and recumbent river watching. The southward journey to Aswan took five nights and six days, with stops along the way at remote temples and curious off-the-grid historic sites (including a quarry where the ancient Egyptians chiseled out the sandstone for its famous obelisks). But the real adventure of boat travel involves simply reclining on deck, hypnotized by the undulating riverbanks, making the eye do all the physical exercise. The fluttering palms. The yellow Sahara stretching into the west beyond the lime-green farmland. White herons flapping through the marshes at sunset. It’s easy to understand why so many myths of the Nile — from Narcissus to Antinous — involve the lure of beauty and the dangers of appetite.

King for a Day

After six days on a boat, I had to get my land legs back, so I walked down to the bustling open market of Aswan, where you can buy fine Nubian crafts, plumbing equipment, knock-off American sneakers, and fresh camel meat. The market is tucked behind a row of buildings that face the picturesque corniche. Of course, a drink on the terrace of the newly renovated Old Cataract Hotel helps as well. But I had little time for idling. Not long after disembarking the dahabiya, I crammed into the backseat of a van that was driving three and a half hours south past Lake Nasser, not very far from Egypt’s border with Sudan. I was intent on visiting a monument that had haunted me ever since I watched Mia Farrow appear at its feet in “Death on the Nile,” villainously pretending to be a tour guide while stalking the attractive rich newlyweds played by Lois Chiles and Simon MacCorkindale. But even 1970s Hollywood can’t capture the enormous and monastic majesty of Abu Simbel, where four figures cut from rock sit in eternal judgment in honor of Ramses II. Amazingly, Abu Simbel, which had stood since 1244 B.C.E. — for much of that time buried in sand — nearly didn’t survive the twentieth century. The construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1959 would have submerged the entire structure in a man-made lake. Thanks to the then newly formed UNESCO, the monument was cut into blocks and reassembled at its current perch on higher, dryer land. A second temple devoted to Ramses II’s beloved wife, Queen Nefertari, was also saved in the nick of time (the waters were rising toward the monuments while heroic preservationists frantically worked to save them). I’m not saying that I didn’t pretend for a second to be Lois Chiles and whisper her canned dialogue (“Get away from me!”) to an invisible Mia Farrow while lingering in front of this magisterial ode to immortality. But childhood fantasies are a lot like wonders appearing in the middle of a vast desert — places of mirage, fantasy. It’s a shock to discover they’ve survived all this time.