Beneath the Sands of Egypt (5 page)

After I'd completed my undergraduate career and spent a fun summer following graduation, fall arrived with its accompanying poor weather in the Northwest. In short order I found myself increasingly bored and wishing I had applied directly to graduate school. Scrambling in an attempt to make up for lost time, I managed to get admitted to two great schools in Southern California beginning in January, for the beginning of their winter quarters. One was a program in international relations and the other in Egyptology. I attended each for a week and dropped out of both. I learned quickly from the former that I didn't have the obsession or dedication to pursue a professional career in the very real and often ugly world of Cold War politics. Many of the professors at the school were presidential advisers or other prominent individuals, and the subject matter was immediately current and very, very serious. The career path seemed to be directed toward positions in the State Department, policy institutes, or university-level teaching. It wasn't political science per se that attracted me as an undergraduate, but the history surrounding it. I was more interested in its fascinating past than in its frightening present.

I had very different misgivings about the Egyptology program, mostly logistical, but my turning away from it was ultimately for
the best. Somewhat trackless, I spent the rest of the spring climbing, returned to the Northwest, married the ever-patient Sherry, and directed a climbing school for the summer. In the meanwhile I applied to a graduate archaeology program at a very large institution that I will hereafter refer to as Big University.

 

F
ROM THE VERY BEGINNING,
it was clear that my new graduate school would require some major adjustment. The campus was huge, and I was just one of thirty thousand students, about ten times more than my previous university. PLU had spoiled me. When I was an undergraduate, each of my professors knew me by name and was genuinely concerned about my academic progress and personal welfare. At the new school, I felt like just another face in the crowd, another herring in the ocean, a number just like the one I was issued.

My first quarter at Big University was like taking a plunge off a high board into unfamiliar and deep waters. There were two required classes that were seemingly designed to flush out the less-than-serious student. The first class dealt with archaeological theory. Behind the shovels, pots, and other physical manifestations of the archaeological practice, there is a level of abstraction that provides a theoretical framework for the organization and interpretation of the work. That particular class was taught by a quirky and eccentric archaeological version of Professor Kingsfield, the arrogant trainer of law students in the book, movie, and TV series
The Paper Chase
. Like Kingsfield, this professor was intent upon training our mush-filled heads into ones that could think critically.

Our massive reading list for the course consisted of 147 articles and books to be read and, more important, comprehended. During our first meeting, class was immediately dismissed for a week
so that we could prepare with twenty-one of these readings, five of which were complete books. Needless to say, we left class that day in shock as we scrambled to the library. Even four years of undergraduate study had not prepared us for this level of intensity, but the only option was to get used to it and get used to it quickly.

Despite his numerous intimidating eccentricities, our theory professor was absolutely brilliant. The required courses taught by this pedagogue from Hades involved the critical examination of major theoretical issues in archaeology, including classification (how does one organize what is found?) and explanation (how does one interpret what is found?). Quotes scribbled in the margins of my notes from his classes retain the flavor of the experience. Classification, for example, is necessary for order in this world so “you can tell your grandmother from your dog” and so that “you can tell a round red rubber ball from an apple, the consequences of a mistake being gastric distress.”

The professor also maintained a highly critical view of the study of the human past. “We're no worse off than alchemy!” he would declare after enlightening us with the hidden foolhardiness of the very subject we were devoted to studying. Very importantly, though, he urged us to develop the ability to analyze the theories, books, and journals in the field critically no matter how prestigious the author or pompous the prose. He insisted that we not be afraid to call a spade a spade (no archaeological pun intended). “Free yourself from the tyranny of the written word!” he would orate. “Don't be afraid to say, ‘This is crap!'” In some of his classes, we were assigned a cutting-edge scientific article and asked to deconstruct it to reveal its basic theoretical flaws. The process was certainly surprising, as we discovered that a lot of what initially impressed us as quality archaeological methodology really was defective (and some of it still is!). In short, he taught us to think in new and different
ways, something that might come in handy, for instance, in finding such things as lost Egyptian tombs.

Another class to be taken by new students during our first quarter was on the subject of “paleoenvironmental reconstruction,” in which we were to study how to make sense of the greater world in which ancient people lived. After all, it's not only manufactured artifacts and human bones that are uncovered by archaeologists. Humans are just one component of a greater picture of the planet's past, which also includes plants and animals and variables such as landforms, landscapes, and climate. The class was at least as demanding as that of our theory professor and required us to read and summarize the hundred or so items on the reading list. We then had to give a critical presentation of a prominent article or book to be critiqued by our peers.

This, however, was no ordinary class on how to reconstruct the past. The professor was an outstanding specialist in “faunal analysis,” and much of our work involved learning the fine art of animal bone identification. Every class period new bones of the mammalian skeleton would be introduced, and we were expected to learn their major features and be able to identify them in whole or fragmentary form. Boxes of disarticulated cat skeletons served as the basic model, supplemented with the remains of other creatures large and small. It wasn't so bad; I happen to like bones. Apart from their obvious anatomical necessity, they are a striking form of art in nature, worthy of admiration and wonder.

To check our progress, “bone quizzes” were held on a regular basis and consisted of a series of small cardboard boxes that held bone fragments for our identification. We lined up along the tables spaced throughout the room that held the bone-filled boxes while a teaching assistant held a stopwatch; every thirty seconds we were required to shuffle over to the next box. A calm demeanor
and nerves of steel were helpful, and attention to detail was essential. Our anxious hands would quickly grab the bone, spinning it rapidly to take note of any distinguishing features. Is it a sliver of a left distal humerus or a battered chunk of a right proximal radius? An answer was hastily jotted down before we were promptly moved to the next box.

The number of bones we were required to know intimately grew with each class, so at the end we were to have a cumulative knowledge of the two hundred plus bones in the skeleton. Our proficiency would be tested at the end of the course with the much dreaded “FBQ,” or “Final Bone Quiz.” We were taunted by veterans of previous classes with stories of the horrors ahead, including one about a rat skeleton's being placed in a blender, from which fifty fragments would be randomly selected for our identification. Ultimately, a pureed rat might have been preferable, as the bones during the final were an amazing assortment of bizarre bits and pieces from peculiar creatures. I had never seen such odd bones. With the phrase “You may begin,” a living nightmare ensued: the intense concentration, the rapidly spinning bones, and, as in the song by Jacques Brel, the horror of the word “Next!” called out every thirty seconds…the sea-lion scapula…the fragment of the antelope metatarsal…the fractured rabbit tibia…and box number 50.

We had heard that the final box could go one of two ways: If the professor were in a happy mood or liked the class, we might find something on the order of a rubber-squeaky-toy dog bone. On the other hand, the box might contain a bone sent from hell, whose identification would boggle even the most discriminately trained eyes. Unsurprisingly, the latter was the case—something from a manatee, perhaps—and the Final Bone Quiz left us exhausted. One young lady fled the room in tears; she had somehow written her answers out of order during the shuffle around the room,
completely fouling her entire test. After it was all over, I knew a lot about methods to reconstruct ancient environments and a whole lot about bones.

I also studied human bones with a wonderful professor named Daris Swindler. His love of the subject permeated his teaching, and his lectures were a sunny light in an otherwise terse and frantic graduate-school existence. My having already studied the bones of dead cats and assorted mammals certainly aided the process, and given other circumstances I might have become one of those forensic anatomists with whom television currently seems so enamored.

 

W
HEN
I
ENROLLED
at Big University, I had heard that a professor in the archaeology program had just conducted his first excavation in Egypt. Dr. W had previously worked in Iran, but with the recent revolution there his research investment was essentially terminated. With generous private funding, however, he was able to gain a fresh start in another ancient land. I sought out Dr. W on my very first day of graduate school. Nervously knocking on his office door, I interrupted the young professor typing away at a document. I quickly introduced myself as a new student, explained my deep interest in Egypt, and acknowledged that I was aware of his recent work there. I eagerly stated that I would be grateful to be involved in any opportunity to learn or participate in anything having to do with the subject. In what some might consider a profound coincidence, Dr. W was at that very moment typing a grant proposal to conduct an archaeological project in the Egyptian desert the following year. “Sign up as one of my advisees and I'll add you right in!” I did, and the very next summer a dream was realized as I traveled to the land of my childhood fantasies to participate in my first archaeological expedition.

I
T WAS A VERY LONG
first year in graduate school, and it seemed as if summer was ages away. Dr. W was successful in winning his grants, and the project would begin in June 1981. Egypt at the time was a politically tense place. Anwar Sadat, the president who boldly made peace with Israel, would be assassinated in Cairo in October of that same year. Despite the political complexities, we dealt with the problematic present by holding to our goal of addressing the past.

The expedition's objectives were fascinating. Everybody is aware of the grandeur of the pharaohs—their massive constructions, the hieroglyphs, and the opulence of royal tombs. But all these marvelous things, these manifestations of advanced “civilization” or what anthropologists call “societal complexity,” didn't always exist, and they certainly didn't appear out of nowhere. People in fact lived in the Nile Valley for tens of thousands of
years before there were any pyramids, sphinxes, or sprawling temples. Egyptologists and archaeologists tend to agree that what we might call “pharaonic civilization” began only about five thousand years ago, or around 3100–3050
B.C.
Long before that, inhabitants of the place we now call Egypt were living off the land, hunting, fishing, and gathering natural produce. And at some time, between nine thousand and six thousand years ago, people in the Nile Valley started to grow their own crops and began the process of domesticating animals for their own benefit. Permanent villages became the norm, and food surpluses allowed for larger populations. Out of this situation, a “civilization” would arise with its relatively sophisticated characteristics, including monumental architecture, a writing system, craft specialists, political and religious bureaucrats, and a supreme ruler.

The transition from living off the land to manipulating the land is a topic of great anthropological mystery and discussion. It happened in many places, and here and there the notion spread through contact with those “in the know,” but elsewhere processes of independent invention seem to be the case. The timing of this profound transition is suspicious; some of the earliest cases of the development of agriculture appear after the last ice age, and climate change may have played a major role. But however it may have happened, it was from this important cultural platform that most early civilizations evolved, not only in Egypt but in regions like Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China. Dr. W's project would investigate this intriguing and somewhat shadowy transition period through archaeological exploration in a part of Egypt known as the Fayyum.

The Fayyum is a natural basin southwest of Cairo, its principal feature being a large lake known in Arabic today as the Birket Qarun, which has varied in size through the ages. In the
1920s two bold British scholars—archaeologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson and geologist Elinor Gardner—conducted some of the first archaeological surveys of the region and found evidence of early agricultural settlements in what is now desert, including baskets of grain well preserved in the dry sand and other essential clues. Certain portions of the region, including the north side of the lake and the deserts to the southwest, remained undeveloped and thus bore the potential of being excellent places to investigate Egypt's agricultural transition.

With June fast approaching, Dr. W presented me with an airline ticket that might as well have been a key to my future. I flew to London and from there to Cairo. I remember peering through the airplane window seeking any clue that we were coming close, and after a few hours the blackness of the Mediterranean yielded to a land punctuated by thousands of tiny lights. It was the Nile Delta in northern Egypt, and Cairo was but a couple of hundred miles away.

I arrived in Cairo after dark, and it was an experience right out of a very peculiar and restless dream. As we left the plane, large floodlights illuminated our every gesture and soldiers manning machine guns crouched behind small sandbag bunkers. The air was hot, and the unfamiliar sounds of Arabic added to an atmosphere of both wonder and excitement. And I was finally there! In Egypt! Land of the Pharaohs!

Outside the airport I hired a taxi, and thus began my pandemonic and fun introduction to the city of Cairo. A half hour high-speed careen through the streets revealed a city still very much alive even at this late hour. I remember blurs of light, the rattling of the taxi and its various loose parts, the incessant horn honking, and the Egyptian music on the radio. Thanks to a couple of quick swerves, we avoided a donkey cart full of garbage while another
dilapidated speeding car swung into our lane with only inches to spare. Eventually we arrived at the Garden City House, my eyes wide and my knees shaking.

Pronounce it like the Egyptians, “Garden See-tee House,” I had been instructed by my friend Janet, who'd been in Egypt with Dr. W the year before. The Garden City House is located on the third and fourth floors of an aging building near the Nile. Its truly convenient location and its simple, inexpensive rooms have attracted many a scholar by word of mouth for years. Tired from my travels, I checked in, found my room, and attempted to sleep.

The first day's agenda was obvious. It had to be the famed Pyramids of Giza, including the Great Pyramid of Cheops and its two colossal neighbors, as well as the famous Sphinx along with fields of ancient cemeteries, all located just on the outskirts of the sprawling city. But before I began my adventure, I stepped outside the hotel and walked a short distance to gain my first glimpse of the legendary Nile River.

“Egypt is the gift of the Nile,” stated the Greek historian Herodotus. That little quote appears in nearly every book ever written about Egypt, so there is no reason to break tradition and leave it out of this one. But it's true. The Nile is the undisputed life source for the country. In ancient times its annual flooding renewed the soil and produced an agricultural paradise that formed the foundation for the Egyptian civilization. It also served as a natural highway and easily facilitated the movement of people and their goods.

In antiquity the Nile was worshipped as a god and the people prayed for its benevolence: Too much flooding could be destructive, too little could bring about drought. The river, though, is no longer free to come and go as it once did. The immense dam at Aswan, built in modern times in the far south of Egypt, changed all that. While electricity is supplied for industry and floods are
controlled, the new need for artificial fertilizers exhausts the soil, coastlines are eroded when sediments are trapped behind the dam, and the rise in water tables contributes to the deterioration of ancient monuments.

The Nile is quite impressive at Cairo, flowing smooth and wide. Too many bridges obscure the current panorama but are a necessity for a city whose growth knows no bounds. Travel just a few miles farther south of downtown, though, and the river flows unobstructed for great distances. River barges plow through the water, while local boats called feluccas hoist their sails to travel upstream with the north wind or track with the current toward the Mediterranean.

After taking in my fill of the majestic Nile, I located a taxi and settled in with great anticipation. The route to the pyramids crosses the river and then proceeds through the crowded suburb of Giza. Eventually we reached the Pyramids Road, a busy stretch of street whose opposing lanes are separated in part by occasional topiary bushes in symmetrical pharaonic shapes. A surprising number of garish discos were visible, but the ultimate culture shock came at the first sight of an indomitable American institution, Kentucky Fried Chicken. And also nearby was a Wimpy's hamburger outlet, a British chain. Dismayed, I found it best to stare straight ahead, keeping a lookout for pyramids. Soon the very edge of a distant, dusky shape could be seen lurking behind the onslaught of tall apartment buildings. The shape became increasingly more distinct until the first full view of the Great Pyramid hit with all its impact. The words that came to mind were “amazing,” “incredible,” and “stupendous.”

In its pristine condition, the Great Pyramid stood around 480 feet tall—about fifty stories high—and it covers an area of about thirteen square acres. It is estimated that over 2 million stone blocks
were necessary to construct the structure, with some of its interior chambers utilizing immense granite slabs transported from quarries located hundreds of miles away. In its day the exterior of the Great Pyramid was clothed with smooth limestone casing blocks that reflected the rays of the sun, creating a gleaming beacon, visible for miles.

I have often heard two opposing kinds of first impressions of the Pyramids of Giza from visitors. Some express a sort of disappointment, stating that “I thought they would be bigger!” while others are thoroughly overwhelmed at their immensity. But nearly all are impressed by the fact that these massive constructions were built by human ingenuity and manual labor thousands of years ago without the benefit of modern technology. They were just a little smaller than I anticipated, but unbelievably impressive nonetheless.

I had a similar experience when I first visited the famed ancient monument known as Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain in England. From my reading and viewing of pictures, I had always imagined the celebrated megaliths as being truly gigantic in proportion, perhaps forty or fifty feet tall. Alas, had it not been for the security fence barring me, I felt that I could have run up and slapped the top of the standing stones. It was much the same with the Great Pyramid. And the closer one gets, the more apparent it becomes that the pyramids are no longer the smooth-sided models of geometrical virtue that they once were. Much of their outer casing blocks has been quarried away for quality building material in the millennia following their construction, when pyramids were no longer appreciated nor understood. A complete stroll around the perimeter of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, though, will cause even the disappointed to truly appreciate its tremendous size. The pyramid, like others in the vicinity, is still surrounded by a huge number of rectangular stone mastaba tombs and shaft graves of
relatives and officials that are also remarkable and indicate that Cheops was served by an immense ancient bureaucracy.

One of the most impressive facts of the pyramids is their great age; they were built around forty-six hundred years ago, during the time period that historians refer to as the Old Kingdom. The pyramids were already well over a thousand years old when Tutankhamun, Rameses II, and even Moses were on the scene. By the time Herodotus allegedly visited Egypt as a tourist around 450
B.C.
, the Giza pyramids were already over two thousand years old. Herodotus includes an interesting chapter about Egyptian history and culture in his writings known as
The Histories,
and until the decipherment of the hieroglyphs in 1822, and even to some extent still, his commentary was a major source of information.

Herodotus reported many curious things about Egypt, some of which are so improbable that a number of scholars have questioned whether he actually visited the place. Others believe that he was merely a victim of misinformation or fanciful tales provided by local guides who themselves were very shaky on the true details. There is also speculation about a cultural and linguistic gap—after all, he was Greek in a foreign land. Whatever the circumstances, Herodotus relates the story that the Great Pyramid was built by hundreds of thousands of slaves under the orders of evil King Cheops. It took ten years to build a magnificent decorated track used to drag the stone blocks and twenty years to build the pyramid itself, using a system of levers to lift each block into place. When money for the construction ran short, the depraved Cheops prostituted his own daughter to obtain additional funds, according to Herodotus.

There is little to substantiate or confirm any of these notions. First of all, the use of slaves in the building of the pyramids is greatly disputable. (Despite the fantasies of Hollywood, Hebrews weren't on the scene for another thousand years!) One of the better theo
ries suggests that the pyramids were not built with slaves but were great public-works projects whose labor force was supplemented by employing a huge number of idle farmers and other laborers during the time of the Nile's annual flood. Supporting this theory is the fact that the rising floodwaters would also allow for closer access to the building site by quarry barges. Although the actual building techniques are not fully known, it is more likely that some kind of system of earth ramps was used, rather than levers. Doubtless, huge numbers of workers were required, and some recent excavations in the vicinity of the Giza pyramids are revealing the barracks, bakeries, and other facilities necessary to keep a gigantic workforce in operation. As for Cheops—or, more accurately, Khufu, his ancient Egyptian name—there is little known about his life or personal disposition.

Until just a few years ago, when new regulations were put in place, walking around the pyramids wasn't always an easy or relaxing activity. It was never dangerous, unless you tripped on the uneven terrain, nor was it particularly strenuous, unless you met the intense summer sun as you traipsed through the sand. The difficulty began when the unsuspecting tourist encountered the enthusiastic local entrepreneurs who raised persistence to an art form.

Interactions generally went like this:

“'Scooz me, meester, want to ride a camel?” one of half a dozen or more hawkers would inquire, beckoning any and all approaching tourists. A simple no would never suffice and was countered by insistent pleading and a likely chase lasting up to several hundred yards.

“I'm a student, and I don't have any money,” I'd insist within a few minutes of arriving at the Giza Plateau.

“No problem, my camel is a special student camel. Special price for you! No charge! Pay what you like!” If naïve travelers ever took
the bait, they'd find that getting up on a camel could indeed be free, but getting back down from their awkward perches would cost plenty. After it became gradually clear to the entrepreneurs that a sale was not going to be made, the camel man would usually trot off on his bellowing, sandy-colored beast to seek out the next potential customer.