One of the weirder things in Cairo is the City of the Dead. This is not, as you might suspect, a temple littered with mummified pharaohs. It’s a four-mile cemetery complex in Cairo which, for some reason, people have decided to live in. I say “for some reason” because Egypt is full of abandoned and half-finished read more »

The next day the terrible pagan curse I had contracted at the Pyramids seem to be dwaining a little, probably because I’m from America where we don’t believe in curses. (Curses have a limited potency if you don’t believe in them, sort of like a reverse placebo effect.) I still felt awful, but I could read more »

Before leaving for Egypt I devised a list of things I wanted to do and have done to me. “See Pyramids” was up there, as was “bribe a guy” and “invoke ancient Egyptian curse.” As luck would have it, mere hours after bribing a guy at the Pyramids to break into a forbidden burial chamber, read more »

“So are those the pyramids, then?” I ask. “Yes!” our guide answers, irritated, which was I guess my goal. They’re hard to miss. Man-made mountains hewn from stone, colossal ego and a few thousand slaves. Whenever you see footage of them on television they’re seemingly way out in the desert, rising mysteriously from a stark read more »

Here is my favorite thing about the Valley of the Kings: you can determine how long a pharaoh ruled by how deep his tomb’s shaft is. A pharaoh who ruled thirty years will have a burial chamber deep in the bowels of the earth, like an extensive ant farm. Whereas someone like Tutankhamen, who ruled read more »

Visiting Luxor is the fruition of many childhood day dreams. What were your classes in elementary school? As I recall, we had Reading, Math, Egypt and Dinosaurs. (I did particularly well in Dinosaur Class. I’m pretty sure I could rattle off eight-syllable carnivore names before I could write my own, and I knew oodles about read more »

In Egypt it’s customary to begin all business transactions by throwing out a psychotic asking price. Say you want a toothbrush, which you reckon should cost about eighteen cents. The Egyptian in question will say something like, “Friend, I like you– honest face. You are special friend. For you? Egyptian price! Three hundred US dollars read more »