The White Nile Diaries by John Hopkins

Author:John Hopkins [Hopkins, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travelogue, Personal Memoirs, Diaries, Africa, 1960s, Non-Fiction, Travel
ISBN: 9781780768922
Google: RFS3AQAACAAJ
Amazon: 1780768923
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Published: 2014-05-14T23:00:00+00:00

A canal was built to Giza to bring stones to the foot of the Great Pyramid.

If the above figures are accurate, and my long division serves me correctly, the massive blocks were laid at the rate of 315 per day! Nearly 800 tons! And that’s working 365 days of the year! Not including the polished limestone casing.

There is something fishy about these figures. They don’t add up. That number of huge stone blocks could not possibly have been quarried, transported, hoisted up, and laid in the specified time period. (The lifetime of the Pharaoh.) Could it be that the Great Pyramid at Giza is not made of solid stone?

Anyhow, the canny Egyptians managed it, and we think of them in their pyjamas, smoking hubble-bubbles, their women veiled or locked away. Only a god could have mobilized the population. I guess that’s what Cheops was—a god.

One advantage about climbing a perfect geometrically engineered pyramid compared, say, to a mountain or a volcano, is that, no matter how high you climb, you can see all the way to the bottom. The machine, now about the size and configuration of an albino ant, remained undetected and unmolested behind the boulders. The Egyptians were still snoring in their pyjamas.

I was glad I had made an early start. It took about an hour to reach the summit or, more accurately, the apex of four perfectly formed triangles leaning together, whose shadow, now projected by the rising sun, pointed like a steeple straight toward New York City.

It was good to stop and rest. It was cool up there. I was sweating and sat down for a few minutes, surrounded, not surprisingly, by thousands of names, initials, and scratchings of those pilgrims who had preceded me over the last few thousand years. Almost all French soldiers. When Bonaparte landed in 1798, he brought with him not only his army and his navy, but hundreds of scholars eager to explore the mysteries of ancient Egypt. And there I was, sitting on top of the big mystery. Beautiful work, hammer and chisel, most probably supplied by the guys in pyjamas who guided soldiers up to the top. A cool breeze flowed around my shoulders as I scratched my initials into the stone with the awl of my Swiss knife—pitiful, minute incisions to be scoured away by the next sandstorm. Then I bounded down, anxious about the security of the machine. Still not a soul stirring, not even a camel.

When I got back to the hotel, Joe had just woken up. He was looking stronger, not so pale, and was sipping from a glass of orange juice. I felt as though I had been to the moon, or as close as you could get to it without your feet leaving the ground.

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