The Field of Reeds: Where Everlasting Life Awaits

By A. A. Aziz

The monumental tale of the Old Luxor Hotel begins in the present with a ghostly meeting in the garden of this rundown and dilapidated Victorian hotel. It tells of a divine encounter a century earlier in India of the British Empire, between the young girl Flossie and Wadjet, the mystical snake of a native guru. The serpent sets her a riddle which sends her halfway across the world to the land of the pharaohs, to this very same hotel. Once there, she is cured of the terrible disease that would have ended her life, saved only by the fearsome and all-powerful cobra-headed goddess, Meretseger, whose voice can deliver both mercy and vengeance. She has the ability to warp both space and time. The book tells of this girl with the blackest of hair and the bluest of eyes and that of her son, the late Muir Birch, of their great adventures. It will speak of a three-thousand-year-old papyrus that contains sacred spells which the ancient Egyptians believed could cheat death itself and of a meeting in the hotel’s garden between a playboy English lord and a disgraced archaeologist who together would find the tomb of a long-forgotten pharaoh. You will learn that to speak the name of the dead is to make them alive again and it restores the breath of life to the one who has vanished.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528984010

A. A. Aziz

When in his forties, he exchanged a career in IT consultancy and retrained to become a genealogist and architectural historian when he was employed by individuals and estate agents to research the history of ‘Listed Buildings’ ranging in age from the early medieval to the Edwardian era. He was a regular contributor of articles for family history and period property magazines, as well as having his work featured in the UK National Press, radio and television. His book, The Field of Reeds, was born out of his other great passion, that for Egypt and its ancient past.

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Photographs/Illustrations

About the Author

When in his forties, he exchanged a career in IT consultancy and retrained to become a genealogist and architectural historian when he was employed by individuals and estate agents to research the history of ‘Listed Buildings’ ranging in age from the early medieval to the Edwardian era. He was a regular contributor of articles for family history and period property magazines, as well as having his work featured in the UK National Press, radio and television. His book, The Field of Reeds, was born out of his other great passion, that for Egypt and its ancient past.

Dedication

To Patricia, my very own Flossie, whose love and support have been with me these past twenty years, ever since I first gazed upon the Old Luxor Hotel and met with my benefactor.

Copyright Information ©

A. A. Aziz (2021)

The right of A. A. Aziz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528984003 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528984010 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

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E14 5LQ

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the characters of my book, who actually lived the lives described in its pages, for without them, it could never have been written; their voices speaking to me across the ages from a place we all seek but very few of us will ever find. For they have found everlasting life amongst The Field of Reeds.

Opening of the Old Luxor Hotel in 1877

Prologue: The Book of Thoth¹

This book is like no other. It will not sit easily on a library shelf for it can never be classified. No code will ever be seen on its spine or any bytes found on a computer disc. It does not fit into any genre of literature. It is not a novel for what it says is the truth; it is not a history because it reads like a work of fiction; neither is it a biography for it spans the millennia of civilisations; or an autobiography for I am but a ghost; and in no sense is it a guide, although it contains photographs and illustrations. An epic poem it is not, despite the momentous events of which it tells and the verses found in its pages. A play it might be, for its characters are actors on a stage, but it cannot be, for its script was written by ancient gods. It is none of these and yet, it is all of them.

The monumental tale that is contained within—and I use these words with great trepidation for I have experienced much difficulty in my many attempts to accurately and faithfully describe the book you are about to read, I eventually decided that they were those best suited to describe what has been written, but with the caveat that they are used to mean a true story, especially one that might have been invented or thought difficult to believe; but also, one which is both of great importance and immense in meaning. It is in every sense a book that covers all of literature’s many facets and as such will have appeal to anyone who wishes to lose themselves in the wonder of words: those written to explain events and understand people; words that lie beyond life’s banal use of them; words that reach out across the ages to all that we should revere and cherish; words that are rarely used; those that have been sacrificed before the altar of bad education and the worship of the digital age.

When I first dipped my nib into the inkwell on my desk and wrote the first words, I felt an overwhelming urge to complete the task at hand—no matter what, and despite the many and varied restrictions placed upon me, one of which forbade the use of any form of modern tools and permitted only the media available to the great writers of the past; whose works my benefactor insists would never have been allowed to sit on booksellers’ shelves or be sold ‘online’, had they been penned today. A fate, I often feared, would happen to this present volume. You, my readers, may well ask why I agreed to write such a book when I could make no use of those means that make things apparently so easy nowadays and that are an accepted part of today’s world. My benefactor was of the unshakeable belief that such technological inventions have made people lazy and, above all, have deprived them of the ability to do the simplest of educational tasks; those same tasks that formed the basic tenets of learning for thousands of years—the skill of reading, the power of the spoken word, a proficiency in handwriting and the competent application of mathematics to the solution of everyday problems. Your incredulity will be further compounded if I mention that I had asked for no recompense to complete my task nor was any offered. I need no defence as to my actions in receiving no financial inducement, something of which I am aware is totally at odds with present day values; save it to say, my reward is in the book that I have written.

It is only fitting that I have used the medium of pen and paper, for these were the only means by which those featured in these pages wrote their letters, penned their books or transcribed their texts; all of which were achieved in the days before the internet or the coming of the smartphone or the explosion of digital data. My benefactor was of the opinion that his story should be told, and that my conscience should be enough to make it a great book so that as many people as possible should know of it; not just because of the incredible events it portrays—which in themselves should be enough—but because in its pages lies the key to understanding that which almost all of us fear and few truly confront: our own earthly mortality, which we cannot cheat, just postpone, in the hope that each new day is not to be our last.

I must apologise to you for I have been most remiss in failing to state the principal subject of this epic saga. It is one that would surely never come to the mind of anyone, but only to myself or its principal characters. For it is but a seemingly unimportant and scarcely heard-of small Egyptian hotel. Although now all but forgotten, the Old Luxor Hotel is one that—I must at the very outset make clear—has changed the lives of every guest that has passed through its doors and whose walls have absorbed the momentous events of its past. Although the hotel first opened in an age of empires when the British ruled a quarter of the world—some of the events of which I am about to relate took place many centuries before its very existence when pharaohs ruled the two lands of Egypt under the ever-watchful eyes of its ancient gods.

It will tell the tale of a papyrus over three thousand years old that held sacred texts, ones which the ancient Egyptians believed would cheat death itself, and how it was smuggled out of this hotel under the very noses of the Egyptian Antiquities Service and sent back to the British Museum, where it can still be seen to this day. You will hear of the earliest Christian Gospel written in the time when a rebel Jew, named Jesus, preached in Palestine and whose disciples spread his word throughout a realm that became Christendom. And of a meeting in the hotel’s garden between an English aristocrat and an out-of-work archaeologist, who together would find the tomb of the boy pharaoh, Tutankhamen, and the curse that some believed would destroy all who defiled his final resting place. There I must stop before I reveal too much and spoil the eager anticipation I hope that I have awakened in you, my readers.

The main character in the book and my benefactor is the late Muir Birch, a name much abbreviated from that given him at birth, who—for his entire existence that far exceeded man’s allotted time of three score years and ten—had resided at the Old Luxor Hotel and who had never left its confines. He was born in the hotel, the child of a great love between a local physician and the consumptive daughter of a British Army Officer, one whose father had the misfortune to be the first of the many soldiers to die in the second Anglo-Afghan war. The very same conflict that still rages to this day but by another name; one with no end in sight; one where politicians still ignore all that history has foretold.

‘The Field of Reeds’ tells the story of those he and his mother met and the events they experienced, which together made the Old Luxor Hotel the most historically important of any in the world. You will read of its guests, amongst whose numbers were to be found the royalty of Europe, the aristocratic elite, the American millionaires, the movie stars and the politicians; of the artists, writers, musicians and archaeologists who came. And the thousands of ordinary people: the intrepid early tourists, the soldiers of both World Wars and the many sick who came in search of a cure for their consumption, but who so often did not survive and were laid to rest in Luxor’s foreigners’ cemetery or taken back home by their loved ones. The only testament to their passing were the small white crosses placed near the English Chapel that was once to be found amid the peace, the palms and the flowers of the hotel’s gardens—often described in times past as the most beautiful in the whole of Egypt. More importantly, the true intentions will be revealed of the powerful deities who have manipulated every word written here. These were the ancient gods who ruled the people of the world’s oldest empire and whose representative, the Goddess Meretseger, appeared when needed in her earthly form as that of a mighty and terrifying cobra; but to those she loved, they only saw the vision of her as a beautiful woman.

It is now twenty years since I first saw the Old Luxor Hotel and met with Muir Birch. In the intervening years, I have done everything I could to bring about its restoration to what it once was; even delaying the publication of this book in the vain hope that I would succeed. Now, sadly all my efforts have proved totally inadequate in overcoming the greed and corruption of the powers that control Egypt, where an endemic baksheesh culture takes precedence over the well-being of its people and its ancient heritage. This hotel—the earliest in Luxor and the first to be built by the pioneering tour operator, Thomas Cook—now lies in peaceful solitude, ensconced amid its once Elysian gardens, soon to become a ruin like the three-thousand-year-old Pharaonic Temple it overlooks or even worse, a modern reincarnation, subjected to the worst kind of historic interpretation, becoming everything it never was.

Whenever possible, I have used the very same words that were spoken at the time by those who feature in the pages of this book. The less charitable of readers may accuse me of plagiarism but in truth, this is not the case. Only by adopting the exact identical sentences, grammar, words and even the punctuation that they used to describe the parts they played in this play of life and death, can the reader ever truly appreciate the events and the very feelings and emotions they experienced of times long since confined to the past². In doing so, they too, like the hotel, will live again. Their names have been spoken once more. This to me is the only true path to everlasting life; to the ancient Egyptians, it was known as the ‘Field of Reeds’—the one place that we all seek but very few of us will ever reach.

This book is dedicated to the few who have known of this much-neglected Egyptian treasure; but especially to the almost countless more who did not.

"To speak the name of the dead is to make them live again, and restores the breath of life to him who has vanished."

Funerary inscription found in the tomb of Tutankhamun

A. A. Aziz

Old Luxor Hotel, Luxor, Upper Egypt, September 2019

Prologue Notes:

Thoth is the ancient Egyptian god of learning and wisdom and the patron deity of the scribes. See Appendix A.

The words written by others—that is to say, by the characters in the book themselves or by those who have described their lives and the events that befell them—have been indicated in italics.

1. ‘The Bracelet of Khepri’: Thomas Henry

William Muir Longmore Mawson Holwell

Comyns Birch (1898-1998)

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The Rear Garden of the ‘Old Luxor Hotel’, circa early 1900s

"The garden at the Luxor Hotel is a delectable place of palms. Sixty to eighty feet high they stand: slender, slim, and dusky-stemmed, and high up at the top of the trees stretch the glorious fern-like fronds of foliage beneath which hang the clusters of yellowing dates. Here rises a thicket of bamboos, tremulous and quivering even on the stillest and most windless nights. Over trellis-work foam pink cascades of bougainvillea, gorgeous scarlet creepers and hibiscus shoot wayward flames through the dark green foliage and the scent of hundreds of roses is thick in the air."¹.¹

Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940)

I must begin by describing the circumstances under which I first met my benefactor. It was in the garden of the Old Luxor Hotel, an establishment that I freely admit was one that I was utterly ignorant of at the time, even of its very existence, and yet has since that day been the focus of my very own. Who I am or why I found myself in Luxor on that day is unimportant; that we should ever meet was at least fortuitous—others may say even divine. That I would find myself guided towards the only circumstances under which our encounter could ever possibly have happened is testament to such a far-fetched thought.

The Luxor Hotel of which I speak is not to be confused with the pyramid of absurdity found in North America’s gambling capital of Las Vegas, amongst the temples of the winners and the tombs of the losers. But the one in Luxor, Egypt, once the ancient city of Thebes, a capital of a now long-gone civilisation; a place where for over two millennia of its existence, gods walked alongside mortals. There are no pyramids here, only the one of natural stone found atop a hill called el-Qurn. Also known by its ancient name of Ta Dehent—the Peak—I only know it as the domain of the fearsome cobra goddess, Meretseger, the one who loves silence—equally as dangerous as she was merciful—a bringer of both life and death. It was to this fearful and mystical place that I would soon go to learn of not only my own destiny but also the very reasons why this book had to be written and placed before the eyes of you, my readers. For the whole of her immortality, the goddess Meretseger watched over the final resting place of the pharaohs. These were the kings and queens who, in life, were the mortal representatives of the gods. In death, they were buried in magnificent tombs in the Theban Royal Necropolis; to the ancients, it was Ta-Sekhet-Ma’at—The Field of Truth. To my native Egyptian friends, it is Biban El-Moluk; but you, my readers, will know it only as the Valley of the Kings. It was here in this sacred place that these rulers of the two lands of upper and lower Egypt lay for a brief moment in time before beginning their final journey to the ‘Field of Reeds’, and an eternal life according to their own enduring vision of that which we call heaven.

14 October 1999, Luxor, Egypt

It was three days prior to the fateful meeting with my benefactor that I, together with my wife, boarded the train at the burgeoning metropolis that is Cairo to meander alongside the Nile, four hundred miles south, which would lead to our eventual destination—the city of Luxor. It is a special city for us. It is a city like no other in Egypt, not even Cairo itself can match it. To the many who have visited Cairo and declared that they know Egypt, they are mistaken. This great city may be huge and bustling, but it is a mere glimmer of the magnificent sunlight that once shone brightly on this country’s ancient civilisation. The real Egypt and its past are not to be discovered in Cairo, but in the Luxor of today. No sooner had we exited the railway station at Luxor than we were blown into the maelstrom of the city; where the ancient and the modern are accepted worlds living side by side, as though time had ordained that they should occupy the same space—a merging of what is now and what has gone. As we walked along its streets, we found ourselves in a place that is as real as it is both mythical and magical, where religion and belief merge across the millennia. It is where the boundary between the past and the present is no more than a blur, one to be crossed without knowing.

We could see, smell and hear the passage of time without moving. In front of us were the sight, sound and smell of a scrawny donkey pulling a cart of dung, which was soon overtaken by the pungent odour billowing from a black limousine of a high government official. We heard the clip-clop of the caleches, with their drivers, forever ferrying unsuspecting tourists towards relative penury; ever hopeful of relieving them of a few of their valuable dollars or if not, some of the impoverished Egyptian currency they detested. Beyond them, an ageing coffee shop could be seen where often as not, minted black tea is the preferred drink; a place of respite for the locals to gossip and tell of their day whilst enjoying the sweet smoke of a shisha pipe. Much to the delight of my wife, there was no smokescreen of a western ban enforced here within its walls. With a slight look to our left, we glimpsed a Fatimid mosque erected to the glory of the invading deity of Allah, a thousand years ago. Nestled amid its realm was an even older temple of worship, built a thousand years and more before Jesus Christ walked the Earth, dedicated to no god save the royal Ka, the spiritual incarnation of the pharaoh, ruler of the two lands of the cobra Wadjet and the vulture Nekhbet.

As we strolled beside the esplanade that ran alongside the Nile, we were transported back to the present. There was a multitude of cruise boats that regularly inhaled and exhaled themselves of an almost breathless flow of tourists, ever eager to gorge themselves on a package meal of culture and history; one which they would soon forget, only to be replaced by an equally unpalatable one at the next stop of their whirlwind itinerary. Who, nevertheless were still proudly able to boast of once having known which Amenhotep built this or that temple or which gods made up the Theban Holy Trinity or was Tutankhamun a pharaoh of the 18th dynasty or 19th dynasty. It was a scene that had altered little since those Napoleons of travel, Thomas Cook and his son, first sent their charges up the Nile over a century before. Gazing on it, an overwhelming feeling of sorrow and pity overcame me. It was directed towards those tourists for whom Luxor is nothing more than a notch on their money belt or another stamp in their passport. Yet for others, it is anything but. It is a place where they feel privileged to have seen, yet one that they do not fully understand; a place where they have only glimpsed the lure of its past through a mist into which time itself flows. But for us and those of like mind, we know why we must keep coming back, again and again. It is a place that holds the answers to the questions we must ask of our own mortality. Luxor is a nexus, a focal point, where life and death meet. It is a dichotomy of a city, a subdivision of two halves, paired together in every way imaginable. A place where the river Nile separates it into two banks—one to the east where the sun rises and the living reside and the other to the west where the sun sets and the ancient dead rest. It is the very gateway to the afterlife.

The streets and alleys and promenades of Luxor’s East Bank, where we walked, are a Noah’s Ark of a melting pot into which is thrown two of everything with a reaction that is surprisingly good-natured and tolerant: two religions—Islam and Christianity, two classes—rich and poor, two cultures—ancient and modern, two forms of transport—the petrol engine and the horse-drawn caleche and two ideologies—the tourists who have money and the locals who want to acquire it. Here, money is never gained by totally fair means and more often than not by guile which knows no bounds; one where smiles and tea are offered for free and born out of a necessity to survive. As we became fatigued, our steps slowed, making us easy prey to a constant horde of street vendors, hotel waiters, shopkeepers, stallholders, carriage drivers and even policemen that began to swarm around us, forever ready to strip us bare of both money and time; each offering their own brand of Egyptian produce, much of which is sadly now made in China. All I will say to you, my readers, is—Caveat Emptor!

It was to be an hour later after our arrival in Luxor that we wearily reached our hotel, thankful that our luggage had been sent on ahead and would await us. Before beginning the obligatory chore of unpacking and settling into our room, we stopped to recuperate with an Arabic coffee and rest awhile on the hotel’s terrace, letting our eyes wonder and wander at the magnificent vista before us—a seemingly never-ending panorama of the Nile and the topography of its bank beyond. When I surveyed the Theban hills that rose majestically towards the sky, as if out of the mighty river itself, I was at that time totally unaware of the future that was soon to be revealed to me; one where I would become the ghost writer of a book conceived by gods, set amid the world that now lay before me, where life ends and eternity begins. At a place where answers are to be found to the only questions that should really matter. Is there life after death? Is there a heaven? Does hell exist? Is there a one true god above all others? And is it possible to find everlasting life? It is where I would travel along the axis of time into the mist that will take me to the past—on a journey between this world and the next. To a place known to the ancient Egyptians as A’aru—the ‘Field of Reeds’—where the spirit of their Ka will live a mirror-like existence of their former life; no longer fleeting and brief, but one that will endure for all eternity. Into a life to be lived forever with their family and friends, their land and animals, and all of their Earth-bound wealth and possessions. To have servants to do their bidding whilst they relax under a favourite palm and sit on a special bench, shaded from the heat of the day; to go hunting by the river with a much-loved dog; or even to take care of a sick and neglected donkey. In the entire history of the world and all of its past civilisations and the many religions they practiced and the numerous gods they worshipped, there is to my mind, none more perfect a vision of an afterlife, than that believed in by the ancient Egyptians.

*

As I stared ahead, revitalised by the caffeine of my now consumed coffee, I became lost in thought, deep in a prolonged and intense period of musing and imagination. One that caused me to travel in my mind, to dwell in the past, never realising that I too would be transported to a distant time, a time when the cobra goddess, Meretseger, ruled the Peak atop el-Qurn. I now saw below its pinnacle the tombs of the elite of ancient Egypt—the pharaohs, their royal wives, the high priests of the gods and the powerful state officials—laid to rest inside their magnificent ‘Houses of Eternity’, dug into and down through the very rock of the valley necropolises. Their mausoleums created by teams of highly skilled craftsmen—stonemasons, painters, scribes, carpenters and goldsmiths. I looked on them not as they are in the present—incomplete, robbed, empty, defaced, defiled and faded—but in their past to the time when they were whole, intact of all their treasures, their walls luminous with vivid colours, decorated with the texts and images that could defeat death itself. I even gazed into the craftsmen’s village, known in ancient times as Set Maat—the Place of Truth—its pristine whitewashed walls glistening before my prophetic eyes. I caught, or so I thought, a glimpse of its now long-dead ‘servants’ going about their daily tasks of making bread, cleaning their houses, tending to the sick and offering devotion to their patron deity—the all-powerful and all-seeing goddess Meretseger.

For reasons both unclear and unknown, my thoughts were now dominated solely by Meretseger, guardian protector of the royal necropolises. Why my mind should dwell for even the slightest sliver of time on this mythical but nevertheless mystical deity eluded me entirely, save for reasons that were far-fetched and ridiculous. Was she to figure in my future in some manner or other? Or would this ethereal being even appear by miracle before me? But why? Such ideas were discarded as quickly as they had appeared in a mind that had suddenly become confused and afraid. I remembered what little I knew of her. For five hundred years, she had watched over her royal charges and their tombs. It was the premier deity of the ancient pantheon, Amun-Ra himself, who had ordained this. Within the eternal silence that was her domain, she dispensed swift and deadly justice to all who defiled it and the mortal remains of those who slept within it.

My mind and all thoughts of the present, where I was and who I was, now became lost in a deep trance. I was alone, no longer on the hotel’s terrace, I had travelled across the Nile and beyond into the past. I had entered the richly decorated tombs of Meretseger’s world; the sacred texts espousing the great deeds of the deceased were clearly seen as new as were the trials their souls had to endure during the dangerous journey through the ‘Hall of Truth’ to A’aru, where an idyllic and eternal afterlife awaited. I looked upon the images that told of the trial of the 42 Negative Confessions that the dead must undergo in order to reach the ‘Field of Reeds’; during which they must declare: ‘I have not stolen, I have not caused anyone to weep, I have not made anyone angry.’ The truths of their declarations were depicted in utmost clarity as they were decided upon by the gods¹.². If the supplicant’s confessions were found truthful, then their soul would be further subjected to the ‘Weighing of the Heart Ceremony’, in which their heart was offered to Osiris to be weighed on the golden scales against the goddess Ma’at’s white feather of truth. If the heart was found to be lighter than the feather, then the soul moved on, getting ever closer to A’aru; but if it was judged to be heavier, it was thrown onto the floor of the ‘Hall of Truth’ to be eaten by the demon goddess Ammit—the female devourer of the dead. I saw on the tomb’s walls, her likeness, that of a most terrifying creature, with the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus—the three most feared man-eating animals known to the ancient Egyptians. The terrible fate of the wanting soul as it suffered the ‘Great Death’, one in which nonexistence was its end, was painted in gory detail within my mind. In the Egyptian afterlife, there was no concept of hell; everlasting nonexistence was considered to be far worse a punishment than any other form of eternal damnation. To be denied entry into A’aru was to them the cruellest of fates and one for which the living would do anything to avoid, no matter what the cost to them or their soul might be.

For the fortunate souls whose heart was lighter than the feather, the depiction of their fate was seen by me to be one that was both comforting and wonderful; they passed on through the ‘Hall of Truth’, avoiding the teeth of Ammit onto a path that led to the ‘Lake of Flowers’. Before reaching its shore, they met with further trials to overcome, more dangers to avoid and gods to help and guide. Once completed, the soul would then meet its final challenge—which was to be courteous to its ferryman called Hraf-Hef, He who looks behind him, and to show itself worthy of entering A’aru. To do so, it had to ignore all manner of vile, unkind and cruel remarks he may care to hurl. If appeased, Hraf-Hef would row the soul across the Lake of Flowers to the Field of Reeds and the everlasting life that awaited.

The turmoil in my mind intensified even further as I began to ask of myself questions that seemed to have no sensible answers. How was it possible for any ancient Egyptian to reach A’aru given the onerous confessions of truth that formed the greatest of all the trials a soul had to overcome? My mind argued long and hard on this matter. Was it that for every one of the 42 Negative Confessions, the defendant would be allowed some leeway in their answers; maybe to include the caveat, ‘unless I had to’? Or was it more likely that the explanation lies in the existence of an ancient ‘crib sheet’—known as the Spells for Going Forth by Day? Such texts being written to ensure that the privileged elite had all the right answers before they even began their journey to the afterlife. Today, we know such a text by its other name—the Book of the Dead. A smile drifted across my face as it occurred to me that it was like a present-day scholar being able to buy a book that contained all the perfect answers to all of the questions on all their exam papers, written down for them well in advance of the date they would sit for them!

Was all that I had seen real? Or was it a mere extension of memories? Ones I had gained from the almost countless books I had read on this land, going back to my earliest years and in the decades since. My mind told me, it had been but a false dream, an illusion of an over-fanciful imagination. For how could I know otherwise? Yet I still wanted to believe in all that I had witnessed, felt and thought. In my heart, I knew it to be a true vision, born out of an unbreakable faith in a future that I could neither control nor avoid. As I began to emerge from my trance, encouraged by a friendly but nevertheless painful elbow in my ribs, my last thought was once more of Meretseger. I had heard it said by some of the older and more superstitious gaffirs, who now guarded the tombs at Biban El-Moluk, that the three axes of time flowed through Luxor, along which the line separating the past, the now and that to come, was but a turn of the head or a step away and when the great mist came and went, the goddess Meretseger walked its path and then anything became possible for she had the power to make it so. I should add that at least twenty Egyptian pounds was a necessary requirement for even so fanciful a tale to be told. Only the most gullible of tourists would surely believe their money had been well-spent and not even the feebler minded of them should ever entertain any suspicion of truth in such poppycock. Or so I once thought…until I met Muir Birch.

17 October 1999, Luxor, Egypt

The day I first met my benefactor began after the dawn had gone. It was much like any other that year in Luxor or any year at all, with a sky that would send many a fine artist into paroxysms of despair and disbelief—made up of a single colour—one so blue it even defied the meaning of the colour itself and that was all you would see or feel, apart from the heat of endless sunshine on your face and in your eyes—no cloud or mist and a chance of rain so slight that a bookmaker’s tears would produce more moisture than would fall in Luxor that year. The fortunate might experience a light breeze at dawn or dusk when the sun was at its lowest over the Nile, which to the ancient Egyptians signified that the sun god Ra was taking his daily journey across the sky to and from the underworld on his two solar boats—Mandjet by day and Mesektet by night.

I had awoken just before dawn, quickly showered and dressed long before my wife had even stirred. I opened the doors of my hotel suite and stepped out onto the private terrace, which had an uninterrupted view across the Nile. It was now time for Ra to begin his diurnal duty, shining his light first onto the river that gave life to all and then beyond to the Valley of the Dead, where life would begin again in A’aru. Even so early in the day, the Nile was awash with activity: fishermen out to make the first catch of the day accompanied by the ever present but unwanted retinue of birds, eager to deprive them of their meagre living; the laden barges carrying the city’s garbage away to be dumped downstream; and the tourist boats returning quickly from Aswan to dock upstream and unload their charges, many still suffering from a mixture of culture shock and the gastric condition known as the ‘Pharaoh’s Revenge’. For me, this was the best time of the day when few guests stirred and all was quiet save for the hotel staff who moved silently about their work—cleaning the swimming pools, trimming the hedges, mowing the grass, spraying the bushes with insecticide, cooking the daily bread and all the other myriad tasks necessary before their charges awoke.

I should make it clear that I am not a rich man who could ever normally afford to stay in a hotel suite costing some $3,500 a night. This was only made possible by way of a devious baksheesh arrangement between myself, a friend and the hotel’s reservations manager, where I received my accommodation at a fraction of the normal rate; the money paid then was split equally between the two of them. So as far as the hotel owner (which, I should add, was the Egyptian Government) and the lessee (a large American hotel chain) were concerned, the suite was empty for the period of my stay but occupied for anybody who tried to book it! It was a perfect arrangement—everyone benefitted: the hotel workers received generous tips from me and my tour operator friend received a hefty baksheesh as did his friend, the reservations manager. Do not feel in the least bit sorry for the Egyptian Government, for they had received an enormous bribe from the rich American Corporation, which in turn had acquired the lease to a hotel with the finest view in all Luxor.

As I sat overlooking the Nile, watching all its facets float before me, I was interrupted from my reverie by my wife who informed me that she had ordered breakfast. My perfect start to the day suddenly ended when she added that I had promised to take her to meet an old acquaintance of hers—GOLD, in the guise of our dear friend Moses, who owned a jewellery shop behind Luxor Temple. He was the consummate Egyptian vendor who never failed to find a piece of gold that my wife adored. At the very mention of his name, his voice filled my head and I heard the dreaded words of his oft-repeated mantra—‘It is not a lot of money’. To make matters worse, he took his Coptic Christian beliefs seriously, so much so that he refused to barter—the price he quoted was the price you paid—no matter how much tea you drank or how impoverished you pleaded to be. I knew I was defeated before I had even left the hotel by two adversaries who did not have ‘no’ in their vocabulary when it came to gold, but who also knew that I would ultimately give in and part with what little I had—for the sake of a day free of tantrums and silence, but above all for love.

Within thirty minutes, we had finished our breakfast and were on our way out of the hotel, along its drive, through the security barrier and into the hassle and bustle of Luxor itself. Before you had even blinked at the magnificent vista of the Nile that lay to your left, it began—the endless procession of felucca owners, postcard sellers, fake antiquity dealers and young boys offering nothing but an empty hand, all bent on taking all of your money before asking for more; but this was nothing to the devious ways and vile practices of the caleche drivers who are to be found everywhere you go in Luxor—on street corners, outside hotels, opposite temples, driving past and following your very footsteps. Every tourist should be given strict instructions on how to deal with them, if it was even possible to define such guidelines, but it is not. They are a fact of life in Luxor and have been so since the first organised tour groups arrived aboard a Thomas Cook steamer in late 1870. My best advice on how to deal with these mobile cockroaches is to find a ‘good’ one and use only him. I must add that good in this context is relative and means less dishonest than his compatriots, but one who will not overly charge you for your journey or ‘up’ the agreed price when you arrive or try to charge you twice—once for alighting his carriage and again for stepping off of it—or even threatening you with his horsewhip if you refuse to pay his exorbitant demands.

Fortunately for us, we quickly spotted our ‘good’ carriage driver—Little Mohamed, so named to distinguish him from Big Mohamed—the gaffer of this necessary but pestilent brotherhood. The reader might come to ask why anyone would wish to use them at all. The answer is simple—once aboard, the passenger is treated to a leisurely and unhurried mode of transport that western civilisation had abandoned over a century earlier. You, the reader, may be surprised to hear that many of the older carriages were in fact made by the Connaught Motor and Carriage Co. Ltd., once to be found at the back of Long Acre in London’s famous Covent Garden, but now sadly long gone. In their heyday, they must have been magnificent with their buttoned black leather seats and glistening black and gold-rimmed wheels and bodywork trim. Alas, today, the seats are ripped and dishevelled with their carriage bodies barely recognisable when compared to what they once were; wear and tear from the countless tourists that have sat on them and the thousands of miles travelled over the past decades have all taken their toll.

It is not advisable to pay too close attention to the poor creature tasked with conveying you to your destination, for they are animals in a pitiful condition, often whipped by their owner and as a reward given little sustenance to ease their suffering; so much so that their ribs protrude from their emaciated and flea-ridden carcasses. Do not think you are helping if you pay extra when the driver implores, Sir, lady, something for the horse. It will just go into his pocket. It is better to stop at a street vendor and buy the horse some hay. But be sure to give it to the horse yourself as its owner will oft sell it on. This is how low these utterly despicable and loathsome individuals can stoop. This dreadful situation became even worse following the revolution and overthrow of President Mubarak, when the poor natives were fooled into believing their lot could only get better. In truth, the exact opposite was the case, with the horses and donkeys of Luxor bearing the greatest brunt of this great falsehood.

Despite all of this, the horse and carriage is the ideal way to travel the streets and negotiate the city’s narrow alleys; to go wonder at the pharaonic temples of Luxor and Karnak; to glide along the river promenade where the Nile cruisers lay moored, often as many as five abreast, each with their engines running to keep its air-conditioning units operating; and to sedately trot to have afternoon tea in the salon of the Old Winter Palace Hotel. An establishment that is but a shadow of its former glory—where its foyer was once filled with the royalty of Europe and the elite of American society, it is now replaced by inappropriately clad guests carrying bags of fast food to their rooms along corridors lined with threadbare carpets and broken furniture. Even the once-famed cream scones come with the unwanted addition of ants and the Orange Pekoe tea has succumbed to the globalisation of the pyramid bag, the sole concession made to Egypt’s illustrious past. Like all the best hotels in Luxor, it is owned by the Government who squeeze the last drop of juicy profit from its lessee, who are then left with the worthless pith as a poor reward for their best efforts.

Ten minutes later, we are dropped off at the premises of Moses and move swiftly through the shop doorway, too quick for the street sellers that seem to inhabit every nook and cranny of the city. Once inside, we are greeted by Moses as the old friends we were. Within minutes, we are treated to a lemon drink said to date back to the time of the pharaohs, which had the look of a milkshake, but a taste of pure delight, that could well have come from A’aru itself. After some minutes of pleasantries, the true business at hand began. Gold from every corner of the shop was placed before our eyes—in trays, from boxes, out of envelopes and from within showcases—the complete arsenal of his wares was brought to bear on my wallet—rings, necklaces, arm bracelets, ankle straps, brooches, tiaras and charms, some with diamonds and some not, pharaonic designs and modern styles, statuettes of the ancient gods—Osiris, his wife Isis and their son Horus, along with the entire pantheon—appeared in procession along the entire length of the shop’s counter.

Two hours past and no decision was made, nothing caught my beloved’s eyes. Was I safe or would fate strike me poorer? Just as we were about to leave with my wallet intact, my wife glanced at the scarab bracelet that adorned her wrist and mentioned in passing to Moses that one of them looked flat, its legs had somehow been squashed. In a flash, he seized on this ray of hope and suggested that the scarabs, which he knew to be hollow (for I had succumbed to his wiles the previous year), would look much better if they were solid: "I will create for you, my dear, a bracelet that even the god Khepri¹.³ would be proud—it will be reborn. And of course, it is not a lot of money. I was now defeated. Moses and my wife huddled together to discuss the detail of the design for the new solid scarabs and whether 22 carat gold might be used or would they be too soft, or would it be better to stick to 18 carats. From past experience, this would take some not inconsiderable time, during which my opinion would not be required. Not wishing to be bored, I decided to leave them to their deliberations but where could I go? The front door would lead me to do battle with the street vendors, a confrontation I wished to avoid at all costs. So I took the only sensible way out—through the back door. Where it led I did not know nor did I care. I opened it and passed through, and thus made my escape. As I closed the door behind me, I heard a joyful Moses whisper to my wife, We will find him when we need him!"

I then looked to see where my flight had brought me. My first thought, after my brain had recognised what my eyes had seen, was, How strange. As I began my hurried exit, the last impression I had in my mind’s eye was the poster that covered the back door to the shop. It was of a garden—a beautiful garden, one with floral rainbows in its beds, immaculately trimmed hedges, tall palms in clumps and winding pathways between carpets of the greenest grass. It could only have belonged to that of a palace, built for one of the khedives of Egypt, who ruled the country as an autonomous tributary state of the Ottoman Empire. I visibly froze as I looked upon that garden again—much smaller and now a scene of decay, neglect and sadness. The flowerbeds were filled with hardened mud, the hedges were bereft of all but a few leaves, the tall palms remained in clumps but now strangled by weeds at their roots, the paths still had their stone edges in part and the lawns were but dried straw, littered with broken wicker chairs and tables that barely stood upright. An occasional cushion adorned a few of the chairs and only a brave man would risk sitting on them, for they surely held all the plagues of Egypt, such was their vile appearance.

Directly in front of me was a ramshackle structure that had provided us with our lemon drinks and presumably was meant to be some form of outside café, the empty chairs silent witnesses to its popularity. To my right was an Islamic-style horseshoe bi-coloured archway beyond which could be seen the great pharaonic temple of Luxor. To my left was a line of seven similar archways that led to a terrace, deserted but for a man in a white galabeya seated on a solitary chair. My attention was immediately drawn to three brass plaques placed on the piers that supported its arches. Intrigued, I walked over to them to learn of their purpose and hopefully to find out where I was.

The one nearest to me was in the form of a portrait to the memory of Albert Ferdinand Pagnon, a name wholly unfamiliar to me, and which provided me no further information as to who he was or why it was felt important for someone to remember him. The second brass to my right was dedicated to the Rev. Charles Bousfield Huleatt, a former chaplain at Luxor who had perished in an earthquake in 1908, another name unknown to me. The third and final brass, that to my left, I hoped would be more forthcoming in clues to where I had escaped to. It was in memory of a Dr Thomas William Muir Longmore who had died in Luxor in 1898 and had been a medical superintendent to the local hospital and former physician to the hotels of Luxor and Karnak. Alas, a name I also did not recognise. A brief sense of frustration and disappointment came over me, but was soon dispelled when I noticed at the bottom of the plaque a fourth name—one I believed I knew—John M. Cook. The three brasses had still not given me a definitive answer to the question uppermost in my mind. If only I had looked upwards, then the name written in big bold letters on the building that lay beyond the terrace would have revealed all, but I did not. Instead, I walked through the middle archway across the terrace and through the doorway that lay before me. No sooner had I passed through that I realised, to my utter shame and ineptitude, that I was in the lobby of a hotel.

The cold shock of my ignorance and stupidity brought my brain from its torpor. This was the Old Luxor Hotel—and John M. Cook was John Mason Cook, the son of Thomas Cook, the great tourism pioneer once called the Napoleon of Travel. My soporific realisation was confirmed when on the wall nearby was a page from the Thomas Cook and Son Excursionist magazine of 1880, proclaiming the opening of the Luxor Hotel at the start of the 1877-78 season—the first ever hotel in Luxor and, as I later found out, the very first Thomas Cook hotel established anywhere in the world. Further surprises were to be had, not because of the style of the architecture or the quality of its furnishings or the luxury of the accommodation—which were, to say the least, banal and at worst decrepit with its dark depressing examples of fake Moorish influence in everything around me, from the chandeliers hanging from the ceilings to the picture frames and lanterns on the walls to the fireplaces, to the carvings on the wooden panels that led to the dining room and to the bar (a facility that certainly would not have been part of the original hotel as Thomas Cook had been a staunch supporter of the Temperance Movement—an organisation that was the reason for his very first excursion!

Hanging on the wall next to Cook’s Excursionist were two pencil drawings: one of Howard Carter, the amateur archaeologist despised because of the jealousy felt by his own profession for finding the tomb of a pharaoh whose very existence they did not want to acknowledge or even believe in; and a second next to it, of George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, the 5th earl of Carnarvon, his sponsor and friend who did believe. Why were they here in this place and on these walls, I did not know. Looking behind me, I saw the hotel’s reception, bereft of clamouring guests and staff, now deserted save for the room keys that still hung beside the empty pigeon holes, no letters, no telegrams, or notes or telephone messages, no life was seen but a cockroach that scurried across past its now silent bell. A cheap white plastic clock was nailed next to the pigeon holes, its silent hands stopped at eighteen minutes past seven, it too was a timely reminder that this hotel had ceased to function.

Continuing my exploration, I passed a once fine grand piano that, like the salon in which it stood, had seen better days but now lay silent, never to be played again. I was now in the dining room, a dark and foreboding place in which cheap wooden chairs and tables were scattered about the floor in a haphazard manner, some upright and others on their side against the walls, useless without legs or backs or seats or tops. It was hard to believe that people once sat and ate their meals here—a breakfast before embarking on the arduous day before them—where their guides would talk of gods, dynasties, kingdoms and pharaohs, whose names would be lost to their minds, before they returned for afternoon tea on the terrace and an evening meal, where they would maybe talk of their experiences and thoughts, but more likely of the home they had left and the trivia they had hoped to escape. Surely this barren and depressing place was not always like this, empty of decoration and light but the Moorish lanterns on its otherwise bare walls and what little of Ra that passed through the drab curtains that now hung, all but concealing the doors that led onto the terrace and the gardens beyond. Perhaps diners had once been entertained by a pianist in the evening as they ate and enjoyed a last brandy or coffee before retiring in preparation for another day of cultural indigestion for most and spiritual awakening for the few. A lone guest scurried across the floor in pursuit of their dinner, but was too late. The dish had returned to the kitchen, uneaten. Nobody, it seems, had told the cat that they no longer served dinner here, not even a dish as rare as rodentia rattus al fresco.

After satisfying myself that all 23 bedrooms on the ground floor of this dark, dank and foreboding place were locked, I began making my way to the upper floors of the hotel with a good deal of apprehension and reluctance. A brown painted wooden sign with faded gold lettering revealed the existence of an ELEVATOR, an American vulgarism for the perfectly good English word, LIFT, which would once have transported its guests to the 25 other bedrooms on its two upper floors. My first thought was to make use of this small and claustrophobic cubicle that could carry at most four thin people or a single broad individual. No sooner had I reached out and opened its twin wooden doors, that I recoiled in horror at what I was doing and shut them immediately, withdrawing my hand in disbelief at my foolishness. Did the lift even work? Was it safe? Would it trap me with no one to hear my cries? NO! I should take the stairs and see what further discoveries would be revealed, be they good or bad.

As I climbed the first flight of stairs, I looked up and saw what had once been a magnificent mirror, both in size and former elegance, its 12 feet of height hung proudly against the wall, the gilding of its ornate baroque-like frame all but gone as was the silver of its face, now blacker than not. Was this, I thought, the only survivor, the last remnant of what this hotel once was, but which is now no more? I felt that if I stared hard and long enough into it, I might see what it once had seen, who it had gazed upon and of the events that had happened here long ago, the guests who had stayed here and of the lives they had led and what they had even said. Perhaps all of this was still there, hidden from sight behind its face that now only looked down upon nothingness. The jaws of the goddess Ammit, the Great Devourer, had truly visited here and had consumed the very soul of this hotel with her unforgiving teeth.

For the next hour, I wandered alone; not a single soul or glimmer of a guest did I see in the dark, dusty and dingy corridors. My sole companion was the dank smell that emanated from the carpets on the floor, which bore more holes than it did fibres. To my frustration, I found all twelve of the guest rooms on the first floor locked, although given the poor condition of their doors, it would have only taken a little force to open them. The frustration continued with the first eleven of the thirteen rooms on the second floor. As I looked around back down the deserted corridor, it occurred to me that this floor was somehow different. It was clean and had the smell of expensive Egyptian scent and the carpet had no holes and its pattern was clear—a bright red thread amid green stems from which golden bunches of flowers opened. Should I go down to reception and borrow a key or two or force them like a common burglar? I decided against both of these dubious courses of action—fearful that guests might actually still stay here! I was right to do so, as it turned out. Even the walls were adorned with fine prints, which I immediately realised were limited editions taken from David Roberts’ Egypt and Nubia¹.⁴. Although I do not profess to be an art expert, I did, however, suspect that these were no mere modern reproductions but original lithographs dating from the 1840s.

Expecting another locked room, I turned the last but one handle and to my amazement, the door to the 47th room opened. Before entering fully, I knocked, just to reassure myself that it was devoid of any guests. No reply came and when I crossed the threshold, it became clear that nobody, not even the most desperate of vagrants or the poorest of tourists, would ever wish to stay in or worse—pay for such accommodation. Once inside, thirty seconds was all that I needed to take in the scene before me. It was a double room with two single beds placed next to each other, their floral covers barely recognisable beneath the thick layer of dust that hovered like a storm cloud in the air above, illuminated by the sun that shone through the closed filth-ingrained curtains of the window opposite. Each of the beds were in such a state of disrepair, their bases were so broken that the mattresses touched the floor, making sleep impossible for all but the finest of contortionists.

So it was with the rest of the room. A once-fine dressing table cowered in one corner to the left of the window, miraculously still standing on its three remaining legs, its mirror cracked and missing much of its glass. A somewhat incongruous fireplace for a place as hot as Luxor filled the corner to the right of the window; next to it was an armchair, its seat and back covered in the same material as the bedcovers and broken like everything else in the room. The walls were half-panelled in rectangles filled with wallpaper decorated with a floral pattern of bold pink roses that blossomed from thorny green stems. Above the wooden dado rail, the wall had originally been painted in a delicate shade of pink, which had over time succumbed to age and presented itself now as puce. I then turned to leave; my brief time in the room had been more than enough. Although I saw a door that led