Towards the Confluence

It all begins in the bustle of Cairo. In the courtyard of Bayt al-Suhaymi and beneath the twin minarets of Sultan Hassan and al-Rifai, Islamic Cairo unfolds its centuries; at the Egyptian Museum the treasures of the pharaohs crowd together in the half-light of old display cases. In the evening, from the heights, the sun sets in a golden haze over a sea of rooftops, and then the lanterns of Khan el-Khalili come on.

The pyramids of Giza, overwhelming under the July light, with camel riders who seem to belong to another age. At the foot of the plateau the Sphinx keeps watch over the horizon, the pyramid of Khafre at its back. A first vertigo before the sheer age of this civilisation.

Further south, at Memphis, the colossus of Ramesses II lies on its back, face turned to the sky. At Dahshur the Bent Pyramid stands almost alone in the desert, and we climb down into the corbelled chambers of the Red Pyramid. At Saqqara, Djoser’s Step Pyramid marks the beginning of it all, while underground, in the galleries of the Serapeum, huge granite sarcophagi wait in the gloom.

Before heading upriver, a detour to the delta and the Mediterranean. Alexandria has kept something cosmopolitan in its weary façades, its old streets and its wave-battered seawalls. At the market, life is raw, generous and loud. Beneath the city, the catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa blend Egyptian gods with a Greek Medusa.

In the Fayoum desert, the Valley of the Whales holds fossilised skeletons of forty-million-year-old cetaceans, lying in the open sand. Nearby, the Wadi Rayan lakes set a turquoise stain among the dunes. Egypt is not only the land of the pharaohs.

We cross Middle Egypt, far from the usual routes, where the long green ribbon of fields stops abruptly at the foot of the desert cliffs. Farmers, donkeys laden with fodder, tombs cut into the rock: the rhythm of the river has not changed. At Beni Hasan, in the tombs of the nomarchs, painted wrestlers have been grappling on the walls for four thousand years.

At Tuna el-Gebel, the tomb of Petosiris already blends Egypt and Greece. A little further on lies Amarna, Akhenaten’s short-lived capital, where the disc of the Aten reaches its hands of light towards the king. Almost nothing remains of the city, only a path up the cliff, silence and heat. On the way back, children on motorbikes escort us between the canals.

Near Sohag stand two Coptic monasteries with fortress walls. The White Monastery, an open-air nave lined with columns, then the Red Monastery, whose restored apse has regained its colours: saints, angels and Christ in majesty rise over three tiers of gold and ochre. A Christian Egypt too often forgotten between two temples.

Luxor, ancient Thebes. On the west bank, the Colossi of Memnon, Hatshepsut’s temple set against the cliffs of Deir el-Bahari and the still-painted ceilings of Medinet Habu. At sunset a felucca glides across the Nile before the hills where the pharaohs lie; old steamers moored along the quays recall the age of the first travellers.

In Aswan the Nile narrows between the granite boulders of the First Cataract. We sail between the islands to the Nubian villages of the west bank, with their houses painted blue and ochre. In the evening the river turns violet. On the west bank, the princes’ tombs of Qubbet el-Hawa overlook the river; at night the feluccas are mirrored in the still water.

We reach Philae by boat, as one approaches a sacred island. The temple of Isis, dismantled stone by stone and rebuilt on Agilkia island to escape the waters of the dam, has kept its Hathor capitals and long colonnades striped with shade. Trajan’s Kiosk, set at the water’s edge, seems to wait for a boat that will never come.

We board the Sudan, an early twentieth-century paddle steamer with wood panelling, a brass engine telegraph and cabins from another age. A stop at Kom Ombo, then at Edfu, where Horus’s granite falcon guards the entrance to the best-preserved temple in Egypt. In the evening, a red sun sinks behind the palms.

At dawn, the Esna lock, then the river between cliffs and palm groves. At Karnak, the avenue of rams and the forest of columns in the hypostyle hall, where one feels tiny. Late in the afternoon Luxor Temple catches fire: the head of Ramesses II, the colonnades and the avenue of sphinxes turn the colour of honey, before the Sudan’s paddle wheel resumes its slow beat.

The temple of Hathor at Dendera holds the most beautiful sky in Egypt. Cleaned of their soot, the ceilings of the hypostyle hall have regained their deep blue: there the goddess Nut swallows the sun each evening and gives birth to it again each morning, among the signs of the zodiac. At nightfall the illuminated Sudan is mirrored in the river.

At dawn, the temple of Seti I at Abydos, its reliefs of extraordinary finesse still touched with colour. Then a last day drifting downstream, watching villages, dovecotes and fishermen slip by from the deck. Every evening the sun sinks into the palms.

Back on the west bank of Thebes, underground this time. In the tomb of Nefertari the queen plays senet, her colours looking as if they were laid down yesterday; in that of Ramesses VI the sky goddess stretches across the whole vault. More modest, the tombs of the Deir el-Medina craftsmen paint a paradise of fields and palms. Then Tutankhamun’s tomb, a tiny casket for the most famous of the pharaohs.

At the gates of Nubia, on the shore of Lake Nasser, the temples of Ramesses II and Nefertari emerge from the cliff, ochre in the desert dust. The last Egyptian stop before the Sudanese border. Inside, between the Osiride pillars, Ramesses endlessly refights the battle of Kadesh.

From the port of Abu Simbel, the Lake Nasser ferry carries us to Wadi Halfa, at the far end of the lake. Across the border, Sudan opens up, vast and almost empty. We follow the Nile through Nubian villages, between the white domes of saints’ tombs and the small boats that still link the two banks. At Soleb the columns of Amenhotep III’s temple rise among the fields.

Near the Third Cataract, at Tombos, an unfinished statue has lain among the rocks for millennia, right where it was carved. At Kerma the Western Deffufa, a massive mud-brick temple, recalls one of Africa’s oldest kingdoms. In the museum, the statues of the Black Pharaohs, Taharqa and Tanutamun, gaze at us with sovereign serenity.

At the foot of the sacred mountain of Jebel Barkal, the ruins of the temple of Amun and the pyramids of Napata recall that Kushite kings once ruled Egypt. Seen from the air, the pyramids line up between the cliff and the railway. At El Kurru, a staircase cut into the rock leads down to the tomb of Tanutamun, whose starry ceiling and paintings have kept their colours.

On the other bank lies the necropolis of Nuri, where Taharqa rests beneath the largest of the Kushite pyramids. Seen from above, it looks like a handful of teeth planted in the sand. A man in a jalabiya walks between the tombs, as indifferent to time as the stones.

The pyramids of Meroë, slender and crowded along their ridge, rise from orange dunes. There is almost no one: only the wind, a few camel drivers and the silence of forgotten kings. Further south, the temple of Amun at Naqa stands alone in the dry savannah. Nearby, at Musawwarat es-Sufra, more columns wait in the same silence.

On Friday, at the tomb of Hamed al-Nil in Omdurman, Sufi dervishes whirl in dust and incense to the beat of drums. A few kilometres away, the White Nile and the Blue Nile finally meet. This is where our journey up the river came to a halt.

Unable to continue south, we headed to the Red Sea for a few days of diving off Port Sudan. Manta rays, spinner dolphins, schools of barracuda, the coral-covered wreck of the Umbria, and at Sha’ab Rumi the remains of Precontinent II, Cousteau’s underwater house. Another desert, a blue one this time.