Egyptian Grandeur

Explore the ancient wonders of the Pyramids of Giza.

- Richard Newton

FORTY-THREE YEARS is a significant portion of my life, though it barely registers on the timescale of the Pyramids of Giza. They loomed solidly above the surrounding desert for 4,500 years before I first stood next to them, as a boy, in 1976.

I traveled there from Cairo by taxi with my family, driving through fields and open desert. The Yom Kippur War between Israel and Egypt raged briefly less than three years earlier, and tourists still had not returned to the region. At the pyramids, local guides, souvenir hawkers and camels vastly outnumbered us.

On my next visit, in 2008, I had no impression of leaving Cairo when I took a coach trip from my downtown hotel out to Giza. The urban sprawl of Africa’s largest city now lapped to the boundary of the pyramid complex. We parked among dozens of other coaches, and I joined the tourist hordes on the walk to the base of the nearest pyramid. The Saharan sun blazed down. Hawkers were doing a brisk business selling cold drinks as well as souvenirs.