Awed and inspired in Egypt

We landed in Cairo, Egypt’s capital, which has 17 million inhabitants. At once we were awed by the Giza pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus. For truly awesome scenes with pyramids and temples, this surely is the place. Get it on your to-do travel list.

The scale of pyramids is amazing -- each block of stone is taller than a person, and the largest pyramid is more than 40 stories tall and occupies 13 acres.

To carry Cheops’ body into the afterlife, a 142-foot wooden “solar boat” was buried beside his pyramid. This ornate boat has recently been reassembled in a nearby grand museum. Of the several sound-and-light shows presented at temples and monuments, none are better than the one at Giza, which has the giant sphinx glowing right in front of you.

My favorite was the “red” pyramid at Dahshur, circa 2600 B.C., since it established the classic pyramidal form and because of the tricky way you have to go backward down into its two chambers and crypt. If only we had visited Tanis in the Delta, northeast of Cairo, where a complex of royal tombs was found intact, yielding gold masks, solid silver coffins and spectacular jewelry -- in some ways more spectacular than Tutankhamen’s treasures.

As one moves from the Sakkara pyramid to the Temple of Karnak, to Luxor and Edfu, there is no dearth of shopping opportunities. Egypt may well have invented the strip mall in ancient times. The diversity of goods is amazing, including cotton shawls, spices, alabaster scarabs and brilliant papyrus paintings showing details from Pharaonic tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

A feast for the shopper’s eyes is Cairo’s vast Khan al Khalili bazaar, where my wife and I relished the handsome café favored by and now named for Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and author in 1956 of “Palace Walk,” a family tale set in this narrow street of commercial shops.

Meals rely on tender meat and fish, plus cucumbers, cabbage, dates, corn, bananas and grains grown on the irrigated fields within miles of the fertile Nile. Just imagine the massive Nile Delta, which extends fully 100 miles north from Cairo as it spreads to the sea, an amazing agricultural center for thousands of years.

The delta’s westernmost city is the bustling modern port of Alexandria, established in 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great. This city of 7 million has not only enticing beaches, great hotels and King Farouk’s summer palace but also Greco-Roman archeological sites. Then there is the Citadel, the fortress that helps close the secure port and was the site for the famous four-tiered lighthouse -- like the Giza pyramids, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

Today Alexandria can boast of a new stunning creation, a resurrection of the ancient Library of Alexandria that was once the largest in the world. This new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, opened in 2002, was designed brilliantly by a Norwegian architect and will have a capacity of eight million volumes. How satisfying to see this library rise again for use by people of all ages, faiths and nationalities.

In this and all Egyptian cities and villages, the traffic is nothing short of organized chaos, a mixing of cars, bicycles, buses, pedestrians and donkeys, all ignoring any semblance of traffic lanes and accompanied by the punctuation of horns that add their harmonies to the noise of business and construction and bargaining on the streets. Women are everywhere in the workforce -- professional, governmental, agricultural and service.

We learned that the biggest Egyptian problem is overpopulation, with a baby born every 26 seconds and 17% unemployment.

Amid all this bustle, we visited the fabulous temples at Abu Simbel, raised from the waters of Lake Nasser, which was formed by the 1970 creation of Aswan High Dam. Another delight was the charming Philae temple to Isis and Osiris, also raised onto an island. Then there is the massive temples of Hatshepsut, Kom Ombo (to the crocodile god Sobek) and Horus -- each decorated with bas-relief religious symbolism and royal cartouches. Many still bear evidence of the original colors.

The comfortable way of visiting so many of these fabled ancient remains is not by camel, though riding one is an experience never to be forgotten. Rather, the dozens of four-deck motor ships plying the Nile provide leisure, superior food and service, deck chairs under awnings, swimming pool and hot tubs, with such birds as wagtails, cattle egrets and kingfishers adding constant entertainment. Plus, there are such sights as huge locks and the Aga Khan’s mausoleum at Aswan.

You might choose some of the cooler months to visit, for the heat can be enervating, even in November. A respite from temples and pyramids is a felucca ride. One of these colorful, stout, shallow-hulled, lateen-rigged boats sailed us by the famous First Cataract Hotel in Aswan, delighting us as it plied the constant river breeze. Several delightful youngsters paddled miniature dinghies up to our felucca and sang “Frere Jacques” for a trivial monetary reward.

The bustling charm of today is but a reflection of the storied creations of those ancients who left for us their rich culture with the awesome, glorious temples and pyramids of Egypt.

* DAVID C. WEBER lives in Corona del Mar.