I HELD my breath as my eight-year-old son Adam threw his hand into the air. It
was our first morning in Cairo, and our guide, Delia Pemberton, had just
asked the children what they knew about pyramids. All those books I had
bought him, that trip to the British Museum, were about to be put to the
test. “Well, they are sort of pyramid-shaped,” Adam began, and I allowed
myself a wry smile. He was right, after all.
The other children, whose ages ranged from seven to 14, had clearly been doing
their homework too. Before long, we had established that pyramids were the
tombs of pharaohs, that they were more than 4,000 years old, and that there
were more than 80 of them in Egypt, including the big three at Giza which
were visible from our hotel.
A few hours later, we were inside a pyramid, stooping as we made our way along
a steep, humid tunnel to the burial chamber at the centre.
I wasn’t sure about taking a child as young as Adam to Egypt. Yes, the
pyramids, tombs and mummies would excite his imagination and with luck get
him into a good frame of mind for studying the ancient Egyptians at school,
but would he appreciate ancient Egyptian culture, or just trudge around the
temples wishing he was on the beach?
Delia, who works in the Education Department at the British Museum,
immediately put the kids’ minds at rest. “I love coming on this trip,” she
told them, “because I can do all the things I like. Instead of giving boring
lectures to grown-ups, we can have fun, swim, ride camels and donkeys and
stay in my favourite hotels.”
Sure enough, the first thing we did on arriving at the Pyramids was to take a
camel ride around the site, watching the Tourist and Antiquities Police,
also mounted on camels, as they chased away the hustlers who hassled us to
buy T-shirts or demanded baksheesh for acting as guides.
The tour, operated by the cultural and archaeological specialist The
Traveller, took in all the main sights while leaving plenty of free time for
the kids. Most days, we spent just three or four hours on serious
sightseeing, usually early in the morning before it got too hot. Afternoons
were for reading or relaxing around the hotel pool, while in the evening,
before supper, Delia would give “lectures” which were really activity
sessions to support the day’s learning.
One night, there was a card game where we had to match up Egyptian gods;
another day, the children had fun making amulets in the shape of scarab
beetles and lotus flowers.
In Cairo, we visited the Egyptian Museum to see the treasures of Tutankhamun’s
tomb. Adam was just as fascinated by the internal organs of Queen
Hetepheres, preserved in dust in an alabaster box almost 5,000 years after
her death. The yuk factor scored highly.
We haggled for football shirts in the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, and sipped mint
tea in an old-fashioned café beneath mirrors, chandeliers and an enormous
stuffed crocodile. We sat inside the Mohamed Ali mosque watching the men
prostrating themselves during noon prayers, and (strictly for the children,
this) we toured the tacky, themed Pharaonic Village, taking a boat ride
through the papyrus reeds as bored-looking “villagers” acted out farming,
crafts and mummification rituals.
Luxor and the Nile
After three days in Cairo we flew down to Luxor, where we stayed on Crocodile
Island on the Nile. The island is now a luxury Mövenpick resort, with
bungalows in lush gardens, a swimming pool, tennis courts and a zoo. The
hotel even had a resident crocodile, which soon led to the best schoolboy
joke of the holiday. Why did the crocodile go to see a therapist? Because it
was in de-Nile.
At times, it felt as though we were rather too insulated from modern Egyptian
life, but there were still fascinating glimpses from the river banks, of
farmers and fishermen and buffalo ploughs and the mud-brick villages on the
west bank. Egrets nested in the mimosa trees, dragonflies darted among the
reeds, at night there was the sound of crickets and the call to prayer
gently drifting across the river.
One morning, we joined the hotel’s naturalist for a bird- watching safari,
spotting kingfishers, hoopoes and Nile Valley sunbirds as we hiked through
banana plantations and met children walking to school as the sun came up.
There was a free ferry service into Luxor, which I took one afternoon to
stroll along the corniche and go shopping in the souk for jewellery, spices
and hibiscus tea. But whenever we wanted them, there were also all those
reassuring reminders of home that are so important when you are travelling
with children. No need to worry about fussy eaters and unfamiliar diets when
you have fish fingers, chips and Swiss ice-cream on the menu.
Luxor has probably the richest concentration of ancient sites in the world. It
was here that the children could easily have become bored, but Delia and
Hala Mahmoud, our Egyptian guide, mostly managed to keep their attention by
making the archaeology come to life.
With their help, it was possible to imagine Karnak Temple in its heyday more
than three millennia ago, with candles, incense, priests, votive offerings
and brightly coloured murals where now there are bare stone walls.
At Medinet Habu, the great mortuary temple of Rameses III, Delia found a
pharaonic toilet (which schoolboy humour turned into “Rameses the turd”) and
a hieroglyphic list of daily offerings to the pharaoh (one cow, two
chickens, three vats of wine, 100 loaves of bread) which she used to explain
the ancient Egyptian system of numbers.
Everyone was thrilled by Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings, with
its murals featuring baboons accompanying his body on its journey through
the afterlife, but my personal favourites were the Tombs of the Nobles in
the small village of Qurna.
Unlike the pharaohs, these ordinary citizens did not decorate their crypts
with images of gods and kings; instead there were wives, daughters,
musicians and parties. In the tomb of Sennefer, former mayor of Luxor, we
found grapes recalling his role as a vintner, and his wife depicted in a
long, tight dress. Just the sort of images to keep him happy in the next
world, I mused.
By the end of the trip, we all agreed that we’d learnt a lot, but that it had
been fun, too. “Delia made the trip more enjoyable because she gave us fun
things to do,” Adam concluded on the flight home. “The mix of free time and
activities was about right.”
So what did Adam enjoy best? The Pyramids, the Sphinx, the donkey ride, the
felucca trip on the Nile? All of these, he said, but something else too: “I
liked meeting other children and having friends to play football with.”
Sometimes, for children, even the Pyramids have to take second place.
Need to know
Getting there: Tony and Adam Kelly travelled with The
Traveller (020-7436 9343, www.thetraveller2004.com)
on their Egypt Family Tour. The next tour is from March 26 to April 4 and
costs £1,690 per adult, £1,355 per child 12-16 and £890 per child under 12
sharing with adults. The cost includes flights, transfers, all lectures and
entry fees, and half-board accommodation in five-star hotels.
Family tours of ancient Egypt are also featured by The Adventure Company (0870
7941009, www.family-adventures.co.uk),
Explore Family Adventures (01252 760177, www.explore.co.uk)
and Responsible Travel (www.responsibletravel.com).
Reading for adults: Egypt Handbook (Footprint,
£12.99); British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (British
Museum, £14.99).
Reading for kids: Eyewitness Ancient Egypt (Dorling
Kindersley, £5.99); Egyptian Mummies: People from the Past by
Delia Pemberton (British Museum, £8.99). A visit to the British Museum’s
Egyptian galleries (020-7323 8000, www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
) is a good way to prepare children for a trip. It now has a virtual reality
exhibition, Mummy: The Inside Story (ticket line 020-7323 8181),
adults £6, children 5-16 £3, family ticket £15.
