“My place is with you, O sun, and I will not give it to anyone else.
I will go up to the sky by you, O sun, my face as that of falcons, my wings as those of birds, my claws as the viper’s fangs.
…
I have used my arms as a goose, I have beat my wings as a kite.
Someone has flown away, people: I have flown away from you.”

I was exhausted; it was dark, late, hectic, wearisome, the rambunctious start of a weekend. This was the last great stop of my two month excursion through ancient sites in Greece, Turkey, and Egypt; I saved the grandest for the end, yet again, in another doomed notion of some profound spiritual crescendo. I dreamed I would be in a special plane of existence at this moment, but instead all I desired was rest. I had insanely decided that the way to decompress from my busiest work season in years was to backpack at breakneck speed through some of the greatest cultural wonders of the world as cheaply as possible, battering my body and spirit along the way. What good is a once-in-a-lifetime experience if you’re not at rope’s end?
(I have problems)

As it turns out, Gaza on a Thursday night is not the place to seek rest. Or perhaps any night. The jumbled streets are cacophonous with music, animals, hookah smoke, preteen gangs and unpredictable detours. I walked nearly an hour from bus stop towards my booking, hardly ever in a straight line and never far from being accosted in some manner. The image of a bed in a room to myself kept me going, and dawning awareness that I was about to see the freaking great pyramids in a matter of hours.

But this walk was only the beginning of a long dark night.

I arrived at my supposed guest house, one of many haphazardly arranged buildings astride the outer wall. There were no clear address markings as far as I could see; my google maps had the guest house in one spot, maps.me had it around the corner, and booking.com seemingly had it inside a different structure. I tried each, to no avail; I knocked on doors and wondered into open hallways, got pointed to three different doors by different guest house owners, and tried to hide when groups of boys came through on horseback or wild ATVs. Eventually I found the right place, took one step in and realized it felt all wrong. There were a couple guys and a blond European girl on a rough couch; they woke up another man, who looked at the computer a while, went to a door, talked to someone there, then took me to a totally different building and up three flights where he opened a door to find a shirtless man already staying in the room. At this point I was sure this was either a scam or a terribly-run business where I wouldn’t feel safe for a second, so I cut my losses and went back to a woman who had offered me a room earlier in my search. It was a little more than I had wanted to spend, but I would have paid any price at that moment for just an hour of sleep.

Of course this was also going to be a challenge; there was a constant parade of tumult outside my window until 4am, a white noise of loud music and shouting punctuated by firecrackers and revved engines. Horses thundered by, goaded by violent whip-cracks. This was the sound that stayed with me most, this burst of controlling fury, this forceful attempt to master nature. As I slipped into delirious sleep it hung in the air over my head.

And then I awoke at first light to a vision of the largest monuments on earth.

2.3 million stone blocks, limestone from the immediate area and granite carried downstream on the Nile. Each stone averaged 2.5 tonnes, or the size of an army cargo truck; all together there are approximately 5.75 million tonnes of stone, enough to constitute the third heaviest human structure ever built. It took nearly 30 years of backbreaking labor from 40,000 humans.

And that’s all just for the Great Pyramid alone, which at 174 meters tall was the tallest structure in the world for nearly 4,000 years.

It’s almost impossible to comprehend, especially for a modern mind. We are so machine-dependent and scientifically individualized that we have no concept of the intricate teamwork and physical sacrifice this project required on a day to day basis. These weren’t slaves or foreign prisoners; there was undoubtedly coercion, yes, but also deep camaraderie and competition. They lived and worked in teams, striving against other groups for better rations of bread, food, and most importantly- beer. They utilized ingenious techniques honed over generations of monument-construction across the birth of this great civilization, from small mastabas to Mesopotamian-styled step pyramids to the innovative ‘true’ pyramid style with almost supernaturally clean lines.

Without wheels, without iron tools, without advanced mathematics, they built this mountain of a masterpiece with near sublime precision- within an average error of 0.58mm per each 240 meter-long side, base angles within 1/3600th a degree of perfection, and an orientation within 1/10th a degree of the 4 cardinal directions. They used the surrounding geography with maximum efficiency, canal systems and hand sleds and astronomical observation. And they essentially formed a small city alongside the construction site, cooks and laborers and engineers who devoted a piece- or all- of their lives to this single monument many would never see completed. Most were buried nearby, with pride. There was little separation between individual and communal accomplishment; it wasn’t the greatness of one man that was celebrated, but the People of the Black Land, the Kemet. This great act preserved Ma’at, preserved godly order in the world. They were imbued with purpose.

Or not. How could we know? We are so programmed for instant gratification now, so obsessed with material justification, what do we know about true sacrifice for a community? We have more devotion to our sports team, political party or celebrity than we do to our community. The smallest inconvenience becomes a major division.

Which is…better than 4,600 years ago? Worse? The same, but different?

I don’t know.

I made sure I was first through the gates as soon as the ticket office opened, for about 90 minutes of relative peace amidst these giants. Under a blue sky tinged with ever-present haze, I walked barefoot on sand and ancient marble. I stood at the base of the great pyramid and let its scale swallow me whole, stone by stone. I felt as insignificant as a single human life in the great arc of a civilization, one of countless millions- and also the power of connection, to a legacy that spans countless millions. I tried to imagine the purpose and meaning an ancient found in this existence, as a part of divine order.

And then the capitalist hordes descended like a plague.

Paragliders circled above the peaks, tour buses rolled in on diesel clouds, scammers and hawkers squawked aloud, small gangs of boys accosted white faces for pictures. Whip-cracks filled the air again, accompanied by horse hooves and camel belches. Tourist money flowed from hand to hand.

I had grown accustomed- or perhaps hardened- to this wavelength that permeated every ancient site in Egypt. This opportunistic industry exists most everywhere in the world, or course, but there is something rapacious to what I felt like I experienced in the country; a hardness to it, a calloused and bare duplicity. Armed military or police will beckon you to follow them and then demand money, locals will offer ‘friendly’ advice or directions and then demand money, shop-owners will invite you inside for tea and then demand money. There is a constant buffer of touts outside every gate, every ferry crossing, every major train station.

On the one hand, this should probably be the price white faces pay for over a century of exploitation and patronizing behavior- Europe and the US in many ways created this beast, and should live with the consequences. But I still deeply lamented the lack of sacredness at every site, the inauthentic interactions, the naked obsession with money. Every man for himself.

I didn’t have much money, of course, which might play a part. I couldn’t really afford to go inside, or do a guided tour, or do any of the other touristy activities…but that’s not my thing anyways. On this day I just wanted to feel things, with my skin and with my soul. I sat in the shadows, I placed my hands on ancient stone, I walked far away from all the hubbub with sand underfoot to survey the scene. This was a culmination of everything I had experienced in Egypt, all the soaring heights and the materialist depravity. It is a rare magic to experience the wonders of this land- you are truly immersed in the scale of each temple, sculpture, complex, all exquisitely preserved by desert sands through the ages. There is simply nothing quite like standing under the colorful papyrus pillars of Karnak, or at the foot of sun-kissed Ramses at Abu Simbel, or before the grandly etched facade of Ptolemaic Edfu temple.

And yet I was as exhausted as I was entranced, worn down by society like I had rarely been before. Here, at the end of my sojourn, in the presence of one of the wonders of the world, I didn’t want engagement; I didn’t want interaction. I wanted to put my feet in the sand and stand alone, watching a modern lifecycle of juxtaposition unfold as if I was just another pebble.

Which of course meant I had to meet a young couple of warmth and optimism and spend the next hour in delightful conversation.

They were both nurses, school sweethearts who dreamed of going to live in the United States one day. That beacon of wealth, that paragon of comfort and the easy life. They wanted to talk about where they should live in this dream life, where they could enjoy most the fruits of capitalism; all I could see around me were the worst effects of putting monetary valuation at the pinnacle of life, the deleterious commodification of all things. But their love was earnest, their smiles untouched. He was worried that his romantic partner had more initiative than him, asked him out first; this was not how things were meant to go in male-dominated society. We all expressed sorrow at the unnecessary divisions of male and female here; I rarely ever saw boys and girls playing together, which only seemed to bolster the worst instincts in mobs of boys running about.

Yet we cut to the heart of the matter, the love beneath all things. They gave me the important human connection I needed, to temper my cynicism. The lessons of ancient Egypt are as complex as the moral dilemmas we face in our own times. The greatness of what we can achieve together is eternally astounding; the darkness of how we strive for that greatness, together or apart, is eternally sorrowful. The ancients who built the pyramids defined themselves in opposition to others, in the age-old paradigm of good vs evil, of self-justification against the ‘others’. The violent crack of the horse-whip and the crook and flail depicted in pharaoh’s hands form a through-line of human coercion over nature and each other. To look upon human-built wonders, via religion of the gods or of money, is to look upon structures mortared with violence and love in equal measure.