going back in time, apparently, as layers of the current city peeled back like an onion to show earlier habitations. And then to reveal another city altogether, as we came to several stories of medieval brickwork.
It featured the curved archways and pierced stone of Fustat, the original city built here by the first Arab conquerors, which predated Cairo by centuries. I remembered one of our guides telling me that Old Town overlapped its borders somewhat, or what was left of it. But we didn’t stop there.
Maybe seven levels down we branched off the main stairs and cut through some rock hewn, sepia-colored rooms. They had traces of age-old pigments on the walls, and cartouches containing hieroglyphs I couldn’t read. Hassani paused like a good host whose guest has seen something that interested her, and the lantern boy he’d brought along stopped, too.
The kid was a vamp but just barely, with big dark eyes and a nervous disposition. He had on a simple djellaba—the local robe that reminded me of a long nightshirt—with pale blue and white stripes. With the simple leather sandals he wore, and the old-fashioned lantern he carried, he looked like he’d stepped out of another time.
As did everything else. The abrupt halt set the light swaying and the carvings flickering like an old news reel. I expected to see Howard Carter show up, any time now.
“Heliopolis,” Hassani said, looking approving of my interest. “You are standing in the remains of the first city ever built on this spot. The City of the Sun, as the ancient Greeks called it.”
“I thought Fustat was the first on this site.”
“Oh, no. In fact, the temples and other buildings of Heliopolis were scavenged for materials to build Fustat and then medieval Cairo, just as the pyramids were.”
“The pyramids?”
Hassani nodded. “The monuments used to be faced with pure white limestone in ancient times, so highly polished that it was said to be blinding under the sun. But taking their facing stones was easier than quarrying new material, so.” He shrugged. “You can see the stones of temples like this one in the walls around Old Cairo.”
“This was a temple?” I glanced around. I supposed I should have figured that out. The paintings were faded almost to indecipherability, but there were a lot of them, covering even the ceiling, which was so high that the light barely touched it. And while the stone pillars guarding the doorways were bare of pigment, their surfaces were beautifully carved, with the tops looking like lotus flowers opening under the sun.
That sort of thing was expensive in the ancient world, where everything was done by hand. Palaces and temples were virtually the only spots that received such treatment. Well, and tombs.
For some reason, I felt a shiver go across my skin.
Hassani did not appear to notice, maybe because he was busy tracing another carving on the wall. “Oh, yes. Heliopolis was full of temples, to the point that the Greeks named it after the god they associated with the deity worshipped here. In ancient Egypt it was known as the House of Ra. You see? This is his cartouche.”
“Ra? He was the sun god, wasn’t he?”
Hassani wasn’t called Teacher for nothing. I’d thought it was more of a religious title, but he seemed genuinely pleased that his strange visitor knew something, at least. I was grateful for the guide to Aswan, who had basically never shut up. “Yes, indeed. Heliopolis was the center of his cult, going back as far as history does. It predated the dynastic period, you see.”
“Dynastic?”
“The era of the pharaohs.”
“And what was before that?”
He shot me a look. “Why, the time of the gods, of course.”
We went on.
There were more stairs, and more descent into darkness. The underground temple was vast enough for me to wonder why a good chunk of Old Cairo hadn’t collapsed into a massive sinkhole. I assumed that something had been done, magical or otherwise, to shore it up, although there were no signs of anything. No magic glistened anywhere, and the only scent I could detect was dust.
Well, and an odd, skin ruffling odor that tickled my nose occasionally, from different directions, as if born on a breeze that didn’t exist down here. It was acid-sharp and bitter, and disturbing because it was impossible to identify. It didn’t help that the rooms we’d transitioned into were smaller and interconnected, and as dark as pitch before our completely inadequate light source lit them up. I was starting to wonder