Pagan Holiday:On the Trail of Ancient Roman

Tourists

Tony Perrottet EGYPT

Do as the Romans Did

• Agrippa’s Map shows the Roman Empire• People could understand the distance

between Rome and anywhere else• Lots of places were under Caesar’s protection• “The world was the Romans’ oyster” (5)• “The first age of tourism had begun.” (5)

Perrottet’s Project

• Sees map at the New York Public Library• “I had my own dark reasons to catch that

ancient travel bug.” (7)• Carries home a modern version of the map

with “a thin red line scrawled from Rome to Egypt’s frontier.”

• “It was time to revive a great tradition.”

Scholarly Goals

• Write a popular account that’s readable but also accurate

• Note extended bibliography, glossary, timeline• Does extensive research throughout the

process of planning the trip and traveling• Seeks experts in the field for interviews and

further information

Techniques

• Contrasts: old and new• Rome vs. the world• High culture vs common culture• Male/female points of view: his reactions as

opposed to his wife’s• The gung-ho traveler vs. the uninspired tourist

AlexandriaAd Aegyptum

The Special Nature of Alexandria

• “For ancient tourists, Alexandria was a phenomenon in its own right, a self-contained enclave that was neither Roman, Greek, nor Egyptian—and was utterly, fatally romantic. (266)

• Ancient Alexandrians labored diligently—and made money

• Roman quip: “They worship only one God here—cash!” (269)

Modern Lure of Alexandria

• Cecil Hotel• Lots of literary references• E.M. Forster lived in Alex and wrote a history

about it• Cavafy, the Greek poet, lived and wrote here• Lawrence Durrell kicks off the action of The

Alexandria Quartet in this hotel, which is where Darley first glimpses Justine

Cecil Hotel

Cavafy’s Apartment

Where is Alex Anyway?

• Most of the ancient buildings are gone• Tries very hard to do archaeology but gets

thwarted by government regulations• Gets to meet Jean-Yves Empereur, leading

archaeologist in Alex. (275)• So far his mission has catalogued some 2,000

objects• Progress: it’s easier to make archaeologists

into divers than divers into archaeologists

Today’s Alex

• “Alzheimer’s in the ‘Capital of Memory’”• Locked in a “Sisyphean slog” (277)• “With aeons of inertia behind them, not much

gets done in Alexandria today.”• Note that it used to be a very European city,

but it’s getting more and more like the rest of Egypt.

Greek Pastry Shop

Nightlife in Alex

• More contrasts: from archaeology to bars• WE: he’s got time to “piece together the

remnants of Alex’s fabled nightlife, whose reputation had managed to survive from the Romans’ steamy Canopus district through to the seedy fantasies of Lawrence Durrell (279)

• Doesn’t quite stack up to a “den of iniquity”• Alex experience doesn’t quite stack up either• “Come back in 90 days…”

Into the Realm of the Exotic

• Vivid and fanciful descriptions• “If you were a Nazi war criminal, the Long Bar of

Cairo’s Windsor Hotel is where you would hang out.. Customers can hide in the shadows.. 289

• ..Octogenarian bartenders wearing frayed galabia robes and red fezzes eye their customers suspiciously…

• I started to feel pretty shifty myself, ready to cut a deal in weapons, bootleg penicillin, or hijacked body organs.” (You know he’s kidding, but…)

Nile Magic• We’re like the ancients—even in the first

century, the sights along the Nile belonged to an unimaginable, earlier time period (290)

• To the Romans, this was the oldest place on earth

• Intellectuals would hire barges with cooks and poets (not so much different than Edwards’ experience)

• Everything before seemed like “a dress rehearsal” (291)

“Nobody, it seemed, left unsatisfied”

Dangers of Tourism

• Romans’ information comes from Herodotus, 5thC BC travel writer

• Problems: “They viewed the land through the distorting prism of their own culture—and as a result, they misinterpreted almost everything.” (293)

• Inserted their own pantheon of Gods• Worse still, the Egyptians themselves “fueled

the disinformation” (293)

First Orientalists

• Romans and Greeks= “first ‘Orientalists’ (to use Said’s term): Their idea of Egypt was more potent than the reality itself” (294)

• They saw what they wanted to see—probably we do the same today

• They confuse Amenhotep for Memnon, mythical prince from Troy, and it becomes the Memnon Colossi

Modern Cairo

• Kafka-esque gallery of old storefronts• (cf cultural references we saw in Iyer)• Confession: “Perhaps inevitably, we were

viewing it all with the eyes of modern Orientalists. The city fulfills a Western nostalgic fantasy of the Middle East.” (295)

• Maybe this is inevitable: Egypt is still overwhelming in every way

Interview with a Mortician

• “Would you like to touch him?”• Explanations of things we probably don’t

know, even if we’ve been to Egypt—he’s taking us below the surface

• Thutmose III– Mr. Iskander makes “him an offer he can’t refuse” (note overtones)

• Doesn’t refuse, knows he should, and proceeds to use this as a device throughout the section

Mummy Stuff

• Mummification was still going on in ancient times

• P. compares the space in the museum to the House of Usher

• He notes the devices of the museum itself: “Armed guards hush all conversation; lights are dimmed to a minimum, which adds to the morbid effect.” (300)

• Gets to meet another famous archaeologist

Dead Guys• “Back within the gloomy walls of the Windsor

Hotel, I washed my hands, still feeling the cold touch of Thutmose III” (301)

The Deathless Pyramids

• The ultimate sight for the ancients• Today, “Pyramidiots” pay to hold rituals inside

the pyramid to capture its cosmic force (307)• But P. has to go into the secret passageway as

well: “Squirming ahead like a worm, I did my best not to think of the 2.3 million stone blocks above my back, each of which could compress me into a wafer of Egyptian pita.” (309)

•

Searching for Immortality

• “Obsessed with death and the afterlife, wrestling with metaphysical despair, tormented by the knowledge that they were toys of a capricious fate, educated Romans were already profoundly vulnerable to suggestions of the occult.” (310)

• Tourist Egypt, naturally, only makes this worse• They paid sorcerers and hired magicians

Tales of Horror• Anonymous Letter of Thessalos (medical

student almost dies trying to find secrets)• Heliodorus’s Ethiopian Tale• An ancient Quijote, Lucian satirizes them in

Lovers of Lies• Goethe turns it into a long poem• Dukas a symphonic work The Sorcerer’s

Apprentice• Disney sets Mickey to work it out in Fantasia

Pharaohs’ Curses

• While “in” the passageway, P. reviews:• Mummy lore popular in Victorian Britain• Still popular in today’s imagination• “By the time I staggered out of the Great

Pyramid on all fours like some beaten vampire cringing from the sun, I had a terrible feeling that our journey was about to spin out of control.” (312)

Don’t Call Home• Compares communication in Roman times• Dares to check his phone messages only to

find his apartment is flooded• (You can research all you want, but “real life”

may intervene—Les’s physical condition is also a constant reminder of this)

• “Outside the café, a skeletal waiter offered me a chair. I remembered him because of his friendly smile—or was it the face of Thutmose bared into a grin?” (316)

VIP Seeks Crocodile God

• Again, P. shows willingness to get off the beaten track

• Note: Rough Guide says that to see Faiyum, you have to be “committed”

• P. barely gets there himself, wonders if “Thutmose had anything to do with this” 323

• Ancient draw: Labyrinth of Hawara• Cf in ancient times, you had to get a guide so

that you wouldn’t stay lost in “the maze of Escher-like dizziness.” (323)

Escape• “Shaking the sand from my shoes back at the

Windsor Hotel, I found Les in the Nazi bar, trying to avoid the stares of the usual suspects.” (326)

• Several techniques: • uses Les to ground (us),• refers again to the “Nazi bar,” which is

already created in our minds, • the Casablanca quote pulls up other cultural

references we might have for the region

Fun at Luxor• “All night long it had been raining

hieroglyphics in my dreams” (333)• Back to confession: “Sacrilege is sacrilege..

There aren’t degrees of defiling the dead.” (342)

• “The disaster in our apt. in NY—I’d heard about it the very next night. The mad trip to Faiuym. The terrifying train ride.. I was as bad as those maniacally superstitious Romans, both fascinated and unnerved by the dark forces of Egypt.” (342)

Valley of the Kings

• In Thutmose’s tomb, for a small bribe, he can’t pass up lying down in the sarcophagus! (342)

The End of the World As They Knew It• Philae,at that time, was the last stop• (Note: UNESCO moved it in the 1970s.)

Enough Already!

• Final example of the road less traveled, accepts invitation to a Nubian wedding

• “It was slowly dawning on me that this Nubian wedding was going to be an all-night event. Mahmoud finally confessed that this stellar insight was quite true.. Festival would continue nonstop for three days.

• This was a little inconvenient, since I had no way of getting back to Aswan.. “ (356)

• Finally realizes: really should be getting back

Perrottet, Tony. Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists. 2002. NY: Random,

2003.