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
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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
Alexandria
Ad 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)
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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
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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.