It’s our final day in Cairo, but today takes us out of the city environs, to a time before even the Great Pyramids had been built. 

Our driver, another Ahmed, meets us at 9am and takes us out towards Giza. The full craziness of rush hour traffic is on display with stuffed buses, beeping horns, death-defying jaywalkers, weaving motorcycles, hand-waving traffic cops, horsedrawn carts, a disregard for lanes and the only discernible rule of the road seeming to be every man, woman, child and donkey for themselves. 

The Corniche itself, along which we drive initially, is very elegant, a grand Parisian riverside boulevard, but like the rest of the city it’s cloaked in a grey dust of pollution, and once across into Giza any semblance of elegance vanishes. Ahmed pulls up at the side of the road and in jumps today’s guide Mina, with his slicked-back hair, cigarettes and sunglasses. 

We head south out of the city along a canal parallel to the Nile, and are soon passing through rural farmland, where the likes of cotton, rice and potatoes are grown, and palm trees line the banks, providing regular harvests of dates. Our first stop is Saqqara, constructed by King Djoser of the Old Kingdom’s 3rd Dynasty, as his eternal resting place and the first example of a pyramid, dating from circa 2650 BC. 

Originally kings were buried in an underground tomb with a single mostaba (platform) constructed of mud bricks above it. However, the story goes that Djoser was upset that, when his tomb was prepared and the mostaba was built on top, it wasn’t high enough for him to see from his castle. So Djoser’s architect, Imhotep, re-built it in stone and laid a second, smaller mostaba on top of the first. It still wasn’t high enough for King Djoser to gaze upon so Imhotep added another and then another, until a six-step pyramid was created. It was the first colossal stone structure ever created and at half the size of the Grand Pyramid at Giza is very impressive. 

To enter the complex we pass through what remains of the vast encircling walls. It originally had fourteen gates, thirteen of which were false to confuse robbers and spirits. Luckily enough, the correct gate remains, taking us into a temple where I’m photo-bombed by an old chap in traditional dress who instantly asks for a tip.

We move on through the pillars of the temple into the huge open air plaza where, in ritual tradition, Djoser would fight and slaughter a bull with his own hands every thirty years to maintain his royal status in the afterlife. 

Surrounding the plaza are various pavilions, purportedly the oldest remaining buildings in antiquity, and the Re-Coronation Hall where Djoser would have been recrowned each time he’d fought the spiritual bull. But the most impressive site is actually that of another king, Unas, from the 5th Dynasty, who built his tomb under a collapsed pyramid around 2350 BC. 

We clamber inside and the decorative chambers are phenomenal containing a ceiling of stars depicting Sirius, which was the most important body in the celestial map of the heavens. 

The chambers are the oldest surviving inscriptions of the Pyramid Texts which helped deceased kings in their resurrection and guided them to meet the sun god Ra. They’re quite a wonder to behold, still bearing traces of the colours that they would have been painted with over four thousand years ago. 

We continue on to Memphis and have our car stopped a number of times on the way for security. Mina explains that wherever we go in Egypt drivers and tour guides have to give details of their number plate, passengers, nationalities and destinations to policemen who keep a record to ensure every tourist is accounted for, all the information tallies up and we’re delivered safely from location to location. It’s rather authoritarian but in some ways reassuring and we have indeed felt very safe wherever we’ve been. 

However it makes us realise that poor Alaa, whose phone died yesterday, is probably in trouble with the tour company and potentially the police as Mustafa had to arrange a taxi to get us back to the hotel, meaning Alaa was unable to complete his duty. 

There’s not actually a huge amount to see in Memphis -  which was for centuries the capital of Lower Egypt - as it has remained a living town and, unless the whole place is torn down and excavated, the thousands of remnants buried underneath it will remain lost in history. However the Colossus of Rameses II was discovered in 1821 in the nearby Nile and at ten metres is so large and heavy that rather than move it a great distance they constructed a museum around it. It’s one of the most impressive representations of Rameses II, widely considered one of the greatest of all Pharoahs, who ruled for 66 years, and of whom more statues exist than any other Egyptian ruler; the greatest of which remain at the temple of Abu Simbel. 

 A range of other local finds populate the grounds around the museum including various statues and a Sphinx of Queen Hatshepsut and we wander through them snapping photos. 

We carry on down the litter-strewn, plastic-choked canal, past the great dredging machines at work, to come to Dahshur, a site in the middle of the desert protected by both a military installation and an oil company drilling the grounds around it. 

Dahshur was constructed between 2613 and 2589 BC by the Pharaoh Snefru, who was the father of Khufu, and consists of two huge pyramids, inspired by the six-step pyramid of Djoser. The Bent Pyramid is so called because Snefru realised halfway through that his angles were wrong, and his second attempt, the Red Pyramid is so-named because of the hue of the rocks that was revealed once the limestone cladding had been stripped in later years to build houses in Memphis. Khufu carried on his father’s ambition at Giza, with a bigger pyramid than his dad’s, only to have his own son Khafre trump him and go one bigger. Kids, eh?

One major difference between these pyramids and Djoser’s, other than the fact they weren’t in step formation, is that rather than be constructed on top of a subterranean tomb - which was easy for robbers to tunnel into - they were designed to have tombs hidden inside their structure. And so we become intrepid explorers, venturing high up the outside of the pyramids to the entry point and then clambering steeply down into the hearts of the pyramids and navigating our way through cramped chambers and narrow tunnels until we get to the empty burial chambers. 

There’s nothing really of note to see when we get there, and it’s hot, airless and sweaty inside, but we feel a sense of achievement having crawled our way into these funerary spaces from antiquity. The following day however our legs, glutes and backs ache and complain at the workout we put them through!

We’re both absolutely exhausted by the time we make it back to Mina and Ahmed and on our drive back to Cairo there’s little conversation so Mina puts on the car radio and the likes of Lionel Richie and Elton John serenade us, before ubiquitous R&B pop takes over, blasting a surreal contemporary soundtrack to the landscapes we pass through. 

After a while we pull into a local banqueting restaurant in Giza called Wa’adaa Almuluk (aka Valley of the Kings), where local families stage wedding banquets. It has outdoor seating, decorated pagodas, fake Egyptian antiquities, a dance floor, wedding stage and swimming pool, plus a huge Egyptian barbecue hall. Mina had called ahead to let them know some dreaded vegetarians were coming so we’re presented with a lukewarm plate of French fries and spaghetti - alongside the ubiquitous rice, pickles, tahini and stewed vegetables - while he tucks into a full mixed grill. 

Back at the hotel we decide to toast our Cairo adventures with a glass of Egyptian “champagne” at the pool before packing and then head out to Taboula once more for a proper Egyptian feast, enjoying a fabulous aubergine and avocado main course with pomegranate molasses and Egyptian cheese, plus a toumia garlic dip, hot breads and foul modammes (hot fava beans) alongside a bottle of our favoured Shahrazade red wine. The whole meal including service is just £26, which is far less than two cocktails at the Kempinski. 

Taboula is much busier tonight than when we arrived on Friday, full of tourists, locals and expats. It’s buzzy and lively and a fun way to finish our time in Cairo, although on the table next to us is a young, chain-smoking, long-haired and very animated American Egyptologist loudly discussing his theories on various aspects of his study. He’s the archetypal trendy academic, convinced of his own brilliance and delighted by the sound of his own voice, holding court while his semi-weary-yet-adoring female companions nod and allow him to pontificate. 

We leave them to it and retire into the night.