Aidan Hartley: I have been shot at and bombed so why do I fear a pyramid?

It was towards dusk by the time we had given the tourist police the slip and started climbing the pyramid of Mycerinus at Giza. It was Sebastian Barry-Taylor and I and we wore white linen suits.

The 4ft blocks were easy enough to scale because erosion of the limestone had in the 4,500 years since construction weathered cavities or broken off corners so that there were plenty of hand- and footholds. We climbed quickly, looking down at the fat policemen in the desert shaking their fists up at us — but we did not rush it. To slip or stumble would be very dangerous because I could see that once one started falling down that slope there was nothing to stop one from bouncing all the way down. We did not care. We feared nothing.

At the summit of Mycerinus we found carved into the stones graffiti, some of it very old indeed, and the views were spectacular.