An Ancient Egyptian proverb once said: Only two kinds of animals can reach the top of a pyramid—the eagle and the snail.
As long as it climbed upward slowly and diligently like a snail, one day it would reach the heights like an eagle, gazing down with the wind-borne "favored ones" upon a prosperous land bathed in golden light at dusk or dawn.
The winding Nile River had become a little stream. Everywhere it passed was green, dotted with white sails. The livestock drinking by the river looked as tiny as ants, while smoke curled up from distant villages.
No one believed that one day, such a land would be left with nothing but crumbling walls and ruins, its prosperous cities abandoned and eventually buried beneath yellow sands.
Yet, just as Pharaoh Thutmose IV described on the Dream Stele he erected between the paws of the Sphinx at the Giza Pyramids, the sand covering the great statue would sooner or later be cleared away.
The Pharaoh had then been a youth as young and vigorous as Horus. Like other Egyptian princes in their youth, he enjoyed his prime. He drove his chariot, racing like the wind between the dunes, drawing his bow and hunting lions and wild goats in the desert.
One day, exhausted from hunting and wishing to rest for a while, he fell asleep beneath the Sphinx's shadow. In his dream, the Sphinx spoke to him: Look at me. See what suffering I endure. My body is almost a pile of ruins. The boundless sand constantly assails and oppresses me. I know you are my son, my protector. So come closer to me. I am with you. I am your guide.
Thus began one of the earliest "archaeological" excavations. The prince ordered the sand cleared away, and he