During the 1950s and 1960s, as a young man, I had the pleasure of attending the old Khedivial Opera House to watch magnificent performances of Chinese folk arts. I also attended, on two occasions, ballet performances by what I consider the greatest ballet company in the world, the Russian Bolshoi Ballet. These were performances of extraordinary beauty and artistry.

Thanks to my friendship with, and proximity as a neighbour to, the family of Dr. Magda Saleh, Egypt’s first ballerina, and her brother Tarek, who was also a ballet dancer, I was granted special permission to watch and enjoy performances by the excellent Egyptian Ballet Company from the stage itself, behind the curtains.

I also developed a friendship with the father of the artist Farida Fahmy, the much-loved Professor Hassan Fahmy, an engineer and lecturer at Cairo University’s Faculty of Engineering. He played an influential role in providing important technical support and essential facilities that helped the Reda Troupe deliver its performances.

Naturally, I also had the honour of meeting Ms. Farida Fahmy and watching some of this wonderful troupe’s performances from behind the curtains on stage. It was a company of which we were all immensely proud, as it represented Egypt through beautiful performances in several foreign countries and received the attention and patronage of the President of the Republic, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

During the years 1975, 1976 and 1977, I was assigned, as an officer in the Egyptian Armed Forces, full responsibility for supervising visits by ministers of defence from countries around the world, as well as prominent personalities, historians, writers and journalists from various nations.

I was responsible for planning and overseeing every detail of their visit programmes, which naturally included visits to important battle sites along the Suez Canal front, Pharaonic archaeological sites scattered along both banks of the Nile from the far south to the far north, museums, and the various historical monuments throughout the capital.

As a result, I visited most of the ancient Egyptian temples dozens of times. These experiences also gave me the opportunity to develop friendships with remarkable individuals whose lives were closely connected to some of these monuments.

Among them was the great restorer, Haj Ahmed Youssef, who devoted twenty-seven years to the task of extracting the 4,500-year-old boat of Khufu, known as the Solar Boat, from its pit beside the southern side of Khufu’s Pyramid, restoring and studying it, and then reassembling it using a stitching technique.

He was a cultured and modest man, a restoration artist of the highest calibre, who earned the respect of Egyptologists around the world.

I also became acquainted with the British woman Dorothy Eady, widely known as Omm Sety. Whenever I accompanied Egypt’s guests to the mortuary temple of Seti I, known as the Temple of Abydos, in Sohag Governorate, I would meet her there. She lived permanently in a modest house beside the temple.

Her life was associated with an extraordinary story that began in childhood, when she fell down the stairs of her family home in Britain and lost consciousness. Upon regaining consciousness, she declared that she was an ancient Egyptian, that she had been the lover of Pharaoh Seti, and that she wanted to return to her homeland and her home near the Temple of Seti I in Upper Egypt.

This prompted her family to take her to psychiatrists at mental hospitals, where doctors confirmed that she was normal and showed no signs of mental illness.

As the years passed, she began making frequent visits to the Egyptian antiquities galleries at the British Museum in London, studying the ancient Egyptian language and the history of the Pharaohs.

She later met an Egyptian man, married him, and gave birth to a son whom she named Sety, after which she became known as Omm Sety, meaning “Mother of Sety”.

In 1933, she travelled with her husband to Egypt. Upon arriving at the airport, she knelt down and kissed the ground, declaring that she had returned to her homeland.

In the period following her arrival in Egypt, she refused to leave the country with her husband when he obtained a job in Iraq, which eventually led to their separation.

She subsequently visited the Temple of Abydos, where she decided to settle permanently in an area known as Arabet El-Madfuna.

There, she began identifying hidden locations and providing information about the temple and its history that attracted the attention of Egyptian archaeologists, including the renowned scholar Selim Hassan, a pioneer of Egyptology.

She also participated in organising the temple’s large and small stone blocks so that they could be reused in restoring various sections of the monument.

Over time, she became recognised as an archaeologist, despite not having obtained the academic qualifications normally required for that title.

She also had a profound influence on the studies of Dr. Zahi Hawass.