Life inside Egypt's ancient pyramids with Wales' real-life Indiana Jones

James McCarthy, WalesOnline
Jan 15 2012
DEEP in the world’s oldest pyramid, real-life Indiana Jones Peter James faced the prospect of thousands of tons of rock crushing him at any time.

The former Royal Navy lieutenant-commander – dubbed Indiana James by his team – was at the bottom of a 29-metre shaft where he was fighting to save the 4,700-year-old structure.

It was not a job for people who don’t like being boxed in.

The 68-year-old said: “If you went there in the dark and did not know what you were doing you would just fall down the shaft and splat at the bottom.

“And there must be a thousand metres of tunnels underneath.”

In the eight metre square room he and his four man team sat with the stone sarcophagus of Pharaoh Tjoser – built to house the remains of the ancient ruler.

The only way to reach the sarcophagus is to descend a specially built scaffold tower.

All the way down the surrounding walls are dotted entrances to mysterious tunnels.

One leads from one side of the pyramid to the other.

“There is one about half way down that leads to another tunnel,” said Peter.

Peter who has previously worked on renovation projects at Buckingham Palace, the Iron Bridge Gorge and the White House, was unimpressed by them.

“They probably say, ‘Cartwright was here, or whatever,” he said.

After millennia in pitch blackness the rooms of the Pyramid of Tjoser have been flooded with electric light powered by outside generators.

The civil engineer and his colleagues arrived last year tasked with stopping the building, sometimes known as the Step Pyramid, from falling down.

An earthquake in 1992 shifted everything sideways, prompting a total of 200 tonnes of rock to collapse. For 19 years the whole structure could have tumbled at any time.

Using technology developed by Peter’s firm – Newport based Cintec – it was stabilised with scaffolding and massive airbags.

For three months before Christmas they have painstakingly filled cracks in the chamber with mortar to make it solid.

“It’s bloody frightening because it could collapse at any point on your head,” said Peter, who bears little resemblance to his Hollywood nickname-sake.

“I bashed my head on the scaffolding and some rubble fell and I thought, ‘Oh, here we go.’ But it was OK.”

One of his colleagues was startled when a stone shifted unexpectedly.

“He had a bit of a panic and he ran out,” said Peter.

“It’s like working in a prison. It is very enclosed and it is kept at a constant humidity, so it gets a bit warm in there. It’s about 28ºC.”

The dad-of-one and grandfather-of-three has been warned about a curse on the tomb.

He is not superstitious.

More worrying is the “lethal and massive game of Ker-Plunk” he is playing.

“It is the most dangerous job I have done in 28 years,” the former Cardiff Council buildings inspector said.

“It is probably going to go on for another three months.

Designed by the ancient official Imhotep, the 62 metre high construction contains 330,400 cubic meters of stone and clay.

The older Peter gets the more claustrophobic he feels in there.

“If you’re claustrophobic it is even worse in there. I am a little bit claustrophobic.

“The nearer you get to a wooden box the more claustrophobic you get, though I am not too bad.”

Work was put on hold as the ongoing revolution swept the country.

Looters did not touch the pyramid but they plundered computers from site offices – setting them back four months.

Not that it has put Peter off the job.

“I’m loving it,” he said.

“It’s bloody marvellous. I was a building inspector at Cardiff Council so if someone had told me I would be doing pyramids one day I would have told them they were bloody mad.”


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