Sunbathing with two sub-machineguns near by is a curious experience. There I was, lazing along the Nile, when our luxurious liner was boarded by armed tourist police. Docked, things got even more exciting. Special operations officers, dressed in black, drove us in convoy, horns blaring, through roadblocks to the Temple of Dendara.

Essential security or showing off? Whichever – the original occupants would have approved: the Pharaohs loved a grand entrance.

I was doing Egypt as I’ve never done it before: expensively. A night beneath the silhouette of the Giza Pyramids in the superlative Mena House Hotel, followed by a week on the new Nile cruiser The Zahra.

Now I’ll confess. Much of this trip indulged every fantasy I’ve ever had. For years I’ve tramped around the Eastern Med and North Africa, so dusty and drenched with sweat that tiny rivulets of mud run from my shoulders to my toes. Back then even a functioning shower was a blessing.

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But thanks to the Oberoi-Zahra experience a carafe of chilled water was pressed into my hands en route to the sites. Returning I was offered karkade – fresh hibiscus juice. The evening finished, if I so chose, with a rubdown and full-body manipulation by a Thai girl. Hmmm, life just got very good.

The Oberoi group offers luxury in an ancient setting. There are 80-plus cruisers on the Nile, all lining up to see the mind-boggling achievements of the Ancient Egyptians. Now you can become a history buff with a little help from a computerised telescope, cocktails after sunset (within the temple precincts), spa sessions, even a room for your bodyguard. Given the Ancient Egyptians’ adoration of all things sensual, this OTT experience feels strangely appropriate.

The cruise motors from Luxor (Ancient Thebes) to the Aswan Dam and back again. Spanning the Nile, elements of an Egyptian heaven are still here: oleanders, vines, papyrus plants, lotuses and the lifeblood of the chameleon inky-pearly-azure river itself. The Ancients believed that the blessed in the afterlife would live in a land heavy with fish, fowl and the fruits of the earth. Driving into the Valley of the Kings, we saw an ibis pacing our minibus, a silver-wet fish, freshly caught, thrashing in her beak.

This is why seeing Egyptian splendours in Egypt itself is a must. The ancient objects are intrinsically exquisite, but behind European glass the searing sensuality of the culture that produced them is muted. On Egyptian soil you can appreciate pharaonic culture in the raw: the irregular rockiness of the rock-carved tombs, newly discovered wall paintings so brilliantly garish they look like modern-day imitations of themselves, caverns where you breathe the same fuggish air as those who made faïence pomegranates, spoons in the shape of swimming girls, kid-soft, inlaid-leather dog collars – all buried for the world to come within the vast, primeval, geological opera that is the Valley of the Kings.

And an Egyptian adventure – however sophisticated – allows us all to become children once more. Led by our guide, a moustached, Harrison Ford manqué, we clambered through gloomy passages within 3,500-year-old sanctuaries and sat in the dark listening to the tales of long-dead heroes.

The most curmudgeonly of visitors flushed pink with excitement when offered the chance to decode hieroglyphs. After a son et lumière show at Karnak Temple we wandered around in the velvet black imagining the ghosts of the past, and middle-aged couples smooched under the stars like teenagers.

Ours was the virgin voyage on The Zahra and things were not absolutely ready. The cabins weren’t sufficiently soundproofed (I quite like the tinkle of other people cleaning their teeth, but that’s not to everyone’s taste). But the staff bent over backwards to help.

I voiced an interest in local food: that night the Indian chef (yes, he does a mean curry) ran up a feast worthy of a fairytale souk. Golden cartouches, gifts for my daughters, appeared by my bed the morning we left. As the operations manager, Tariq, said to me, with a just perceptible wink: “This is Egypt, anything is possible.”

I’ll not pretend. There is, for me, something a little odd about drifting bikini-clad, moist from the open-air pool or mist spray that wafts over the sun deck, through the heart of Luxor. The words gilding and lily spring to mind. The Ancient Egyptians were far more than just bling-merchants, they were intensely spiritual.

Temple complexes treated the well-being of body and mind. Much of Ancient Egypt’s 4,000-year history was peaceful: they cherished ma’at – moderation and good order. Mind you, King Tut, Nefertiti, Ramses et al also enjoyed their creature comforts. Even those scrawny pyramid-builders had impressive beer rations, and one key deity, the cow-headed Hathor, was known as “the lady of drunkenness”.

Thank Amun, whatever the size of your wallet, you cannot completely blot out contemporary Egypt. Driving through Cairo, plastic bags blossom in the canals like polythene lilies. Dogs and donkeys, cats and children meander through the traffic; mules stray on to the ring road.

Toothless old boys sprawl out on day beds (poor cousins of Tutankhamun’s own lion-legged recliner). Here there will always be mosquitoes, the oily thump of generators where you least expect them, the grubby, grinning little boys who row past in dinghies piled high with sugar cane.

The Ancient Egyptians were a little troubled by sunset (this marked the moment the sun god was swallowed by the earth to spend 12 hours in the netherworld). But Egyptians revel in the cool of the night, so sightseeing opportunities continue well after dark. Go with the flow. Join the night owls. The street scene is still kicking at 2.30am.

The Luxor Museum opens late, so here is a chance to see tomb-painters’ palettes, splodged with half-used pigments; animal-headed, full-breasted alabaster goddesses; the humanity of the New Kingdom ruler Sesostris II, careworn bags etched under his eyes. Black granite Pharaohs and their queens line the walls, their stomachs carved with such enticing, curved precision it is all you can do to stop yourself leaning over and copping a feel.

Throughout antiquity, Egyptian artefacts were thought the most beautiful on earth. Replicas were palmed off with the label “made in Egypt”. But artefacts are best experienced in context. Whatever the gorgeousness of the Tutankhamun exhibition, it can’t match the wonder of a sweet Theban night, the awe of intricately carved columns disappearing 20m (70ft) into the night sky or an Egyptian boy’s smile – particularly when you see the doppelgänger of that selfsame boy on the walls of every tomb you visit.

Even if you can’t afford the Oberoi’s price tag, go to the Tutankhamun exhibition in London and then get yourself on a plane to Cairo... and beyond (never miss the chance to go to Luxor). Steep yourself in the sensuality of this miraculous country. It is only when you breathe in the mongrel scents of ancient Thebes and watch the Nile, lined with date palms, guarded by crocodylus niloticus (crocodiles to you and me) that you truly travel not just in space but in time.

Bettany Hughes is a historian and broadcaster. Her latest book is Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore (Pimlico, £8.99).

Need to know

Cox & Kings (020-7873 5000, www.coxandkings.co.uk) offers an 11-night Nile holiday with three nights’ B&B in a pyramid-view room at the Oberoi Mena House in Giza and seven nights on board Oberoi Zahra, from £1,795pp. The cost includes flights, transfers and all excursions.

Glories of ancient Egypt revealed

Egyptian Museum, Cairo: A new museum is planned, so this is the last chance to see priceless treasures bundled chaotically together.
Luxor Museum: A crouched Syro-Palestinian captive, carved out of grey granite, reminds us that Ancient Egypt’s power came at considerable cost.
KV-63: A newly discovered tomb (www.kv-63.com) on the West Bank of Thebes – possibly a cache of embalmers’ materials. Limited public access has been promised soon.
British Council, Cairo: See the latest in the contemporary Egyptian arts scene (www.britishcouncil.org/ egypt-arts-culture-events).

and closer to home...

British Museum: What could possibly beat a wet London afternoon spent cosied up with a sphinx? If mummies, some still with wisps of hair on leathered skin, are too ghoulish for you, don’t venture upstairs (www.britishmuseum.co.uk).
Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of The Pharaoahs: The shop is full of tat and the American commentary should have been redubbed, but the 130 Ancient Egyptian treasures are still some of the most fabulous artefacts on earth (At the 02 bubble, North Greenwich, London until August 30, 2008. www.visitlondon.com/tutankhamun).

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