Nile cruising hasn’t always had the best reputation... cramped cabins, conveyor-belt excursions, a fair-to-middling chance of food poisoning.

But the bar has been raised this season with the arrival of the Oberoi Zahra, the first genuinely luxurious boat to float down Egypt’s main artery.

You still get to marvel at how the Nile’s lush banks of date palms and Moses grasses fade away to endless biscuity biblical desert and distant mountains; you can still spy on the riverside villages where naughty, stick-wielding boys tease the family camel, much as they might have two centuries ago; and you can still watch their fathers in rickety feluccas, expertly spearing fish for that night’s supper.

You’re just doing it from the spa bath on the main deck of a luxurious ship, glass of hibiscus-flavoured champagne in hand.

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Forget poky, windowless cabins: Zahra’s 27 suites are twice the size of the average New York hotel room. Interior design is unintimidatingly modern – matt-black rattan recliners, clotted creams for the raw-silk and leather furnishings, with chestnut horsehair rugs for added texture – but the winning feature is the picture windows, providing gorgeous views from the plumply feathered bed, the lounge area, even from under the vast rainforest shower.

The boat has a glamorous bar, a cigar lounge and a cinema (which, of course, shows Death on the Nile). There’s an outdoor pool, a gym, a hairdresser’s and a spa, with four huge, flower-strewn rooms and Thai therapists. (Treatments are ayurvedic rather than Egyptian – how could they miss the trick of a Cleopatra milk bath?)

The dining room’s backlit alabaster walls are beautiful, and the affable chef is happy to tear up the daily gourmet suggestions (from risottos to Asian prawn rolls) and head off-menu – the Middle Eastern and Indian dishes were the tastiest. Of course, the $64m question is, will this Egyptian kitchen give me gyp? Unlikely. Several guests complained that the food was so good, they’d put on weight. There’s no pleasing some people.

In all, it is quite a billet for the eight-day drift through 5,000 years of civilisation, tripping down the gangplank at regular intervals to take in a glorious temple or do a spot of souvenir-hunting in the souks. Cruising from Aswan to Luxor, the first-night excursion was the sound and light show at Philae temple, a place that is the result of not one but two impressive feats of construction.

A consequence of the building of the Aswan High Dam was that Philae’s original site had to be flooded, so, amid great controversy, Unesco supervised the painstaking eight-year relocation of the entire complex, stone by crumbling stone, 500yd west to a higher island. The “light” bit of the show was not half as tacky as it sounds: the added dimension that the cloak of shadows threw on the delicate wallpaper of hieroglyphs and elegant architectural lines was awesome.

I could have happily done without the “sound” – the script was comical and the delivery very Rada-reject-does-Dame-Judi – but, overall, the drama of the darkness was magical. Back on board, there’s a resident astronomer to interpret those starry, starry nights.

During the day, each suite is assigned a personal guide, who choreographs tours with the smoothness of Anton du Beke’s foxtrot. Guests never wait: Oberoi’s black Mercedes van lurks like a CIA surveillance unit to whisk clients from the boat to various sites. Guests never queue: the guide fast-tracks every entrance turnstile with the efficiency of an Olympic hurdler.

This five-star hermetically sealed bubble even extends to hawkers, who proffer their wares from a discreet distance.

If your jaw doesn’t drop every five seconds in the Valley of the Kings, do check you still have a pulse. It is humbling to witness the magnificence of this culture’s ability to balance technical skills (more than 60 tombs have been excavated, some burrowing more than 300ft into solid rock and containing dozens of chambers) and sophisticated creativity (every high-street fashion trend borrows something from these incredibly vivid designs).

Sadly, you will be in the sort of snappy crocodile that the ancients did not worship. But Oberoi’s clout occasionally extends even to crowd control. One night, Edfu, the best preserved of the pharaonic temples, was opened just for Zahra’s guests. As the sun set, 10 of us strolled through Edfu’s 118ft-high pylon and stood in its vast courtyard, with just its 32 intricately carved columns for company. I felt as privileged as any high priest.

Susan d’Arcy travelled as a guest of Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000, www.coxandkings.co.uk ), which has seven nights, all-inclusive, on the Oberoi Zahra and four nights, B&B, at the Mena House, in Cairo, from £1,815pp, including British Airways flights from Heathrow to Cairo, domestic flights with Egyptair and all shore excursions.

Other tour operators featuring the Zahra include Carrier (0161 491 7650, www.carrier.co.uk ), Bales Worldwide (0845 057 1819, www.balesworldwide.com ) and Kuoni (01306 747002, www.kuoni.co.uk )

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