Surrounded by sea and bare sand, Sahl Hasheesh’s 48 acres have been turned into an oasis in less than two years. Enormous emerald-green lawns, dotted with palms and sprinkled by immense quantities of desalinated water, sweep down to the sea. A brisk breeze sent white horses galloping towards the shore. Above the beach and facing the sea, a picture-postcard swimming pool makes you feel you are about to swim over the edge of the world.

It was safer to get Mustafa to take me swimming along the reef. “Over there,” he said, pointing to the horizon, “is Sharm el Sheikh.” A huge resort that has grown from nothing in the past 20 years, Sharm is famous for its snorkelling and diving, but you can get both at Sahl Hasheesh — and enjoy them in relative seclusion.

The water temperature was perfect, the coral spectacular. I floated over clumps of what looked like purple flowers, delicate green tabletops and, deeper down, great shelves, columns and canyons. Clams with wavy lips yawned hungrily. Blue and green parrotfish swam right underneath me, followed by a shoal of yellow-and-black butterfly fish, with thin, supercilious streamers curling over their backs like radio antennae.

Mustafa swam close and pointed downwards. I could not see anything, and surfaced spluttering: “What... where?” “Turtle,” he said, and dived down, arm out. This time I saw it: a young leatherback swimming unhurriedly 20ft down, heading away from the reef into the dark, blue, mysterious depths.

That night we dined at the end of the jetty by candlelight, serenaded by two local musicians competing against the breeze off the water. One hundred miles across the desert lay the Nile, Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, where Egyptologists are debating a new riddle: whether a British archeologist, Dr Joann Fletcher, is right in believing a recently discovered mummy is that of Nefertiti, who died 3,400 years ago. Without DNA testing, which the Egyptian authorities refuse to allow, her theory is impossible to prove.

If the brittle bones lying in a cramped grave in the Valley of the Kings really are the remains of Nefertiti, the discovery will be of huge significance. Not only was she a great beauty, many believe she ruled as pharaoh after the death of her husband, Akhenaten, in about 1358BC.

It will also inflame an old Egyptian quarrel with the Germans about her famous bust, excavated by German archeologists in 1912 and taken to Germany illegally, the Egyptians claim. It is now a prize exhibit in the Berlin Museum, which recently commissioned a headless bronze nude on which the Nefertiti bust was placed. This went down badly. “A real insult,” the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr Zahi Hawass, wrote in a Cairo newspaper. Nefertiti, he added, was a national symbol “comparable to the pyramids and the Sphinx”. In Egypt, the past is never far away.

• Sandy Gall was a guest of Oberoi Hotels, Wentworth Travel and British Airways

  TRAVEL BRIEF

  Tour operators: Wentworth Travel (01344 844622, www.wentworthtravel.com) has two nights at the Mena House Oberoi, in a suite overlooking the pyramids, and three nights at the Oberoi Sahl Hasheesh for £1,129pp, B&B, including flights from Heathrow with British Airways (regional supplements from £60). Or try Abercrombie & Kent (0845 070 0612, www.abercrombiekent.co.uk), Longwood Holidays (020 8551 4494, www.longwoodholidays.co.uk) or Peltours (020 8371 5200, www.peltours.com).

  Further information: Egyptian Tourist Office (020 7493 5283, www.interoz.com/egypt).

Times recommends

• 10 of Rough Guides' best images
• How to do Florence for free
• The UK and Ireland's 25 best Christmas events