Emissions/Kilian Doyle:Haven't got long to chat. I'm being shunted off on another world museum tour. Funny when you think about it - I lie unmolested in my tomb for five millennia, only to be "discovered" by a few mad Englishmen and paraded ceaselessly around the planet like some freakish toy for 100 years.
I've been more places dead than I ever dreamed existed when I was Pharaoh. The museum bit is fine - shiny lights and stardom. One misses that kind of thing locked in a tomb. Cockroaches don't really cut it in the adoration stakes.
I really don't mind being poked and prodded by ignorant porters and reprobate children - the ability to dish out curses is a great comfort. But it's the endless travelling that gets me so wound up, if you'll excuse the pun.
Sarcophagi are no fun. True, we Egyptians were pretty classy in our time - when the rest of humanity was living in caves and chewing the bark of trees, we were knocking together pyramids and filling them with treasures so that the dead could get their round in when they reached the next world. But could nobody have thought of padding us poor mummies with an odd cushion or two?
It's not so bad in some places - Singapore, for example. Nine minutes to travel five kilometres in a van, it took. Amsterdam, Paris and Helsinki - airport to museum in less than a quarter of an hour. London's superb too - only 13 minutes from door to door . . . and they sure know how to look after an old man in a mask in Soho.
But some places make me wish I were born an anonymous Mongolian yak herder. Frankfurt? Unbelievable. Four times as long to get around than anywhere else in Europe.
Except Dublin, that is. In terms of horror destinations, it barely scrapes ahead of the Black Hole of Calcutta. It's not the people I hate, although last time I was there some little delinquents tried to unwrap me.
The journey from the smelly port to that nice old building with the bit added on to the side of it took longer than my funeral procession up the River Nile. That's some achievement, considering all the floods and superstitious subjects prostrating themselves in front of the cortege before feeding themselves to the crocodiles. I hear there are plenty of slimy reptiles facing a flood in Dublin too. Maybe that explains why the place is such a mess?
Still, there are some consolations. I'm sure to have a reasonably quiet time - I can't imagine the public will bother braving the horror traffic to ogle an old former ruler in a box. Or would they?
kdoyle@irish-times.com