Although this old man reopened on July 1, with new mandatory temperature controls and social distances at the front, only a few citizens come.
A dove perched on the face of the majestic Elongated Sphinx is its solitary host.
“It’s been very complicated for everyone. We spent 4 months at home,” says Ashraf Nasr, who has been offering camel rides to tourists for 25 years. “Each camel wants a hundred Egyptian pounds ($6; 5 per day for food”).
He forced to sell two of his animals to feed his family, like some other owner, Hamdi Mohammed.
The picture was different before the pandemic. After years of political unrest and a fatal bombing of a plane in 2015, tourism was booming.
In 2019, 13.6 million other people visited Egypt and are expected to exceed 15 million this year.
“Finally, everything so stable. I’ve been busy all week. But after the coronavirus, it all just disappeared,” says tour consultant Shahenda Adel, who lives in Giza.
He lost 1,000 bookings after preventing overseas flights in mid-March and says it affected many others.
“We had to cancel hotels, and this takes into account everyone who works at the hotel, the travel company itself, everyone else at the counters. We all lost our jobs. And then there are drivers and restaurants,” he says.
The Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Khaled el-Anany, is tasked with recovering and helping to revive the economy.
“It’s a crisis for us, like the whole world,” he said. “We’ve lost about $1 billion a month and we estimate we’ll still lose a lot of cash in the coming weeks and months.”
In recent days, Anany has made media appearances to provide new hygiene and protection standards as museums have reopened and some foreign flights have resumed to the southern provinces of Sinai, the Red Sea and Matrouh.
He says there are no cases of Covid-19 in those coastal areas, which makes them safer.
“Right now you will see the beaches, the sun, the desert, the water activities, it is the outdoors and the sea.
“Later, we will open the Nile Valley, with Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor and Aswan.”
Many industry players expect to see adjustments such as the pullback of mass tourism, but they say they can be positive, with new sanitation measures and reducing overcrowding in popular places.
“People all over the world are now looking for giant crowds as much as possible, so I guess there will be more very small groups, if not individual hikers,” says Mona el-Dessouki, some other tour guide.
She sees the mask as her challenge.
“Our job depends mainly on eye contact and the smile we welcome our guests with, but now the mask will be hiding half of our faces,” she says.
“Wearing the mask for many hours on a bus tour, in enclosed spaces such as museums, airports and airplanes, will not be as simple as it seems.”
Back in Giza, there were massive cleaning operations around the pyramids, such as ancient monuments.
The country knows that it can count on the enduring appeal of its pharaonic past.
“Egypt is different, a set of wonders,” says Ms. Adel, the guide. “After all, who doesn’t need to come and see the pyramids? It’s on everyone’s wish list.”