When the Grateful Dead Played at the Egyptian Pyramids, in the Shadow of the Sphinx (1978)

In Sep­tem­ber of 1978, the Grate­ful Dead trav­eled to Egypt and played three shows at the Great Pyra­mid of Giza, with the Great Sphinx look­ing over their shoul­ders. It was­n’t the first time a rock band played in an ancient set­ting. Pink Floyd per­formed songs in the mid­dle of the Amphithe­atre of Pom­peii in Octo­ber 1971. But Floyd per­formed to an “emp­ty” house, play­ing to no live fans, only ghosts. (Watch footage here.) The Dead­’s shows, on the oth­er hand, were real gigs, attend­ed by Dead­heads who made the jour­ney over, and they could thank Phil Lesh for putting it all in motion. Lesh lat­er said, “it sort of became my project because I was one of the first peo­ple in the band who was on the trip of play­ing at places of pow­er. You know, pow­er that’s been pre­served from the ancient world. The pyra­mids are like the obvi­ous num­ber one choice because no mat­ter what any­one thinks they might be, there is def­i­nite­ly some kind of mojo about the pyra­mids.”

Logis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, the con­certs weren’t the eas­i­est to stage. Rolling Stone report­ed that an “equip­ment truck got stuck in sand and had to be towed by camels.” Because the elec­tric­i­ty in Egypt was an “a winkin’, blinkin’ affair,” Bob Weir lat­er recalled, the jet­lagged band had dif­fi­cul­ties record­ing the first of the three shows. But, as with most adven­tures, the incon­ve­niences were off­set by the won­drous nature of the expe­ri­ence.

Weir cap­tured it well when he said: “I got to a point where the head of the Sphinx was lined up with the top of the Great Pyra­mid, all lit up. All of a sud­den, I went to this time­less place. The sounds from the stage — they could have been from any time. It was as if I went into eter­ni­ty.” The Sphinx and Great Pyra­mid date back to rough­ly 2560 BC.

The Dead were joined on this trip by the coun­ter­cul­ture author Ken Kesey (not to men­tion Bill Gra­ham and Bill Wal­ton) who appar­ent­ly cap­tured footage on Super‑8 reels. (Watch it above.) Kesey him­self lat­er tried to explain the sym­bol­ism of the vis­it, say­ing: “The peo­ple who were there rec­og­nized this as a respect­ful and holy event that went back to some­thing we can all just bare­ly glimpse, them and us both. Our rela­tion­ship to ancient humans. To this place on the plan­et. To the plan­et’s place in the uni­verse. All that cos­mic stuff is what the Dead are based on. The Egyp­tians could under­stand that.”

At the very top of the post, you can see the Dead per­form­ing “Ollin Arageed,” with Egypt­ian oud­ist Hamza el-Din and oth­er local musi­cians, before segu­ing into “Fire on the Moun­tain.” The clip gives you a good feel for the awe-inspir­ing scene. Just above, we have a longer playlist of per­for­mances that took place on Sep­tem­ber 16, 1978 — the same night there was a lunar eclipse. The com­plete 9/16/78 show can be streamed on Archive.org, as can the shows from 9/14 and 9/15. A 2CD/1 DVD pack­age (Rock­ing the Cra­dle: Egypt 1978) cap­tures the Dead­’s vis­it and can be pur­chased online.

To get more on the Pyra­mid con­certs, read Chap­ter 43 of Den­nis McNal­ly’s book, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside His­to­ry of the Grate­ful Dead. And here you can see Dead & Co’s homage to the Egypt adven­ture at the Sphere in Vegas. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

A Walk­ing Tour Around the Pyra­mids of Giza: 2 Hours in Hi Def

Louis Arm­strong Plays Trum­pet at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

Isaac New­ton The­o­rized That the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Revealed the Tim­ing of the Apoc­a­lypse: See His Burnt Man­u­script from the 1680s


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Comments (12)
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  • Yames says:

    It astounds me that such a lame, unin­ter­est­ing band such as the Grate­ful Dung would play such an icon­ic set­ting. Why? Who did they inspire? They played the most ter­ri­ble and embar­rass­ing songs in their long-wind­ed and blow-wind­ed careers. They all played their ticky-tacky pick­ing shit for hours on end. Fuck­ing bor­ing shite!

  • Liam says:

    Wow, sor­ry you are unable to access the con­scious vibe and delight­ful jam melodies… but there’s time… you may have an awak­en­ing and all of a sud­den real­ize that there is so much more to hear and enjoy and then you can get on the bus and join the par­ty… in the mean­while shut yer pie hole if ye ain’t got nut­tin good to say ya slag­ger….

  • Bryce says:

    Poor guy yames, clear­ly the low­est of the Lames; you’re unin­ter­est­ing trolling and absence of intel­lect and cul­ture astounds all of us with more than two func­tion­ing brain cells and unclogged ears. The Grate­ful Dead, and this arti­cle in par­tic­u­lar, seems to have inspired you to vom­it your fuck­ing bor­ing troll shite into this com­ment sec­tion. It is okay to be envi­ous of the Dead’s vast musi­cal tal­ents and their abil­i­ty to inspire an entire com­mu­ni­ty of fans to reli­gious­ly fol­low their musi­cal deities around the globe, to see, hear and feel the spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence of attend­ing a Grate­ful Dead con­cert. This com­mu­ni­ty is still alive and con­stant­ly grow­ing, over 60 years after it began. Don’t be jeal­ous of this fact. There are still plen­ty of seats left for you and oth­ers to sit back and enjoy the trip, along with the rest of us. We will wel­come any­one, even douchebags like your­self.
    Stay lame yames, you fuck­ing mup­pet. Namaste.

  • Jonathan Sherman says:

    Wang dang doo­dle all night long

    “MEOW IS WOOF IN CAT”.
    George Car­lin
    Send­ing love and peace­ful easy feel­ings to my Dead broth­ers & sis­ters
    Keep the faith
    When the storms fly
    And the wind blows
    Go on at a steady pace.

  • Toast17 says:

    Thanks for the insight OC. Hater’s got­ta hate

  • Toast17 says:

    Sorry,OC my mes­sage was in response to yames nasty mes­sage

  • Walker says:

    I agree that they are not very inter­est­ing nor very com­pe­tent musi­cians but they made and con­tin­ue to make a lot of peo­ple hap­py and hap­pi­ness is a good thing. My gar­den may not be your gar­den may not be Dead heads’ gar­den but let a thou­sand flow­ers bloom.

  • Matsey says:

    Bob Dylan must be crazy. And your def­i­nite­ly not a “lazy” music lis­ten­er.

  • TRUE DEADHEAD says:

    James (Lames — more appro­pri­ate). You sound so igno­rant and unin­formed that I won’t both­er try­ing to cor­rect or try to explain what the Dead­’s music and lega­cy mean in the hearts and minds to those of us who have fol­lowed the band for 50+ years. Your sad and fee­ble attempt to char­ac­ter­ize one of the most sig­nif­i­cant bands in the his­to­ry of rock and roll is piti­ful at best and ridicu­lous from the word go. What­ev­er your issue is, it’s appar­ent that you’ll nev­er “get it”. That’s per­fect­ly fine and yet iron­ic that you’d take the time to com­ment on a his­toric and unique video of a con­cert expe­ri­ence that holds no appeal to you. Lots of luck to you, I’m sure 50 years from now peo­ple will still be inter­est­ed enough to watch some­thing that you par­tic­i­pat­ed in…actually nev­er-end­ing, your sad opin­ion will be flushed like the stinky turd you are! FOREVER GRATEFUL, FOREVER DEAD!

  • Davey says:

    And yet peo­ple will be lis­ten­ing to them and tak­ing the time to under­stand and appre­ci­ate their unique genius long after you’re gone. You can even take col­lege cours­es on their music, which drew from near­ly every genre and var­ied every sin­gle night–not just in the songs played but also how they are played. I used to not appre­ci­ate their sound but acknowl­edged I prob­a­bly just did­n’t under­stand it. For­ev­er glad that I went a lit­tle fur­ther down that road. The inter­net is filled to vom­it­ing with peo­ple armed only with an idi­ot­ic, sin­gu­lar log­ic: If I don’t like it, it is crap. Ah, ok. Thank you for your supe­ri­or and flaw­less musi­cal ver­dict.

  • Davey says:

    “Com­pe­tent,” this one says, ay yi yi. Spon­ta­neous­ly impro­vised jams that, on the best nights, sound as tight as a stu­dio album (google May 8, 1977 or, heck, the day before, the day after…). New threads are woven in flaw­less­ly. Songs merge with oth­er songs. Bob Weir weaves coun­ter­point rhythms around the solos. Everone is mesh­ing beau­ti­ful­ly just by their lev­el of atten­tive­ness.

    Jer­ry is on lists of great­est gui­tarists ever for good rea­son. I can’t even imag­ine how it would have sound­ed if he had played the same licks to the same unvary­ing setlist every night like most bands. Gar­cia was mak­ing it up on the spot and still deliv­er­ing vir­tu­oso per­for­mances.

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