Well, what time is it?

Dusk, then darkness, settled over the large crowd facing the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid at Giza. Soon, only the stars dimly lit the scene. Then a powerful array of lights shone on the Sphinx and an English voice proclaimed, "I am the Pharaoh! The Pharaoh fears only time! Time fears only the Pyramid!" At that moment, other lights illuminated the Great Pyramid, Cheops (Fig. 1). I felt a slight shiver as I contemplated the centuries embodied in the panorama before me, and, as a young metrologist, I couldn??t help wondering about the possibility that time, perhaps the most relentless of life\´s forces, could know fear. I had no idea how my hosts, staff members of the Egyptian standards agency, perceived the sound-and-light display, but some forty years later I still remember it well.