This time last year I ‘did’ Cairo’s Tahrir Square when civil war and revolution claimed nobody’s mind.

Only wide smiles celebrated Egypt’s Africa Cup triumph and, of course, the ever-lucrative extraction of shekels from all of us amiable tourists.

Today’s television shows me the overpass that took us to Tutankhamun’s tomb and the Pyramids; precious ancient history now endangered by looting petrol bombers.

It brings to mind another Egyptian tyrant oppressing a different generation, facing a remarkably similar plea to the one before President Hosni Mubarak this morning – ‘let the people go.’ The people were the Israelites led by Moses facing a stubborn Pharaoh who, like his present-day successor, had not the slightest intention of bowing to the rabble.

Three millennia and more ago it took plagues of frogs and locust, and the death of each eldest Egyptian son to crack the impasse. And even when Pharaoh let God’s people go, second thoughts made him chase them into the Red Sea, drowning his army in the process (Exodus 4 to 14).

One day we might learn from history, and the major lesson of the Middle East’s past is that there’s more at work than mere man.

Three major religions and 3.5 billion followers know God is intricately involved and any who ignore this bury heads and hearts in deserts of sand.

And now something new is happening. First Tunisia rebels, then Egypt, and now Jordan, and today’s Pharaohs know creeping fear while historically-enslaved peoples glimpse hope.

God help them, and may the cry of freedom be heeded without recourse to plagues.