Be still my geeking heart.I saw the pyramids.
The driver we hired for the day was totally trying to hustle us for commissions all day, trying to take us to various "free museums" to drink tea and "get information" about perfumes and papyrus and other tourist purchases, but we weren't buying it. Before the pyramids he took us to this stable that tried to sell us a horse tour that included "tickets to the Sphinx." There are no admission tickets to the Sphinx. Lame.
But the pyramids themselves were amazing. You catch your first glimpse of them from the highway as you drive through Cairo, and they loom over everything, dwarfing all the high rise apartment buildings. I felt like all the kids from my camp this summer who were nearly passing out with anticipation of their Jonas Brothers concert...only way older and dorkier. Once you get there, the Sphinx (no tickets, please) is surprisingly small...or at least he looks small compared to the giant structures behind him. The "Father of Terrors" isn't really so terrifying. But he's awesome, even with no nose. We explored the funerary temples (entirely in ruins but still fun to poke around) for a while, and then started hitting the pyramids from smallest to biggest, all the while fending off offers of horse and camel rides to the panoramic viewpoint. The smallest pyramid actually has a huge chunk taken out where one of Saladin's nephews tried to take it apart, only to realize the thing is way too huge.
One of the pyramids still has part of its limestone outer casing intact. Even though it's not polished anymore, it's really beautiful. I can't imagine how it must have looked when the whole thing was perfectly smooth and gleaming in the Egyptian sun (which is brutal, by the way). The Great Pyramid wasn't as huge as I thought it would be. I don't know what I was expecting. I think being on Kilimanjaro has maybe altered my sense of scale just a little bit, so anything less huge-normous than...say...a mountain doesn't impress me much. But it was still amazing to think that the ancient Egyptians managed to put that thing together without the help of the wheel. Amazing.
After Giza we went to Saqqara, where there is a cemetery you can wander through. It still has a lot of reliefs intact, some even still have traces of paint! The step pyramid is also out there, along with a partially restored temple complex. The step pyramid was the world's first stone monument (as opposed to mud brick), which tells you something about how old it is. It was designed by a guy named Imhotep, who is not, for you fans of The Mummy movie, a guy who was mummified alive. He was an engineer who was so smart that people started worshipping him as a god after he died. Now that's smartness.
We saved the best for last: Dashur. Dashur is rarely visited by tourists so we had the place practically to ourselves. It's home to the bent pyramid and the red pyramid. The bent one was the first attempt at a smooth sided pyramid - didn't go so hot, and halfway up they realized that if they kept going up it would collapse under its own weight. Too steep of an angle. The red pyramid was the first one they got right. The stone has a slightly red tinge to it in evening light, and actually looked bigger to me than the Great Pyramid, even though it is way smaller.
The coolest thing about Dashur is that we got to go into the burial chamber (you can do that with the Great Pyramid but there's millions of people there, no fun). To get there you climb down a very narrow and very steep shaft for almost 100m, then suddenly you're in these big burial chambers. It's crazy hot in there, and hard to imagine that the whole weight of the pyramid is above you. So Indiana Jones. I loved every second of it.
I have tons of great pictures of the day but alas this computer doesn't have a USB connection so no photos today. Perhaps when I finish up the felucca tour in Luxor...
The driver we hired for the day was totally trying to hustle us for commissions all day, trying to take us to various "free museums" to drink tea and "get information" about perfumes and papyrus and other tourist purchases, but we weren't buying it. Before the pyramids he took us to this stable that tried to sell us a horse tour that included "tickets to the Sphinx." There are no admission tickets to the Sphinx. Lame.
But the pyramids themselves were amazing. You catch your first glimpse of them from the highway as you drive through Cairo, and they loom over everything, dwarfing all the high rise apartment buildings. I felt like all the kids from my camp this summer who were nearly passing out with anticipation of their Jonas Brothers concert...only way older and dorkier. Once you get there, the Sphinx (no tickets, please) is surprisingly small...or at least he looks small compared to the giant structures behind him. The "Father of Terrors" isn't really so terrifying. But he's awesome, even with no nose. We explored the funerary temples (entirely in ruins but still fun to poke around) for a while, and then started hitting the pyramids from smallest to biggest, all the while fending off offers of horse and camel rides to the panoramic viewpoint. The smallest pyramid actually has a huge chunk taken out where one of Saladin's nephews tried to take it apart, only to realize the thing is way too huge.
One of the pyramids still has part of its limestone outer casing intact. Even though it's not polished anymore, it's really beautiful. I can't imagine how it must have looked when the whole thing was perfectly smooth and gleaming in the Egyptian sun (which is brutal, by the way). The Great Pyramid wasn't as huge as I thought it would be. I don't know what I was expecting. I think being on Kilimanjaro has maybe altered my sense of scale just a little bit, so anything less huge-normous than...say...a mountain doesn't impress me much. But it was still amazing to think that the ancient Egyptians managed to put that thing together without the help of the wheel. Amazing.
After Giza we went to Saqqara, where there is a cemetery you can wander through. It still has a lot of reliefs intact, some even still have traces of paint! The step pyramid is also out there, along with a partially restored temple complex. The step pyramid was the world's first stone monument (as opposed to mud brick), which tells you something about how old it is. It was designed by a guy named Imhotep, who is not, for you fans of The Mummy movie, a guy who was mummified alive. He was an engineer who was so smart that people started worshipping him as a god after he died. Now that's smartness.
We saved the best for last: Dashur. Dashur is rarely visited by tourists so we had the place practically to ourselves. It's home to the bent pyramid and the red pyramid. The bent one was the first attempt at a smooth sided pyramid - didn't go so hot, and halfway up they realized that if they kept going up it would collapse under its own weight. Too steep of an angle. The red pyramid was the first one they got right. The stone has a slightly red tinge to it in evening light, and actually looked bigger to me than the Great Pyramid, even though it is way smaller.
The coolest thing about Dashur is that we got to go into the burial chamber (you can do that with the Great Pyramid but there's millions of people there, no fun). To get there you climb down a very narrow and very steep shaft for almost 100m, then suddenly you're in these big burial chambers. It's crazy hot in there, and hard to imagine that the whole weight of the pyramid is above you. So Indiana Jones. I loved every second of it.
I have tons of great pictures of the day but alas this computer doesn't have a USB connection so no photos today. Perhaps when I finish up the felucca tour in Luxor...
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