You'll forgive the writer's laxity, as yesterday was a 27-hour skin-of-our-teeth adventure through many airports. I'll discuss that in the next post, along with my final thoughts on this trip.
The last day of our tour was packed, starting back on the bus at 6:00. Our first destination was the Saqqara necropolis, where we saw the original step pyramid created by the pharaoh Zoser. Before about 3200 BCE, the ancient Egyptians didn't mummify their dead the way we know them to have in later dynasties; they simply buried the bodies in shallow graves in the desert. This led to a lot of dead royalty being eaten by jackals.
After that, they began covering their dead with large square slabs of sandstone called mastaba to protect them from burrowing paws or eager robbers. It was Zoser, the founder of the third dynasty (of thirty dynasties), who first decided to stack the mastaba on top of each other. He had his chief architect, Imhotep (who you might remember is deified in the Roman-era hospital area of Kom Ombo), create a design for the original pyramid tomb, which, after several revisions and added stacks, was completed around 2700 BCE.
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| Our Egyptologist Walid lecturing to us about the Step Pyramid of Zoser |
Did you know that mummies were really only designed to last about a year, as that is how long the ancient Egyptians believed it took for the soul or ka to make the trip through the afterlife to be judged by Osiris and return to reclaim their bodies? They would travel back down to Earth, pick up their flesh suits, and then move on to A'aru, the Field of Reeds, to spend eternity. The masks that adorned the mummies and the sarcophagi made in the image of the pharaoh were to assist the ka in finding the body when it returned to Earth.
Saqqara was home to a few noteworthy tombs, including those of Zoser and Unas, both of which we visited. The entire complex was surrounded by an enclosure wall made of sandstone and actually polished with sand in its day. Nowadays, the corridors of the funerary temple built into the enclosure wall are shiny from just around shoulder to waist level, where countless tourists have touched it. Walid says this is the oldest wall in history, but the internet notes that the walls of Jericho (8000 BCE) and the prehistoric walls of Theopetra (21000 BCE) are markedly older. I think you might be reading this, Walid, so feel free to correct me!
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| Walking through the Funerary Complex at Saqqara |
One fascinating thing about Zoser's pyramid, other than being the original, is the multiple entrances leading to an entire subterranean complex of tunnels and galleries, all dug below the pyramid instead of starting from within it like in later pyramids. Each of the major galleries had its own ground entrance, only one of which led to the actual burial chamber of the king.
The other pyramid we visited was that of the pharaoh Unas, which, honestly, from the outside, isn't much to look at. The pyramid was reduced to rubble by earthquakes. However, the burial chamber and passage to it remained blissfully intact, and it's a real treasure because not only is the journey down into it pretty easy, but the burial chamber itself contains a wealth of some of the oldest known hieroglyphics in pristine condition, with the original coloring intact.
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| The crumbled pyramid of Unas |
There is also an amazing hidden engraving of King Khufu (of Giza pyramid fame, more on him later) located on the side wall of the burial chamber. But why Khufu when this was the tomb of Unas? Unas was pharaoh at the end of the fifth dynasty, a time of financial depression for ancient Egypt, and many of the blocks used to create the tomb of Unas were actually pilfered from either the Great Pyramid itself or from Khufu's palace, which remains undiscovered to this day.
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| The secret image of Khufu in the Burial Chamber of Unas |
After Saqqara, we made another shopping stop, this time to one of the many rug academies in the surrounding county of Badrashin. Students and teachers hand weave stunning wool, cotton, and silk rugs. The difficulty in weaving increases with the fineness of the material, so the silk weaves are reserved for the more advanced students and the teachers themselves. We got to observe how the silk is spun from silkworm cocoons after extracting the worm and soaking the casing, and watched as many of the students worked on complex pieces to be added to the upstairs gallery. A portion of sales from the academy goes to funding the students' education. Larger pieces (some as big as 3 meters by 5 meters) can take up to three years to complete.
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| Student hand-weaving a complex pictural rug |
I admit to making a rather expensive purchase here of a gorgeous silk rug we plan on using as a tapestry on one of our walls. It depicts the tree of life, a common theme in Egyptian art, and while not huge, it was definitely the most expensive thing we purchased on the trip. I'm in love with it, though.
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| Our beautiful new silk rug with a depiction of the Tree of Life |
The next stop on our packed day was the Museum of Memphis. Memphis is Egypt's original capital, located not too far south of Cairo. It was the capital city of Egypt for about a thousand years before Thebes took its place. Sadly, not much remains of the city. Earthquakes and time have reduced it to a few artifacts, mostly housed in the small outdoor museum.
The centerpiece of the museum is the massive fallen statue of Ramses the Great. It is the largest extant depiction of Ramses and would have towered 22 meters (72 ft) in height when it was upright. It is made of limestone and is so heavy that the Antiquities Ministery could not move it from its present location, so they built a museum around it. Originally, the statue would have been mere meters from the Nile River, but the river has since shifted to be about three miles away.
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| Titanic statue of Ramses II at the Memphis Museum |
The other great treasure of this museum is the Alabaster Sphinx, which honors an unknown pharaoh, as there are no cartouches engraved on its surface -- I guess this is one that Ramses II didn't get his mitts on. It's believed it may depict Hatshepsut or possibly Amenhotep II or III. It is one of the largest alabaster statues to come out of ancient Egypt and is beautifully preserved, considering the softness of the stone.
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| Alabaster Sphinx at the Memphis Museum |
After Memphis, we had another 45-minute bus ride to the crowning destination of our journey -- the Great Pyramid complex at Giza. The Giza necropolis houses nine pyramids in total, along with the Great Sphinx. The three largest pyramids are dedicated to a single line of Pharaohs: Khufu III, his son Khefre, and Khefre's son Menkaure. While the Great Pyramid is pretty...great, it is frankly a bit spoiled by the sheer number of tourists making the pilgrimage to see it and the extra-aggressive peddlers that surround it to hock their cheap wares -- the same ones available at almost every tourist location. But it was marvelous to see up close, and of course, as is the way of these things, pictures cannot do it justice.
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| Here's a picture of the Great Pyramid of Khufu anyway, with a dog for added appeal. Thankfully, he did not demand tips. |
There is a lot of speculation about how the pyramids were built and the time it took to build them. Herodotus claims that the construction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu took only 20 years, but there's speculation that it was closer to 30. Khufu's pyramid contains 2.5 million blocks of limestone and was allegedly built by only ten thousand workers. Archaeologists believe many of the stones were quarried nearby, while the higher-quality finishing stones were moved down the river from Aswan. At any rate, all (reputable) archaeologists agree that it wasn't ancient aliens, just plain old human ingenuity and labor.
The second large pyramid at Giza, Khefre's, appears taller than Khufu's Great Pyramid due to its construction at a higher elevation, but where the pyramid of Khufu had an original height of ~147 meters, Khefre's was ~143 meters. Only the pyramid of Khefre still has some of its remaining polished limestone casing.
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| Kefre's Pyramid in the Giza complex. Note the remaining outer casing at the top. |
While we only viewed Khefre's pyramid from a distance, we actually had the opportunity to delve into the pyramid of Menkaure and see the burial chamber. Like our exploration of the Red Pyramid at Dashour, going into the burial chamber is more of a bucket list item than a particularly spectacular tomb. It is, however, a much easier delve and only took about a minute of back-hunched, graded climbing to get down into the ante-chamber. It was still a fun time, however, and since a lot fewer people were willing to go down into the cramped corridor, it was less jammed with tourists.
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| I'm in a pyramid |
After the ground-level (and subterranean) tour of the pyramids, we drove to a panorama site where we took a group photo of our whole bus (We were bus 1 of 3) and got some very nice shots of the pyramids from higher altitude and then...to the camels.
As Walid said, it's almost always the first question people ask when you say you've gone to Egypt -- did you ride a camel? Well, we wanted the answer to be yes, so almost everyone on the bus dropped 20 bucks a person to hop on the back of the giant creatures; they seem way bigger when you're astride one, as your head is easily almost 3 meters (12 feet) above the ground. I certainly wouldn't call it a smooth ride, either. Camels are very bumpy walkers, and while you can get into a natural rhythm with them, we did a lot of stopping and were tethered together in a tight caravan, which meant they were starting and stopping quite a bit. We galumphed out about a hundred feet into the Sahara, got some pictures taken, and harumphed back to the vista. Sean and I were both pretty epically sore the following morning. But hey, we can claim my official camel-rider merit badges now.
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| Proof of camel riding |
The last major site of our journey was the enigmatic Great Sphinx. The ancient Egyptians didn't refer to the ~22 meter (66 foot) statue as a "Sphinx"; the Greeks associated the chimeric statue with their own legendary beast. Some writings refer to the Sphinx as "Horus on the Horizon," though the defender of the necropolis looks nothing like the falcon-headed god.
While the face of the Sphinx is likely the visage of Khefre, there's some debate in the archaeological community that it might have been built by Khufu, while Khefre may have gone back and re-carved the face to be his own. There's no physical evidence to support the claim, but there's some circumstantial evidence -- Herodotus claimed a connection between the two, and its position in the Giza complex is closer to Khufu's pyramid than it is to Khefre's.
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| The Great Sphinx |
Waving goodbye to the crowded Giza plateau, we were off to our last actual stop on the tour (aside from the hotel, of course), which I have to say I was disappointed in. This was another shopping stop at a local department store specializing in Egyptian cotton goods. I could see the appeal for some; they had some fancy tablecloths but were a lacy style that didn't fit our taste. They also sold additional luggage, though no one on the bus took advantage. All in all, it felt like an off-note on an otherwise extremely memorable day.
At last, we returned to the hotel. On the way back, Walid gave his farewell speech, which seemed to choke him up. He said we'd been one of the most fun groups he'd toured around, and even if that's just a line, we were happy to accept the compliment. Maybe we were all a little choked up, too. Carrie was certainly bawling, but she'd cry at a rather nice-looking leaf in the breeze, I think. (I love you, Carrie!) Walid hugged us all individually as we got off the bus, and we managed a group photo with him and the small council. We also got his contact info in case he visits California, which is a real possibility! Then we can tour him around and return the honor.
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| The gang saying goodbye to Walid |
Tomorrow is the return trip, and I'm dreading it for multiple reasons, including a nail-biting short layover in Istanbul and, of course, the 12-hour leg from there to Seattle. Tomorrow, I'll sum up the trip, and then I'll likely do a little piece with some travel tips.
As always, thanks for reading!
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