Cairo & Giza Pyramids

Thursday, December 6, 2007

I have revised my impressions of Egypt somewhat. I was mistaken about the road and street signs only being in Arabic. I could only see the Arabic ones when I arrived, but they do have English translations in places. Still, you couldn’t pay me to drive here. I thought the Cypriot drivers were maniacs, but in Egypt they are desperate. It is bad enough that no one stays in their lanes properly where they are fairly wide and new…the buses mostly drive down the middle straddling two lanes, darting this way and that as needed to pass other vehicles. Where there are two marked lanes there are frequently three lanes of traffic. When ones gets into Cairo, the main roads have many more lanes both marked and in traffic and many cars have scrapes and scratches down their sides, and fender bender dents from all the nose to nose and side by side traffic that is racing through. There is little space between vehicles when they are driving. The traffic jams are horrendous and it takes a couple of hours to get from the airport to the Pyramids at the other side of the city. Mind you, it would probably take a long time anyway to get across the city as it’s huge.


Driving into Cairo from the airport there are many road vendors either set up along the side, or travelling into the city to sell their wares. Truckloads of open baskets filled with fresh picked produce are also a familiar site.

Apparently there are from 16-20,000,000 people living in Cairo (including the suburbs) with 8,000,000 in the core area and the infrastructure here cannot accommodate these huge numbers. I found I didn’t care for Cairo much, but others who have stayed there for several days and were transported by taxi saw a much more pleasant side of it.

I saw a great deal of squalor passing through some very old sections of the city where people lived in places which we would have demolished eons earlier.

The weather here is fabulous and consistent. Apparently the amount of rain they have here in a year is as much as we might have in Saskatchewan in an hour. They obviously do a great deal of irrigating to have the lush foliage they have, and probably part of this is the variety of plants they have here that need little water. I saw an uprooted palm tree and its root
system was amazingly sparse. My guess in Cairo is that they take water from the grungy Nile River.

As we weren’t allowed to take photographs in the museum, I have none of our first major stop….no way I could take any either as the security to get in was incredible….At least two scanning stations (like in the airport where you put your carry on luggage to be checked and walk through) and gates with guards, police and military everywhere. There was a beautiful pond in front of the building with a square of papyrus growing in the centre, surrounded by blue lotus flowers floating on the surface of the water, both major symbols here. (Of course, I had no camera, because you couldn’t take one inside the building and there was so much security to get in and out and you couldn’t go back and forth, etc.—all every complicated.) http://www.egyptian-papyrus.co.uk/ and http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/egypt_waterlily.html

They’ve recovered 5,500 items, including all his toys and beds as a child to his carriages (chariots), as well as weapons, items of food, and of course his dried body organs, and four layers of tombs and their coverings, as well as many protective statues and even boomerangs (Yes, the Egyptians, not the Australians, were the first to use boomerangs). King Tut’s sarcophagus and inner coffin is in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, but I don’t know that I will go there this time or not as I have so little time left and I need to rest in between, as I’ve found with all the trips I’ve already done. The travelling here is very early in the morning, like 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. and I can’t do too many of those in a row before feeling like a bag of sand myself.

My first glimpse of the pyramids was through the tour bus window while still within the city limits. The fact is that the city has built outwards until it has almost reached the pyramids themselves. It’s a strange site to see these incredible historic edifices banked by city buildings.

At first we walked around one of the smaller pyramids in the spiky blowing sand, but it stung our bodies and faces, so the bravest ones went inside the pyramid. For some reason I was under the impression I would be travelling downwards and had slight claustrophobic thoughts about all that weight on top of us. However, we went upwards to the burial chamber, which was about halfway to the top. I’m not sure how far we went through a narrow tunnel bent at our waists to keep from hitting our heads, but it was quite a ways almost crawling on these boards fitted with cross pieces to keep from slipping back.


There were a number of metal ladder things, like those found in swimming pools, with the steps far between so that one had to pull oneself up between the different sections of the tunnel. The second half was a little easier as we could walk upright, but it was steep and a very long way up. I barely had time to consider being a little claustrophobic as I had to keep moving fast enough to keep pace with others. (yes, I was out of breath and my legs were aching.) Reaching the burial chamber was anti-climatic in that it was a large rectangular stone room-empty except for the outer stone ‘box’ that had once held the mummified remains of a king (and three other layers of boxes, (each made out of different materials and sarcophaguses - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcophagus). http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tutcoffins.htm

There was no air circulation inside and it was warm, so I wasted no time in getting back out again, as there were many people filling the room.






We then drove up to a site where we could see all three pyramids at once. They are: Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus from the 4th Dynasty, c. 2500 BC.

















There was also a long row of merchants with their goods set up in the sand, along with several Bedouins who would let you take a picture of them and their camels, and even get on one for a price. There were those who let you get on for free, but you had to pay for them to let you off again. This fellow I'm with insisted on having a photo taken with me and then insisting that I pay even though I told him from the beginning it wouldn't happen.

There is so much to learn about the pyramids and how they are built, but so many stories of what we have heard on TV seems untrue. They began building each pyramid as soon as a new King was in power, calculating that he would have approx 20 years of life, which is how long they would take to build the largest ones. They became more clever as time went on, building them smaller as they went along. Because King Tut was only 18 when he died (and about ten years old when he took over), they didn’t have time to build him one, which is why he was found underneath the chambers of another one and his things were well preserved. (I’ve sent a book to my son that has incredible information if anyone is interested in seeing more.)


Excavation continues today, but there is so much hidden in the desert, one can't imagine how they will discover it all or what spectacular fine they will uncover next.



In front of one of the pyramids is a temple, which was built to receive and worship the King before he was buried. In the one at Giza, apparently it was smaller and they had extra material left over, which is why they built the sphinx. It was quite incredible as well and has the face of the king who is buried within. You must go through several corridors to get through the temple to the Sphynx.











Another interesting place we visited was at a Papyrus place where we were shown how the Egyptian paper of the same name is made. They peel the stalk of the papyrus plant and cut it into thin strips then use a mallet to soften it a little, then soak it for several days (6, I think), then they lay the strips out to form the ‘sheet’ of writing material. It is then pressed for another six days and finally dried. They draw and write on this paper with coloured ink….it lasts forever, it seems, at least it did in the pyramids where they were sealed in tombs without any weather and air getting at it.

Our final stop was at a market place (of course). It is called the 'old bazar.' I didn’t like it at all. The vendors were worse than in Mexico, constantly hassling you from shop doorways, in the streets, etc. You couldn’t even stand still for a moment without a swarm of them pouncing on you. I felt like something not too desirable left out in the sun too long being attacked by flies. Seems the whole group felt this way and we all made our way to the coffee meeting place to get away from it, or so we thought. It was just as bad there with all kinds of people coming up to us with watches, jewellery, clothing and other things. Some just plain begged for money. The main ones I noticed was the blind one with a cane, the old guy in a wheelchair with one leg cut-off at the knee and his other leg and foot bandaged and dripping fake blood. The worse was the woman who approached me who was carrying a crying baby and had no fingers on her hands. (Yes, I gave her money when she uttered the one word, “mother.”)

Travelling through the streets on our way back to the airport, we often went through the narrow streets of very poor districts. And I couldn’t help but take photos of some of the shops from the bus that showed the average life of some of the people. Some lived in the backs of their tiny shops. Others lived in abandoned places where old buildings no longer had roofs. Many have nowhere else to go.











I didn’t arrive home until 10:30 pm and had some trouble getting to sleep, knowing I had to be up again at 3:45 a.m. to go to Petra. Finally sometime after midnight I drifted off, wondering what sites awaited me the country of Jordon.