To Egypt and Beyond!: Pyramids, Sphinx and tourist torment

Days 11 and 12 (I think) – Ancient and not so ancient sights…

Where was I? Oh yes, I had put you off until after we had spent 2 HUGE days looking at really old stuff and considering this place that is Egypt. I may have sounded tired in the hurried note I left as my last post. Turns out I wasn’t tired at all – after yesterday, Sunday was a walk in the park! But – all things in order first day in first place – pyramids and the Sphinx –

downtown Cairo

typical egyptian construction

We arrived at the Port of Sohkna late Saturday evening and woke before the birds and most Egyptians and were dressed and off the ship and onto a bus by 6:30am. The drive from port to Cairo is about an hour and a half through the Eastern Desert. There is nothing there but sand, rock and the occasional checkpoint with armed militia doing absolutely nothing as near as we could tell. Then you get near Cairo. First you can tell because you see something on the horizon which your eyes say is either a fog bank or a sand storm. After a couple of minutes you realize it is worse – it is smog- thick, ugly and all encompassing. A couple of minutes later you start to see buildings; thousands of them all between three and 10 stories in height; all of them in varying stages of completion, none of them complete. They are all constructed the same way: there is a substructure of poured concrete floors, pillars and a staircase – very similar to what we would see in highrise construction in North America. Then the wheels fall off. In the open spaces between concrete columns and floors, bricks are laid. Picture a concrete frame, now fill it in with mud brick. Now forget half the mortar. Now knock a few bricks out and let some lie in curved rows and leave the occasional space for a window. Stack them around the stairs so you can still see the side profile of the stairs as you gaze at the structure. That is Egyptian building – virtually all the buildings except some banks and the odd government courthouse are constructed in this exact way. The final stage is to plaster over the whole outside and maybe make it smooth – or not. Or colourful – or not – as it will all become one uniform sand colour after the first sand storm anyway. It is amazing more people do not die simply by returning home in this country. Each family owns a home, it is rare to rent in Egypt. A couple will start to build a home and they will, in Muslim tradition, strive to have many sons. They will finish enough of the home for them to live in with small children and will build above that but not complete it. Upper floors are completed as children grow up and marry. So Son marries and then moves into 2^nd floor and so on. No one moves away except girls. When girls are married they move to their husbands’ family homes. I never had a chance to ask how all this works out as generations pass on. It seems there must be a point at which someone has to move and start all over again but I do not have the answer to that question.

step pyramid

Ok – you get a mental picture of the buildings now picture every third ground level space filled with a store of some description – vegetables, coffee house, smoke shop, corner market, butcher, whatever. Sitting around outside of all these shops are the Arabic men. Most are smoking, many are smoking hookahs (the traditional water pipes of the Middle East). None of them are actually DOING anything. The women are scurrying around in full Burkhas with usually only the eyes showing, occasionally a whole face. Children run around in whatever is thrown on them. Girls wear bright colours until they are married (average age 14-18) from which point on they must wear only black in public. To this busy street scene you may now add every kind of beat up and disastrous vehicle you have ever seen – mini vans brightly decorated, tractors with curtains, donkey carts, horse carts, ox carts, bicycles, mopeds, motorbikes, three-wheel cars, scooters, tiny Datsun trucks, large Mercedes lorries, buses, and every kind of car imaginable with a communist era look about them.

We are almost there now – add in some indescribably filthy canals, open sewers, unfinished overpasses and garbage everywhere in heaps and blowing around. Mix in some feral dogs lounging in the shade and a couple of Palm trees. Oh, now lift your head from that, look west and through the haze of the smog slowly come to realize that what you are seeing is the three great Pyramids of Giza towering above everything – right there! That is Cairo. It is one CRAZY city.

We drove through all of that and eventually made it to the Giza plateau where first we went to what is called a Mustaba Tomb. This is an in-ground tomb complex where kings and nobility were buried. All of it is below ground and it is not all that large – perhaps 1000 square feet or so. There are cartouches (wall carvings of hieroglyphics), an altar for the Ka or spirit of the dead person and a tomb chamber. This is where we were introduced to Egyptian bureaucracy and had to wait around for 20 minutes for the right official to show up and unlock the tomb so we could see it. There was a lot of loud shouting in Arabic and very little action though a guy with his donkey was trying to do brisk business in tourist photos. This is the earliest type of stone tomb known in Egypt and dates back nearly 5000 years – and it is still there! It was so hard to get one’s mind to grasp how OLD everything is in this country. Standing fairly near this tomb is the first pyramid known to have been built in Egypt – the Step Pyramid – so called because it is built sort of like a layer cake with smaller and smaller levels leaving step like sides. This was revolutionary in Egyptian architecture as it was the first above ground stone structure the Egyptians built. Everything prior to that had been made of mud brick. They are doing reconstruction work on the Step pyramid which is controversial as there are archeologists opposed to rebuilding any antiquities arguing that it should be stabilized and left as is, not reconstructed. At this time they seem to be going ahead with full reconstruction but who knows since the Egyptian government is hardly stable at the moment. Also associated with the Step Pyramid is a temple complex which ruins we also toured. It is huge and sprawls over many acres and was built for the sole purpose of mummifying the king’s body. The mummification process takes 72 days. Building the temple took approximately 30 years. They seemed to have not much sense of time and budget management!

In the distance and to the north from this site we had a view of the Bent Pyramid. It gets its name from its shape as well. A king started to build it and discovered that the angle of the sides was too steep and the whole thing would fall down so part way through he altered the angle of construction making the sides looked bent. Also nearby is a pyramid known as the “Scrambled” pyramid. It is an example of what happens to your pyramid if you get the angles wrong. Basically it has collapsed on itself.

From here we traveled the short distance to Giza and had lunch at a posh hotel right by the Pyramids. The only notable thing there was the weirdest welcome party ever which I think I may have mentioned in my last post – three Egyptians dressed in fake Pharoh robes playing a drum, a trumpet and complete-with-plaid bagpipes. Weird, man!!

After lunch we made the short drive to the pyramids. They are truly amazing and indescribable. It is true that if you have seen pictures you have no idea what these amazing structures actually look like. They are ever so much bigger than you can imagine. They estimate the number of 5 ton blocks in the Great Pyramid of Cheops (the largest, first and most perfect) to be over 2.3 MILLION. Your brain just sort of gives up on believing it.

This is also where we had our first experiences with the truly unique breed of human known as the “Egyptian Tourist Crap Huckster”. Those of you who have been to Egypt will have experienced this and know of what I speak. Those of you who have not – well, you really should try to see the pyramids in your lifetime – it IS worth it and when you do you will meet these individuals too. I am certain they have been there as long as the pyramids. There is no one more pushy and offensive than a crap salesman on the Giza Plateau. They surround you immediately and shove things in your hands and talk non-stop and try to take your camera saying they will take your photo for you when in fact they will take the photo and then keep your camera until you pay them something for it. All manner of fake tourist crap is offered from tiny pyramids to camels rides. The camel guys are the worst – they have been know to force people onto camels for pictures and then refuse to let them off until the tourist pays something for the privilege. They are more relentless than Saskatchewan mosquitoes and a whole lot more annoying. Apparently the situation is worse since the revolution as now there are all over the plateau with apparently no restrictions so there is no where you can go to avoid them. It is a dreadful part of the experience and many, many people were unfairly taken advantage of. I have the luck of being a quick study in languages and learned what “No NO” is in Arabic. When I used it apparently my accent was perfect and they assumed I was Egyptian and left me alone (of course until the next one came along). It is all very exhausting. Anyway – we admired the awesomeness of the pyramids from many angles and viewpoints (and yes, I WILL post photos when we get home) and then set off for the Sphinx which, as it turns out, is right there. You can’t see it at all from the plateau because it is carved down into the local bedrock – not built UP like the pyramids.

The Pyramids were much larger than we imagined. The Sphinx is smaller. It was sort of weird. Still it IS the Sphinx and there is much to be admired even though it is missing its nose. Which, by the way, was done in antiquity by people who likely hated the king who had it carved (they do not know which King). The ancient Egyptians believed that your spirit exits and enters your body through the nose so if you removed the nose the spirit would be confused and would not be able to travel safely to the afterlife and paradise. There were more, worse hucksters here and we had a disappointing experience with the armed guard from our bus (each bus had one, supposedly for our protection) when he ended up hitting us up for Baksheesh as well (baksheesh is tip money or bribe payment).

We ended the day with the mandatory tour through a Papyrus “Institute” where they demonstrate the process of making papyrus into paper and then try to sell it to you. We were then “guided” into a gift shop where a slightly less pushy but no less annoying group of salesmen pestered you to buy souvenirs. We declined the invitation though I did want a small scarab beetle of some sort. I never did get one because shopping in Egypt is just too exhausting and irritating. Then it was back on the bus and back through the desert to our ship. We hoisted anchor and set off for the next port - Safraga. It was from Safraga that we traveled to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings yesterday. But I will save that story for tomorrow. I am still too exhausted to go back over it all.

Egypt – what a place! I will most likely NEVER come back but am so glad we came.

Till tomorrow -