| Submitted by: Evelyn C. Leeper, United States |
| Submission Date: 04 February 2005 |
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There are other rooms following, with scenes of carpentry, boat-building, agriculture, government (scourging tax evaders), and so on. Of particular interest in the main hall were scenes which showed animals being fed and were (according to Hoda) pictures of an animal hospital. Perhaps, but one wonders how much of our interpretation of these pictures is totally off. As with many of the monuments, photography was not allowed inside--or rather, was only allowed if you paid a five-pound fee (twenty pounds for video cameras). However, flashes are not allowed even with the fee so that makes it academic for us--you practically need a flashlight to walk around.
Lunch was at the Mena House and was a buffet. The grilled chicken was good, as was the stuffed eggplant and all the Middle Eastern salad-type things. Unfortunately, these buffets seem to cater to tourists in that they have too much Western food.
After lunch, we went a few blocks further to where started our camel caravan to the Pyramids. The camels are all lined up, seated, and you just take the next one in line (like a taxi stand). You hold on tight to the saddle and lean back when the camel gets up, because the back end goes up first. Then we headed up the hill (on a road) toward the plateau. Halfway up, the camel owners pull over and offer to take our pictures on the camels with the Pyramids in the background. I figured why not? Jane said she never heard of anyone running off with the camera and I also realized that if he stole my Instamatic, I'd get the camel, which seemed like a good deal. However, he didn't take the camera, just a couple of shots of me on 'Yankee Doodle Dandy,' which he said was the camel's name. He had no trouble using the Instamatic and knew without even looking how to advance the film. (I suspect his primitive look may be a trick.) I tipped him a pound for this. He took it but said he wanted American money because it smelled wonderful. We agreed at the end I would tip him in American money.
On the remaining leg, we passed an English tourist and the camel owner was already trying to sell her a ride back. I felt like telling her that the camel's name for me was Yankee Doodle Dandy, but for her it would be Prince Charles.
The total ride was about a mile (maybe a mile and a half); I have no idea how long it took. We ended up at the Second Pyramid (the Pyramid of Khefre) since the Great Pyramid (the Pyramid of Cheops) is currently closed to tourists. I got off the camel and tipped the driver a dollar (the going rate). You don't tip until they let the camel down or they want more for that. But it's all very friendly and joking, so it isn't as obnoxious as other places.
The main area around each pyramid was supposedly cleared of vendors about a month ago, but they seem to be drifting back. However, based on what other people have told me it is still much improved.
Not everyone took the camel ride, so we rejoined the bus for a brief talk about the Pyramids. There are three: Cheops, Khefre, and Menkaure. Cheops is the largest, but Khefre was built on higher ground so actually appears taller. They're all Fourth Dynasty, about 2500 BC. Hoda claimed they were not built with slave labor, but I think the consensus is that they were. Hoda also didn't mention the recent theory that they were built of poured blocks (like concrete) rather than solid ones.
Those of us who wanted got to go inside the Pyramid of Khefre to see the burial chamber. Not everyone wanted to--Hoda said it was not recommended for people with high blood pressure, claustrophobia, bad backs, bad knees, etc. The latter are because the passageway is only about three feet high (maybe four) and has a gradient for most of the way of 21 degrees 40'. First you descend about 100 feet of corridor (all figures approximate except the gradient, which I looked up) which is made safer and somewhat easier by the installation of handrails and a plank along the passageway with crossties every couple of feet which keep it from becoming a giant slide. Then there is a short horizontal corridor high enough to stand up in, then an ascent along the twin of the descending corridor into the burial chamber itself. The chamber is 46 feet by 16 feet by 22 feet high, so we did get to stand up. I suppose for some the feeling of having millions of cubic feet of stone on top of them would make them claustrophobic, but it didn't affect me at all. At the top of the chamber is a hole where someone (tomb robbers? Belzoni?) entered. When Belzoni found the chamber in 1818 it was empty, with only the sarcophagus left behind.
To get out we needed to 'duckwalk' back the way we came. Having two-way traffic in the passageway made the whole procedure even more difficult. Luckily there were some lights along the way since holding a flashlight would have been difficult.
We then went to see the Solar Boat of Cheops. This was a boat found in a pit to the south of the Pyramid of Cheops in 1954, or rather the pieces of a boat, like a giant model. It was supposed to come together through magic to carry Cheops on his journey with the sun on the underground river at night. That didn't happen, though, and finally the archaeologists decided they'd have to do it themselves. They put a building around the boat. To go in you need to have slippers put over your shoes, not because it's sacred, but to protect the floors and the boat from all the dust you've picked up.
After the Sun Boat we went a short way into the desert to a sort of 'Lookout Point' from which we could take pictures of the Pyramids from a distance and also avoid getting lots of city in the picture. (Though a large area has been protected around the Pyramids, the town is within a half-mile of their bases and beginning to wrap around the area.) Of course, hundreds of other tourists had the same idea so it wasn't exactly the serenity of the desert we were experiencing.
The last sight at Giza was the Sphinx. It faces east (the rising sun) and so is better seen in the morning but you make do with what you can. You can't get really close to the Sphinx so we had about fifteen minutes to take pictures and see some of the two temples near its base, neither of which are in very good condition.
Then the bus took us across the street to the 'papyrus institute' to see how papyrus was made. This was a five-minute demonstration followed by twenty minutes of opportunity to buy papyri with paintings on them. We bought three small ones, all with Anubis on them. Before lunch we had stopped at the Karnak Bazaar in Giza, where many people (myself included) bought cartouches with their names on them. I got Mark's name instead--it seemed more romantic. (Aw!) These shopping stops can be overdone, but so far they seem to have a minimal impact on the amount of time to see 'real stuff.'
Because of traffic we didn't get back to the hotel until 4:30 PM and needed to be ready at 5:30 PM to leave for the Sound and Light Show. No problem, right? Well, the hotel decided to wait until 4:30 to make up our room, so we sat around while they did this, waiting to get into our bathroom. It was a bit of a rush but we made it.
We arrived a few minutes early so had some time to browse through the 'California Bazaar,' the 'Canada Dry Bazaar,' and other such authentically named shops. Mark wanted an Anubis for the chatchka table, but Anubis is not nearly as popular as the Sphinx (and most of the statues of this look as defaced as the original), Nefretiti, or even Bastet. William Golding was right about a small number of items forming a large percentage of the tourist wares (AN EGYPTIAN JOURNAL).
The Sound and Light Show (or Son et Lumiere, as the French is often used) is held twice nightly in different languages--Arabic, English, French, German, Spanish, and a recent addition, Italian. You can sit in the chairs at ground level, or there is a bar on the second floor of the building there. It begins with the Sphinx talking to you (well, not really, of course, but that's the idea) telling you all that it/he has seen. As he (well, if he's talking, we'll anthropomorphize) talks about each of the Pyramids the lighting changes to emphasize the particular one. There are also readings from ancient love poems and dramatic music. (See THE SPY WHO LOVED ME for a better idea.) The show lasts about 45 minutes. After the show, we returned to the Mena House for dinner and a folklore show. Dinner was undistinguished. I had a squid appetizer in a somewhat gluey sauce and fish fillets coated with coconut and fried, served with banana. It was pretty good but the service was very slow. The show was equally undistinguished, with not-very-good belly dancers. The fundamentalist revival meant that the dancers were fully covered from neck to knees (or more) and some found this disappointing as well. Corny it might have been, but the Sound and Light was considerably better.
We returned to the hotel about 10:30, just in time to see a beautiful fireworks display about a mile upriver, much more elaborate than fireworks back home, with several ground displays we could also see. Then to bed.
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I slept late this morning, till almost 11 AM. The past two days were very full and rest was called for. After a Middle Eastern buffet lunch, during which Tom regaled us with the story of his visit to a Coptic church, we decided to go back to the Cairo Museum.
This entailed crossing the street in front of our hotel to get to the Corniche (Riverwalk). The Corniche went under the main street so we didn't have to cross that. Then back across and another block, shooing away all the taxi drivers who wanted to take us to the Pyramids, and we were at the Museum.
First we went upstairs to see some of the rooms there we had missed--one of statues of various deities, one of jewelry, and so on. Occasionally the guards would point out various objects and then want a tip but they always took a 'no' graciously.
Then we went down to the main floor, which has all the statuary. For this, the guidebook of ancient Egypt we had brought with us was very helpful, as it had a whole itinerary with descriptions through the exhibits. This was especially good, because the Museum was out of English guidebooks. It also meant the guards left us alone because they could see we knew what was what.
I won't bother to describe everything we saw, since most people wouldn't know an Osiride statue from a stela--or care. If you do care, you probably want to go see for yourself anyway.
We left the museum at 3:30. As we were leaving, the guard counted the writing implements in Mark's pocket (four, because he counted the flashlight) and said, 'One, two, three, four--too many!' so we gave him a pen and he was happy. We bought some postcards and then left the grounds (the museum closes at 4). We started to walk around a bit, but the first thing we had to do was cross the main street and by the time we did that we were exhausted. But seriously, folks.... Actually, Mark wasn't feeling well (a touch of Mummy's Tummy perhaps, though it seems more flu- like--something like what I had in Oaxaca, I guess), and we decided to go back to the hotel. This in itself was a major undertaking, involving crossing two main streets, trolley tacks, and the bus station bus lanes! We made it back safely (trick: cross with a local and downstream of him/her) and spent the rest of the evening in the room. I did browse through a couple of shops in the lobby, but found nothing of great interest. We opted for room service for dinner (something we had never done before in all our travels) and even then I ended up eating most of Mark's dinner (a fruit plate). Mark dozed off during the evening, but neither of us could really get to sleep until almost midnight. |
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