Egypt: Day 1 - An introduction to Egyptian pyramids

My wake-up call comes at 7 am, giving me ample time before our 9:00 departure by bus.  I open the curtains and - misty as it is - there stands the Pyramid! Couldn’t see it last night.  It’s looking down on me through the centuries.  I can’t believe I’m here!
       The first day of the trip.  A time for getting my bearings.  Breakfast is a buffet, plus omelette makers who flip them expertly.  The tea is good, as befits an ex-British “protectorate”.  Then just time to brush teeth and empty tanks before we’re off!

Today is an extra excursion above and beyond the actual tour:  Meidum and Hawara, two pyramids a good distance south of Cairo.  Both are about an hour and a half away.

       Once out of Cairo, the trip is mostly across barren land.  Not desert, although we’re headed west, but rather what wind erosion has created over the millennia.  Occasionally there are housing projects, one of which is decorated with Tom chasing Jerry across its facade.  Strangely, each apartment building - about five to seven stories high - has a huge pile of dirt between it and the next building, as if the earth excavated for the foundations had just been dumped there and left. Not a nice view for the lower floors!

Gradually Meidum rises on the far horizon.  Called the Seven Step Pyramid, it was built by Sneferu, but he doesn’t appear to have been buried there.  The top is now missing, which means that this pyramid was once almost twice as high as it is now.

       We are being escorted by a police car, which changes with each administrative department (like county lines for sheriffs).  There are speed bumps on many streets in both towns and countryside, as well as multiple guardposts where all vehicles must stop and no photos are to be taken.  Security is important here; these measures were implemented during the upheavals of the 1990's.  Keeping tourists safe is serious business, literally, as tourism is Egypt’s second source of income, after oil and gas (and fees from the Suez Canal, I believe).

       Scattered along the road are stands selling soft drinks and, I suppose, other food staples.  Although they're selling to passers-by, there are also tables for drivers who need a break from the tedium of the flat, dry terrain.

       We pass pick-up trucks with sleeping passengers crowded in the back.  Others have a flock of sheep shoe-horned in.  Have they just been bought or are they already on their way to slaughter?  There are myriad microvans:  six-passenger Suzukis - the little brothers to the white minivans that compete with and are preferable to the municipal buses, which are not too... enticing.  Plus many cars that seem to aim down the lines drawn to create lanes, obviously just a concept here, rather than stay within them.  And almost no traffic lights.  (Ahmed, our other tour guide, will tell us later that, in case of an accident, you don’t call in the police, you shout at each other and then leave.  He claims the only “big deal” in driving in Egypt is if your car’s horn doesn’t work!)

Jihan, our guide

We reach Meidum and shed our escort, who will wait for us at the guardpost.  Jihan, our guide for today, is a knowledgeable Egyptologist and she explains a bit of the history to us.  (I’m surprised to learn later that she has no university degree in architecture!).
       After her introduction, those brave and able enough are handed over to an Arab guide to go down into the pyramid's tomb.  Although the corridor has a ramp a bit like the ramp to get on or off a ship, it’s a lot less user-friendly, with a 45° angle that descends for the equivalent of several stories.  Following that is a horizontal corridor followed by several ladders up to the small burial chamber.







       There are no furnishings left, no sarcophagus and no decorations.  Just a very small room.  I’m not claustrophobic but the air in here has definitely been breathed many times over, and it’s very stuffy.  I decide to climb back down and leave more room for the other 20 people.

      The ascension back up the ramp will turn my thighs into steel for two or three days to come.  I remember stopping, alone in this cramped shaft, looking up toward the speck of light far ahead.  It looks so very distant and makes me realize completely how deep inside the earth I am.  Gives me a good idea of what it would be like to have been buried here almost 5,000 years ago.  My mind boggles at the ancientness of this place.

       Up in fresh air we wait for the others, then off to the second pyramid, Hawara.  Now just bricks, it was robbed long ago of the limestone facing that gave it the name Black Pyramid.  No visits inside because it’s filled with water from the aquifer below.
       So off we head for a lunch and then back to Giza and Mena House.

Mena House was built in 1869, in time for the opening ceremony of the Suez Canal.  We arrive just early enough for a tour to see the rooms Churchill and Montgomery lived in when they and Franklin Roosevelt met here during World War II.  This is a more recent page out of history, and one I didn’t know about.  I only knew they met in Yalta, but this was a pre-Yalta meeting minus Stalin, to plan strategy for Operation Overlord, the liberation of Europe.  The rooms have been left as they were, and the furniture is stunningly retro.

After dinner with the two Lindas and another Sandy, it’s time for a hot soak to unknot my aching Meidum thigh muscles... and then to bed.