Egypt: Day Four, Part Two

First we go to Dahshur to see the Bent Pyramid.  This seems to be the first pyramid which went from the step design to the straight-sided design that was to follow.  But for some reason, part way through its construction a decision was made that the angle wasn’t the right one.  So about a third of the way up, the slope suddenly changes from 53° to 43°, giving it a strange shape.  Had it continued at 53°, it would have been much higher and the weight on the tomb below would have been too much of a load for the passageways and chambers to bear.
     Another different feature is the casing - the polished limestone on the outside.  Dahshur has more of the original casing left than any of the pyramids, including the Great Pyramid of Giza.  That gives us more of an idea of how gleaming they must have been under the Egyptian sun, compared to the dullness of the less beautiful limestone used below.
       As we walk around it, discovering again a smaller pyramid to one side, we spot a worker mixing up sand, clay and water to protect the wall that is being rebuilt around parts of the pyramid's base.  I'm sure not much has changed since the Bent Pyramid was built in 2600 BCE... and that is the point. 

After the pyramid comes the Memphis Museum.  Its main attraction is a huge alabaster statue of a pharaoh, stretched out with an elevated walkway all around it so you can see it from all angles.  Scattered outside the museum are various statues and monuments from the area.
       And then comes a visit to the New Egypt Carpet School, where boys are taught to make both woven and tied carpets.  They work six hours a day and are paid, which is a far cry from what their destiny would be otherwise, set loose on the streets all day.  At first, the boys work off of a pattern taped up on the wall, but soon they learn the pattern and don’t need it any more.  Looms are set up all around the huge room and we’re given a demonstration of how carpets are made from both knot-tying and weaving, Then we’re taken upstairs for mint tea or coffee... and a review of all the carpets they make.  Some of us order large ones to be sent back to the States; others buy small versions of the patterns.  I go back downstairs where Ahmed’s warning they will ask how old you are comes in handy.  Evidently that’s one of the phrases students are taught, along with “what’s your name” and “where are you from”.  I just tell them I’m very old, so the number of my years on Earth doesn’t cause them to mess up a knot and spoil their carpet.


Lunch finds us in another restaurant where they bake their own bread.  Two women are busy in the forecourt and enjoin us to try some and take photos (of course then expecting the classic “$1".  We pick our meats out from a selection freshly grilled over the charcoal fire, along with bell pepper and onion.  Very much shish-kebab-y, without the kebab.

 
After lunch, we can hear music coming from a third courtyard behind these two.  Some of us go exploring and find young people listening to modern music, and two girls dancing atop the hood of an old car from the 40's.  They’re just like young girls everywhere, and the miles between our two cultures melt away as we start to dance with them.  Lord only knows what they thought, but they were nice enough to smile... and giggle, but just a little bit.

Egypt: Day Four, Part One

An early start today - up at 6 am, bus by 7:30.  And off along the same irrigation canals as yesterday, lined with garbage, some smoldering or being eaten by spare dogs and egrets.  Today I even see a “soup wagon” (for pumping out septic tanks) emptying its contents into one of the canals.  Image-wise, it’s all a bit overpowering.

     On the way to Memphis and the Bent Pyramid of Dahshur, Ahmed gives us a lesson on the unification of Egypt in 3100 BCE, with that city chosen as its capital because it was on the border of the two Egypts.  The name Memphis means “beautiful monuments” and it governed 40 provinces, each with its own chief god.  Memphis had Ptah, the god of darkness and workers, his wife Sekmet and son Neferteem.  It was the richest and biggest city of ancient times, with two million people, but all of it is gone because it was built of mud bricks.

Ramses

Queen - Memphis

Ahmed goes over the gods and goddesses, and a chapter on how to read the statue of a king.  For instance, if his ceremonial beard is straight, he was alive when it was carved; if curved, he was already dead.  A cobra is a sign of the king.  So is a dagger at his waist.  His crown, as of this era, has a base/part for Lower Egypt (the north) and a crown for Upper Egypt (the south).  Even if only the legs of a statue are left, you know it’s a man if the left foot is forward.  Little clues to help identify.
       Ahmed dwells quite a bit on Pharaoh Ramses II, who ruled all the lands from the Euphrates to the third cataract of the Nile (at Khartoum).  He also loved his wife Nefertari, meaning “the beautiful one”, so much that she is portrayed in the statues at Abu Simbel as the same size as his own, a fact that never happened with any other queen.  Ramses also had two strange hobbies, again according to Ahmed:  he liked to usurp other rulers’ monuments, replacing their names with his, and he liked marriages, from which came 92 sons and 106 daughters.  So I guess Nefertari was perhaps the most beautiful wife but not the only one.
       Ramses is portrayed with the white crown of Upper Egypt atop the red crown of Lower Egypt, showing him to rule both.  Blue in his portrayals symbolizes war.  He always is shown with a cobra on his crown (for protection), the typical false beard (straight if the portrayal was made during his lifetime, or curled after his death), and with a dagger at his waist.  All these symbols add up to indicate a ruler.  (Children aged 1 to 12 are portrayed sucking their thumb and with a side-lock of hair.) 
       One fascinating detail Ahmed tells us concerns the ankh, the symbol of life.  If you turn it on its side, you have a line ending in a triangle.  (Well, a rounded one.)  The line represents the river and the triangle the delta.  So the ankh, representing life, also represents the Nile, without which there would be no Egypt.

Egypt: Day Three, Part Two

Saqqara Pyramid

Saqqara

By the time we reach the Step Pyramid in Saqqara, we’ve learned it was the first giant monument built, the prototype for all the other pyramids to come after.  Built in 2700 BCE by King Djoser, it’s a mind-boggling 4,600 years old!  The name comes from the fact that it’s actually six different mastabas (“eternal houses”) of different sizes, one on top of the other.  But Djoser didn’t dream up this project; it was his vizier Imhotep, a physician, who decided to build the tomb.  Its deep shaft cuts 92 feet through limestone, and the sarcophagus is of pink granite.  There are dozens of corridors on six different levels with blue tiles all along them.  As with all pyramids, the entrance faces true north.  Ahmed calls it “the biggest tombstone on Earth” because there’s nothing inside it; everything’s underneath it, below it.  It was just one of several buildings that, grouped together, created a mortuary complex, all surrounded by a one-mile-long wall.  Now the only thing around the pyramid is farmland, with no residences.

Mohammed, my self-appointed "guide"

       While some go down inside, I choose to opt out.  My legs still ache from yesterday and this pyramid is apparently much the same inside except the corridors are only four feet high and very long.  That’s too far to crouch that low.  Instead some of us decide to walk all around it and we discover another smaller pyramid on the opposite side.  It’s believed that this was Djoser’s wife’s.
       We split up to explore the several buildings within the necropolis.  Somehow I seem to have adopted a certain Mohammed, who started out wanting me to take his photo, “no money”.  (Everyone wants $1 in bakshish.)  Mohammed proceeds to “show me” (translation: walk around with me) several buildings and finally a statue.  But as I try to leave for the bus, he wants “dollar”.  I use my new word leh (no) - adding shoukran to be polite - but basically I just have to keep walking, with him in my wake until another “volunteer guide” shushes him away.
       Lunch at the Palm Club was a Mideastern smorgasbord (how do you say that in Arab?) with barbecued chicken and beef kefta.
       Followed by the Imhotep Museum, the work of Zahi Hawass which was opened jointly by the wives of Egyptian President Mubarak and of French President Chirac in 2006.  It includes scale models of the site as it once was, plus many of the treasures found during excavations, including our first mummy.  Along with a statue of a scribe that I particularly liked and a collection of jars made out of alabaster, on display are many of the blue-green tiles that lined all the corridors of the Step Pyramid, so at least I can see them without having to crouch along the low passages on my still-aching legs.

Zahi Hawass

Back at the hotel after a long bus trip and heavy traffic, we just have time for a rest and change, then an audiovisual presentation by The Great Man himself, the impeccably-dressed Zahi Hawass.  He tells us of how the Cairo Museum was ransacked during the Egyptian Revolution that eventually brought down Mubarak.  Looters, he says, were looking for gold and the mercury placed in the mummies to protect them from evil spirits.  The looters also stole souvenirs from the museum’s gift shop, but not books.  In all, only 54 objects were stolen, compared with 45,000 in a similar incident in Baghdad during the Iraq war.  All but 17 were found later on.  Hawass takes this incident as typical of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he feels is ignorant.
       In spite of his vast knowledge, Hawass tends to speak extensively in the first person singular.  For instance, we learn that it was he who discovered the Pyramid builders’ tombs.  Hawass has written a book on Ancient Egypt chock full of magnificent color photos of all the wonders we’re about to see over the coming days, and he signs the copy I buy, but doesn’t enjoin a conversation with me or with any of us.  Same at dinner - he only talks to his assistant Tarik and others in his group.  Then disappears.
       As I do... to bed, to nurse my still sore muscles.