Egypt: Day Six, Part One

Today is the Great Pyramid.  And we get to visit it before it opens to the public.  There will be only the 38 of us and no one else.

There are, in fact, three pyramids.  The one most people talk about is the Great Pyramid of Cheops, who is called Khufu here.  It’s the oldest and largest, and in fact was the tallest man-made structure in the world for almost 4,000 years.  Originally 481 feet tall, it has lost 26 feet somehow.  Some people think that’s because there was once a cap on it which is now missing.  This pyramid has three chambers, the deepest cut into the bedrock and the others above it.  The Tura limestone used for its casing (the cover layer) came from quarries across the river.  It was transported across the Nile during the flood season (June through September) by boat when the waters reached all the way up to the Temple of Khafre near the Sphinx, making it far easier to transport from there.  Which is a very good thing, as each block weighed in at up to 88 tons.  And there were no wheels or pulleys back then, just brute force.
       The second pyramid is the Pyramid of Khafre, son of Khufu.  It’s less tall than his father’s (471 feet), which was respectful on his part.  However, it’s built on higher ground, so it surpasses the father’s in altitude, if not in height.  There are still casing stones on the top third, but the pyramidion and part of the apex are missing.  Originally the bottom course of casing was pink granite but the rest was cased in Tura limestone, which is a finer quality than the stone blocks underneath.  The first two levels inside are cut into bedrock.
       The third and smallest at only 215 feet is the Pyramid of Menkaure, grandson of Khufu.  It’s slightly out of line with the two others.  The bottom was cased in red granite, floated downriver all the way from Aswan far to the south, and the top casing was Tura limestone.  There’s nothing inside this pyramid because the king died suddenly, which is also why there are only six or seven levels of casing laid on its north side.

All this is revealed to us by Dr. Hawass, who is waiting for us at the Sphinx just after daybreak.  When we arrive, he’s already there, leaning against the Sphinx’s paw, in his levis, blue jean jacket and Indiana Jones hat, ever the debonnaire character.  He starts by explaining the meaning of the Sphinx:  the brain of man and the courage of the lion.  Its face is said to be that of Khafre, and indeed it bears (or once bore) the pharaoh’s three attributes:  the cobra, the beard and the headdress.  Between its paws stands a stele relating the dream sequence that legitimizes the pharaoh’s right to reign.  Originally cut out of bedrock, its shape has been restored by blocks of limestone, because the erosion of centuries has not been kind, even if the Sphinx was once buried in the sands up to its neck.  Overall the monument measures 250 feet in length and stands 70 feet tall.

Khafre statue at Cairo Museum

       Dr. Hawass also tells us about his excavation of the nearby Temple of Khafre.  Originally its floor was made of alabaster floated downriver 650 miles from Aswan, and it boasted two rows of six columns each.  Mummies were blessed here before they were moved along the limestone causeway to the mortuary temple.  There they were put in the sarcophagus and installed in the pyramid, which was then sealed.  In this temple stood the striking dolorite sculpture of Khafre with the falcon embracing his head which we saw yesterday in the Cairo Museum.
       The last thing to see here is the Cheops Boat Museum.  There are old sepia-colored photos of what was unearthed in 1954:  five of the pharaoh’s solar barges built to transport him through the afterlife, and one perhaps that carried his mummy across the Nile to the pyramid for burial.  These boats had no nails; they were held together only by rope.  The one restored had been dismantled - all 1,224 pieces of Lebanese cedar - and buried, piled in 13 layers, in a large pit.  The other four boats, all discovered in different places around the pyramid, have been buried again.

Pharaoh Cheops solar barge at Cheops Boat Museum

Egypt: Day Five, Part Two

After an onslaught of hawkers almost blocks our bus’s departure, we head to the Cairo Museum.  Traffic has picked up but we reach Tahrir Square, now calm after many rowdy days over the past few years.
       Patiently and knowledgeably, Ahmed explains the highlights of the museum to us.  (I don’t think even the curators can know all they have!  Some of the explanatory panels are so old and faded...  And French is the second language on them, not English!)  We cover both floors of the museum under his guidance, except for the special King Tut room which he cannot guide us through.  No idea why.  The upshot of this is that, not having seen the sign over the door, I get sharply and loudly rebuked for taking photos.  Of course it was about the sixth photo I’d taken, and it was a different photographer who drew the guard’s attention.  “DELETE, DELETE!” he shouted.  And I did, one photo.  “Show me!” he yelled at the other photographer, and I made quietly my exit before he turned his attention back to me.  I told Ahmed he should warn people, and he said that he really didn’t know it was forbidden, even without flash.  Maybe it’s a new rule?

     At the end of two hours, we’re given about 45 minutes to wander on our own.  I choose to fly solo a bit after being in a group all morning.  I happen upon the prehistoric part of the museum and note that all mankind, at that moment in time, seems to have been at the same point of evolution.  No difference with prehistoric France.  It makes me wonder what made things move faster artistically here in Egypt than elsewhere after that point.

     After buying a book in their understaffed and under-inventoried gift shop - which was evidently ransacked by looters looking for easy money during the recent Revolution - it’s back on the bus.  Ahmed, in his inimitable fashion, has scared up a book that has almost all the treasures we’ve just seen, and he takes orders on the bus for those, like me, who want one... and at an unbeatable price.

We have lunch nearby at a kitschy looking, Ali-Baba-type place called Felfela, with a distinctly Middle Eastern decor.  I choose to sit with Arlene and John in a quiet corner.  It’s 4:00, the hunger has come and gone somewhere in the museum, but the food is good:  Egyptian cuisine, very similar to Lebanese cooking back home, where nearby Dearborn has the largest Middle Eastern population outside of the Middle East.

The Nile waterfront

     With the traffic jams, which have returned to their normal density, there’s just enough time to change at the hotel, do my laundry and make it to the Zahi Hawass lecture, Chapter 2.  In spite of my dislike of his pharaonic ego, I sit in the front row again, joined by Floyd, a physician.  Tonight Hawass starts with his autobiography, as he did two nights ago, but gets caught up in the history side of his presentation.  There are fewer “I”s tonight, perhaps because he’s not feeling well, as he later reveals at table.
       Still, he eats with us... or rather in our presence.  Floyd and I sit opposite him and we both are determined to make him talk to us, which we manage to do.  Somewhat.  But soon I leave him to Floyd and his wife Victoria*, and concentrate on Hawass’s Assistant, Tarik, to my right, who is much more simpatico, and a colleague of his seated across from me, who is Chilean with a French father.  More at home in French, he and I discuss Easter Island and its archeological treasures.  Then Hawass rises and prepares to leave, quipping something over his shoulder about the Pharoah needing his sleep, meaning himself.  I guess I wasn’t far off with my earlier metaphor.
       Back to the room, shower and wash my hair, then bed.  Our 5 am wake-up call looms all too soon.

(* Side comment:  Over dinner, my Lost Hat Issue comes up and Victoria kindly offers me her second one, which is very generous of her and will save my scalp from burning off during our remaining time here.  February in Egypt is mild, but relentlessly sunny just the same.  And I’ll manage not to lose this hat as I did Sally’s!)

Egypt: Day Five, Part One

Citadel of Saladdin

 There’s been entirely too much eating going on, so I skip breakfast and just eat the tangerine from last night plus the three complimentary cookies they leave when they turn down my bed in the evening.  Such service!  I also have what’s left of my pistachios, just in case, because lunch today will be late.

Mosque of Muhammad Ali

       We’re venturing into Cairo.  It’s a bustling, sprawling city of 8 million people, to which must be added 8 million for Giza just across the Nile and an additional 6 million from another suburb whose name I didn’t catch (something like Hababea).  Egypt itself is very concentrated as a whole, with its population of 92 million crammed into a mere 5% of its territory.  The rest is desert.
       Ahmed is amazed at the lack of traffic, especially on a Wednesday.  His commute in the morning and evening can take a full hour or even more.  But this morning we speed all the way to the Citadel of Saladdin (or actually Salah el Din) in which stands the Mosque of Muhammad Ali (no, not the boxer).  We arrive so early that the hawkers aren’t even out yet plying their trade in souvenirs.  (An Ahmed Trick:  getting off the bus, the price of something may be one-for-$5, but by the time you’ve run the gauntlet back to the bus later, that same souvenir will be two-for-$1.  And it works.  Every time.)

Muhammad Ali's tomb

       The imposing alabaster tomb in the courtyard is that of Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Ottoman ruler from the start of the 19th century.  Although Albanian by birth, he is highly respected and seen as the founder of modern Egypt because of the dramatic military, economic and cultural reforms he implemented.
       High above the tomb is a clock that was given to Egypt by French king Louis-Philippe in 1845, in return for an obelisk from the Temple of Luxor, gifted to France by the self-same Muhammad Ali and carted off to stand to this very day in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.  Ahmed looks at me as he points out that the brass clock doesn’t work, and never has worked properly.  Not a great trade.  (I find out that the other obelisk was also given to France, but it was so hard to move the first one that France never came back for the second.  In fact, it was only under President Mitterrand in the 1980's that the French gave ownership of that second obelisk back to the Egyptian people.)

       Like the pyramids, the Ottoman-style mosque and minarets are made out of limestone, but the mosque’s interior walls are covered with alabaster tiles up to a height of almost 40 feet.  Above that rise a huge central dome and four smaller domes around it.  The light plays through the high windows, seemingly pointing out architectural details, of which there are many.
       This is my first time in a mosque, except for eating couscous at the Paris mosque.  It’s very majestic, with that high dome and the light streaming in.  The floor is carpeted totally, with a repetitive design pointing east toward Mecca so the faithful know which way to face.
       As Ahmed explains certain facets of Islam, and takes questions, I start to feel the presence of my grandson Ibrahim, who miscarried at seven months while I was an ocean away.  I’m overwhelmed with both grief and a feeling he’s near.  I say a little prayer for his soul, and then take Ahmed aside to slip him some money to pass on to a needy family, alms to the poor being one of the Five Pillars of Islam.  (Later, to comfort me, Ahmed tells me that in Islam children who are never born go directly to Heaven and do not need our prayers, but still...)

Cairo as seen from the Citadel

Egypt: Day Four, Part Three

On the way back to Giza, we pass loads and loads of “tuk-tuks”, those three-wheeled auto rickshaws which are illegal in Egypt but can be imported anyway.  Go figure.  Kids drive them as of age 10 or 12, especially in the countryside... and obviously without a license.  We also see a lot of buildings that look like tall ovens with sticks and holes poked in them.  They’re dovecotes, pigeon being one of the favorite dishes in Egypt.  (We’ll see more of them along the highway from Cairo to Alexandria later on in the trip.)

Pyramid builders' tombs

As we drive past the Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx, which we’ll be visiting in two days.  Ahmed tells us that the Nile used to reach the Sphinx when the river flooded.  In 1942 the water came up to its neck!  That was also the year that the Temple of Khafre was uncovered and excavated.
  Waiting for us when we pull up at the Pyramid Builders’ Tombs is Dr. Hawass, who discovered them.  And there were plenty of builders.  Estimates today are 20,000 workers to build Khufu’s pyramid aka The Great Pyramid aka The Pyramid of Cheops (the Greek-isized name by which we know it in the United States).  As Hawass says, that’s the population of large cities in the Near East in the third millennium BCE.   And that population went on for nearly 70 years, year round, while construction continued.  The facilities would have included housing for the workers as well as storage for food and building materials... and even a cemetery for those killed on the job.  Men came to work from villages all over the kingdom.  It was certainly an eye-opener for country boys here in the Big City, much as it was for soldiers from France’s villages on the front lines in World War I.  Hawass explains to us that “The pyramid builders were not slaves but peasants conscripted on a rotating part-time basis, working under the supervision of skilled artisans and craftsmen who not only built the pyramid complexes for the kings and nobility, but also designed and constructed their own, more modest tombs.”
  As with many of the monuments hidden over the millennia by the sands (at least three we were told about), the cemetery was found when an American tourist was thrown from her horse who stumbled on a previously unknown mud-brick wall.  The mud-brick wall turned out to be a tomb.  And then the rest was excavated, giving us an idea of how “the other half” lived, this half being not the pharaohs but Ancient Egypt’s blue-collar workers.

Although it’s not far to Mena House, it takes us half an hour to go just the short distance.   Cars are parked on either sides of a narrow street and there’s only one lane, which is blocked.  There are also spare lots filled with camels waiting for something... perhaps tourists to ride them across the plateau.  It’s often like this, evidently, in this neighborhood of stables, where you can rent a horse to ride across the Plateau of Giza.  But all the horses are skinny and their coats aren’t brushed at all.  It’s something I’ll notice often during my time in Egypt.  Animals here seem to play a role - breadwinner or mouse-catcher or guard-dog - but not act as pets.  (Camels may be an exception to that rule, although I doubt if they’re pets, but I’m not well-versed enough in camel to tell if they’re well looked-after or not.)

I seem somehow to have lost Sally’s safari hat that she lent me for this trip.  I thought I’d left it in my room, but when I get back, it’s not there.  I ask at the desk if anyone found it, but no.  The only other possibility is that I left it on the bus, but also no.  (It turns out later that Suzanna found it and left it on the bus near the empty water bottle box, so either it got thrown out or the person who cleaned out the bus liked it and adopted it.)  Luckily for me, our early start this morning meant I was wearing both my sweater and my jacket with the hood.  That hood kept my head from burning up, but that’s how I’ll be immortalized in all those photos taken at the pyramid builder’s tombs.  Sigh.

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.