Egypt Day 2

We had an early wake up call on Tuesday morning so we could have some breakfast and get out to the Pyramids before it got too hot out. The pyramids are not far out of town at all, about a five or ten minute drive from our hotel. From the right angle, you can see all of Cairo spreading out behind them.

Our guidebooks indicated that at first sight the pyramids could be a bit disappointing. As you approach them, their size becomes a bit deceptive. It's almost as if your mind doesn't want to believe how large they are. We noticed this as our bus pulled up to Cheops' Pyramid. Cheops' Pyramid is the largest of the three (aka the Great Pyramid). It looked large, but not impressively so. And then we noticed bright colored specks scampering up the side of the Great Pyramid. The individual blocks were larger than the people climbing up the sides.

We had wanted to go inside Cheops' Pyramid, but there was apparently some miscommunication between our travel agent and our guide. Visitors inside Cheops' Pyramid are limited to 150 in the morning and 150 in the afternoon and unfortunately the morning tickets were sold out by the time we got there.

Cheops' Pyramid is the oldest of the three pyramids at Giza. It was built sometime around 2500 BC making it more than 4500 years old. It's 482-feet tall.

After Cheops' Pyramid, we got back onto the bus and headed to Chephren's Pyramid. Chephren was Cheops' son and his pyramid isn't quite as tall coming in at around 470-feet. However, Chephren's Pyramid is on a small hill making it look larger than Cheops'. Chephren's Pyramid also has a bit of the smooth sandstone finish remaining at its peak. Back in the day, all three pyramids had this smooth lime stone finish hiding the larger inner blocks that we see today. Hany, our guide, pointed out that at one time a silver and gold cap stone adorned the top of all three pyramids.

An unlimited number of visitors are allowed inside Chephren's Pyramid, so we all headed inside. We had to stoop over inside the narrow hallway to make it through. As we were moving into the King's burial chamber, others were making their way out making it an even tighter fit. We started off heading downhill. Despite her claustrophobia, Hers managed to make it through the hot and humid passageway. We were able to stand up once we reached the bottom. But the extra headroom was short lived as we had to duck down again as we made our way up. Eventually, we reached the King's Burial Chamber. There wasn't much left inside the pyramid itself. There were no inscriptions and the only artifact inside the burial chamber was a sarcophagus at the far end. Word is that it was found open when Belzoni discovered the chamber in 1818. Speaking of Belzoni, the guy painted his name on the side of the burial chamber along with the date. Interesting to see how far archeology has progressed in the last couple of hundred years. It's interesting that a painted sign almost a couple hundred years old would've been a big deal in the states, but it's kind of silly inside a 4500 year old pyramid.

Hers managed to reach the burial chamber and make it out relatively intact, although I don't think anyone was happier to be back in the increasingly hotter Egyptian sun. After finishing with Chephren's Pyramid, we set of to a plateau overlooking all three pyramids (the third and smallest being Mykerinus' Pyramid, which we didn't actually get a chance to visit). From the plateau, we took a camel ride back to the Pyramids. Unfortunately, camel rides in this area can be dodgey. A common scam is to offer you a cheap camel ride, take you away from the pyramids into the middle of nowhere, and then jack up the price. In our case, they just stopped Hers and I between the plateau and the pyramids and refused to get a move on until we gave them a tip.

After finishing with the camel ride, it was back into the bus and on to the Sphinx. From a distance, the Sphinx looked smaller than I had thought, but I thought the same of the Pyramids originally too. There's a small temple to one side of the Sphinx where mummification rituals were performed. After making our way through the temple, we came out on the right hand side of the Sphinx. It really was smaller than I thought.

The area of the Sphinx was a limestone query where some of the stone for the Pyramids came from. There was a small outcrop of weak limestone in the middle of the Query and Chephren decided he'd build a statue with the body of a lion and the head of a man (some claim it was Chephren's head while others claim it was the head of a God). The Sphinx was actually buried under sand for a time (which sounded impressive until I realized the Sphinx wasn't really that big). A later would-be Pharaoh had a dream that if he cleared the sand away from the Sphinx he would become Pharaoh. As it turns out, the dream was correct and a small granite tablet between the paws of the Sphinx commemorates the event. Common knowledge has it that Napoleon's army shot off the nose of the Sphinx. In fact, our guide book claims that the nose fell off much earlier when the Turks used the Sphinx for target practice. Apparently there are pictures predating Napoleon's visit to Egypt showing the Sphinx without a nose. Unfortunately, there was restoration going on, so we couldn't walk around the Sphinx at all.

We had lunch overlooking the Pyramids and the Sphinx. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped off at a perfume shop. Egyptian perfume is completely pure, no alcohol or oils and so it'll last forever. The stop, like so many others, was a complete kick-back to the guide (who receives a percentage of sales), but it was still interesting to learn a little about the perfume business and, if nothing else, get a break from the heat.

After the perfume shop, we headed back to the hotel where we were able to swim and relax for the rest of the day. We had an ungodly early wakeup call the next day for our flight to Aswan.