Dahshur and back to Giza

I was up bright and breezy this morning in order to head out and visit my final set of pyramids. Due to the nature of the climate, all trips start very early in the morning (8:20am is early when you are on holiday!!) so that you get most of the temple hopping done before the midday sun.

Today I did things slightly differently; I booked a private tour, which meant that I hired a taxi and a tour guide for the day on my own. This is a bit more expensive then going on the daily tours which picks up people at every hotel, and is a little bit more anti-social, but it has some very distinct advantages, namely that I could choose how long we stayed at the pyramids, and also ask the driver to stop at something interesting I happened to see on the journey, so I could take a quick snap.

Also, it meant that I did not have to endure any more of those bloody carpet / alabaster / papyrus / aromatherapy / cotton schools which are just a front for selling overpriced merchandise to tourists. Don’t get me wrong, the guide did ask if I wanted to see them, but he was told in no uncertain terms that I was not interested and he knew not to pursue it any further.

Actually my guide was a very nice chap call Wagih. He is a Coptic Christian, and I could tell this without even having to ask him. Most Coptic Christians have a traditionally Christian name, like Mary, Joseph etc. but Wagih sounded more of an Islamic name to me at first. However, a lot of Coptics also have a tattooed cross on the underside of their wrist to signify their faith. It was this I noticed on Wagih.

Our first trip of the day was out of Cairo a few miles to a place called Dahshur. This is a site which was built by the forefathers of the builder of the great Pyramid in Giza, and has some interesting designs. Ironically, this was not too far away from Saqqara, which I visited yesterday, but it is not deemed worthy of being on most companies official tour list, and so joy of joys, upon arrival at the site I was pleased to find it completely devoid of tourists (i think there was maybe four or five other people there). This seems really strange, as these pyramids are the hidden gems of the Cairo pyramid circuit. Giza is packed, but here you can walk around with no people touting for business and no tourists getting into shot.

There are two pyramids of note here; one is called the bent pyramid and the other is called the red pyramid. I visited the bent pyramid first. Why is it bent you might ask? Well it is not because it minces around the Sahara saying “hello sailor” at every passing tour party, it is because halfway through the design, the pharaoh (Djoser) who commissioned it became ill, and so the architect needed to finish the building quickly. In order to do this, the architect decided to change the angle to make the completion date quicker. Put simply, a pyramid needs to be finished in a Pharaoh’s lifetime; otherwise he is quickly forgotten about as all resources are diverted to building the new Pharaoh’s pyramid, akin to “the king is dead, long live the king”.

The bent pyramid mincing in the Saharan sand.......the smooth surface is the best

example of how all the pyramids would have looked had they remained untouched

Unfortunately for the architect though, the Pharaoh recovered, saw what a botched job this pyramid was and jailed him for his troubles. He then moved on to commissioning another pyramid next door to it (the red pyramid)., much to the annoyance of the workers! This is a mighty impressive structure, but the pharaoh never saw it completed, as he died only a few years into the construction and, because the people resented him for making them build two pyramids, they interred him in the bent one as a punishment.

The red pyramid - looks the same colour as all the other pyramids to me...

This pyramid was still finished by the Pharaoh’s son, but no one was ever buried in it, as the new Pharaoh was called Khufu (Cheops), he who built the largest pyramid at Giza. The good news for me was that the red pyramid was open to the public, and you could go down into it and see the would-be tombs of the pyramid. Down into the bowels of the pyramid I went.

The climb up to the entrance of the red pyramid was tiring!!!

The smell of ammonia was pretty stifling, but it was not as bad as the journey into Khafre’s pyramid at Giza, which was a) packed with people making the humidity even worse and b) much more strenuous. Furthermore, at the end of this journey there was something more interesting that just a square stone room, and thanks to an earlier baksheesh payment to the guard at the entrance, I was allowed to take my camera in and take a few pictures. This was simply not possible at Khafre, because of the weight of traffic that goes through it.

This is the tunnel to the Pharoahs tomb, it is only about 3 feet high

The roof to the tomb, pretty bland really

There is one other pyramid at the site, called the collapsed pyramid. This being on account that it has –erm- collapsed. The whole site of Dahshur used to be right in the middle of a massive army base, and so I was left wondering if the collapsing was a natural occurrence, or whether a stray shell had wiped out this massive piece of history. Fortunately, in recent years the Egyptian government have realised that these buildings are actually worth preserving and so they have relocated the army base to border the monuments.

After visiting Dahshur, we moved back on to the Giza plateau to look at the Great Pyramids again. This was an opportunity for me to get a closer look at the smallest of the three pyramids, Menkaure, which has three nice satellite pyramids next to it. Also, I wanted to see the Solar Boat, a recently discovered ship at the foot of the Great Pyramid, which it a fully 40 metres long! The last time I was here, we were not afforded the time to see this, because we needed to rush off and visit the papyrus institute!!

The pyramid of Menkaure from the front

As I was in control of what we did on this trip, I was able to spend a nice amount of time wandering around the pyramids, taking photos at leisure. I even managed to walk out into the desert and get a spectacular 6-pyramids-in-1 photo.

The Giza-n money shot - 6 pyramids in the same picture.

The camel riders offered to take me out further to get a 9 pyramids shot, but looking at the way they treated the animals (lots of whipping), I decided that I was not going to support them with my money, and so I walked, but only as far as getting 6 pyramids in shot. The 9 pyramid shot would have been a further kilometre walk in the desert, and I had no air-con!

So after snapping away furiously, I moved back to the base of the Khufu (Cheops) pyramid to go and visit the sun boat. Because this thing is so old and fragile, upon entry you are ordered to put on some special shoe coverings, to prevent any sand/contaminants into the room. The wood has been preserved, but I suppose they are not taking any chances. Or maybe they don’t want to pay for a cleaner to sweep away all the sand the tourist shoes will bring in. Whatever.

These are not the silliest things i have worn on this trip so far.....

The boat is a mighty impressive ship over 40 metres in length and is completely intact, which can't be said of a lot of monuments here. When the Pharaoh died, they buried this boat along with him. I won’t go in to the details, but it is linked to Ra (Sun god) moving across the sky in a large boat, according to Egyptian mythology.

The solar boat...I wonder what "Just one Cornetto" is in Egyptian....

That is the end of seeing pyramids and ancient temples in Egypt, tomorrow’s trip will involve going to see Old Cairo (mosques, synagogue and Coptic Church) and hopefully the Khan Al Khallili bazaar, which is a sort of Egyptian version of Portobello Road.

One final shot of the Sphinx and Khafre Pyramid