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

It's the Pyramids, Geezer

Well, I suppose it would be very remiss of me to come all this way and not manage to see the Pyramids, so last night I dedicated to seeing the laser show they put on, with a tour of the three Pyramids and the Sphinx this morning/afternoon.

The laser (aka sound and light) show is something that I find difficult to describe in words. "Cheesy" would be the one that sums it up best. You arrive at the Pyramids after sunset and they are beautifully lit, showing off their magnificence. You take your seat and wait for the fun to start. Straight away I knew this was going to be bad because as soon as the entry barrier opened, you had fully grown adults behaving like children and sprinting so they could get to the front seats! Still I found a seat in the third row, which was perfectly fine, and I settled down to watch.

Nice lighting, shame about the narration

BOOM!!!BOOM!!!BOOM!!!

An unnecessarily thunderous noise bellowed out of the speakers, followed by an over the top fanfare that would not have been out of place in Ben-Hur. Then, Omar Sharif's voice (I think) booms out a welcome from the Sphinx. For the remainder of the show the impression is given to the audience that it is the Sphinx that is the narrator of the story of Egypt. Interspersed with the BOOMing was a haunting xylophone/chime tune, which was reminiscent of the theme to Tales of the Unexpected. They really need to update their music to something more contemporary, like Eminem (will the Real Slim Sphinx-y please stand up?).

The Sphinx informs us the even Alexander the Great bowed before him (no actual
evidence of this), but forgets to mention that Napoleon's troops used his nose (now
in the British Museum) as target practice...they have no respect those Frenchies;)

Lots of cheesy lines ensue, one classic I can remember is "man fears time, but time fears the Pyramids"[fanfare]. To add a bit of drama to the proceedings, they change the colours of the lighting so that at some points the Sphinx is blue, others he is green, or maybe even red. This was quite a nice series of effects, but my camera is not up to taking meaningful photos in the dark like that, so out of the many I took, only a handful are worth keeping. Personally, I was thankful when the show was over and the noise had stopped, then I could go to the front and take a couple of tasteful shots of the Pyramids and Sphinx at night. Still on the plus side, it is something I can say I have done.

Man fears time, but time fears a piece of crafted limestone
that's been slowly weathering away over the ages (i.e. time)

So, today I arranged a day trip to the Pyramids and Sphinx. Getting there was an ordeal in itself. I got into the tour bus, which stops off at a variety of hotels to pick up people, and we seemed to keep going around in circles for almost an hour. First of all we went back to one hotel to drop a couple off who got on the wrong tour, then we had to cross the city to get back to my hotel and pick someone else up who belatedly decided to go on the tour. Then I found out he was not going on our tour, but we were handing him over to another tour, and just dropping him off. Then we had to switch buses as the bus I was on was for a different tour. Nothing in Egypt is ever straightforward, but as long as you just sit back and go with it, you will be fine.

Finally we got there, and I was not disappointed with what I saw. To see the only remaining wonder of the ancient world is quite a humbling experience if i am honest. The Pyramids as viewed from the sound and light show seemed very small, but that was down to two factors; firstly, there is a large bank of sand between the seats at the sound and light show and the Pyramids, making them look stunted, and secondly, the distance of the seats from the Pyramids must be close to 1km. Now though, up close and personal, these monuments were, well, monumental. Each brick weighs between 10 and 50 tonnes, and most of them were almost as tall as me.

The Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) stands 143 metres high

A view looking straight up Khufu - to give you a sense of scale, I
would estimate that each one of those bricks is almost as tall me!!

Ok, factoid time. for the largest Pyramid (Cheops) it is estimated that 2.3 million of these bricks were used, and the tour guide delighted in telling us that Napoleon had his mathematicians work out that if all the bricks were laid out end-to-end, it would be long enough to completely surround France with a three metre high, half a metre thick wall (seems like a more productive use of the bricks to me ;) )

The second Pyramid, which is known as Khafre (or sometimes Chephren) is one that you can enter, for an additional fee of course. I am not the sort of person that is going to turn down that sort of opportunity, and so I excitedly entered the Pharaoh’s inner sanctum (if you will excuse the term). Once again, no photography is allowed in there, although there is not much to snap in there anyway, it is very bland and could just be any stone room.

The Pyramid of Khafre stands at 138 metres

The entrance into the Pyramid of Khafre

The side of the Pyramid of Khafre with the Pyramid
of Menkaure (which is the smallest) in the distance.

What was noticeable though was a blast of hot stagnant air as you enter the tunnel leading down into the Pyramid. It smells like a 4000 year old mummy's laundry basket, and the further you go into the pyramid, the more stiflingly hot it becomes. This is probably due to a combination of the lighting and the amount of tourist traffic it seems to get. The tunnel itself is not for someone with claustrophobic tendencies (think of all those millions of tonnes of rock that could come crashing down on you at any moment!), or for people with back problems as you have to hunch for a most of the journey. I am suspecting that ancient Egyptians were midgets.

The Pyramid of Menkaure with satellite pyramids (so that
the Pharaoh could watch Sky Sports in the afterlife.....)

After this, we kept moving around the Giza plateau for a variety of different photographic opportunities. At this point, I should mention that I seemed to get paired with some French chap who looked a bit like a young Gerard Depardieu and could speak very little English. He was nice enough, but the language barrier was a bit of an obstacle, and I don’t think he fully understood that I did not want to go out with him later to pick up girls at the nightclub across the river from the hotel (I am honestly not making up this stereotype at all, that is what he wanted to do!).

The Sphinx (in case you had not guessed) with the Pyramid of Khafre

Close up of the Sphinx

After an afternoon snapping, I was looking forward to getting home when, all of a sudden, the tour guide started telling us about how papyrus was made. Regular readers will recognise these classic warning signs, and true enough we were soon parked up outside a shop which was going to show how papyrus is made. The lesson was conducted by a young man who clearly did not have the heart in demonstrating this ancient art to us, as the whole thing lasted under a minute and we were left to browse the shop while the tour-guide was given a Pepsi for her skills in getting us into the shop.

We all left without making a purchase, and got back in the car. Then she mentioned the most evil word in the English language to me at the moment, "aromatherapy", and I quickly piped up with "I have seen that already, so I will wait in the car". Fortunately a couple of others on the tour had seen this too, and so the visit to have a variety of unguents smeared on your body was cancelled (something which I think the guide and the driver had a mini-argument about, as they did not speak to each other on the way back).

So that was today’s adventure. Tomorrow I think I will visit some of the other Pyramids in the area (there are 109 Pyramids in total, the 3 at Giza being the most famous of them), notably at Memphis (not the US one) and Darshur (not Darfur, which is in the Sudan).