Pyramids

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26/09/08 - 29/09/08

We arrived at our hotel near by the Great Pyramids of Giza. We first saw them while still on the main road through Ciaro. It would be very hard to get lost with a land mark like the Pyramids to guide you.
It seemed very strange to see their shape jutting up into the sky as you walk out into the street outside the hotel. It is surprising how close they are to suburbia. We imagined them to be out in the middle of the desert. They are boardered on one side by the desert, and houses on the other. Our driver who drove us from one hotel to the other said that 20 years ago there was not a house within cooee of the Pyramids.
It is amazing to see these huge ancient constructions still standing. There size is deceptive. They look big from a distance, but as you get closer you realise how big they are, when standing next to them you see how really really big they are.

Over the next 3 days we finally saw up close what we would normally only see on TV or in books, The famous Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, and the treasures of Tutankhamun in the Egyptian Museum.
We were lucky enough to get four of the 150 tickets that are issued in the morning, to enable us to enter the Great Pyramid. Once inside we had a climb of about 100m or so, through low passage ways. The girls found it easy going. The passage opened out into the burial chamber of the king which was about 5m x 10m, and 6 or so metres high. The stone blocks of granite which make up the walls of the chamber, fit together so well that it is hard to see the joins. The roof of the chamber is made up of 9 huge granite blocks which weigh over 400 Tonnes. It is incredable to think how they moved these blocks and placed them together with such precision and engineering skill. No modern tools back then, just hammer and chisel. Unbelievable!

We moved on to Saqqara to view the Step Pyramid. This was the first pyramid to be constructed, in 2650BC and is Egypt's oldest stone monument. It wasn't meant to be a pyramid it was constructed as 5 layers of blocks on top of each other to help protect the mummy in the tomb. Each layer was smaller in size than the one below, giving rise to the pyramid shape.

The Egyptian Museum is filled with over 120 000 relics from every period in Egypts history. There was so much to see but with limited time we concentrated on The Tutankhamun Gallerys and the Mummy Rooms. The Mummy rooms have 11 of Egypts most illustrious Pharaohs and Queens on display, dating from 1650 to 945BC.These include Ramses II and Ramses V and Queen Henttawy. The girls were intreged with this morbid display.
The treasures retrieved from the Tomb of Tutankhamun are the only artifacts ever found intact in any unearthed tomb.All of the other tombs were raided within 50 years of them being sealed.
There are approx 1700 items on display, ranging from board games and hunting implements to couches and beds and of course, the famous golden death mask. The only reason this tomb was left intact is because it was situated below the tomb of a more important Pharaoh. This tomb above Tutankhamun's tomb was robbed with the thieves not realising the existance of the treasures below. Tombs were not normally built on top of each other, so the thieves had no reason to think there would be anything else nearby to pilage.

On our larst day in Cairo we hired a man off the street, and his extremely old pugeot car (not sure of spelling), to take us to see the City of the Dead and the Hanging Church.

We were picked up from our motel at 7.30pm to catch the 8.10pm sleeper train to Aswan. After boarding at 930pm (810pm Egypt time),we were given dinner and our bunk beds were turned down. We were all ready to be rocked to sleep by the train so we climbed into bed. The girls thought it was great having their own little cabin. We set the alarm for 7am for breakfast as our arrival time in Aswan was for 8am.

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