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Published: January 17th 2006
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Step Pyramid
The Step Pyramid at Saqqara, the world's oldest pyramid. Today is Shane's birthday! Won't tell you how old he is (most of you know anyways), but I think he's still looking pretty fine... Anyways, after staring at the fascinating the view of the Great Pyramids in the morning and having a huge breakfast buffet, we headed off to see the world's oldest pyramids. First off was Saqqara (by private taxi, of course)...
Saqqara is about 25 km south of Cairo and is a huge cemetery of ancient Memphis, which is where the legendary pharaoh Narmer founded his capital. Narmer is credited with unifying the two lands of Upper and Lower Egypt around 3100 BC and Memphis is symbolically located on the exact spot where the Nile Delta met the valley. Saqqara has eleven major pyramids in which Old Kingdom pharaohs were buried and hundreds of smaller tombs in which their subjects were buried. Overally, it covers a 7 km stretch of the Western Desert.
First off we saw the B tombs, which had buried in them the overseers of royal manicurists, royal hairdressers, and royal butchers. From there, there was the Causeway of Unas, which is a walkway that leads to the Pyramid of Unas. Unas was the
last pharaoh of the 5th dynasty and the Pyramid of Unas is little more than a pile of rubble, but it once stood 43 m high.
Then we saw the Step Pyramid, which is the tomb of the pharaoh Zoser. It is the world's first pyramid and was built in six stages that rose in six steps to a final height of 60 m. It was encased in fine white limestone. At the North end of the pyramid is the serdab which is a stone structure housing a life-size statue of Zoser. We then saw the Pyramid of Teti before heading off to Dashur.
Dashur is about 10 km South of Saqqara. Amazingly not a whole lot of tourists at Dashur so we got to enjoy the pyramids there by ourselves. There were originally eleven pyramids at Dashur, but only the two Old Kingdom ones are still intact (the Red and the Bent Pyramids).
The older one is the Bent pyramid, build by the pharaoh Sneferu (2613-2589 BC). He also built the oldest "true" pyramid, which is the Red Pyramid. Both the Red and Bent pyramids are the same height and are the third largest pyramids in
Saqqara
The causeway of Unas and the Pyramid of Unas, the last pharoah of the 6th dynasty (yes, the pyramid is the huge, shapeless mound at the end). Egypt, after the two largest ones at Giza. The Bent pyramid is a result of Sneferu's architects trying to create a true, smooth-sided pyramid. They began with the same steep angle and inwards-leaning courses of stone they used to create step pyramids, but it began to show signs of stress and instability about halfway up. So they had to reduce its angle, giving the pyramid its bent shape and angle.
As mentioned before, the North Pyramid, or better known as the Red Pyramid, is the first true pyramid. It is named for the red tones of its weathered limestone (its better quality white limestone casing has been removed). The entrance of the pyramid can be reached by climbing up 125 stone steps and then a narrow 63 m long passageway takes you down to the burial chamber. Everything in the burial chamber has been taken out and it was really humid and dank down there with a very strong urinal smell to it. However, it was neat to climb down just for the experience. Pictures aren't allowed, but the guy at the top was quite happy to let us take pictures for baksheesh so enjoy the pics! (I know,
Hypostyle Hall
The hypostyle hall at Saqarra. there's not much to see.)
All the sightseeing took us well into mid-afternoon and as I was getting tired and hungry (no lunch!), we headed back to the hotel for some eats and decided to go golfing by the pyramids at the Mena House Golf Course. (Well, Shane golfed anyways since I don't enjoy golf and I was his caddy - a bad one at that.) It was an 18 hole golf course that was pretty boring and flat. We enjoyed the views of the pyramids anyways and the sunset if nothing else.
We returned to our room to get ready for supper when lo and behold! There was a surprise birthday cake for Shane from the hotel. It was a black forest cake and it was really good! (Which is surprising from me as I am not a big fan of black forest cake.) We had reservations at the Moghul Room which is at the Mena house and supposed to be Cairo's finest Indian restaurant. Its gotten rave reviews and I was looking forward to a lovely meal. Turns out the meal was pretty good, but not worth the raves or the price. Once again, service was
What's everyone looking at?
Here you can see a stone structure right in front of the step pyramid which is called a serdab which contains a wooden box with two holes into its north face. What's everyone looking at? impeccable. We had live sitar music for entertainment.
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