Egypt 2008: Giza: the Sphinx

October 11th.

So, we got back in the car and drove back down, but by a different route. We had one thing left to see - the Sphinx. OK, to be exact, the Great Sphinx of Giza. Read the Wiki entry to learn a little more about the history of this amazing statue, the debate about its age etc ... I just don't know enough about it to say anything, really. Google is your friend. :-) CH is going to lend me a book about this, so maybe I'll learn a little more eventually. :-) All I can say is that it did seem disproportionate to me - its head looked too small relative to the size of its body. Having seen it, the theory that its face was recarved into its current appearance at some point after its construction seems quite likely to me. The proportions did look off. Whether the face resembles other portraits of king Khefren or not, I really have no idea. :-)

Received wisdom has been wrong before, but I really know way too little about this. Must read books ...

Also, about what 'people' say about how everyone is so surprised by how small the Sphinx is - I actually wasn't surprised by how small it was, because before I saw it, I'd had SO many people tell me how surprisingly small it is. ;-)

Approaching. It was just so cool to be there. As I've mentioned, I know. :-) Something I haven't mentioned, though, is that thing on the peak of Khefren's pyramid. You may have noticed it in my previous posts. :-) It's all that's left of a smooth layer of stone that used to cover the entire pyramid. All three of them, in fact, but only Khefren has any of this left now. So they looked very different way back when. Extremely different, in fact ... since this smooth stone was heavily decorated with gold and silver and precious stones. This won't sound very nice, but really: it must have looked so fucking tacky.

There were quite a few tourists there ... as well as police and souvenir sellers. (Who were selling mostly really tacky souvenirs, if truth be told.) Here's the wall that I showed pictures of before, when it was being used as a screen during the sound and light show. You have to go through this to get to the Sphinx ...

... but of course you can see it from much further away, it towers over the wall. Partly because it's much taller :-) but also because the ground slopes upwards towards the plateau where the Khefren pyramid stands.

The Mykerinos pyramid to the left. It really is so much smaller. He must have been a very modest fellow. ;-)

A closer look. I love seeing the details of the pyramid. You can practically count the stones. :-)

Me in front of the Sphinx, as close as you can get. They don't let people actually approach it, or walk on the area adjacent to it. You can just look at it from a kind of wall that runs alongside. I guess they can't risk having people climbing on it and so on. There is a small temple between its front legs, but there's no entry to this. For regular tourists, anyway - I'm guessing they may let VIPs in occasionally. :-)

A closeup ... not entirely in profile, but I had to take it just then, because there was something special ... something that was just perfect for scale. Can you see it? :-)

Here's something pretty damn amazing. Actually you've got to call it almost unbelievable. A marvel of engineering. This was built what, 4500 years ago. Amazing is the word. Can you spot what I'm talking about?

The entire front of the Sphinx. Can you see what I mean by disproportionate? I mean, look at those legs, and then the size of the head ... it just looks off. To my eyes, anyway.

Some pretty hefty blocks of stone they've used here ... and very well preserved indeed. They have been buried under sand for many centuries, of course. CH included for scale. :-)

As I've mentioned, there are cops around all of these places. The Tourism and Antiquities Police. :-) They're mostly on foot, but sometimes I guess the areas are just too big to patrol effectively that way ... so here you have the Egyptian mounted police. :-D A Kodak moment if I ever saw one ... !! :-D

Here's the seating area where we sat the night before watching the sound and light show. The place looked pretty different by daylight.

I've just got to boast about my new camera a little. When we arrived in Egypt, I'd only had it for a couple of weeks, so I was still experimenting with it and learning about it. Of course the zoom was something that really interested me. Here's my first real test of it. See the ridge on the other side of the road there? See the little speck that is actually a man? Something else came along there a little later and I decided to check out the zoom a little. Scroll down ...

Zoomed in to the max. :-o Pretty good, don't you think? These people are actually standing right there on that same ridge. I'm still in roughly the same spot. This is a great picture in its own right, IMO, but not least it shows that the zoom is pretty damn good on this little thingummy. :-)

We joked that maybe we should book rooms at this place for our next stay. Hmm, tempting ...

Here's the best picture I took of the Sphinx ... maybe the best picture I took all day. Almost postcard-worthy ... IMHO. :-)

To see more pictures of the Sphinx, go here.

Egypt 2008: Giza: the Pyramids, part two

October 11th.

So, we left the lookout point in our car and drove back down to the pyramids. Felt pretty weird knowing that in a moment we would be standing next to them. :-D During the drive, Hatem told us that if we wanted to, for an extra 25 Egyptian pounds each (LE; worth about the same as Norwegian crowns) we could go down into the tomb underneath the Khefren pyramid. Did we!!? I was so there. :-) CH was a little more ... well, meh ... because as I said she had already been down there 13 years ago. But hey, why the hell not. :-) She had hoped to be able to enter the Cheops pyramid, but Hatem explained that it's only open to a limited number of visitors per day - I think he said 150 - and you have to be super early to get a ticket, etc. So then & there it was Khefren or nothing. That's what you call a no-brainer, as far as I'm concerned. ;-) So even though CH said there was nothing much to see there, just a long low corridor and then an almost empty room, we all got in line. I mean, hello. It's a pyramid. :-o

While we were waiting, there was of course plenty to look at ...

Approaching Cheops ...

Approaching Khefren ...

Waiting in line to get in. The line was pretty long, but it moved fast, so we didn't have to wait that long. Which was good, because it was pretty hot out in the open like that.

I wanted to take some pictures inside, or ideally even film the walk, but alas, this was not allowed. To the point where we had to leave our cameras outside. Poor Hatem had to hold all of them, it was quite a juggling act. :-) This is the last picture I took before I had to surrender my camera. Can you tell that the corridor is very narrow indeed, and that the people in the picture are very very hot? Or I might even say over-heated? Probably not. But it was SO HOT down there ... !! We saw people coming out with sweat literally dripping off their chins, young strong men red-faced and almost staggering ... and both CH and I thought to ourselves (as revealed in conversation later :-) that come on, it can't be that hot. It can't be. Those guys are just wusses.

But yeah, it was that hot.

The corridor was very long and very narrow - most of the time we had to walk bent almost double - going first down down down, then flat for a while and then up again, until we entered the burial chamber of king Khefren. o_O Although as CH had said there wasn't much to see there, except the unadorned stone sarcophagus (which, 13 years ago, she was allowed to sit down in!! times have changed!), it was still rather a special feeling to be standing there. Knowing what I know. There was some 19th-century graffiti on the walls and I would have loved to be able to take some pictures down there. But, alas, it was not to be. Fortunately, I was to have more chances at graffiti over the course of the trip. :-)

Afterwards we wandered around outside gazing at the scenery and taking pictures. Here's a closeup of the side of the pyramid, with some of the many birds who rested in the shade there.

It was very impressive to be standing there and seeing it all ... and looking up ... o_O

You aren't really allowed to get right up close to the pyramid; like, onto it - there is a rope barricade around it - but the tourism police allow it anyway if the guides ask nicely. Which of course Hatem did. As long as you stay on the bottom levels of stone they have no problem with it ... but one guy (a total stranger to us, fortunately) decided to climb up further and that made them freak. Too bad that we couldn't climb on it, but I do understand that not everyone can be allowed to do that - that would probably be hundreds of thousands of people every year - so of course no one can. Anyway. Here we all are, sitting on the Khefren pyramid. :-) Einar in front, back row left to right me, CH, Sissel, Inger-Lise, Berit. Photo by Hatem. :-)

There were remains of other structures too, here and there, but there was too little left of them for us to be able to tell what they had been. Just bits of wall. Still impressive, though, size-wise. And look, people out horseback riding. :-)

The peak of the Cheops pyramid. Even thinking of the number of stones used to construct it makes me tired.

Khefren again. Wow. Just wow.

To see more pictures from the pyramids, go here.

Next up: the Sphinx!! :-)

Egypt 2008: Giza: the Pyramids, part one

OK, now it's time to get back to Egypt, photo collection complete or not. CH is in France this weekend so she hasn't had time to do anything more with her pictures. Oy vey. Who knew it'd be this difficult. :-) I guess I'll just have to post some more pictures later. Oh noes ... :-)

October 11th, still. :-)

From Memphis we drove off to meet our fellow countrymen, who had been taken out in another minibus and met us basically by the side of the road somewhere. :-D I don't remember who switched cars, us or them. Not very interesting anyway, because ... next stop, the Pyramids!! :-o

Everywhere we went we didn't have to wait in line to get tickets, because our guides always went to get them for us. This seemed to go quicker than standing in line on one's own, I guess they have a fast track for people guiding groups. I got that impression, anyway. Here we are getting our tickets - left to right CH, Hatem handing out the tickets, Inger-Lise (back turned), Sissel, Berit.

The Cheops pyramid in the background. Woo-hoo. :-)

A view of Cairo with tourists in the foreground. 'Hurry up, woman, can't you see there's a line??'

The first thing we did was drive past the pyramids and up to a lookout point which would give us a view of the whole area and where, as Hatem said, we could take nice pictures. :-) I of course had to take pictures through the car window as we drove. :-)

Cheops, left, and Khefren.

Mykerinos with three so-called 'Queen Pyramids' to the right. These were graves of queens/female consorts, obviously. There is a rectangular hole in the side of the Mykerinos pyramid; this happened during an earthquake which caused part of it to cave in.

Khefren ... v. obviously through the window of a moving car. :-D

Giza is on the very outskirts of Cairo. A view out towards the desert surrounding the city. Note the camels. :-)

On the lookout point there was quite a crowd, despite it being off season. Not sure I want to know what it's like at the peak of the tourist season ...

Hatem posed for a picture with the crowds in the background. :-)

An excellent view indeed. From left to right, Cheops, Khefren, Mykerinos, the Queen Pyramids. From this angle it looks as if Khefren is the largest; as I said, this is a trick of the terrain, Khefren's father king Cheops' grave is the biggest of the three, but Khefren's is built on higher ground. Imagine that; I bet his face was red when he discovered how it looked from the other side. ;-)

Me. Woo-hoo, pyramids!!! :-D

There was a kind of temporary bazaar set up along the side of the lookout area ... we didn't venture over to it since we didn't have a lot of time and we didn't want to be mobbed by crazed salesmen. They weren't very pushy, or didn't seem very pushy to us ... but again, we did have Hatem with us to discourage them. V. convenient. :-)

Desperate for a last few pictures as we drove off ... !

From the lookout point we drove back down to the foot of the pyramids. We were hoping to be able to get into one of them. CH hoped especially for Cheops since she got into Khefren the last time she was in Egypt. Did our wishes come true?? Stay tuned for the next Egypt post ... !! ;-)

To see more pictures from the pyramids, go here.

Egypt 2008: Sakkara

October 11th.

This was the first full day of our trip. We had several outings on our schedule and Wael had told us the night before that we had to be in the lobby at 7:15am (wake up call at 6). The first excursion was to be to Sakkara, the great necropolis at the outskirts of the city, and we were the only ones going.

A brief digression: the day before we had met some countrymen, they were also travelling with Egypt Reiser, and were staying in the same hotel, but other than that had nothing to do with us. While waiting to check in on the 10th we had started to make friends with them – nothing like a trip abroad to make you feel kinship with any & all random Norwegian you come across. ;-)

This was a group of four people who were all much older than us. There was a husband and wife team, Einar and Sissel, her sister Berit, and Berit's friend Inger-Lise. We never found out exactly how old they were, but over the week or so that we spent together Berit mentioned, several times, her 75th birthday party that had been and gone … and I think she was the younger sister. I hope I’ll be in as good shape as these people were when I’m pushing 80. :-o But more on Einar and his ladies later. They were not scheduled to go to Sakkara with us, we were going to meet up with them later to see the pyramids in daylight. :-)

Wael met us in the lobby and introduced us to our guide, Hatem, a cheerful-looking personage of indeterminate age who allegedly spoke Swedish. This was a very strange sort of Swedish with a little Norwegian and some German thrown in, and initially it didn’t sound like any Swedish we'd ever heard, but once we'd reset our ears, so to speak, we had very little trouble understanding him. He was enthusiastic and friendly and turned out to be quite knowledgeable too, so overall we were really happy with him as a guide. He was the most fun in Alexandria. :-) But first, Sakkara!

We drove directly there, somewhat recklessly, and got there in fact too early … they opened the area up for visitors at 8am and we had to wait for about 10-15 minutes before we could drive through the gates. Hatem told us about date palms in the meantime. :-) When the guards finally let us through we drove off again, only stopping to get tickets (Hatem took care of this) and then heading off to our destination.

Sakkara as I mentioned is a necropolis … a city of the dead, ie an ancient burial site. Many types of graves have been excavated there, and burial customs from many many centuries can be traced in the finds. There is a quite new museum there, which unfortunately we didn't have time to visit. Well, that wasn’t what we went there to see anyway. CH was the prime mover in our choosing this excursion, because Sakkara was one of the places she missed on her first trip to Egypt. (Did I mention that? She spent a week in Egypt 13 years ago.) So she definitely wanted to see it this time. What people mainly come there to see is the biggest and most important grave in this city of graves – the first pyramid in Egypt, the Stepped Pyramid which hid the tomb of king Zhoser. It was designed and constructed for him by his brilliant architect and engineer, Imhotep, who was later deified and worshipped as the god of medicine.

This excursion was almost the coolest thing we experienced on the whole trip. Not because the place itself was so amazing, but because we were there all alone. :-o We were the first ones to arrive, there was literally not a single other tourist to be seen – it was just us, Hatem, a couple of guards outside the king's burial grounds, and a few souvenir sellers who seemed only half awake at first and who, when they came to, were shooed away by Hatem and basically didn't bother us at all. It was just so cool … !! to be there all by ourselves. I can’t describe it. It rocked. :-D

Hatem leading us towards the entrance to the funerary complex.

CH in the hall of pillars that leads to the grounds in front of the pyramid. These pillars are about 4600 years old. :-o

The first pyramid!

Hatem explaining the development of burial customs in ancient Egypt.

A view across the necropolis, with some more pyramids in the distance. (Those are not the Giza pyramids, but some other ones. CH, I know you're reading this, which pyramids were these? I don't remember, but I know that you know ... :-)

Hatem and CH posing with camels in the background. :-D

CH and me in front of the pyramid. Photo by Hatem. :-)

Looking up the side of the pyramid.

A lot of work is being done to maintain and preserve this precious structure.

But not everyone is overwhelmed with awe of the ancients. ;-)

Since no one but us had walked around and disturbed the fine-grained sand yet, there was evidence of animal activity, though we only saw some wild dogs.

The patter of tiny feet …

Here you see a life and death struggle between a desert lizard and a small bird … or possibly a snake may have been involved.

Leaving, oh noes!

It’s the first pyramid … !!

Desperate for one last glimpse …

We headed off again just as the serious busloads of tourists started to arrive. What a wonderful wonderful experience. :-) To see more pictures from Sakkara, go here.

Happy now, Paz?? ;-)