The City of Pharaoh's

We start the morning by visiting the Egyptian Museum.  We are there before it opens and I am amazed at the throng of people milling about.  I don’t recall seeing this many tourists & travellers in one place, in any of the cities I have visited this far. 

The museum is fascinating and I can hardly believe the amazing collection of artefacts housed under this one roof, given how much Egyptian stuff is found in museums around the world.  I read there is a new museum being constructed near the Giza Pyramids but obviously that is still incomplete.   

Amr takes us around to show us the highlights (we could easily spend days here looking at everything) and then gives us time to spend on our own.  My guidebook tells me that if we spent just a minute at every exhibit, it would take 9 months to see it all.  Wow! 

The highlights for me are the Tutankhamen Galleries and the Royal Mummy Room.  Tutankhamen himself was a rather insignificant Pharaoh who was just 19 when he died and only ruled for 9 years.  What was significant about him was the fact his tomb was the only one found complete intact and had not been raided by tomb robbers.  I really enjoyed looking around the treasures and marvelled at the four gilded shrines that fitted inside each other and held his sarcophagus. 

The Royal Mummy room contains the mummified bodies of 11 of Egypt’s most famous pharaohs and queens including Rameses II who was the longest ruling pharaoh in Egypt.  He ruled Egypt for 67 years and died when he was 99 years old.  He had 123 children from over one hundred wives.  A busy man indeed. 

I had one of those ‘small world’, moments as I was going around the mummies.  I hear someone call my name and say ‘Nil, what are you doing here?’.  I stare in amazement, wondering how amidst the millions of people thronging around here, someone who knew me had actually bumped into me.  For a moment I stare at him with a completely blank look on my face and say, ‘I’m on a year off from work’, to which he responds, ‘Yes, I know, I’m Marzi’!  In that instant I recognise him also.  He is a friend from work and is travelling around Egypt with his wife.  We chat for awhile but we are both on tight schedules and unfortunately, we don’t have time for a proper catch-up.  I say goodbye and ask him to convey my regards to all our mutual friends back in Sydney.  Yes, what a small world indeed.

After lunch we make our way the pyramids of Giza.  These pyramids are the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World and are 4000 years old.  It is quite amazing to be in a city that claims to be one of the oldest inhabited places on earth. 

The great pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) was the largest in Egypt and was 146m high at the time it was completed.  It took 23 years to complete this pyramid and probably involved hundreds of thousands of people in its construction.   

I am surprised to realise how close urban Cairo is to the pyramids.  Massive apartment blocks can be seen against the skyline and unfortunately urban pollution makes it rather hazy around here.  The city has encroached on the desert and the pyramids are not quite in the midst of a white sandy desert, the way I would have liked to have seen them.

There are 3 pyramids here and we were given an opportunity to take a camel ride in the desert and enjoy a panoramic view of these wonders. 

Sitting astride this beast of the desert, I tried to imagine what it was like here, 4000 years ago and how these amazing structures might have been constructed.  A number of theories abound and one of them is that a ramp 25km long was used to transport the rock from the quarry nearby.  How ever they were constructed, it is certainly a feat of engineering, especially for those times.

We then move to view the Sphinx.  Known as the Father of Terror, it has been constructed from a huge piece of limestone that was left over from the construction of the Khufu Pyramid.  It is smaller that I imagined it to be, but incredibly impressive.  While they seem to be unsure what the purpose of the Sphinx really was, I like to think it stood there as a guardian of the Pharaoh’s resting place.

We walk through the Valley Temple to the Sphinx viewpoint.  This is the place where the internal organs were removed from a corpse and the bodies made ready for mummification.  Ah..if only these walls could talk. 

I love the view afforded from the lookout point but again am amazed at the diversity and sheer numbers of people here.  Hundreds of languages swirl around me while I just gaze in fascination at this amazing Wonder of the Ancient World.

“Man fears time but time fears the Pyramids”