June 18, 2015

We just finished our first day of touring in Cairo and it was awesome!  First off, the Western media is doing a HUGE disservice to Egypt and the public in general making this seem like a dangerous place.  The people have been nothing but nice (except the guys at the pyramids that are totally trying to scam you into taking a picture/handing you something and then asking for money.)  Everyone we met has been wonderful and thanks us for visiting.  Yes, of course there are some problems, but seriously, we have our own issues in the US with violence.

OK, ranting over…our tour today was great.  We started in Saqqara where we saw the Step Pyramid of Djoser.  This is the oldest known stone building complex in the world…pretty amazing!  We came in through the only remaining part of the complex wall which they are currently restoring.  You can see the difference between the original blocks and what has been replaced.  The inside contains “rooms” separated by columns that used to house statues of the king.  Unfortunately, most of the statues have been missing for quite some time.  Also, due to the risk of collapse, they have started putting steps/scaffolding around the pyramid in order to maintain it.

In the same complex as the pyramid, there is an ongoing excavation of some of the nearby tombs.  Our guide slipped a few bucks to the guy guarding the entrance and we got to go in to see the tombs (seriously…she handed him a balled up wad of cash once we came out).  It was really cool…as they work to recover the writing from the walls, they preserve the top layer with the writing and put it onto a newly constructed wall to keep it looking as close to original as possible.

This area was designed by Imhotep, who you may remember as the bad guy from “The Mummy”.  In this time, he was actually NOT a bad guy and was a very famous architect and counselor to the king.  He was buried at this same site, but his body is also missing.  They do have his inner sarcophagus on display in his museum along with some other pieces from the area.  Unfortunately, we were not able to take pictures inside of the museum.

After the museum at Saqqara, we went to the museum of Ramses II in Memphis.  They had a 13 meter high statue of Ramses II on display, it is still in very good condition except for the missing legs.  There were several other items on display here including the 2nd largest sphinx in the world and several other statues of Ramses II.

On our way over the Giza to see the pyramids, we stopped at a Carpet School to see how they hand make the rugs.  The carpets are really amazing and can take up to a year to make…crazy!  Kids as young as 5 start working here while they go to school in the afternoons.  They were a little out of our price range, so we won’t be bringing one home.  After that, we went to see how they make paper from Papyrus.  It was really cool because they let Hayden make a piece of his own.  We ended up getting a cool map of Egypt that was painted on the papyrus that they made there.

Our last stop was to Giza to see the pyramids and the Sphinx.  They certainly did not disappoint!  The pyramids are huge…much bigger than they look in pictures.  Actually being here is really awesome because you can walk up them, touch/sit/take pictures right on the pyramids!  The three pyramids belong to a son, his father and his grandfather.  The tallest pyramid belongs to the grandfather (147 meters), the next belongs to the father (144 meters, but it was built on higher ground, so it looks taller) and the son’s is only 66 meters tall (he ran out of money and couldn’t afford to make it taller.)  Additionally, there are 6 smaller pyramids for the queens.

Right down the street is the Sphinx of Giza.  I have to admit that I thought it would be bigger.  It has the head of a person with the body of a lion, it was built to symbolize intelligence (the head of the man) and power (the body of the lion).

Tomorrow we are going to the Egyptian Museum which should be awesome!!