Needopedia

This is our fifth day in Egypt, and it has been ripe with experiences.

Dwayne and I explored a few kilometers around our hotel the evening we landed, and we didn’t get maimed or killed.  It’s cute how we thought Nairobi was dirty and brimming with crazed drivers and unflappable pedestrians/vendors in the middle of freeways.  Add 15 million more people, the smell of dead cats (because, you know, of what happens to all the living ones), and oh-my-f-ing-Nefreti, the Nile! …and you have a decent approximation of Cairo. It was exhilarating.

We met Mohamed, our tour guide for Egypt, and the six of us explored Memphis and Saqqara on our first full day.  Understatement: Memphis is old. While it didn’t become the capital of a united (Upper + Lower) Egypt until about 3100BC, it probably existed, in its prime location on the Nile, about 8000 years ago. Even when it wasn’t the capital after a thousand years, it was still an important city such that Ramses II (most famous/powerful/successful/ egotistical of all the arrogant 170 pharaohs) erected two huge statues of himself in Memphis and he died in 1200BC.  Ancient Egypt can throw thousand-year increments around like the US tosses billion-dollar price tags.

 

There are three interesting things about the Memphis outdoor museum:

1. The 2^nd largest sphinx (like a mini-me, and in better shape).  It was excavated exactly where it was found, which is why the base is so deep.  The museum was built around it.
2. The mostly intact Ramses II statue, rescued from it’s face-down position in a mudpuddle.
3. The casual remnants of ancient sculpture, hieroglyphs, treasures places around the yard. (The last one in the slide show is an altar with depictions of after-life necessities and the hieroglyphics on the edges are the spells to make those items real.)

Memphis alone could probably employ all the world’s archeologists for many years.

Not far from Memphis is Saqqara, in my puny understanding, the mausoleum of Memphis.  This is where the first step pyramid was built.  Its importance? Besides being the first known pyramid, it was the first block (not mudbrick, but cut stone) structure, possibly ever.

I enjoyed many of the carvings we saw inside:

One thing I’ve learned about pyramids is that they are never built alone.  Even this first burial pyramid had little pyramids built for wives and daughters and his burial and mummification, as well as possible tombs for the architects. The Step Pyramid of Saqqara has part of its original fortress wall around it, which has been recently restored. Something I already knew, but didn’t quite grasp, was that the mummification and burial “stuff” is quite a ways from the pyramid, and access to the final chamber is a long stair set through the underground. You will be forgiven for thinking “iceberg” even given the hot climate.

That was about as much history as we could take for the day, and our next adventure was to visit the bazaar downtown, singeing all our senses in a cacophony of hawkers.

The next day was the big guns: Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, camel rides, and the Egypt Museum.  The youngers were thoroughly bored.

[The momism in our household is “Well, I liked it enough for all of us.” Not only is it true, but it has the benefit of annoying Wes.]

A fun fact about the pyramids, built by Father, Son, and Grandson: The Father’s (Khufu) was quite tall, and Son (Khafre) couldn’t disrespect his father by making his taller.  So he built his four meters shorter… on higher elevation. Grandson (Menkaure) couldn’t compete and just sulked over in a corner.

Even though “the coolest stuff” has been moved over to the not-yet-opened Grand Museum, the Egypt Museum still had some interesting and curious works, including some statues that did not look like anything we had seen in our ancient Egyptian field study, including what looks suspiciously like mummified Yoda.

[Continued, next post…]