Previous to our flight to Egypt and the few days we would spent in Cairo Rob warned about the people. As you may have read before on this blog his travel to Cairo was horrible, including food poisoning. So, his warnings in mind I was expecting a lot of greedy people and a lot of abused animals. Well, what can I say?
Arriving at the airport we were bombed with the question if we need a taxi. The owner of the hotel picked us up with his cousin and even had a piece of paper with Rob’s name on it, well prepared. Also well prepared was his selling speech at three in the morning. It took us some time to calm him down and finally getting to bed. For the drive from the airport to the hotel he charged us 20 bucks. The next day we had no other choice than to book a tour to Saqqara, Dahshur, Memphis and the Giza-plateau at his desk. 95 dollar per person, including entrances, a lunch, the tour guide, the driver and I guess some bakshish. For the day after this tour we managed to just book a diver to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, 50 dollars. Keep in mind we just paid 25 dollars for four nights including breakfast. Means this guy and his whole family didn’t make their money with the hotel itself, but much more with the tours they provided. And you can’t go without a tour. You may think now, wow, how stupid are those two. Why just don’t say you don’t want this tour? To give you a scale: we needed half an hour just to make clear that we were not interested in visiting a papyrus manufacturer and a perfume shop. Not to mention the disappointment about only the driver for the museum. Those people now, that you are there for a reason and they won’t stop asking question. If you are lucky, you will end up at a hotel like ours, where you can negotiate some stuff. If you are unlucky, you’ll get something like Rob the last time. Compared to his experience our stay in Cairo was awesome.
Let’s move on. The tour guide was an idiot. Half of the time he was telling bullshit, the other half was stuff you may have learned in school. I am a studied Egyptologist and at the end of the day I was annoyed by him treating us like dumb tourists who did this tour just to tell they were at the pyramids. That he was staring at my chest and liked to come pretty close didn’t make the whole thing any better. At the Great Pyramids they will always offer you the possibility of camel riding, horseback riding or taking a carriage. Don’t. Do. That. And while you are in Egypt, refuse every offer to use an animal for transportation. Those poor animals are malnourished and overworked. Under their saddles are hiding open wounds and often the backs are curving downwards. You don’t need to be a radical vegan or activist to have a little bit of pity for those animals.
Our tour brought us to Saqqara. A lovely place and just as we arrived there and had a look around I realized how close everything was. At the university we were talking about the pyramids and the locations, but I hadn’t expected to see not only the step-pyramid of Djoser, but also the pyramid of Unas. Both I don’t want to miss. Both pyramids are special in their own way. Djosers pyramid was not only the first pyramid ever, but it was based on a mastaba (arb. bank). Mastabas are the graves of royalty, Djoser let Imhotep built a mastaba and put several other mastabas on top to create the step pyramid. This is also the reason why the burial chamber itself is under the pyramid and not inside. People with mastabas as a grave had shafts and small burial chambers underneath the mastaba. The mastaba itself was just a “house” for the spirit to visit and enjoy the offerings made by certain priests. The offerings where placed I front of a false door, there the spirit could enter from the afterlife into our world and return back in the afterlife.
Unas pyramid is special because of the texts inside the chambers. The book of the dead is written upon the walls and the ceilings are decorated with a blue sky and yellow stars. Unas was the first pharaoh to write this “map” of the Duat (afterlife) upon the walls. Also, along the passage way of his pyramid there are pictures of starving Libyans, begging for food. He is worshipping himself as a good king by giving those people help in times of need. Apart from that those images are a human depiction of a climatic change that dried out the Sahara from a steppe to a desert.
Off we went to Dahshur, another place with two pyramids, the red pyramid and the bended pyramid. Both were built by Sneferu, in fact he had built three pyramids. The bent pyramid was a mistake. The angle at the bottom was to steep and the whole pyramid could have collapsed if the alterations with the bend wouldn’t have made. Nearby Dahshur there is another pyramid, the Meidum-pyramid, also built by Sneferu. This pyramid is a disaster, because just the core has remained, the rest crumbled away, now surrounding the pyramid. A mistake in its construction had let the outer rocks slipped down, just leaving the core behind.
Memphis was our next destination. Since this city was located next to the Nile it was washed away by its floods. There is not much left of it, despite being the capital of ancient Egypt for a good amount of time. With the expanding of Cairo more will be lost as it will be found. The are several other archaeological areas buried by the city, such us Maadi (a predynastic culture of Egypt), Heliopolis (a big temple complex of Ra, used during all times of Ancient Egypt). Heliopolis is now located in El-Matareya, don’t confuse it with the quarter of Heliopolis in Cairo, completely different places and faraway of each other.
Affected of the growing Cairo as well is Giza with its plateau. While the other places we had seen were empty or just had like five other visitors the Great Pyramids were full. Well, I felt it was overrun, but Rob said those were not many people. Still, the magic this place once had was long gone, everyone was eager to see just the pyramids, ignoring the mastaba around the pyramids. I asked our tour guide if we could go see the mastabas, he didn’t even know what they were. He had never heard about them. What a shame! There the families of the kings were buried and now nobody cares about them. Just paying extra charge to go into the pyramids, despite them being without decoration. Included was a visit of the Great Sphinx, well just the place right before, the surrounding of the Sphinx itself was closed. A shame, there is some interesting stuff around it. And no, the nose wasn’t shot down by Napoleons man. Noses are the most fragile thing on Egyptian statues, that’s why so many noses are lost.
A basic information for you about the location of most of Egyptian graves. They are located at the west bank of the Nile, because the sun goes down in the west. The sun “dies” every day and the Egyptians believed she would enter the Duat in the West. That is why Egyptians buried their people in the west at the edge of the desert, far away from every living human. They had their own “cities”, as the Greek said – necropolis.
Our last day in Cairo we spent in the Egyptian Museum. At the entry we approached by a guy offering us a tour from an Egyptologist, he was an Egyptologist himself and respected our wish to go by ourselves and greeted me as a colleague. The Museum was beautiful, despite the great number of wooden boxes waiting to be brought to the new Grand Egyptian Museum next to the pyramids. Also, there are too many objects on display to grasped every single one of them and understand them.
As the title said, it was a lot of exploitation. The sad thing is, the people are not only exploiting their animals, their rich culture and the tourists, but also themselves. Rob once mentioned the Egyptians sacrificed their honour and dignity for money. And currently I am reading Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie and I am sad to read, that it was this way even at her times.
Well then guys, that’s it for today. Stay thrilled for our next entry. It was a completely new experience for Rob and me.
-Toni
PS: Sorry for being late, we both had a food poisoning and our current hotel sucks.
TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF 