Oct 31: Cairo

After breakfast (the hotel provides a buffet every morning), we got our group orientation from the tour director Walid, and then hopped on a bus (which always has a machine-gun-armed guard aboard, though Walid said it is totally unnecessary...it's just a government job that can't be eliminated!) for a ride thru Giza and Cairo (adjoining cities separated by the Nile River).  Along the way we drove thru mile after mile of ugly brownish apartment buildings in various stages of deterioration.  Some looked at least partially uninhabited, some being demolished.  Walid said that during the Arab Spring (2011-2013), the Muslim Brotherhood (whom he obviously thinks little of) built lots of these buildings illegally on agricultural land, and now they are being torn down and the occupants relocated. 



Traffic is always terrible.  It is a mix of motorcycles, trucks of all types, and cars driving down roads which often have no lane lines (where they exist, lane lines are just suggestions!), competing with pedestrians and vendors who have no concerns with crossing the highway at random spots (there are no crosswalks).  Turn signals are never used, and drivers communicate by leaning on their horns frequently. Seat belts/motorcycle helmets - what are those?!

We arrived at the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities (here are us, Jerry, Maria, Gavin, Laura, and Stephen, don't have one for Steve and Sarah yet) 



 

and Walid escorted us thru the museum for about 3 hours, looking at lots of statues, displays, mummies, and sarcophagi from ancient times in Egypt.  

A replica of the Rosetta Stone:

Walid demonstrated on Laura how kings, queens, priests, and royal families were prepared for mummification.

 


They used special tools to poke a hole in their sides and remove their interior organs (only the brains were discarded) and put them into special boxes or vases, which were then interred with the bodies wrapped in cloth (with various artifacts inserted in the wrappings) in the sarcophagus

A wrapped mummy:


 The various layers of cases for the wrapped mummies:




Here is a chariot from back then


Here, Walid is demonstrating how the Egyptian currency (Egyptian pounds are worth about 7 cents) contains images of the ancient artifacts 

 Here is a depiction of everything that might originally be in an Egyptian tomb (before the grave robbers find it), including the mummy at the far right.


The highlight was the King Tut exhibit, which included his gold mask and throne. No photos were allowed, but this was taken at a souvenir shop showing the life-size replica of the headdress (the original is solid gold weighing about 25 lbs.)


 

The bus had stopped at this A&K souvenir shop, where we stopped for an unreasonably long period of time, as the employees (outnumbering the customers) hovered over you as you browsed, pouncing if you showed the tiniest interest in an item.  There were no prices on anything, and it was definitely a bartering situation...not my idea of fun shopping!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nov 1: Giza Pyramids

Image
After over-eating at another breakfast buffet, we took a short bus ride to the Giza Pyramids, which are the ones visible from our hotel room balcony.  These date back to 2550 B.C., and were the burial places of three pharoahs:  Khufu (largest pyramid), Khafre (middle pyramid), and Menkaure (smallest).     The Great Pyramid is the oldest and largest of the three, and is oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact. Its height is about 420 ft built mostly of limestone and granite (the stones averaging 2.5 tons), and was built over 20 years. The middle pyramid shows a sheathing (an extra layer of stone) at the top...all three initially had this, but was mostly peeled off for other construction over the years, as wood is almost non-existent here.    We had the opportunity to climb up a narrow, steep, and short passageway (I actually had to crawl on hands and knees at one point, I foresee a sore back tonight!) goin...
Read more

Nov 7: more temples and pyramids, Coptic Christian church, museum

Image
We rode the bus south of Cairo to the Sakkara archeological site.  Many years ago, the area was flooded by the Nile and was made fertile by the silt, now growing lush palm forests right on the edge of the Sahara Desert Here we saw a several pyramids, both onsite (including this one that we actually went down into) and this "stepped" pyramid which is the oldest rock construction in the world     There were other pyramids in the distance in all directions, built over 4000 years ago ...our guide said there are about 150 pyramids so far discovered in Egypt, and more are being discovered all the time, they have just been covered up with dirt, sand, and debris over the centuries.Any hill of sand can someday reveal a pyramid.  The Valley of the Kings we visited yesterday is the more famous area, but our guide said Sakkara may become even more famous.  Just today, a new tomb yielded a trove of treasures that he was advised of.  It is largely an issue of funding the...
Read more

Nov 5: Valley of the Kings and Karnak/Luxor Temples

Image
Some of our group (Jerry, Steve and Sarah Howell, and "Doc" (sight-impaired)) got up around at 4am to take hot air balloon rides and watch sunrise  over the Valley of the Kings west of Luxor, Egypt.  That was too early for us, so the rest of us traveled by boat to the west bank of the Nile and went by bus to the Valley of the Kings.  This was a place I was supposed to visit in March 2020 as part of my cruise with Jerry from India to Italy but cancelled due to COVID.   For 500 years from about 1600BC to 1100BC (1000 years after the building of the pyramids), the pharaohs and nobles of Egypt had tombs instead of pyramids built for themselves as they passed from mortal life to eternal life.  Tomb robberies occurred even in ancient times, so the isolated nature of this desert valley on the west side of the Nile river was selected for hidden underground tombs. Here is a 3D model of the valley and maybe you can see below the terrain how the tomb chambers extended...
Read more