EGYPT: THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZA AND THE GREAT SPHINX

Mark Twain described seeing the Great Pyramids of Giza for the first time in 1867 in his book Innocents Abroad:

"At the distance of a few miles the Pyramids rising above the palms looked very clean-cut, very grand and imposing, and very soft and filmy, as well. They swam in a rich haze that took from them all suggestions of unfeeling stone, and made them seem only the airy nothings of a dream--structures which might blossom into tiers of vague arches, or ornate colonnades, maybe, and change and change again, into all graceful forms of architecture, while we looked, and then melt deliciously away and blend with the tremulous atmosphere."

Yes, yes, we could see exactly what he was talking about as we approached them, especially that part about the "tremulous atmosphere." (Is that a euphemism for "smog"?)

We had seen them a few times from a distance as we were driving around the city and were suprised by how they stand out. Cairo covers a lot of area, and the edges of the city creep right up to the pyramids. Rising 481 feet above the desert, the largest of the pyramids, the Great Pyramid of Giza, was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,700 years. (Note: It was replaced by the Lincoln Cathedral in England, built in 1092, which stood at 525 feet. These days the tallest building in the United Arab Emirates, the Khalifa Tower, is over 2,700 feet tall.)

Picture from Wikipedia

Of course, I recognized them right away. They are pretty good copies of the pyramids and sphinx in the town where I live in Southern California:

Photo from here

There are six pyramids at Giza (I'm not sure where the other two are hiding), and altogether they are known as the Giza Necropolis, or City of the Dead:

EGYPT: CAIRO CITY SITES

In his book Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses, Bruce Feiler writes:

"If Egypt is the gift of the Nile, Cairo is the cleanup job left after all the boxes have been opened and all the guests have gone home."

I have to agree. Cairo is a tightly packed and messy city in need of a good cleaning. Because the Cairo Airport is over nine miles from the city center, we saw a fair amount of Cairo through bus windows during both our arrival from Luxor and our way back to the airport for our flight to Jordan, as well as during our driving to the Pyramids of Giza. Most of the pictures in this post were taken via those windows, so be forgiving of an occasional bit of glare.

The capital city of Egypt, Cairo is very densely populated and seems to be composed primarily of apartment buildings that are various shades of brown: sand brown, dirt brown, desert brown, and red-brown:

There is also quite a bit of dirty white, gray white, and smoggy white:

EGYPT: CAIRO INTERCONTINENTAL HOTEL AND THE CAIRO MUSEUM OF EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES

With a population of over ten million and ten million more people just outside the city, Cairo is the largest city in the Middle East and the second largest city in Africa behind Lagos, Nigeria. It is also one of the most densely populated capital cities in the world. I was surprised to learn that Cairo was founded in the 10th century AD. I would have thought it was as ancient as the pyramids. The really old city of the region is Memphis, just 21 miles away, which was founded in at least the 31st century BC.

Like other large African cities we've visited (Nairobi, Kenya, and Accra, Ghana), and probably like most really big cities in the United States (Los Angeles, for example), Cairo is a shocking mix of extreme poverty . . .

. . . and over-the-top wealth. Our hotel, the Hotel Intercontinental Cairo, was definitely on the high end of the wealth spectrum:

Picture from here

It was hard not to feel guilty about staying here after seeing some of the living conditions in the city through the windows of our air-conditioned tour bus.

EGYPT: LUXOR TEMPLE

The Luxor Temple was our sixth Egyptian Temple in three days. We had already been to the Philae, Kom Ombo, Edfu, Ramses III, and Karnak temples. It was also our third major event on a single day, following a very early-morning hot air balloon ride and a visit to Karnak Temple. To say this trip was intense is a huge understatement. A trip like this pretty much has to be intense, however. The likelihood of returning to this area of the world is pretty slim, partly because of the length of our bucket list and the limitations of our finances, and partly because of the general turmoil in the region, so we (and our tour company) felt the need to cram as much into the allotted time as possible.

No worries. I at least had some context for the Luxor Temple, for I had seen its reproduction in Las Vegas many times:

Picture from here 

Imagine my surprise when it didn't look like that at all. In fact, Las Vegas Luxor = Cairo's Great Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx, 313 air miles away. Someone really needs a geography and history refresher.

I had to start at ground zero, which meant looking at this map, which helped a little bit:

This temple was built mostly by  Amenhotep III (1391-1353), completed by Tutankhamun (1332-1323 BC) and Horemheb (1306-1292 BC), and then added to by Ramses II (1279-1213 BC), who many believe was the pharaoh in Moses's story, and, whose gigantic statues we had seen near the Valley of the Kings. Amenhotep and Ramses each had his own courtyard, as shown in the diagram above, at the back end is a shrine dedicated to Alexander the Great (332-305 BC), and somewhere in the Ramses II section is an Islamic mosque that is still in use.

This was once a happenin' place. In fact, it still is.

I found these instructions from the Luxor Temple Inspeection [sic] people helpful, although I was puzzled by the random use of capital letters. However, since I can't write a single word in Egyptian, I shouldn't be critical.

Did I give them a "tine"? I don't remember that.

 A broad avenue once connected Karnak and Luxor, a distance of about two miles:

In ancient times, the entire length was lined with sphinxes. Many sphinxes still stand as sentries at Luxor, just as we had seen them at Karnak.

The head of one of the sphinxes, sans body and cobra head piece:

I do like the effect of the palm tree growing out of this head in the photo on the left:

  

Ouch! That's a serious stubbed toe!

EGYPT: KARNAK TEMPLE

It's a bit embarrassing to realize how little I knew about Egypt before this trip. For example, I'd heard of Karnak, but I had no concept of its size or importance in Egyptian history. I didn't know that it is the second largest religious site in the world, behind only Angor Wat in Cambodia, or that it is the second most visited site in Egypt behind the Great Pyramids of Giza. 

Part of the reason Karnak grew to such size (over 200 acres) and prominence (a pilgrimage site for over 2,000 years) is because almost thirty pharaohs added to it. I guess that when you are trying to outdo your predecessors, big things happen.

Before we entered the grounds, we took a look at this model, which was so large that I couldn't even get all of it in a single picture:

Here's an artist's drawing of the complex that gives a more panoramic view:

Picture from here

Before we went in, we stopped for a group picture. I think this is just the passengers in the Yellow Bus, which is half of our group:

The road leading up to the entrance, called The Avenue of the Sphinxes, is lined with statues that have lions' bodies and rams' heads:

Between the paws of each sphinx is a statue of the great Ramses II, depicted as Osiris:

EGYPT: A HOT AIR BALLOON RIDE OVER LUXOR AND VALLEY OF THE KINGS

When we were in Kenya last year, we had an opportunity to take a hot air balloon ride over the Masai Mara for $500/person.  That was much too steep for our bank account, and we declined. When we heard a balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings was an option for this trip, and that it cost a much more reasonable $135/person, we were among the first in line to sign up. When we got the 4:00 AM wake-up call, however, I was questioning the wisdom of that decision.

We left our cruise boat at 4:30 and headed for the barque that would transport us across the River Styx Nile to our heavenly transport:

 We look perky, don't you think?

It's a good thing they provided us with a nutritious breakfast:

When we arrived, the crew had just begun to inflate the five or six enormous balloons that would carry our group and some others aloft:

A burst of flame shot into the void:

. . . and one by one the balloons rose up like oddly colored specters into the pre-dawn grayness:

EGYPT: A CARRIAGE RIDE THROUGH LUXOR

Earlier in our Egyptian travels we had been given a carriage ride from our boat to Edfu Temple as part of our tour package. We got a second opportunity for a carriage ride in Luxor on our own dime. The plan was to drive around for an hour and a half to give us a closer look at the city, with a short stop to stretch our legs in the market. 

We left our cruise boat, not always docked in the most pristine of places:

And met the men, horses, and vehicles to whom we would entrust our lives for the next two hours:

From a respectable distance, the carriage above looks like Cinderella's coach, but our jalopy wasn't quite that nice. The wooden wheels were padded with strips of uninflated rubber, which cushioned the ride only so much.

Julia waves from another carriage (We liked taking pictures of each other):

Our driver told us his name was Mustafa and the horse's name was Cinderella. (Hmmm, a possible Disney fixation?) That was about the extent of his English, but he was friendly and tried hard to please, stopping once to chat with a friend and buy a street snack of some kind of bean that he insisted we share with him, pulling over later to pick a bouquet for me, and letting me sit in front and "drive" the carriage on the way back (when the horse was on auto pilot).

EGYPT: TEMPLE OF RAMSES III (AKA HABU TEMPLE)

Our next stop was the Mortuary Temple of Ramses III, also known as the Habu Temple. 

Much of my visual preparation for Egypt came from Hollywood, and I thought the Nile would be lined with temples and monuments, somewhat like the castle portion of the Rhine in Germany. But I also had the competing image of the Great Pyramids of Giza, definitely situated in the desert. 

As I've thought more about it, the annual flooding of the Nile would destroy anything built within its reach. It was important to build far from the Nile's vengeful fingers, which meant in the lifeless desert. The change from the verdant Nile Valley to the barren desert is incredibly dramatic. It is literally a line in the sand.

On the far side of that line, there are no palm trees, no wildflowers, no grass--just hard, monochromatic dirt.

At first the temples seem to blend into the endless swath of desert brown, highlighted only by the obviously man-made shapes of walls and pillars. 

Aerial view of the temple. Picture from Wikipedia

Within these particular walls, however, we found surprising amounts of color. First, however, some background information.

The Temple of Ramses III, one of the best-preserved of all the pharaonic temples, was built during the reigns of several kings and queens and finished in the 12th century BC; it was excavated almost 3000 years later between 1859 and 1899. The large footprint of 690,000 square feet was once enclosed by massive mud walls (35 feet thick by 60 feet tall), the remnants of which are still visible. 

We entered through the migdol gate, a kind of  watch tower typical in the Middle East:

The walls are covered with bas reliefs showing Ramses conquering his enemies:

This leonine lady is Sekhmet, the goddess of war and healing whose breath formed the desert: