Stacey’s Mini-Extravaganza to the Middle East

 Pyramid of Cheops

Greetings and salutations from the great city of Cairo, Egypt (population 16 million souls…the largest city on the African continent). My driver told me that today the temperature reached 43 C (109 F). He assured me that this is even hot for Cairo…particularly in May. Lucky me.

 View of block construction of Cheops

Shot with the sun about 9 am

 Self-portrait

No matter, armed with a floppy hat, 70 SPF sunscreen and a long sleeve shirt I was off to participate in the Tour de Pyramids starting with the famed Pyramids of Giza just outside of Cairo.  My first glimpse of Giza was actually from the air as we were about to land and I was struck by just how enormous they really are.  Allegedly the largest of the Egypt’s pyramids, the Pyramid of Cheops (and the pyramid at the top of the page) can be seen from the moon.  Which is a little insane if you ask me.

First up this morning was entering the Giza complex on the Sphinx side.  I had been advised to get there just as they opened at 8 am and was surprised to find myself the only person in line for a ticket with the exception of a large tour group who had their tickets already.  The entrance didn’t seem too bad and I enjoyed the Sphinx and views of the Great Pyramids unhampered by crowds.  Indeed, I was wondering what the big deal about the crowds was for a full hour before I discovered it.  Rounding the front of Cheops I was accosted by hundreds of people and many, many gigantic tour buses.  Silently I thanked my driver for getting me in the side entrance.

First glimpse of Chephren from Valley Temple

Inside Valley Temple

Valley Temple again…

Now at 109 degrees there is not much that a person is comfortable doing except maybe swimming and unfortunately there isn’t a swimming hole near the Great Pyramids.  A sane person is certainly not tromping around a desert in early summer.  It was HOT.  And by hot, I mean HOT.  About two hours was all I could take at this first stop and the photos you see here are the shots I got between constantly wiping the sweat from my brow.  The highlights:

1.  Pyramid of Cheops – as mentioned above, the largest of the Egyptian pyramids at 459 ft. tall, Cheops was built between 2589-2566 BC out of 2,300,000 blocks of stone with an average weight of 2.5 tons per block.  150 people are allowed inside Cheops per day but I decided against it as I’d heard entering one of the pyramids at Dahshur was easier and less crowded (more on this in Part 2).  Originally, Cheops had a limestone overlay similar to what is still seen on the top of the Pyramid of Chephren but that casing has since eroded or been pilfered by later rulers wanting to use the stone to construct the Islamic city.

Pyramid of Chephren

2.  Pyramid of Chephren – slightly smaller than Cheops and built a little later between 2570-2530 BC, I actually liked this one better due to the maintained casing near the top.  It’s easier to imagine what the pyramids originally looked like after seeing the casing still preserved…gleaming, smooth and white.  The construction is similar to Cheops using a step pattern you can see from the picture above.

The Sphinx from the front

From one side with Cheops in the background

From the other side

3.  The Sphinx – “newish” on the Giza block, the Spinx was only recently rediscovered (it had previously been covered in sand) around 1417 BC which is actually rather fortuitous.  The Sphinx is made of very soft sandstone and it is theorized that if it hadn’t been covered in sand for more than 1000 years it might not have been so well preserved.  Indeed the Sphinx has had rough time of it over the years…Napolean and his cronies used him for target practice and he lost his beard to the British Museum in London.

Part 2 of the Pyramids of Egypt rolls out tomorrow so stay tuned to the Mini-Extravaganza for more pyramid trivia and pictures.

The “lesser” pyramid of Menkaure

Camels traversing a barren desert

Stacey+Cheops

The obligatory tourist shot with the camel guy

Tags: Cheops, Chephren, Egypt, Giza, pyramids, Sphinx

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 9th, 2010 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Egypt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.