Pyramids, Temples and Tombs – Pharaohs’ Phollies
Yesterday and today Peggy and I visited the pyramids just south of Cairo at Saqqara, Dahshur, Memphis and Giza. It was quite a thrill seeing pyramids for the first time from the taxi we hired yesterday. Our first visit was Dahshur’s Red Pyramid. It was very impressive from the outside and like many of the pyramids it was open for visiting inside. I went in first and was faced with a long chute which was only a meter or so in height. I could see the bottom and knew this would be a long way down. The rock chute has been overlaid with wood with attached metal crossbars that act as steps. It would have been fun to slide down, but the metal bars prevent that. I chose to go down face forward hunched like a baseball catcher and it seemed to work fine. About a third of the way down the hot tunnel, I met a group coming up. I started to get very claustrophobic and almost aborted, but talked my brain into accepting that this was OK. After the group passed, I scurried down as quickly as possible. At the bottom I found a large empty room which smelled strongly of ammonia which I assumed to be part of the pyramid. They had facilities for pumping in fresh air, but it did not feel like fresh air had existed since the pyramid was built. Peggy thinks the smell is from cat urine from rat patrol, but I doubt any cat would ever climb into that pit. The locals call it the Bat Pyramid and although I saw no evidence of bats maybe that is the cause. The room did not have any hieroglyphs which disappointed me, but you could look up and see huge, perfectly cut blocks of stone that overlapped forming an interior pyramid shape up to the ceiling many meters above. I am sure “WOW” escaped my lips. I crouched down and slipped into the second room which contained wood steps up a couple of flights to another room. As I climbed those steps, I knew the catcher crouch method for coming down was probably a mistake as my thighs screamed. The last room was the burial chamber and it was a bunch of rocks strewn about. No sarcophagus and no hieroglyphs, but it was still awesome and quite nice to have the place to myself. As I climbed out (much easier than in) I passed Peggy who was doing the standard entry (not known to me, of course) by going in backwards or same position as climbing out except in reverse. Pyramid Lesson Learned!
At the base of the pyramid I decided to walk around to the side. Three tourist/antiquities policeman followed me, one on foot and two on camels all with large guns. The one on foot started the typical (Egypt) crap about taking my photo, taking their photo, where to take the best photos, the history of the pyramid, etc. This is being done because they want baksheesh. I wanted to take a picture of the other two pyramids, Black and Bent, on the site which are closed due to being in the middle of a military zone (yes, that is Egypt) so I continue to the side and take one. The guy on foot now wants to show me the temple at the side of the pyramid and I tell him that I can find it on my own. I overlook it from a knoll and see that it is a fake location in that the rock has been set up against the pyramid and other stuff has been gathered recently. He tells me that the item in the middle (on cement blocks) is the top of the pyramid. I doubt it because it does not look right. He tells me he can show me the sarcophagus and when I see it in the middle of the “temple” I laughed saying that I had seen plenty of the real thing at the Egyptian Museum. He still wanted to show me more secrets, but I asked him to stop. As I head back to the parking lot, he asked for money and he is persistent about it. And the two guys on the camels in police uniforms with large automatic weapons demanded payment, too. Now I felt very intimidated because I am by myself around the corner of the pyramid and they have big guns and want money. I cannot believe that employees of the State are allowed to extort money from visitors. I just put my head down and walked quickly. They scared me, but they also pushed me far enough that I decided that from that moment forward I would not support their baksheesh system and I would in fact become beligerent about it.
I am quite disturbed by Egypt. My mind is stuck more on how messed up this society is than the great treasures it has. All day yesterday and today we were hounded for money both by people working independently and those working for the State. Things that are against the rules such as photographing inside pyramids (flash deteriates the paint) or entering closed areas are easily broken if you pay the guy who is there to enforce the rules (government employee) enough baksheesh. Every time you enter a site, someone is there to guide you and when you tell them you do not need a guide, they tell you there is no charge. “Charge” meaning what the government gets. But all they really want to do is hound you for money after telling you little about the site. Until you become nasty with them which many of us have learned to do, they do not stop and actually they rarely stop even when you are nasty. They hassle you about what they can do for you such as for security and then after ruining your peaceful visit they ask for money by words or rubbing their thumb and index and middle fingers together. We bought a ticket at one place and an Egyptian woman in front of us started handing out baksheesh to everyone standing around. She is part of the system. I choose to reject their system and believe it is the most horrible degrading begging I have ever witnessed and I say shame on any person who knows better to support it. It has reduced almost everyone in Egypt to being a beggar. There is no self-pride and certainly no pride in their country or culture when one is a beggar under the guise of doing something functional such as being a tourist policeman (and by the way, policeMAN is exactly right because there is no such thing as a woman being one in this society). And I would never expect one of these fake tourist/antiquities policeman to ever be of any help when needed because I do not think they view themselves as being someone to help tourists. Paranoid Planet’s Egypt book states that they really have cleaned up the touts and other scammers from the sites, but that is either a bad joke or it used to be really insane.
After the Red Pyramid, we went to Memphis. I wasn’t too excited to go there because Memphis is no longer anything (Carthage 2), but we went to the museum and it was great (other than the baksheesh guys, of course… oh, by the way again, I say “guys” because as far as I can tell a woman in this country would never lower herself to a level where she is trying to scam you). Forget the museum for a minute… It is quite obvious that the men of this country treat the women like crap. Evidence abounds, but take the fact that the metro line has two cars in front reserved for women only (although I have seen a couple of guys in there). I have to say the men of Egypt are creepy and scare me a bit. Last night we went out for dinner and there were a lot of young men at the nearby square (really a circle). They were lined up in formation. A lot of police were also present. They had set up barricades. The men were obviously going to have a protest. I like Latin America protests, but I have no need to be near one here. As we passed, the men gave Peggy the strangest looks and I was very uncomfortable about it all. I figure young men only line up in order for military and team sports reasons. They were not there for sporting. When we came out of dinner, someone was speaking to all of these silent men and we heard “America” multiple times. Let’s just say that the tone did not have me thinking they were talking about us in a good way. As far as I can tell, Egypt can easily explode someday in the future with fundamentalism and I believe we were looking at some of the troops. Today in line at the metro a few men tried to cut in front of me at the ticket line. This is common practice here which I say is a lack of social maturity (and I really don’t want to hear that this is acceptable because this is the way they do things – there are human norms in this world and when they are breached it isn’t OK because it is the local custom). I gave my money to the ticket man and as he handed me the ticket another hand entered the hole with his money and tried to take my ticket. I was more than fed up and I smacked that hand hard causing him to drop MY ticket. I told him something I will not repeat here and left. This country needs to be sent through Catholic school and have its hands beaten by some tough nuns because it is quite obvious that Egyptians have no social skills. Oddly, we do meet some decent people including most of the women and I have to wonder how they feel about how the bulk of their countrymen behave. My belief is that they have no idea that the majority of the rest of the world is very different.
The museum at Memphis had our first sphinx in the yard as well as some great tall statues. The Egyptian Museum had similar stuff, but inside they do not display well and that museum also had them so packed in that they were less enjoyable to view. The highlight of the museum, though, was going inside to see a Colossus – a huge statue of Ramses II lying on its back. Between the pyramid and the colossus, I was starting to see the scale of what the Egyptians had done… HUGE!
We then went to Saqqara. Like Dahshur, it was a necropolis in ancient times before the pharaohs started to use Giza and Valley of the Kings in the Thebes area. Saqqara highlights are tombs that you can enter. These tombs were our first real look at hieroglyphs and they were stunning. The beauty of the King Tut (and other) pieces at Egyptian Museum, combined with the sheer size of the pyramids and statues and now with our first look at the complexity of their hieroglyphs had my head swooning. I am starting to understand the greatness of their culture and that is making it even more difficult to accept the lack of greatness in the current culture. We were going to try and make it to Giza, but it had already been a long day so we put it off until the next day. We took the metro to Giza the next morning and then caught a taxi. I was figuring out how to deal with Egyptians and I told the driver to take us straight to the gate and he was not to make any stop or deviation because we did not want to buy any junk from his cousin Mohammad or brother Abdul. Sure enough, right before the gate, he pulled over and started to talk to a guy and they were about to tell us some crap when I told him to drive and cut the crap. He acted like he was trying to help us and was mad at me, but he did exactly what had been arranged.
When you enter from the secondary gate at Giza, three pyramids are looming above you and then you see the Sphinx in front of them. It is one of the most magical moments of my trip and reminded me of sitting above Machu Picchu and staring out across the ruins and mountains. I had been waiting for this moment for most of my life and it so far exceeded my every vision. I walked through the catacomb ruins in order to approach the pyramids on foot over desert. The alternative is a paved road that runs right between the pyramids. I was horrified to see that they would build this road in order to get busloads of fat butts up the small hill in their air conditioned bubbles. If someone is in good enough shape to walk around the pyramids and do the other Egypt stuff then they can walk up a hill. While I am sure it was still magical from the main entrance, I can guarantee that the second entrance is much better since the Sphinx is there to greet you and the walking approach is much more “natural”. Another horrifying sight is the building in front of Cheops Pyramid. I could not understand why they would have such an ugly building on the premise, but we soon learned that one of the solar barques (boat that was suppose to take Cheops to the afterlife) had been excavated, refinished and put on display. It will supposedly get moved to the new Egyptian Museum whenever that gets built in Giza and that will help the look of the area a lot.
We circled one of the pyramids and visited a number of the tombs that are on the property. After seeing enough of the pyramids for the day and being hassled by all kinds of people such as the guys that told me I could not be in an area and then blew a gasket when I told them they were scam artists and if they did not want me in an open to the public area then they can go get the police and we’ll discuss it with them. They stormed off muttering the same mutter I have heard so many times already. I don’t know the language, but I am sure they were swearing at me, wishing me many years in hell and giving me the evil eye. I am absolutely sure they were not wishing many welcomes to their country (this is a line used by the scam artists… about 90% of the tourism and business people you meet) and a safe and enjoyable trip. We walked out the front gate and went to the Mena House Hotel for a fantastic over-the-top lunch while enjoying the view out to the pyramids. It doesn’t get any better than this including people who treat you like everyone else unlike how most of Egypt treats their fellow humans. I decided that I would spend my last night at this hotel before I fly to Madagascar. It will be a nice break and allow me not to see Cairo again. During the day I will visit the things I have missed at Giza rather than see some sights I have missed in Cairo.
I hope Cairo is the worst place I ever visit. I cannot stand how people are “living” there. It is the most filthy city I have been in and the people seem to enjoy it that way. It isn’t even the filth that gets to me although breathing in that smog is difficult and the trash and rotting debris is just disgusting. It has to do with all of the modern-ness to it yet no one seems to take care of anything or give a damn. It is a weird place. Take for instance all of the clothes shops selling very risque clothes. Look around and all of the women are either wearing conservative western clothes of more likely wearing conservative Muslim clothing. And then there are the people in those conservative Muslim clothes (i.e. burqa) looking at the clothes and buying them. I think we have some evidence that what is going on in the homes is quite a bit different than what goes on in the public. Then there is the rage. This city is full of it. I have never seen such angry people and I was just making that comment about New York City after seeing so many people screaming into their cellphones and yelling at other drivers. But in Cairo the rage is way more serious and prevalent. On the way to the train station for Luxor we had a cab driver that was crossing a major road without looking and almost hit an oncoming car that clearly had the right of way. Our guy goes beserk and is yelling at the other driver. It was a very scary ride for many other reasons, but we did get there and I was glad to say goodbye to Cairo. These last four days really opened up my eyes to how amazing the Egyptian culture was at the time of pharaohs and I am sad to say that I am likewise seeing how pathetic this culture is today. I can only hope Luxor reported by Paranoid Planet to be the “hassle capital of Egypt” is better and my opinions about Egyptians can be lifted.
Tags: Africa, egypt, Travel
vagabondrick
I am so sorry for your bad experiences – especially with so called protection policemen’s extortion attempts. That certainly wasn’t abundant (or even experienced at all) when I was in Cairo (I never got to see all the other fabulous antiquities) It’s sad for me to learn about the changes over the past 40 years. Still, I’m glad that you were there to see things for yourself. All my love for you and Peggy