Day 31

SATURDAY 9th JANUARY

Synopsis of day: Quintessential OK Egypt

Highlight of the day: Memphis? Sakkara? Giza? The camel? The Sphinx? I can hardly decide.

Lowlight of the day: Stupid, arrogant Arthur explaining why he thought he was above the rules and citing all the forbidden places in Egypt where he has taken photographs.

Toilet ratings: Not great but not wretched either.

Favourite quote/word: “Sometimes I just want to pinch myself as I remember 'I'm here in Egypt' and now I've been to the pyramids!”

Favourite photo: I have about five.
Cultural-shock moment: We went to a carpet making place, and there were children working.
New food consumed: A great eggplant and chickpea salad at lunch.
Random act of crazy: Cairo traffic is intensely psycho.

What Arthur did next: See lowlight. I am consoling myself that I have less than a week of his presence.

Something I want to remember: That I have been once again to places I have dreamed of. My camel ride near the pyramids. Coolness!


We woke up and breakfasted at a fairly typical hour but the traffic in Cairo is so consistently heavy that it takes a while to get anywhere. We were headed in the direction of the old city of Memphis. While the site itself might be large we were only able to see a small but still impressive collection of statues, sarcophagi, stelae and even an alabaster sphinx. What is most remarkable about the work I think is not the size or detail, but that in almost every circumstance, the work is completed using only one piece of the material, whether granite, basalt, alabaster, limestone or otherwise. We are talking about things commonly several metres high and weighing multiple tonnes here.

Ramesses II and a flirty old guard. We attract them young and old here.

 

Kerri and I in front of an alabaster sphinx of Hatshepsut.

As Memphis was capital of Upper and Lower Egypt until the prominence of Thebes (Luxor) in the Middle Kingdom, most work that we saw was Old Kingdom, with a smattering of 18/19th Dynasty (New Kingdom). Given that these are the time periods I studied in Year 11, I was pretty excited about seeing these.



I was more excited about the prospect of Sakkara though. Before we arrived there we stopped at a carpet making place. I hadn't realised that Egypt was home to this industry (somewhat foolishly expecting that even though Egypt was a Persian satrapy in Achaemenid times, Persian carpetry was more limited to Iran). We were shown a carpet school where different forms of carpet were made, and the workshop downstairs was so barren except for the simply gorgeous carpets being created by young teenagers and the odd adult. Apparently the schools are established and do offer academic schooling in addition to an apprenticeship of sorts, but it still smacked of child labour.

In spite of that I fell desperately in love with a particular piece which was heavily neo-classical but it would have meant I would have been left with about $50 to my name. There were still a number of days left on the trip, and I tried to be sage by reasoning that one day if I am in a better financial position it might be more prudent then, whereas now it would just be vanity. One of the salesmen had been very nice and ended up giving me a rose. A red rose! Also for the completely random – we met a few Australians in the shop, and lo and behold, they were mostly from Campbelltown, with one from Bargo! (We had to leave before I met the Bargo one, so I only heard of her, but one of the Campbelltown couples used to live in Tahmoor too).



We weren't permitted to take photos of Imhotep's complex at Sakkara, but there seemed a distinct lack of care for the preservation of the columns (which are 5th dynasty to nearly as early as they come in Egypt). They did seem as though they were in an excellent condition all things considered, but it was still more exciting thing to walk through and into an open courtyard and view Djoser's step pyramid. It was also here that our guide politely told us that his name was Ashrof, whereas we had been calling him Mustafa (Kerri and I felt as though we were having another Pam moment). Ash has been the most well-informed guide of ours in Egypt and has been very courteous. He is also fond of photography and was often showing us the best locations for sites and offering tto take photos for us, or of us if we desired. (It has been complicated trying to explain that Kerri and I just happen to like taking pictures of ourselves). He drew us a diagram of how the pyramid is now presumed to have been constructed which I found remarkably interesting. There has also been a recent discovery (last week) within the complex of another tomb (though by the sounds of it, such discoveries are commonplace in a place so rich in past civilisations.

After an excellent shared lunch (which reminded us fondly of our Israeli salads) in view of the Giza pyramids, we drove up towards the pyramids. It was a strangely complex thing for me to view these pinions of antiquity amongst the cloudy smog of the city (the air is so dirty and a number of us have developed coughs in Cairo – funnily enough I seem to be exempt). It felt so conflicting to see the accomplishment of the ancients right amongst the haphazard and hectic streets of cars, concrete buildings and people. I am finding it complicated to explain what this was like and how I felt about it, because it was neither positive or negative (though with hints of each), but nor was it at all neutral. Maybe ambivalent? Maybe not.

Walking up to the pyramids felt like moments whereby we encapsulated our journey to Egypt and it was electrically exciting. I don't think someone who is not an historian could feel what I felt (theirs would be different but equally significant), but it was a charged and viscerally gratifying time. The lowest row of bricks was only a few centimetres smaller than me, so they must have been a metre and a half at least. We were only permitted to climb up a few rows and I'm supporting the theory the pyramids were built by aliens because really, they are enormous, and impossibly so for their time. :)

We were taken to a few different vantage spots and at one of them four of us took a camel ride. It definitely felt higher up than it had in Sinai, likely because I could ascertain exactly how far I was from the ground that time. Or maybe my camel was taller. I was more confident this time so I did take the opportunity to take some photographs. Following that, we rounded off our day by driving around to the Sphinx and amused ourselves by taking silly photos, some of which turned out really well!

It was just turning sunset so the police were busily herding tourists out and most seemed to ignore them because the sight was more impressive with the sun going down, and who wouldn't want to capture that?

We were very tired by the time we made it back to the rooms but we then ended up being taken out to dinner on a boat on the banks of the Nile. It wasn't as excellent as lunch, but the view was really something. We've seen some truly wondrous things today.