The Hartlen's Visit the Pyramids in Egypt

14.1.2013 Day 1: Giza - The Pyramids
When I first set my travel dreams in motion in 2001, I had charted my initial course to be the viewing and discovering of all seven of the world’s wonders. Like many, I believed there to be seven ancient wonders, seven modern, and seven natural. I had been, at the time, convinced by many that I had likely seen at least one of the seven natural wonders, and one of the modern wonders. Imagine my dismay then, when I discovered that not only was there only an official list for the ancient wonders, but that they were all gone save one, and the other “wonders” I had supposedly visited weren't anything more than glorified tourist attractions, these being Niagara Falls, and the Eiffel Tower. Since there was not an official list celebrating achievements in architecture, or natural design a group called The New7wonders Foundation  set about trying to preserve Global Memory. Global memory is seven things that everyone can remember. The project was started in 2001 by Swiss born Canadian Bernard Weber. A global vote on a set number of sites that people around the world considered to be wonders were on the list, the top seven vote-getters would be the new wonders. The project has been discredited by UNESCO, but I think its heart is in the right place. Further details about the project can be found on their site http://world.new7wonders.com. Nevertheless, in 2007  this group has anointed seven new modern wonders, and in 2011 seven new natural wonders. Sadly, neither of the two wonders I had thought were wonders at the outset made the list, nor did Stonehenge, which had been in the running (and more importantly visited by me in 2001).

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There was one of the ancients still around, and it was perhaps the most impressive of all: The Great Pyramid, at Giza. It is the oldest of all of the ancient wonders the others being: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Colossus of Rhodes, Lighthouse at Alexandria, Statue of Zeus, Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, and the Temple of Artemis. All of these though, had been destroyed, and one (the Hanging Gardens)may not have even existed. As such, my ultimate travel goal was thwarted.

The pyramids though, became even more legendary in my eyes as a result of all of this new information. The other six wonders had perished as far back as 226 BCE (Colossus) and the longest surviving outside of the pyramids was the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in 1494 CE. What made the pyramids mythical for me was their incredible age, construction began 4687 years ago in 2584 BCE! Even if the other wonders had survived, none of them would be older than the pyramids. To know that I was about to set foot in a place that was almost 5000 years old was mind boggling!

We did not waste any time in getting this major trip out of the way with. After arriving in Egypt on the 17th of January, we left our hotel in Giza for the Pyramids the following morning. Our driver Ahmed our driver was a friendly sort, though he spoke to us mostly through Hamdi, our official tour guide, as his English was not very strong. These two would be our guides through Egypt for our full stay here, and because they sat up front and we in the back, it felt a lot less personal than the week we had just spent in Morocco. That said, both Ahmed and Hamdi were exceptionally nice, and Hamdi was very knowledgable about Egyptology.

We arrived at the Pyramid site around 10am, and I was amazed by several things. The fog/smog was horrible, the pyramid building blocks were enormous, and there were no tourists! This last one astonished me the most. I understood that people were more leery of visiting Egypt, and it was the off season, but I still thought that we would find hordes of tourists crowding the area. Not so.  In light of the relative absence of people I was able to get a lot of what would  be stunning photos of the pyramids (devoid of people were it not for the smog. The smog did lessen throughout our four hours there, but never truly offered a clear view of anything, despite the fact that it was around 20°C and not a cloud in sight. I therefore concluded that postcard images of the pyramids must all be photo-shopped, which was a bit disappointing. Aside from the lack of people, and absence of a halcyonian visage, the sheer magnitude of the pyramids up close and personal was awe inspiring. Until the construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1889 the Great Pyramid  was the world’s tallest man-made structure in the world, barring a brief reign of Lincoln Cathedral in England before its tallest spire collapsed and was not replaced. In addition to its impressive summative height, it the sheer size of each of large limestone concrete block, which weighed between 1-7 metric tonnes each. The base blocks were above my head by a good half a meter, and approximately 2.5 million blocks were used in its construction, which took place over a period of twenty years.

Aside from the sheer size of the blocks, the physics of building such a structure 5000 years ago was equally impressive. I will not bore you with details of how this was accomplished, but will dispel one rumour about the pyramids. Contrary to popular belief, the pyramids were not built with slave labour, but rather by paid skilled labourers, out tour guide revealed that archaeologists uncovered  tablets, with pay schedules on them as proof of this fact.

Continuing in the genre of awe, the base of the pyramid, some 250m2 is solid, and remains solid throughout the whole construction save for  a narrow corridor leading down in to the tomb of the pharaoh. This is the case in all seven pyramids at the site, the three largest pyramids belonging to Pharaoh Khufu his son Khafre and his grandson Menkaure. The other four belong to various wives of the pharaohs. Millions of kilograms of rock were used over a combined century of construction, all for the creation of rooms that were roughly the size of a small high school gymnasium, and in most cases, not as tall. It seemed such an extravagant waste. However, the undertaking truly is something to behold, and the pyramids I had long thought the interior of the pyramids to be maze of corridors and shrines ornately decorated, but such is not the case.

We did not go into the great pyramid, only 200 people a day have this honour, and you must get up really early to do so. We settled for the second largest. The entrance to the pyramids today, is not the original entrance, it i the one fashioned by grave-robbers over the years. Everything has been stolen from inside of the tomb, and all that remains is the casket that once held the mummified pharaohs remains. We took turns going into the tomb, which was about 150m down through the stone and into the earth below, Stephanie and Aurora first, and then myself. Brynn did not go, as to get her down the tiny corridor, would have been quite the task. The corridor was narrow, steep dimly lit and quite musty. I would like to say that the reward at the end was worth it, and I suppose it was but it was just an empty room, very well preserved as it had been constructed far away from the sunlight, but also devoid of any significant artefacts, or information. Nothing had been set up by the tourism industry. You came down saw the casket and then went back up into the light. Such journeys are not for the claustrophobic, nor the tall. My back was left with several cuts and gashes to prove it. The corridor itself is probably only about five feet tall, and there are no stairs only a sloped series of wooden planks, broken up every meter with a shallow ridged foothold. Despite the bland appearance of the interior, the true experience was realising that you were walking inside a man made structure that had remained relatively unchanged for 5000 years, not something that you can do every day.

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Aurora in front of "The Great Pyramid"

Guarding the Pyramids was the sphinx. It too was an impressive construction, though in actual fact quite a bit newer than the oldest of the pyramids. The sphinx is famous for not having its nose but being otherwise intact. The popular story about how it lost its nose was first told to me by my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Taylor. He had informed us that Napoleon Bonaparte’s soldiers had used it as target practice during his conquest of Egypt in the early 1900’s, I had since heard this version several times since and thought that it must be true. Not so. It turned out the sphinx was only uncovered about 500 years ago after having been completely enveloped  in sand brought in by sandstorms. Its head was partially uncovered by an Islamic cleric who initially thought it to be a pagan symbol of sorts, and set about destroying it as a blasphemy to Allah. It was not until much later that the rest of the body was excavated and its full reality was discovered.

Due to the unrest in Egypt there were next to no tourists in the area. As a result, I was able to get unimpeded pictures of both the pyramids, and the sphinx.  The unfortunate elements of our day revolved around the atmosphere outside of the pyramid site. There were impoverished camels, horses and donkeys all over the place, as well as pushy con-artist salesmen. The greasiest of who would offer to take your picture on top of a camel, then get the camel to stand up and not let you down until you paid whatever price they demanded. The pushy salesmen were not unlike those found in other tourist sites around the world, but what was difficult to take was the obvious mistreatment of animals, and the exploitation of children  who in turn attempted to exploit tourists. For being a world heritage site the filth was suprising. Garbage, and animal feces everywhere. The definite low-light came at lunch when we stopped at the Pizza Hut overlooking the whole complex, and while gazing out the second story window we were witness to a horrifying case of equine abuse. For about half an hour we watched as a severely malnourished horse was whipped, scolded and beaten for reasons that were not readily clear. The horse, barely able to stand up was eventually roped to the wall of the pyramid complex, and presumably left to die. Other animals within eyesight looked as though they were not much better off. As we left the pyramids for the papyrus museum, I was grateful that neither Aurora nor Brynn would likely associate their visit to the pyramids with animal abuse and filth, and that for Aurora at least she should be left with fond memories of her visit to the “Golden Pyramid”!

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