The Pyramids of Saqqara and Giza

Ms. Chadha arrived last night, which promises to improve life in hundreds of different ways, most of which are too sappy to share here. One change is that I can now visit all of the major monuments that I'd put off seeing (on Ms. C's instructions) while I awaited her arrival. The most obvious and convenient of these was a trip to the pyramids, so, the following morning, this is exactly what we did.

We wanted see more than just the Giza pyramids, so we decided to hire a guide and a driver for the day. Private, organized trips really aren't much more expensive than trying to arrange everything for yourself and if you're a particularly poor negotiator like me, may even cost less.

Private tours also provide a number of pleasant perks like a hotel pick-up (a convenience which is worth the difference in price alone), a car with air-conditioning, lunch, and a driver who actually knows how to get to the places you've asked to see. What you won't always get is a guide who is able to offer anything like reliable information about the monuments on the day's itinerary.

Our guide, a pleasant, chatty woman named Hana, had undermined her credibility before we even left downtown Cairo. As part of a bizarre, impromptu lecture on Egyptian military history, Hana explained how The country had never, in either ancient or modern history, initiated a war of agression. The only reason her country lost its [entirely defensive] war with Israel in 1948 was because unreliable allies had supplied it with defective tanks, artillery and rifles. Happily, Egypt was able to restore its national honor by defeating the combined armies of France, Great Britain and Israel during the 1956 Suez Crisis. No mention at all of the twin devastation threatened by the United States (economic) and the Soviet Union (nuclear) if the allies didn't withdraw. It was indeed a great victory, but it wasn't a military victory and I'm not sure how much credit Egypt deserves for it.

Luckily, the pyramids are impressive even if your guide believes that Colonel Nasser had them built just to irritate NATO. The Nile pyramids are so old that their true construction dates hardly register. To put their age in context, the first momument we visited, Zoser's step pyramid in Saqqara, was already considered ancient by the Greeks to described it. By the time Herodotus mentioned them some 2,500 years ago, the pyramids were already more than 2,000 years old.

The extraordinary size of the Giza pyramids is as difficult to appreciate as their age. With nothing nearby to compare them against, it's difficult to get a sense of scale - you see only row upon row of limestone blocks. Only when you approach the base of the pyramid do you realize that each block is 4'-5' tall. Of course, once you're near enough to recognize the size of an individual row of blocks, you're too close to see the number of levels or the pyramid's overall height. The Giza pyramids are so massive that it's difficult to find a vantage point from which you can appreciate just how enormous they really are.

We didn't linger too long. The temperature was already over 100 degrees and the touts, while not nearly as bad as I had heard, were still fairly aggressive. So, missing yet another opportunity to sit on an angry, abused camel, we drove on to the Sphinx.

You can't wander around the Sphinx the way I'd imagined. It's surrounded by the bedrock from which it was carved, so you're packed together with hordes of other tourists on a series of viewing platforms to the west of the monument. From the platform, you could see that what remained of the Spinx's face was crawling with pigeons. You can't look imposing with a face full of pigeons.

Quick language note: "sphinx" is pronounced as "sphink-ess" locally, because Arabic abhors both dipthongs and triple consonants. 'Sphinx' is transliterated as 'sphinks' in Arabic, and that 'nks' just won't do, so an extra 'e' is inserted before the final letter. You can hear the same thing with words like "thank-ess" or "rust-ess," the latter of which was printed on an ad for a car wash in Mohandiseen.

On the way back to the hotel, Hana asked if we would like to stop at the Papyrus Museum. We had already turned down a tour of one of the carpet "schools" in Saqqara, so we agreed to quickly stop by whatever "museum" our guide had affiliated herself with. I like this tactic of tarting up your souvenir shop by appending words like "museum" or "school" to the name. I look forward to visiting the "Polytechnical Institute of Spice" and the "National Center for the Advancement of Sheesha Sciences" before this trip is through. We at least knew what we were in for, and the fact that the museum passed out order forms at the door (just like at MOMA!) confirmed our suspicions. The presentation on papyrus manufacturing was interesting enough and besides the look of disappointment shared between our guide and the salesman when we asked to leave, there wasn't much pressure to buy. Not that we were much tempted to buy: the only items on offer were garish King Tuts and Queen Nefertitis which would have looked equally at home airbrushed onto the side of a 1984 Astrovan.

Back at a restaurant near the hotel, as I made my way through a plate of fatah (my new favorite food) I was happy to reflect on the fact that we had now 'done' the pyramids and could check it off our list. This was the first time I had felt anything like this in my two months here. I suppose it's because the pyramids are something you must see, but doing so can really be a bit of a hassle. The perfect metaphor for the whole experience was provided by an eight year old Bedouin girl sitting near the viewing platform exit. Having grown bored of the daily hustle, she was now monitoring the tourist flow and when anyone's ass was big enough to merit it, she would yell "heeeey Shakira!" and give it a good spank. We made it through unmolested, but a fair number of the members of an Alaskan tour group weren't so lucky. I'm sure that they were generally pleased to have made the visit, but something about the process must have struck them as undignified.