First Days in Egypt

Hello everyone. Scott and I arrived in Cairo, via Greensboro and New York on Friday afternoon. We had a few delays but nothing that held us up too much. We spent the afternoon walking around our hotel and buying some bottled water. We were told to avoid tap water so we need lots of bottled water for drinking and brushing our teeth. Our friend, John and Leslie, from Washington DC came in a few hours later than us and met us at our hotel. We are at the Hotel Zoser. It says it's 4 stars but that might be Egyptian stars and not US stars.

Day 1 of our official tour began on Saturday. We met our tour guides - Mr. Abdo and Osama in the lobby as well as our driver, Tony Stewart. Just kidding. His name is Josef but he could be a NASCAR driver anyday of the week. There are no lanes on the roads and people drive very crazy. I will try to stick the video camera out of the window in the next few days to try to give you an idea of how scary it is. People honk horns and flash their lights and drive wherever they want.

Our first top was the Great Pyramids. We are actually staying in Giza which is right outside of Cairo. It's sort of like how Westfield is right outside of Indianapolis. The pyramids are only about 10 minutes down the same road as our hotel. You can see from one of the videos how close Giza is to the actual pyramids. The "Great Pyramid" is the biggest and was built by Cheops (aka Khufu) in 2600 BC during the 4th dynasty. There is a false door that the builders make on all the pyramids to fool tomb robbers. It leads no where. The actually doorway is usually underground. We could not go inside the Great Pyramid. You can see it in the video below:



The 2nd pyramid (Khafre's Pyramid) was built by Cheop's son, Khafre. We did go down into a tomb in this pyramid but we were not able to bring our cameras. We went down a long, narrow, short stairway that was about 100 steps. We had to bend down considerably to make the downward descent. It was dark and very scary and very claustrophobic. At the bottom, we could stand up and walk about 25 feet until we came to stairs leading up. We climbed another narrow, short corridor up another 100 feet and finally got into the tomb. It was a 2 story, open room about 15'X8' with a place in the ground for a sarcophagus. It was empty and there was no writing on the walls except for where the excavator signed his name and the date.

We drove by the third pyramid (Menkaure's Pyramid - built by another pharaoh, Menhaura) to a bunch of camels. We got on a camel and took a ride around the desert for about 10 minutes. It was very interesting and hard to stay on the camel. You can view the video below and maybe see what I mean:



After the pyramids, we went about 5 minutes to look at the Great Sphinx. You can actually see the back of the sphinx from the pyramids. The sphinx is the guardian of the Giza Plateau and was built in what most egyptologist think is 2500 BC, around the time of Cheops. It is the body of a lion and the face of a man (thought to be Cheops). It is 66 feet high and solid so we could not enter inside. They are doing some renovation work on it so we couldn't get very near. The nose and the false beard have fallen off due to erosion. Part of the false beard is in a back closet of the Egyptian Museum and the other part is in the British Museum in London. It's a very sandy color.



After driving by the Mosque of Mohammed Ali (the king, not the boxer!), we headed back to the hotel.

Day 2 was spent mostly at the Egyptian Museum. The Egyptian Museum does not allow cameras. When we got there, we went straight to the second floor which houses all of the items found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun (King Tut). He was only king for less than 10 years and died when he was about 19 years old. He was definitely not a very significant ruler in Egypt. He is famous though because his is the only tomb that was found intact by Englishman Howard Carter. There were 3 rooms plus the room where his burial tomb was located. Some of the items in the tomb where an umbrella, 4 jars with all his internal organs, 4 beds, sandals, clothes, staffs, and more than 365 small sarcophagi to protect him into the next world. Most of the hieroglyphs in the tomb describe different things that would protect the King and take him to the next world.

The next area on the 2nd floor was the mummies. We saw the mummies of 9 different Kings and Queens. The mummies were all wrapped in linen from head to neck. The head and arms were showing and were shrunken and wrinkled black, brown and sand colored skin. Some had hair still and some had their teeth sticking out of their mouth. You could see some fingernails on some. Each of the royal mummies has their hands crossed on their chest signifying royalty. I think dressing up like a mummy would be a great idea for Halloween.

We also saw animal mummies. Egyptians mummified their pets to take with them into the next world when they died. Some had their own sarcophagi and some were put into their owner’s. They mummified dogs, cats, cows, bulls, crocodiles, donkeys, elephants, fish, gazelle, horse, ibis, lion, lizard, monkey, ram raptor, scarab, shrew and snakes.

After the museum, we went to the Khan El-Khalili Bazaar. It's basically a section of downtown Cairo that sells a lot of souvenirs and has a lot of coffee and tea shops. There is a video that shows us walking down the streets of the bazaar.

Once we left the bazaar, we went back to the hotel for dinner.

Tomorrow we will be at the following coordinates: 29degrees 51'24.55"North, 31degrees, 14'59.23" East. Can you figure out where we will be?

I hope to speak with all of you Monday afternoon but I'm not sure of the internet situation at the hotel where we will be.