Holy cow this day was a huge day. I'm pretty sure my journal has six or seven pages on it on just this day. So, here goes. (It was a super exciting day though, so bear with me...)
The first thing we did was wake up super early and get on the bus so we could go stand in line at the Great Pyramids. The sun was really hot. It's hotter and more humid in Egypt, so basically we just had a really sweaty week. It was refreshing though, cause nobody really cared what they looked like. Awesome, right? I enjoyed it.
We got to the Great Pyramids and we all stood in line, but unfortunately we're Americans and we actually understand the concept of a line. The other people in this world apparently don't. Because of this, 13 (I heard) people in my group didn't get tickets into the tomb... I was so glad that I did when I heard this. It's something I've always wanted to do. I thought about giving someone my ticket. I may have tried....but (this is horrible) I was secretly hoping they'd say no....which they did. Ahh I'm terrible...but oh well. I went in...
This is us sitting in line, waiting to get tickets with the great pyramid behind us! This is Alison, Michelle, me, and Kathryn. You may notice that I have headphones around my neck a lot in pictures. Don't worry, it's not because I'm tuning out and listening to music. We have headsets that we wear on site so we can always hear our guide and don't have to crowd around him. In the heat of the Middle East -- it's a must. It's really fun :)It was really cool. The entrance to the tomb is higher up the wall, not right on the base, so we had to climb up to get to it. Then when we entered it was really dark until our eyes adjusted. They have electric lights going up the passage ways, but some parts were pretty dark. The first part was kind of a jagged tunnel that honestly looked like a cave. That part was flat. Then we climbed a mini ladder up to this other tunnel that was slanted upwards. I'll guess a 45 degree angle (?) for about 50 yards. There were wooden blocks on the ground as footholds, and a railing to pull yourself up, but it was probably a 4 ft high tunnel, so you had to bend over, then crouch a little, and climb. I didn't notice it then, but it definitely put my thighs to work. They were a little sore after....guess I need to get on the bikes here more, right? But hey, that's the plan, so it's good. Anyway, after the 45 degree angle, it flattened out for maybe 5 feet, then there was a place to stand up. Then we had to bend over again for about 5 feet, and then the tunnel opened up into another about 45 degree angle slope with the passageway up on the two walls of a tunnel that was flat but off limits. After a while the paths came together, and we kept climbing up, and then it flattened up and we had to crouch down to get into the main tomb chamber. Cool right? It was pretty dark, with a couple lights, and the sarcophagus at one end of the room. We came in (if you think of it as a rectangle) at the bottom, left corner of a room that was about...10 yards wide (up and down, if the rectangle is on it's side) and about 15 yards long. I actually laid down in the Sarcophagus for a couple seconds. I saw some people doing it, and there weren't any guards or anything up there with us, so I couldn't resist. I only could make myself lay down for about 3 seconds though because I kept thinking about a mummy laying there for a few thousand years....eeek! After that we sang songs. The Acoustics in the tomb were sweet! At one point everyone in there was just our group, and so we all did a low, humming sound and a few people did kind of higher pitched, African song sounding things...Don't know how to describe it, but it was really sweet sounding. Then we sang a couple other songs, the last being my choice. A bunch of the people had left, so it was just our group, and we sang Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. I always have that song stuck in my head here, and I love it. It was so awesome to sing it. We sang the last first on the way out of the pyramid. At the bottom, we were almost to the entrance, and one of the guards came and played a trick on me and Amanda. Not very funny, but he walked towards us while we were walking out with his arms outstretched blocking the exit, and said in broken English, "Sorry, closed. Have to stay in tomb overnight." I was just creeped out and finally pushed one of his arms away and walked passed and said no to him. I wasn't afraid he wouldn't let us out, but I didn't want him cornering two girls in a tomb. Bad scenario. But he didn't resist or anything on letting us out, so it was probably okay.
Cameras weren't allowed in the pyramid, but we took pictures outside, so I'll have to upload them. Some people have had success on uploading them. I think I need to re-size them, so if I ever have an hour or something, I'll try to do that. I have so many to show you guys, I'm sorry!!
Okay this is me and Kathryn in front of the big pyramid we went inside. You can see the entrance, right next to my shoulder. You have to climb up to it on stairs that they've carved out of the blocks. See how high up it is? And how huge it is? Look at the little, itty-bitty people standing on it and at the base. It's huge.
....I'm not going to list everyone's names....sorry! (Let the record show that I could though..)
This is Kathryn, me, and a girl named Tonya. She has let me borrow her computer to skype before...thanks tonya!
Jumping pictures are frequently taken in our group...After that we went to an overlook of the pyramids. One interesting thing, our guide, Islam, told us how to deal with all the people trying to get you on a camel or to buy something. They are everywhere! But Islam said that if we say, "Nien Danka" instead of "No Thank you" then we'll be okay for three reasons: 1) German people visit Egypt way more than Americans and so they've done everything and the merchants know that there's not a huge change of getting them to buy anything, and 2) There's not much chance of the people speaking German, so they give up, and 3) if they do speak German, we don't and therefore we wouldn't be tempted to continue a conversation with them. Ingenious, right?
This is the overlook. We had to drive everywhere for all the stops in the pyramid site, because they are just so huge! (And I'm supposed to look like I'm holding up the pyramid with my hand, but photographer didn't really....succeed...)We then made a stop to the Sphinx, which was sweet. It's way big, just like the pyramids are unreal...ly huge. We went in through the temple at it's feet and up inside to a ledge that looked out over it. I got a picture that looks like I'm giving the sphinx a kiss, it's pretty awesome. Add that to the list of hundreds of pictures I'm supposed to add sometime...
Here we go!
This is the first view of the Sphinx, from the bus, since we had to drive. See the little dots right on top of the paws? Those are people. This guy is BIG.
This is inside the temple that leads up to the big pyramid. The high priest would've embalmed the body of the pharaoh here. The Sphinx is set on a little hill to the right of where I'm standing in this picture, outside of the temple. We went through it to get to the closest place you can go to get to the Sphinx...
Which is here. Awkward picture with just me and the Sphinx.... :)
And here's the picture of me kissing the sphinx. Who by the way doesn't have a nose, because one of the people who conquered Egypt decided to show the Egyptians that their god was not a real god because he didn't even have the power to protect his nose from being destroyed.After that, we went to the Papyrus factory in Cairo! It was cool. I bought some papyrus there, which was probably more than I should've paid for it, but not a ton...anyway. Yeah they showed us how they make Papyrus. And I will now tell you. Here we go. First they take the stocks of Papyrus and soak them in pieces about 5 inches long. Then they cut them into strips and pound and roll them flat. When they're pretty thin they soak them in water for six days (not joking) [and it's longer if you want a different, darker color] and then they lay them on a flat block and arrange them in criss-crossing patterns. After that they press it between two pads with weights on top of them, and it dries into very durable papyrus paper that you can crumple up, get wet, etc. and it doesn't get ruined. Cool, right? And that's also how you can tell real papyrus (made from papyrus) and fake papyrus (made from banana tree leaves) : the criss-crossing patterns. If they're fake they don't have criss-crosses, just one direction of leaves. So there you go.
They had the facsimiles from the Pearl of Great Price there. Pretty funny, after the demonstration on papyrus leaves they said: "Oh, and here's a special thing for Mormons" and they pointed to a wall, front and center, that had the facsimiles. We must be good customers :).
This is the papyrus demonstration. The bowls on the table are the places to soak the papyrus stalks. Closest to me (the camera) is just the stalks soaking, then the next is the strips soaking, then the board where they pound and roll the strips, and then on the end of the table, kind of blocked by the guy, is the press they use to press the paper while it dries.After the papyrus factory we drove out to Memphis, which was at one time the capital of the Egyptian empire. (Along with areas like Cairo and Thebes[Luxor], and I think a couple others). So at Memphis the only area open is a museum with a mini sphinx made of Alabaster (and thus better preserved than the one in front of the pyramids which is made of sandstone) and a huge statue of Ramses II. The City was originally on the west bank of the Nile, but the river has moved east, and so that's when the city lost it's importance. It's probably the place where Joseph lived when he was the Pharaoh's right hand man, and also where Moses would've lived, and where the Pharaoh took Sarah in because Abraham said she was his sister. So, kind of a historical place. It was very cool.
This is the sphinx. Same guy's face as the big one in front of the pyramids, but much better preserved, yes?
This is the huge statue of Ramses II. They've built a special building for his statue, with a balcony so you can get up and see his face better.
me!Next we went to Saqqara, which is an ancient burial ground by Memphis. It is the place (Katy) where Imhotep's step pyramid is! I saw it! I've been there! Sweet, right? We also got to go inside a tomb there that wasn't a ruler, but a noble. His tomb was in the ground and we went down like we were going in a cave to get to it. That was fun. We also saw some real, live Scarab Beetles crawling around on the ground in the tomb. That was freaky. I was okay about them until someone saw movement in the dark headed to my foot, and we pointed the flashlight there and there was one crawling directly to my foot, and about six inches away. I moved fairly quickly...I'm sure you can imagine. And then I got out of there. Upstairs in the tomb area there was some cool carvings on the walls. I got in trouble for taking pictures....but I still have them. Whoops! The color on the walls was really cool. It's thousands of years old, but some of the color is still there. Can you imagine? It's really cool.
This is the temple in front of Imhotep's step pyramid...
Step pyramid! Thousands of years old! And this was a huge engineering development for them. They used to just set the rectangular "mastabas" on top of tombs before this. Imhotep had the idea to put several mastabas on top of each other, and thus created the first pyramid, ever.
This is the noble-mans tomb. This is my group waiting to go down the steps. Our guide in Cairo is in the green shirt. His name is Islam.
These is the steps into the tomb...
This is inside the tomb, where we saw the scarab beetles. I got a picture of them, but it didn't turn out very well, so I'm not going to post it.
This is a picture of the carvings upstairs in the temple in the back rooms. The color was awesome!Finally, after all those stops, we stopped for lunch. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and we were all fading, if not faded already.
After lunch we headed to the airport to go to Luxor! We traveled by bus, plane, horse-drawn carriage, sailboat, motor boat, train, car, walking, and riding a camel while we were in Egypt. Cool, right? I'll explain all of those that I haven't, don't worry. They're coming up in the next few blogs, just be patient :).
Egyptair!The flight to Luxor was short, but fun, and I wrote in my journal, documenting everything. It was only about a 40 minute plane ride, which was nice. We took a bus to our hotel with our new guide for Luxor, Rafaat. When we got to the hotel (The Sheraton of Luxor) it was right on the river Nile, with palm trees and a nice swimming pool, and it was five stars. It was so sweet. We still couldn't drink the water or eat the fruit, but that was okay. It was such a nice hotel. Amanda, my roommate for the whole Egypt trip (and one of them at the Center), asked me one night, "If this is a five-star hotel, why can't we drink the water?" and I said, "because it's five Egyptian stars." Which was funny, but I should note that this was a really nice hotel, even by our standards. It was really great. And the shower was basically the best thing ever.
Door of our hotel room. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the bathroom, which is the door on the right. It was probably the cleanest bathroom in all of Egypt. Wait, not probably...definitely.
Mine and Amanda's beds with our stuff thrown on them after a long day... You can see that we went out on the balcony, too.
This is the view from the balcony! How spoiled are we? Rooms overlooking the Nile, with palm trees and a wonderful pool? It was amazing!Okay, whew! Day 3, check. Now I'll tell you a little story from my day today 9/27/09:
Okay sorry, no pictures from this day...but....
Today we were planning on doing the Via Dolorosa where Christ walked during his trials and there are places where he was scourged and everything, and we were planning on doing that for our Site Log for OT (cause New Testament sites are okay now), and we walked down Mount Scopus, into the Kidron Valley, and then up the other hill and we saw another group that was coming back to the center and they said that the center had called and said that they should go back and that the city was closed. We signed out with our cards and everything, so we figured that the center would've texted or called us if we were supposed to come back, but we decided to call them (since they don't charge us to call the security office in the center) and check just to be safe. So I called and told the guy where we were and what we were planning on doing and he told me the city was off limits today and that we should head back to the center.So, after climbing up the big hill we turned around, when back down, and then had to climb the hill to the center. (Sweaty climbs and we didn't do anything...yay! :) ) While we were hiking back up the hill, the security office called me again and asked who was in my group, so I told them (there were six of us) and then I asked what had happened and they guy said that at the Dome of the Rock there had been a problem and that gunshots were heard, so they were closing off the city to the students for our safety. I told them okay and we got back perfectly okay. It was like a normal day. We wouldn't have known anything. It's lucky we called though because we were going to go in through Lion's Gate to start Via Dolorosa, and that's right by the Dome of the Rock. I don't know if we would've had any problems, but still...tender mercies,right? So now we're back in the center, which is probably good cause now I can study for my midterm and write my paper and do my readings.
Anyway, that's just something that was interesting that happened. That was our second run-in with security changing plans. The other one was when we went to the wailing wall and there was a shooting in a neighborhood south of there and so we changed our routes and the buses picked us up instead. We're okay though, so don't worry about us!
I love you all! I may try doing another day today, cause we're going to be in the center all day and I'll be studying, but I'm not sure how that will work out. I hope everyone is having a good Sabbath!
No comments:
Post a Comment