Sunday May 28, 2006 – In the Bowels of the Great Pyramid

After a bit of a Pyramid teaser on Saturday, today we headed out to the Giza Pyramids and the Egyptian museum. The Egyptian Museum is located right in downtown Cairo and is an impressive jumble of unairconditioned mummy stuff; although much of the Pharaonic antiquities have been pilfered to museums throughout the world. You could literally spend a couple days just wandering within the museum, but we settled for a half day with Ahmed explaining the most impressive of the collections (there are more than 120,000 items on display with another 150,000 stored in the basement). There are hundreds of sarcophaguses, friezes and wall paintings, pottery, jewelry pieces…the most impressive are the artifacts from King Tutankhamun’s tomb. His tomb is surprisingly the only tomb of a king found thus far which had not been looted – this priceless collection now fills museum rooms of gold, jewels, golden thrones and masks…

Surprisingly the Giza Pyramids, a half an hour outside of central Cairo, are for the most part flanked by the sprawl of Cairo. Only one side (the direction where you see most of the photos taken) is desert. The most memorable part of the Pyramids, besides their impressive silhouette in the skyline, was going inside the Great Pyramid. After a musty thick aired crouched shuffle in the bowels of the Great Pyramid, we were rewarded by reaching the King’s chamber. Long ago plundered by looters, the only remaining ancient relic was the sarcophagus, which was too large for them to remove. Surprisingly, we were the only people in the Pyramid, which gave us some time to just soak in the grandeur of the amazing construction. The power actually went out twice for almost an eerie amount of time (3 minutes each) so we sat in literal pitch blackness in a 4,500 year old pyramid…very cool. A couple random facts for you: “until the 19^th century, the Great Pyramid was the tallest building in the world” and it’s “the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to survive.”

After an afternoon of exploring the site, we dined on schwarmas and pitas in the back of the minivan. Our last stop before being dropped at the hotel was at a family owned operation which extracts floral essences from a variety of flowers. Apparently, the big perfume companies (L’Oreal, etc.) get a lot of their floral essences from Egyptian suppliers which they in turn dilute nine times for inclusion in their perfumes. The owner of the store embarked on a twenty minute demonstration of beautifully smelling floral essences (rose, sweet pea, lily, gardenia…) by rubbing the different flavors on our fingers, arms, neck…accompanied by a bottomless glass of hibiscus tea. After a very impressive and lengthy sales pitch (tea, smell pretties, shoulder massage), the Canadian shelled out $30 for 3 ounces of “Queen of the Nile” while the rest of us just appreciated our floral scented arms and fingers.

The Canadian and I lounged the late afternoon away by the pool, while “C” and the Brit napped. We ate dinner at a restaurant not memorable for its food (enough meze already – the Cypriots, Jordanians, Lebanese, Egyptian all have their different takes on it :^), but the belly dancing show and its outdoor garden setting. We polished off the evening with drinks and a sheesha at a great Nile side bar called Sangria.