Damn those things are HUGE! Unfortunately they don’t let you climb up them anymore. Years back a couple of tourists fell to their deaths and ruined it for everyone else. When you see all of the photos of the pyramids it’s difficult to tell how large they are, but I would say as taller then most sky scrapers, more interesting too :>. I hired a camel and a “guide” (more like a guy to make sure my camel doesn’t misbehave and show us the right route) and got to see the pyramids from the back which was pretty neat. It took 40 minutes by camel to get to the pyramids, but definitely better then walking around them since the area is so large. When I got to the pyramids I saw that most others cheated and took the AC tour buses to the top where the pyramids are lol.
I went inside the Khepre pyramid, the medium sized one, which was pretty awesome! You have to walk down quite hunched over to get into it, and it actually gets difficult to breathe at a couple of points due to the lack of air (and far too many other people in there). Then you come out into a couple of main areas, and the large main section where the sarcophagus is. There isn’t any decorate inside (well aside from some graffiti from the 1890, but still very interesting. I was also able to see the sphinx and the temple of Khepre. Now those people who are selling sand from between the paws of the sphinx, are lying! You can’t even get within 50 feet of it! Fortunately it’s also kind of large, and there is no problem seeing it at all :>. It took 20 years to build the great pyramid apparently, which is pretty fast considering they had to ship those giant bricks down the nile, then get them up there via pulleys or what have you.
I looked at the pyramids of Mycerinus and Khufu but didn’t go inside them, one pyramid was enough. I of course also saw the Sphinx. The people who are selling sand from between the paws of the sphinx are lying, since you can’t get within 100 feet of it! The best view of it is from just above Khafre’s funerary temple. The temple is also quite awesome to visit, with offering tables which are basically large pieces of carved flat stone, hieroglyphics all over the walls, one of the ever popular false doors, and so on. It is truly amazing that the colour from all of those thousands of years ago is still on the walls! Of course some has eroded, but a lot of it is still there. To colour the walls they used charcoal for the black, ochre for the yellow and red, azurite for the blue, and malachite for the green. Those are some damn magically potent walls! Unfortunately the thousands of tourists per day destroy the affect quite a bit.
Also, in all of the temples and funerary complexes (that I have seen so far), the hieroglyphics are carved in quite deeply! 1/8th to 1/4” deep! They are (so far) all done extremely well also! Much better then I could ever carve into my walls, and mine are only wood.
The Egyptian museum is amazing! The jewellery room was my favourite, and I have a few new ideas now :). The statues in the museum are pretty incredible as well, and many of them still have a lot of feel to them. There are some rooms that when you enter you can definitely feel the presence of the statues. The ones that were built to protect the tomb and all the stuff in it have this feeling of being annoyed at so many people wandering in and out LOL. Well I guess they are at least not wandering out with anything, and everything is very well protected.. just perhaps not in the location they would have liked.
That museum has a LOT of mummies, and an entire room dedicated to mummification, and another room for mummified animals. I still would say the statues had more presence though. One of the most beautiful exhibits was a sarcophagus which was marble, then inside that one was a gold foiled one, then inside that another gold foiled one... and eventually down to the actual mummy.
There are also hundreds of amulets in the museum, and I’m sure just as many talismans. All together there are thousands of exhibits there, and I only spent a couple of hours so far, so I will have to go back and spend an entire day there so that I can see more. Unfortunately they don’t allow photos, and are very strict about this, so I can’t post any pictures from inside the museum. Well actually I can’t post photos anyways because Egyptian wifi is about as reliable and fast as the Egyptian mail service...
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