Even with a driver that gets me to the “front door” of the pyramids and tombs, there is still quite a bit of walking, climbing and crawling involved, but this is half the fun. It is easy to keep going when there is another unexplored temple just down the way across the sand. The most recent monument I visited was the step pyramid of Zosar. It is a tiered pyramid, basically one large triangular stone on the bottom with 5 progressively smaller ones on top of that. With the design they basically stacked the entire family up. They wanted to bury each of the family, so they would just add a layer on top. Unfortunately the step pyramid is under construction, er I mean restoration presently so I wasn’t able to go into it. I just walked around the outside of it. Zosar had quite the complex, with the pyramid a funerary complex, a complete building as a walkway into the main area, a temple, and a giant open area.
I also visited the museum in Memphis. Memphis used to be the capitol of Egypt, and is now a very small town with not much other then a really yummy little restaurant under some palm trees, a fruit store, and of course the museum with many people selling tacky statues outside. The statue of Ramses II was HUUUGE! They had the main statue laying down (it had fallen over originally anyways), but it was at least 100 feet tall! In the entire area there are many statues of Ramses II, he seemed to be big on having a lot of statues made of himself. There are also some small (in comparison) ones to be found at the Egyptian museum in Cairo. In the same area is an old temple of Hathor that is in ruins, but unfortunately one cannot go into that area (or so my guide told me, I really have to check up on this).
If you ever come to Egypt, I recommend bringing a flashlight. I did bring one of course, but also forgot to put it into my pocket for one of the pyramid trips. So here I was, down into the tomb area of one of the pyramids, after crawling down a very loooooooooooong ramp, and crawling through and underneath stone, then up some stairs etc. when all of the lighting went out! Fortunately the tourists that were already heading back started yelling to their friends, who yelled to other tourists, and eventually word got back to the guy at the door outside and the lighting was fixed. You weren’t allowed to take photos in that particular tomb, or the pyramid in general, but I decided since I was alone in the tomb room and the lights were out anyways, I grabbed a few shots :>.There were several tomb/temple combination buildings that my guide took me to. They were all pretty cool, and had the walls just covered with engravings of the Gods, and many hieroglyphics. They all seemed to have an offering table or 3, a place for the favourite wife (if she didn’t have a tomb/temple of her own), a main section, a false door, and then the tomb room. Oftentimes the tombs were underneath the main complex as well. Unfortunately most of the tombs that are beneath the buildings are in disrepair, including the route down to them, so they are closed off to tourists. Actually there are a few sections here and there which are closed off to tourists, and I always get curious and wonder what is in those sections. I took a photo past a grill gate in one section and there was a nice large and clear orb in that photo.
The tombs/temples had many rooms, since all of the Pharaoh’s belongings were put there after his or her death for them to use in the afterlife. Considering the elaborate thrones, sometimes statues, canopic jar boxes, statues of people to help in the afterlife, and so forth, one needed quite a bit of room. The pyramids were thought at first to be the best place to place a body, for many reasons, including safety. However a dynasty or 2 later they found that the pyramids weren’t quite as secure as they thought and the tomb robbers were finding ways in (there was a lot of gold in there afterall). So they started building temple like buildings instead, or tombs underground, depending on preference. There was also a period of time that they didn’t believe it was the appearance or shape of the pyramid that mattered, but what was inside the pyramid... so you find a few laying around out there in the desert that look like someone dumped a gigantic pile of rocks into a heap and called it good. It is fun to climb up the side of one of these and go inside though.
No comments:
Post a Comment