Dec 1 - Eat a basic breakfast in a creaky, vacuous dining hall in our hotel and head downstairs to start a four day tour with a local Egyptologist. Use the relatively new Ring Road to circle around and approach the Giza Necropolis.
Security has increased dramatically over the years at these key tourist sites. Understandable, as one of the tactics of Al-Qaeda and their affiliates in Egypt has been to cut into tourist revenue and thus force political change. Numerous incidents, most being bomb attacks on tour buses, have occurred from 1997 to 2018. Because of this, police are everywhere, both uniformed and in plainclothes.
We run the security gauntlet at the traditional entrance by the Mena House Hotel, including a lot of scrutiny by police milling around in the street performing spot checks. Once through the gate I am expecting a lot of hassle from souvenir sellers and camel drivers, but they are fairly subdued. A simple ‘no thank you’ stops them immediately, which is a bit shocking considering what I am used to here.
From here, we drive back around the complex and enter from the Sphinx side. It is really crowded here, though roughly half the people here (and at the pyramids up the hill) are Egyptian schoolkids. Girls run up and want pictures taken with us (mostly with Odette and Janet), until it becomes a bit annoying.
The ‘sphinx’ is fairly controversial. First of all, it was named that by foreigners, specifically the preconceived notions of Greeks (who already had a mythological sphinx in their legends). The creature in Giza does not fit the full Greek description, as it does not have wings. Unfortunately no hieroglyphic engraving has been found to know what the monument’s creators called it, or even when it was made. Based on its position relative to Khafre’s pyramid, causeway, and valley temple*, it appears to have been made either at the same time or a bit later.
When I say ‘made’, I mean it was carved from the natural cliff wall, which itself formed from erosion of the desert plateau at the edge of the flood stage Nile. The strong horizontal lineation seen in the photo above reflect the natural sedimentary layering of the rock (except for the legs, which are reconstructed).
There is suggestion that the head was made first, and body later, because the head appears far too small in relation to the body. The reason the head is darker and much smoother may be a fortuitous effect of the rock type encountered at that level in the sedimentary sequence (harder, more competent sandstone), while the rock underneath is more easily eroded. There is also suggestion that there was a natural protrusion of rock that already resembled a face, and it was just worked into the form it has today.
There is an inscribed granite stelae between the legs, uncovered in 1887. I would have taken a photo of it but that area is off limits to tourists. The stelae, however, is not from the original construction, but erected by Pharaoh Thutmose IV (about 1400 BCE). Called the Dream Stelae, it relates how the young pharaoh spent some time at Giza, and while sleeping the night received a vision from the kings of old, asking him to dig out the base of the statue. To put it in perspective, by the time Thutmose IV visited the site, it was already 1000 years old, hence already with a mythologized history.
From here it is a long way across town, crawling through the traffic, to Tahrir Square and the Egyptian Museum. This exhausted building, constructed in 1901, displays a multitude of objects from all periods of Pharaonic, and lesser Greek/Roman artifacts. I was told in high school that there are ten times as many important objects sitting in a warehouse as are on display. The new Grand Egyptian Museum, located behind the Giza pyramids, is meant to solve this problem, but its opening has been delayed for quite some time. I can only imagine that when it does open, it will be awesome.
Run another gauntlet of security (three metal detectors), and peruse the museum.
Many, many more items were seen on our visit, but several important rooms were off limits for cameras. The museum was everything I remember, except for the pharaonic mummies (they are all now housed in a newly constructed museum south of here).
Upon leaving, we go in search of food, as it is 16:00 and we haven’t eaten lunch. North of our hotel is Abou Tarek, a hugely popular place that serves only one dish, coterie. Despite the fact that it is basically a fast food joint, it has a lot of character to it, with couteous staff and plenty of smiles.
