An American Professor in Cairo: Giza pyramids

Today Scott, Mike, and I visited the pyramids at Giza with our very own personal Egyptologist Valentina. Scott & Mike are professors (political science and sociology) at AUC here as Fulbright scholars. Valentina is completing her PhD in Egyptology from a university in Bologna, Italy and is spending October studying at the French Institute in Cairo before leaving for an archeological dig down south. The guy above was one of the legions of locals hawking useless trinkets to western tourists visiting the site. He has some connection to Italy, however, because when he found out Valentina was from Bologna he became very excited, chatted energetically with her in Italian for several minutes (so I have no idea what was said) but then he insisted that I take the headdress at no charge and also insisted on having this picture taken with me.

The pictures that follow are somewhat out of order, but they are all on the same site. There are three large pyramids here, several really small pyramids, the Sphinx, and the solar boat museum, among other things. We took a taxi from Maadi to Giza (about a 25 minute ride and a cost of about $9), arrived at about 12 noon, and it was really, really hot, a searing Lawrence of Arabia desert hot. But we made the most of it and it is a fascinating site. It is completely overrun by tourists, and the army of cheap trinket vendors are distracting, but in spite of that it is still quite an amazing place to visit. And with Valentina along we were able to learn a lot interesting things about the history and archeology of the place.

Below is inside the solar boat museum. This was one of several boats found buried near the pyramids. They were found very recently, in the 1950s I think. It was in a hole covered with huge limestone slabs, which I found amazing, because the work it would take to load just those limestones covers (you can still see them in the museum) is unimaginable without modern equipment. The boat is made of cedar wood and is held together only with rope; no nails, glue, etc. It was not stored in one piece but cut up to fit in the hole, so the team that found it spent some time putting it all back together, using only the original wood and modern rope.

The boat was important to the ancient Egyptians because they believed that the sun god (Ra, I think) sailed in a boat across the sky every day, carrying the sun, and then fought "bad guys" at night in order to bring the sun back the next day. The Pharaoh, since he was considered a deity too, would need a boat in the afterlife to go join Ra. After he died, Pharaoh's coffin was probably floated up the Nile channel to his tomb in a boat like this one, but whether or not it was THIS boat in the picture is not known. I don't know how the thing would float because I cannot see how they could seal it up, but evidently there was a way.

Here are pictures of two smaller pyramids just beside one of the big pyramids. They were constructed for the close relatives of the Pharaoh, and one was left empty to house the soul of the Pharaoh.

Two pictures of Scott, Mike and Valentina by the middle pyramid:

Here is a brief video of us between the middle and third pyramids:

The Sphinx, with Cairo in the distance. When you are standing there, you can see the Pizza Hut and KFC signs across the street.

It occurred to me that Napoleon was here (Mike said the story is that the French soldiers used the Sphinx as target practice). So I mentioned walking in the same footsteps as Napoleon, and one of the locals mentioned that he saw Obama here (I guess when he gave his address in Cairo) and we also know that Winston Churchill was here, and a lot of other famous people through the years.

Below are pictures of us by the pyramids. I'm wearing the gator hat I don't really like, but it is my spare hat. I gave the Jelly Belly hat I had on earlier to the trinket seller in the first picture because he gave me the headdress. I wish I had given him the gator hat...

Me and Scott and Mike:

See? I like the Jelly Belly hat a lot better. This was also earlier in the day so we were not so hot, sweaty and tired:

Here I am trying to get a view of the desert. You really can't see how it is in the pictures. It really is Lawrence of Arabia, just a vast expanse of desert as far as you can see.