“Listen all of you!
The priest of Hathor will beat twice any of you who enters this tomb or does harm to it.
The gods will confront him because I am honored by his Lord.
The gods will not allow anything to happen to me.
Anyone who does anything bad to my tomb, then the crocodile. hippopotamus, and lion will eat him.”
- Curse inscription from the tomb of Petety, circa 2500 BC
Saqqara is one of the oldest and biggest sites in Egypt. Here is the famous Step Pyramid of Zoser, the first large stone monument ever built. 4600 years ago, the great architect, philosopher and all around genius, Imhotep, designed and built this, the first pyramid. Before, tombs were simpler, just large platforms, called mastabas, with the tomb inside. But Imhotep built this Step Pyramid, which is basically six mastabas built on top of each other, each succeeding lay smaller as you go up. It was a great leap forward in architecture and Imhotep became so famous and revered that he was worshiped as a god until Roman times.
The Step Pyramid...
We also went into some amazing tombs of nobles with beautiful carvings, some with the original color. The entryway was a bit small...
Dear new friends..
"Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids." - Arab proverb
The next morning we met Dr Zahi Hawaas at the tombs of the pyramid builders. This is a large complex, to the southeast of the great pyramid, where the pyramid builders lived and some died and were buried. This discovery and excavation, done over the last twenty years, proved beyond doubt that the people who built the pyramids were not slaves, but regular Egyptians from all over the country. They would come here to work for several months during the year and then go back to their regular lives. Dr Hawaas told us many stories about the people who lived here, how they lived, what they ate, what they died of and we saw where they were buried. There were professionals who designed the pyramids and headed the different crews. They mostly lived into their 50s and 60s. The regular workers died in their 20s and 30s...their lives were a little harder.
“Egypt is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.”
…Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
Today was the last of our many pyramids and they were a couple of my favorites. While the Great Pyramid is gigantic and an architectural wonder and the Step Pyramid was the first grand stone structure in the world, these two pyramids are amazing.
They are both at Dashour, about 30 miles south of Cairo. They were both built by the same man, Senefru, a Pharoah in the 4th Dynasty, who also built the Meidum pyramid we saw on the first day, the one that collapsed.
The first was the Bent Pyramid, so called because it changes angles about 2/3rd of the way up. As they were building the pyramid, cracks started to appear all over, caused by the enormous weight, plus the fact that the pyramid was built on sand and not bedrock. So by making the angle greater, they used less stone. This caused the pyramid to have a unique, bent shape.
Another unique thing about this pyramid is that it has most of its limestone casing stone, the smooth rock that used to cover all the pyramids.
Pharoah and queen...
The Red Pyramid was the world's first true pyramid. No steps, not bent, didn't collapse, a real wonder. Inside, it's also amazing. You go down a steep, narrow passage for over 200 feet, then into the first of three huge burial chambers. These have beautiful corbelled ceilings, reaching way up into the pyramid.
We drove back through some beautiful countryside, past many date palm farms. Many people along the road, when they see we are tourists, wave at us with big smiles. Again this shows how much the Egyptians love to see foreigners coming to Egypt and are constantly welcoming us with open arms.
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