Sightseeing in Cairo

Dear Reader,
Friday is a non-work day here, so we saw the sights of Cairo. The museum is filled with priceless artifacts, and our guide Hussein helped us navigate the vast collection from the age of the pharoahs (over 5000 years ago). We learned so many things! We saw the 5,200 pieces from King Tut's tomb, including his sarcophogi, his headdress, his chariot, throne, clothing, shoes. How these items have survived intact for thousands of years is a mystery. King Tut reigned for 10 years, beginning when he was a mere 10 years old. His cause of death is unknown; his mummy (at Luxor) reveals a head injury, so some believe he was assasinated by a rival, others that he fell from a horse.

We also saw mummified animals, including sacred animals such as crocodiles (!), animals used as religous votives (people would purchase these animal mummies then bury them in tombs as gifts to the gods), and animals that were beloved pets to be buried with owners.

One of the most interesting pharoahs was King Akhenaten. He was considered a "heretic king" because he introduced many new ideas to the people, including the equality of men and women, the fact that kings and queens were not gods, and that their was only one god, the sun god Amun-Re. He was assassinated by a priest. His wife was the famous and beautiful Nefertiti. He was followed by King Tutankamen, who became king by his betrothal and eventual marriage to Akhenaten and Nefertiti's daughter.

Another interesting pharoah was Cheops. There is only one known statue of Cheops, and it is only about 4 inches tall! He believed that the king was one of the people, and that what we leave behind of importance is our work. Although he is not glorified in grand statues, his pyramid is the largest of them all, 455 feet tall!

We learned that a king's statue with a straight beard was created while the king was alive, while if the statue had a curved beard, the king was dead. Statues often showed the king with one hand in a fist (for fidelity) and one hand palm down on his thigh (for prayer). King's statues may have include a falcon (Horus) to represent protection.
In addition to the lotus and the papyrus as symbols for upper (southern) and lower (northern) Egypt, many artifacts show the vulture and the cobra, the 2 protectors of upper and lower Egypt.

Although we could have stayed at the museum for days, we had much more sighseeing to do! Fritz would have enjoyed our float on the Nile, on a boat called a "faluka." Then the rest of our day was spent at the pyramids and sphinx. There are 113 pyramids in Egypt, and 9 of them are here at Giza. The pyramids (ahrams) are hard to describe--the mere feat of engineering is astounding.  It is believed it took 100,000 their lifetimes to create the pyramid of Cheops. To walk to a chamber inside required us to crouch very low and walk up a ramp hundreds of meters. But inside was amazing, in that it is clear that the blocks of stone or granite are perfectly fitted together, yet with no filler in between; again, amazing. The craftsmanship of the artifacts inside the tombs is beyond compare.
This ancient civilization was an advanced culture of language, art, music, architecture, and extraordinary Egyptians.

Signing off for now, your intrepid adventurer,
Alf