Solar Boat & the Great Sphinx

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Paula Terrey

16 March 2000 (morning, continued)

The Solar Boat museum as seen from a distance.

After our tour of the Great Pyramid we skirt around on foot to the Solar Boat Museum.

According to my official Museum of Cheops booklet, published by the Ministry of Culture, Egyptian Antiquities Organization, the present structure, which opened in 1982 and was built directly over the pit where the boat parts were discovered, “…brought a good deal of controversy, and all of it on the same topic — how is it possible to build a modern construction in the shadow of the Great Pyramid itself, without looking totally out-of-place?”

Indeed. What to do, what to do?

The less than prepossessing Solar Boat Museum.

Again, according to the booklet, “The problem was solved by the architect designing the project with an outer shell of steel-reinforced concrete and all the façade of transparent glass, to make it complement its stern surroundings as well as to conceal its vast size and unusual shape.”

The result is, of course, an aesthetic disaster; a big-butt ostrich of a museum with its head in the sand, pretending no one can see it. It sets my teeth on edge just looking at it, but my annoyance is quickly overcome by my desire to visit the boat.

Inside, we put thick cloth booties over our shoes to help cut down on dust and then see the enormous cavity that housed the boat. The ancient Egyptians carved a hole in the native rock and roofed it with forty-one gigantic, rectangular limestone blocks. The blocks were mortared together and then concealed under a layer of beaten earth, then further obscured by a wall.

Other boat pits — long empty — were well-known on the plateau, but this one and another went undetected until 1954, when archaeologist Kamal el-Mallakh and his crew discovered them while clearing old dig dumps and wind-blown sand from around the southern side of the pyramid. It had been so perfectly sealed for those forty-five hundred years that the cedar smelled as pungent as the day it was tucked away.

Next, we examine a model of the boat and photos showing the reconstruction process. The challenge of puzzling out how the 1,223 pieces of the dismantled craft fit together fell mostly to one man: Ahmed Youssef Moustafa, Chief Restorer of the Department of Antiquities, who devoted fourteen years to the effort. Then we go upstairs and see the actual boat.

Khufu’s boat as viewed from the bow.

The cabin of Khufu’s boat, looking toward the stern.

There are two viewing levels in the museum, and from the lower level the boat looks like it’s floating in the air. The planks are surprisingly (to me) thick, and the bottom is quite flat. Bow and stern both rise in a steep curve and end in the form of a papyrus bud. It is stunningly beautiful.

The cabin of Khufu’s boat, looking toward the bow.

We go up to the second level, and from this vantage point can look down on the deck. The gangplank is quite wide — certainly wide enough to accommodate men carrying a coffin, if that was indeed its purpose. While some believe this was a sacred or “solar” barque, used only once to transport the king’s body in a funerary procession, Ahmed Youssef Moustafa believed wear on the timbers and other features showed the boat had been used many times. I’d like to think it was one of the king’s favorite yachts and a defiant thumb-of-the-nose at the “you can’t take it with you” mindset.

Monolithic simplicity of Khafre’s Valley Temple

After the Solar Boat Museum we get back on the bus and drive down to Khafre’s Valley Temple. Khafre succeeded his father Khufu, and his pyramid is the second largest on the plateau, rising to a height of 471 feet, just ten feet shy of the Great Pyramid. All of the Giza pyramids had both “Mortuary” and “Valley” temples linked by long causeways. The mortuary temples nestled against their respective pyramids, while the valley temples hugged the Nile. Khafre’s temple is the best preserved, built from colossal limestone blocks encased in granite.

We spend some time contemplating the gigantic blocks, then use the remains of Khafre’s causeway to march up to the Great Sphinx. The ol’ sphinx is free of scaffolding and looking good.

It is a fantastic day at Giza, with the pyramids in the distance and the paws of the sphinx resting in front of us. Never mind the brazen Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken directly across the street.

Great Sphinx, Giza

The Great Pyramid

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Paula Terrey

16 March 2000 (morning, continued)

The author photographs a boat pit near the Great Pyramid

After buying our Great Pyramid tickets we wander, waiting for the first rush of tourists to hit it and clear out. It’s a hazy day and there’s a brisk wind from the north. There are so many deep pits in the rock around the pyramid, I feel like I’m walking on Swiss cheese.

Overwhelming scale of the Great Pyramid

The Great Pyramid is dated to 2551 BC and attributed to King Khufu, also known by the Greek version of his name, “Cheops.”

According to my guidebook, it has a base of over 13 acres, was originally 481 feet tall (the tippy top is now missing), and has over two million blocks of stone that weigh, on average, two-and-a-half tons each.

Ironically, the only known likeness of Khufu is a 3-inch-high ivory figurine found at Abydos, showing him dressed in a simple robe and the red crown, sitting on a throne with his right arm crossed over his chest, a flail in his hand.

Interior passages of the Great Pyramid

Like other Egyptian pyramids, the Great Pyramid was surrounded by the ritual structures needed to complete a first-rate funerary complex, including temples and a nice “members only” court cemetery out on the back forty. But it is the interior passages and chambers that have become a sort of giant, three-dimensional Rorschach test through the years. Most people view it as a tomb, but there are those who have seen it as a cosmic clock, Joseph’s granary, a resurrection machine, a code for unlocking biblical secrets, an astronomical observatory, and a massive hydraulic pump.

Massive stone beams above original entrance, Great Pyramid

To get inside the Great Pyramid we climb stone steps on the outside to a 9th century Arab explorer’s tunnel. The original entrance is exposed several courses above us and a little to the left. It is astonishing on its own, protected by enormous stone beams set in a stress-relieving peak.

Female guards at the entrance take tickets and check cameras (allowed, but a separate charge). After passing through the tunnel we come to a spot where, if we climb down a few steps, we can see the descending passageway that connects the original entrance to the subterranean chamber. We don’t go that way, however, but climb the ascending passage that leads to the Grand Gallery.

From the top of the ascending passage we can go straight (actually down slightly and then straight) to the “Queen’s Chamber” (a likely misnomer), or up through the Grand Gallery to the burial chamber. We go up first.

Looking up at the ceiling of the Grand Gallery

The Grand Gallery is a mystery within a mystery, and theories about its purpose run the gamut from it being a stone block storage area to it being part of a counterweight system for lifting the impossibly heavy granite burial chamber blocks. In many ways it’s no different from the corbelled chambers we saw in the Meidum and Red pyramids, but like everything else in this pyramid the scale overwhelms. The Gallery is well-lit, but even so the ceiling is in shadow and I feel like an ant in the elevator shaft of a skyscraper.

At the top of the Gallery we must stoop to get through a low, granite-lined passage to the burial chamber.

Burial chamber, Great Pyramid. Photo courtesy of Jon Bodsworth, Wikimedia Commons.

The burial chamber is as big as our house. Our house is admittedly smallish, but still… There is a ventilation fan rumbling in one of the “air shafts.” Its noise is intense and a bit unnerving. The sarcophagus rests at one end of the chamber — lidless, battered, and empty. It seems out-of-place, somehow — too small compared to the chamber and the pyramid itself. There is a recording thermo-hygrometer on a stand against the wall near the entrance and a security camera up in a corner, trained on the sarcophagus. Those who check the pyramid’s condition are also keeping an eye on cracks in the ceiling slabs and have placed strips that will alert to any signs of shifting.

“Movement detectors” on ceiling cracks in King’s chamber, Great Pyramid

Back out in the Grand Gallery, Bill points out to us, high above our heads, the opening that leads to the relieving chambers over the burial chamber. It would take a very long ladder to get up to it.

Niche at one end of the Queen’s chamber

At the bottom of the Grand Gallery we duck-walk through a passage to the Queen’s Chamber. The Queen’s Chamber was never finished and has an uneven floor. There is a niche at one end, although that word hardly does it justice because, like everything else in this pyramid, it’s big. It was burrowed into by treasure hunters and the hole they left behind is gated over. It was in the southern “air shaft” of this chamber that the robot camera discovered the “door” with copper pins.

After leaving the Queen’s Chamber, we go back to the area where steps lead down to the original descending passageway. The gate is still open, but one of the female camera police is shooing people away. She gets distracted for a moment, however, and in an impulsive moment of lawlessness I dash down and arrive at a spot where I can look back up to the original entrance and see sunlight shining around the edges of the steel door that covers it, and also some of the granite sealing plugs. I would love to go back and contemplate in detail all the things we’ve seen, but it’s starting to get crowded and so we must move along. We emerge to a fine view of the bus parking area.

Bus parking as seen from entrance of the Great Pyramid

Giza Plateau

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Paula Terrey

16 March 2000 (morning)

Our routine has been 6:30 wake-up call, 7:00 breakfast, and board the bus by 8:00, but today we must be on the bus by 7:30. We’ll tour the Giza Plateau as a group this morning, then come back to Mena House for lunch. After that there’s an optional walking tour.

The Great Pyramid as seen from Mena House grounds

The entrance to the Giza Plateau is just around the corner and up the hill from Mena House. Makes sense, given that the Great Pyramid has been looming over us these past few days. We’ll take the bus in spite of the short distance because we’ll want it later.

First stop is a security checkpoint. There’s a police station on our left and a tiny mosque to its right, a crescent moon topping its obelisk-shaped minaret. A greasy looking shop called the “Pyramids Bazaar” is next to the mosque, donkey stables behind it.

Guard House, Giza Plateau

After security we go up the hill and wait. When we get the okay to proceed another bus challenges us to a camel race, but our driver is both ruthless and invincible and we don’t miss our chance to be first in line for Great Pyramid tickets. To prevent scalping, visitors must buy tickets themselves, so Bill stands next to the booth and gives us our allotted pounds.

Guards at the base of the Great Pyramid

First impression of the Giza Plateau: it is immense. Human hands have modified every inch of rock under our feet and it’s an uneven minefield of potential twisted ankles.

Black basalt paving, Great Pyramid

Basalt paving stones are still in place on one side of the Great Pyramid and for a moment I’m able to capture what it must have looked like originally: brilliant angle of seamless white limestone set against a turquoise sky and surrounded by a smooth, black stone lake.

This is the start of Eid al-Adha and there are swarms of picnicking families on holiday. Moustafa tells us they don’t allow Egyptians into the Great Pyramid for the first three days of the feast because there wouldn’t be any tickets left for tourists.

Guards & Camels, Giza Plateau

Camel-riding guards are assembled and ready to head out on patrol. Their uniforms look unbearably hot: black woolen jackets with lots of gold braid looped over the shoulders, thick pants, heavy boots, and berets. The camels make a noise that sounds exactly like an accelerating motorcycle.

Red Pyramid

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Paula Terrey

15 March 2000 (afternoon, continued)

Red Pyramid as seen from the Bent Pyramid, Dashur

Next we go to the North Pyramid, also known as the Red Pyramid because of its rose-tinged limestone core blocks. Built from bottom to top at a consistent 43 degree angle, it is Egypt’s first “true” pyramid. The casing stones were looted in antiquity by Cairo builders, but remnants show they were smooth, white limestone.

Red Pyramid entrance

Scholars have long scratched their heads over the Red Pyramid because, like Meidum and the Bent Pyramid, it’s attributed to Sneferu, a man who apparently collected pyramids the way some people collect spoons.

Down into the Red Pyramid, Dashur

We can go inside the Red Pyramid: the entrance is about halfway up the sloping north face. We get to it via stairs, then descend through a steep, long, and beautifully even granite-lined passage to a place where things level out briefly before emerging into a splendid corbelled chamber.

Tidy burial chamber corbelling, Red Pyramid, Dashur

Built less than 60 years after Djoser’s Step Pyramid, the interior stone alignments and surfaces of the Red Pyramid reflect the remarkable advances in precision since even Meidum, where the entry passage was roughly cut in spite of being an “official” entrance and not a robber’s tunnel.

Red Pyramid burial chamber wall and hacked-away floor, Dashur

From the first corbelled chamber we go through a short corridor to a second corbelled space, then up a wooden staircase to a third corbelled room, presumably the burial chamber. Most of the floor is simply gone — quarried away by tomb robbers. The one good aspect of this tragedy is a chance to see some of the core blocks, so we stand on a wooden platform at one side and look down into the hole. The air is so thick and salty it’s like breathing brine.

Next stop is the “Nile School for Countryside Carpets.” A few children are sitting at looms in the downstairs weaving room, demonstrating how they knot the rugs, and one girl in particular is as cute and bright as a sparrow. She’s wearing a long skirt paired with a sweater, her dark, wavy hair braided in a tight pigtail down her back. Her thin little face breaks into a dazzling smile as she shows us what she can do, her fingers plucking the warp so fast they’re a blur.

Looking down at one end of our ridiculous rug.

Upstairs in the showroom they ply us with free Cokes and we somehow end up purchasing a 7 x 11 foot knotted camel-hair carpet in teal, red, pink, beige, blue, brown, yellow and at least half-a-dozen other colors that match nothing in our home. We’ll have it shipped.

On the ride back to Mena House we pass a volleyball game where, for lack of poles, men are cheerfully holding up the net for their friends. At various intersections, guards with rifles and machine guns leaning casually from the windows of limestone towers.

Tonight we’ll have dinner at the hotel, do a bit of laundry, and re-pack. Tomorrow will be a full day, starting with the Giza Plateau and ending with our flight to Luxor.

Bent Pyramid

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Paula Terrey

15 March 2000 (afternoon)

At Dashur we stop first at the Bent Pyramid which, like Meidum, belongs to Sneferu. It’s the third-largest pyramid in Egypt.

Dashur — the Bent Pyramid

The reason for the name is obvious. The builders reportedly began with a core at a slope of 60 degrees, then added a low perimeter reinforcement at 55 degrees, and then about halfway up changed the remainder to 43 degrees.

Approaching the Bent Pyramid

The upper and lower portions also have different styles. The lower blocks — both core and girdle — slope down and in as accretion layers, just like Djoser’s Step Pyramid, the pyramid of Sekhemkhet (Djoser’s successor), Meidum Pyramid, and a pyramid tentatively attributed to Khaba at Zawiyet el-Aryan. But once the angle changes the courses are set in horizontal layers for the first time.

Bent Pyramid Casing Stones

Another interesting feature: most of the casing stones are still in place and the missing ones are at top, not the bottom – just the opposite of what one might expect in a stone looting situation. The remaining casing stones give us a chance to imagine a fully finished pyramid in all its smooth, bright, limestone glory. It must have dazzled, although now the look is more like a thin layer of icing spread on an enormous scone.

Closer look at core blocks, the Bent Pyramid

The Bent Pyramid is unsafe and so we can’t go inside, but walk all the way around. (There’s a subsidiary pyramid to the south, too.)

Pyramids were built in stages and Bill, who’s an engineer, grabs a flake of limestone and kneels in the sand to illustrate. Scholars are still debating the reason for the angle change of this pyramid. Was it planned from the start or an innovation in response to subsidence problems?

The ancient Egyptians placed the Bent Pyramid directly on desert soil, not on rock. The interior chambers are shored up with cedar beams, apparently proving there were signs of instability even during construction. Most Egyptologists have thus concluded that stability issues were the reason for the change in angle — to lessen the weight of stone — but there are those who believe the angle may have been a deliberate choice arising from changing religious beliefs. The interior, which I now long to see more than ever, has two entrances (intended, not just robber’s tunnels) and three magnificent corbelled chambers.

If you’d like to read more about the Bent Pyramid and see some photos of the interior then I recommend this link: The Guardian’s Bent Pyramid

Exposed corner, Bent Pyramid